Variety is spice of life for multi-talented Bill
It has won him a Grammy award, has fans all over the world, and has given hundreds of Irish musicians and dancers well-paid employment, so Bill Whelan is rightly proud of having composed the music for the phenomenal hit show, Riverdance. But ask him where he places it in his cannon of work, and he is pretty circumspect.
“It would be like asking me which of my children I prefer,” he says with a laugh.
Limerick man Bill, who spends as much time in Roundstone as his busy working schedule will allow, is giving a talk at this year’s Clifden Arts Week on Riverdance and his life in music. It promises to be fascinating, given that his music spans many genres and that he has worked with some of the world’s finest singers and musicians including Van Morrison, U2, Kate Bush and Elmer Bernstein.
Bill was also a member of Planxty and he produced and arranged Ireland’s Eurovision winners, Hold Me Now and What’s Another Year. Currently he’s working on a musical for Rough Magic Theatre Company based on the 1971 ‘contraceptive train’, which saw members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement bring contraceptives – then illegal in the Republic – from Belfast to Dublin by train. Train will be performed at this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival.
But life could have turned out much differently. Although he had studied piano as a child in Limerick where he later joined a band, playing drums and writing songs, Bill’s initial career path veered towards law.
He attended UCD, graduating in 1973 with a law degree, but music was his passion and after college, he immersed himself in it.
“My connection to Irish music came when I was in my 20s,” he recalls.
Folk was his entry to trad, he says, when he worked with Danny Doyle. After that, he got involved with Planxty and “that was the turning point”. It brought him into intimate contact with musicians including Dónal Lunny, Andy Irvine, Christy Moore, Nollaig Casey and Liam O’Flynn.
Bill wrote the score for Timedance with Dónal Lunny in 1981, beginning a creative strand that continued through the 1990s, culminating in Riverdance.