'Commitments' show brings fans on a trip down memory lane

There's a lot of different music you can get off on but soul is more than that. It takes you somewhere else,” declared Jimmy Rabbitte in The Commitments. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the acclaimed film, the cast are embarking on a nationwide tour that comes to the Royal Theatre, Castlebar on Monday, March 14.Andrew Strong, who played mouthy front man Deco in the movie, is in frank form as he gears up for the shows.

“If it had been left up to me it probably never would have happened,” he says. “I was just approached by our promoter who’s putting the shows together. He asked me was I interested in doing these gigs for the 20th anniversary of The Commitments. I thought about it and just went ‘if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it.

“Once he got me on board he was 50% there,” continues Strong. “Once the rest of the crew knew I was doing it there like ‘right, let’s go for it’. I’m not being pompous or anything like that, or big-headed, or saying anything like they can’t do it without me – not at all. But the reality is I am the singer in the band and if people are going to go out and spend €60 on it they want to get the real thing.”

Andrew was only 16 when he appeared in Alan Parker’s movie, but he didn’t exactly go banging on stardom’s door.

“Well I didn’t really audition for the movie,” he recalls. “Because my character was a tall, vain George Michael kind of lookalike. As you can see, I’m the complete opposite of that!

“What happened was at that time, Alan Parker needed to choose songs for the movie. Different singers would come in everyday and be given five songs. Parker would have 20 songs at the end of the day and he’d be listening to them all. These were old songs and he wanted to see what they sounded like.”

As soon as the English director heard Strong unleash his raw, soulful voice he knew he was listening to Deco.

“Things just snowballed, really, from there,” says Andrew. “And I was just fairly happy because I was on summer holidays out of boarding school and I was getting 300 quid a week to sing songs. I was over the moon!”

Two decades after the film was made, Strong reflects on the strange new world he found himself in.

“I was living in Jury’s Hotel, at 16 years of age,” he says. “I’m from Wicklow so it was a bit of a drag to get me in to the set every morning so they decided to put me into Jury’s. I was getting a per diem (expenses allowance) every day, so you can imagine – you’re in Ballsbridge, getting 50 quid a day to live there. It was just great.”The cast of The Commitments had to wait a while before international fame was thrust upon them. When he finished filming, Andrew went back to school while Parker and his crew went into post-production.

“When the movie was finished they had to go off and edit it, so it was back to normal for the best part of a year,” he says. “None of us ever saw the film, we never saw any of the rough cuts or anything like that. The first time I saw it was on RTÉ; there was some documentary about it and I saw clips.”

The Commitments was a box-office smash, both in Ireland and internationally, changing Andrew Strong’s life forever. He was offered a solo recording contract and went on to tour with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bryan Adams and Prince. The latter has something of a reputation as a diva– did Andrew get to see another side of his personality?

“No, absolutely no direct contact,” he says. “I didn’t even see him. Well, I saw him perform. It’s quite strange; I played with the Stones, Elton John, Bryan Adams – they’re all very, very down to earth people. You can sit down and have a chat before the gig. Prince just does his own thing.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.