Colin Randall writes: Paul Brady was very generous with his time and also very thoughtful, instantly offering – minutes before I was due to conduct the interview – a 24-hour delay when a family issue arose for me. His responses when we did get talking provided an illuminating insight into his life and work … see Part One (Second class citizen, first class artist) at https://www.salutlive.com/2025/03/the-big-interview-paul-brady.htmlPart Three: on celebrity, culture and the Troubles:https://www.salutlive.com/2025/03/the-big-interview-3-paul-bradys.html
Paul Brady with the Johnstons – Adrienne and Luci Johnston plus Mike Moloney at the top
Salut! Live: What was the rationale behind this project: is it the Paul Brady story, or just the Paul Brady story so far?
Paul Brady: Well I suppose the story so far. I am not in the spring of my career but I think at this point after 60 years in the business it was time to put down an overview of an awful lot of stuff that has never seen the light of day.
Every Paul Brady style is represented in these four CDs. If you had to choose, say, three tracks that you were especially proud of, what would they be?
I like the cover I do of a Beatles song, You Won't See Me and I very much like Let's Get Together and the song I do with Kate Rusby, All God's Angels as it took me into a vocal area I don't very often find myself, a much lower register. If I had a fourth choice, it might by my own song The Havana Way.
There are some fascinating and artistically very successful collaborations in this collection [Carole King, Cara Dillon, Kate Rusby and – see below – the Johnstons are among those included]. Do you get a special buzz from performing with others who’ve mastered their craft, too?
Yes I do because it takes me out of myself and gives me a chance to perform with people I also admire. Quite often these collaborations just come around once, they're not really Paul Brady tracks as such and lots of my fans won't even have heard them if they appeared on the other artists' albums.
Tributes to your work abound, perhaps none more important than Bob Dylan who included you with Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen as his "secret heroes". Did his praise make you forgive him for plagiarising Arthur McBride [see this article]?
(Laughs) That's a loaded question! The point is Arthur McBride is a traditional song and throughout history traditional songs have been added to and subtracted from so I don't feel I own the song though I did adjust some of it.There was no recognition whatsoever from Bob Dylan but I certainly don't lie awake at night wishing he'd given me a pat on the back. My version is essentially the one I learned from a book called the Heritage of Song compiled by Carrie Grover (a Nova Scotian singer, fiddler and folk song collector). I changed it because some lines were repeated unnecessarily and there were some references I didn't feel comfortable with. But I didn't fundamentally change the song.
As an aside, I’m sure you know of that Desert Island Discs edition on which Mark Rylance chose Arthur McBride, also recording his own version for a Stop the War fundraiser.
That's news to me. I'd like to hear it [a link was sent immediately after our interview].
I first encountered you when the Johnstons played two folk clubs I ran (Darlington and Bishop Auckland). With what émotions do you look back on that period and later with Planxty and Andy Irvine? [The Archive contains a Johnstons track, The Coleraine Regatta]
I totally immersed myself in Irish music for pretty much 10-12 years. I loved it all, enjoyed playing with the Johnstons, living in England and touring the folk clubs including yours. We were really qiite popular, doing TV and radio like Jimmy Young and Terry Wogan. The Johnstons were a well known band in the folk revival. I learned an awful lot but when we parted it felt it was the right time to do it.
Having been so absorbed by traditional music in the 70s. did you lose interest when you moved to rockier territory or was it simply a desire to broaden your art?My interest didn't wane but I suppose I didn't want it to be the only focus of what I did. A lot of singer songwriters were coming to the fore, not least Gerry Rafferty who I knew from the Humblebums with Billy Connolly and Tam Harvey and from recording for the same label, Translatantic.
When I heard his album City to City which included Baker Street, I was just blown away. I immediately felt "I wonder if I could write songs" and it got me started. I spent much of 1979 and 1980 trying to write. I knew if I was going to be a songwriter I'd have to concentrate on just doing that so I put traditional music on the back burner, not abandoned forever but put aside while I figured out whether or not I could write.
The rock and roll style was not new, of course, as my pal Bill Taylor noticed (in his review for the Northern Echo) from your guitar playing back with the Johnstons.
Yes. And in the duo with with Andy Irvine there were so many different influences at play. He had his Woody Guthrie and Eastern European styles, I had my Ulster folk singing but also rock and roll and pop styles and we put it all together with no grand masterplan.
Was Irish music – any music – a big part of growing up?
My parents Sean and Mollie were both music lovers. Both sang, my father in particular. Both were primarily in school teachers but he was a frustrated actor. In a different location and time that is what he might have been. He was a great natural performer, doing one-man shows.The house was full of music and I started tinkering about on piano at four or five years old. I didn’t want to learn scales and the like but found I could replicate practically anything I heard on the radio. I had a very good ear.I was given a guitar for Christmas aged 11. There were no guitar teachers in our town so I basically taught myself. I was a mixed-up kid, born naturally left-handed at a time when the emphasis was on making children like me right-handed. I ended up writing and playing right handed but still kicking a football with left foot and other things I was doing before 11 with my right hand.
Did your peculiar early years, life on both sides of the border, influence your cultural or political development?
Yes I suppose so. The river ran through our town and was the border. My father crossed the river every morning to his work as a teacher in the Republic whereas my mother had been trained in Northern Ireland and taught there.So we would be across the border every single day. I preferred being in the Republic than in Northern Ireland. It was just a different feeling altogether.
To be continued (Part three will appear tomorrow) ….
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