Aslan still rocking after 36 years on the road
Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – [email protected]
Aslan, which is celebrating its 36th anniversary in 2018, comes to the Clidfen Arts Festival on Wednesday September 19. During those 36 years, the Dublin quintet have weathered breaking up, addiction and a cancer diagnosis for leadsinger Christy Dignam. Founding member, keyboard player and guitarist Billy McGuinness is in ebullient form as he looks back over a summer that saw Aslan sell out two nights at Dublin’s Iveagh Gardens.
“It’s all good in the Aslan camp!” he says. “Do you know what? It’s been the best year ever. If you go back to 2013 when Christy was diagnosed with cancer, and you fast forward to 2018 it’s like a completely different band.
“We were knackered in 2013, it was all over, Christy was in hospital and everything stopped. And now here we are gigging again, and we’re as popular as ever. To be still here, and still drawing the crowds – it’s unbelievable. I think when the atomic bomb goes, it’ll only be cockroaches and Aslan left!” he laughs.
Aslan’s Crazy World is perhaps their most iconic song, and its enduring appeal could be heard when the Shauna Ray Lacey sang it at this year’s Rose of Tralee.
“It was bleeding brilliant,” Billy enthuses. “It was all over Twitter, it was in the newspapers and everything. We knew nothing about it, and next thing the Carlow Rose gets up and says ‘I want to sing a song that my Dad used to sing to me in the car when I was a little girl.’ Next thing, she bursts out with Crazy World.”
When Billy speaks to The Groove Tube, he’s gearing up for a gig in Limerick that will see Aslan share top billing with The Stunning and Nathan Carter. They are a band in demand, and have rallied around leadsinger Christy, who continues to receive treatment for amyloidosis.
“We don’t do anything else,” Billy says. “That’s why it was a big shock when Christy was diagnosed in 2013. Because everything stopped. And it’s not just the five members of Aslan, you’ve got the crew, you’ve got their family, you’ve Mark Downing who books us, you’ve got Denise who manages us.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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