A flame that flickers but will never go out

Back in the early 1980’s, in Rathmines’ College of Commerce supposedly training to be a journalist, a few of us spent as much time in the nearby snooker hall as we did in shorthand class.

There was a jukebox in the snooker hall, boasting all the big bands and artists of the time – the Police, Squeeze, Madness, the Specials, the Jam, Joe Jackson – but in that mix there was only one record that I used my few bob to play over and over again.

So much so that, when they updated the selection with the next batch of big hits, the people in the snooker hall gave me the copy of the single.

It was a song called Molly, the first single from Johnny Duhan’s eponymously titled debut album. I still have it in my collection.

I was a fan of Johnny Duhan’s music before we ever became friends; that was over 40 years ago. And it’s hard to believe that there will be no more long chats or lunches after his tragic death on Galway Bay.

Not long after I came to work in the Tribune in 1983, the decision was taken to relaunch the city edition as a new paper – the Galway City Tribune – and the editor Mike Glynn was willing to entertain anything that gave it a fresh image or an edge.

I was always going on about Johnny Duhan and his music, so Mike put it up to me: “Go and talk to him for a spread in the paper.”

Mike has forgotten more about music than most of us ever knew in the first place, and he was also intimately familiar with so much of Johnny’s backstory, particularly the story of Granny’s Intentions and their big hit album Honest Injun, for a start.

So he knew it might make for a good piece, albeit left in the hands of a rookie reporter.

Johnny was living in Sandyvale Lawns at the time, and we arranged to meet in the old Rendezvous pub beside Galway Shopping Centre – for the first of what turned out to be hundreds of cups of coffee over the next forty years.

I must have taken up most of his day, but his story was fascinating – the teenage frontman of the first Irish band to score a top ten album in the UK; rubbing shoulders with the stars; the break-up of the band; back to Ireland, living in a flat with Phil Lynott; the record deal that should have catapulted him to solo fame before the rug was pulled from under him.

And that debut solo album that stands the test of time.