Light goes out but the beat goes on

To all who knew him, he was just Viggy – no need for formalities because Viggy suited him to a tee…the drummer who knew no musical boundaries, always ready with the smile and a laugh that lit up every room he entered.

If you remembered him from Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus back in O’Connor’s in Salthill in the glorious seventies and eighties, he was the drummer with the flowing locks, the rhythm in a sweaty room that provided so much of the soundtrack to our youth.

There was less of the hair during his two decades with the Conquerors, but still that unmistakable bundle of musical energy, the eternal backbeat to his lifelong friend Frankie Colohan on every stage imaginable.

Paul Vignoles died last week and it’s so hard to imagine him gone; most of all for Helen and their son Daniel of course, but his passing leaves a chasm in Galway’s musical landscape. More than that, his friendship will be missed by so many.

Viggy saw the best in every situation, perhaps even in illness. He lived and loved life, and his talent brought him to places – geographically and musically – that he couldn’t have imagined.

It was perhaps a musical life of two halves; starting with Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, the band that epitomised the heady days of Salthill nightlife when all roads led to the seaside as soon as evening began to fall.

Paul and Frankie grew up together in the heart of the Claddagh and played music together for almost all of their lives; Rock n’n Roll Circus was blessed with other legends like Cha Reidy and Christy Donnelly, but the childhood friends were the constants on every stage they shared.

You stood there like sardines in O’Connor’s to hear them play the classics note perfect – a marathon version of Cocaine or Stairway to Heaven, which Clapton or Page and Plant themselves would have struggled to match; Sultans of Swing, Parisian Walkways…everything that would represent a massive challenge to others, these guys did it with what seemed like their ease.

His second musical life was with the Conquerors, already well established before the arrival of either Frankie back in the mid-eighties or Viggy some years later, in 2007.

Those who saw them as ‘just’ a showband really didn’t know them at all because within the industry they were renowned for their versatility.