May 2024

Coat Tales

It was late 1970 when my friend Áine O’Connor asked me if Tara Telephone would perform on Fonn, an upcoming RTE show. Under the remit of the Irish language department of RTE, Fonn wasn’t the right fit for Tara Telephone’s English language pop poetry.

However, as luck would have it, I was carrying a magazine with an article about a notional band we’d just named Horslips. Although we hadn’t played a gig yet, I persuaded Áine to arrange an audition. “Folk rock,” I promised.

Guitarist Kieron “Spud” Murphy was moving to London to work as a rock photographer, so Declan Sinnott, who was quitting Tara Telephone, took his place. Declan wasn’t the only icon to switch from Tara Telephone to Horslips. My sturdy tweed overcoat also made the trip.

People who’ve seen the award-winning Parker Pen ad (above) in which I was cast as a bicycle-pushing poet, are impressed by the statement overcoat which landed me the lucrative modelling assignment. “Spud” and Ian Finlay (who later took The Táin album sleeve photos) were both on the photo shoot. “Spud” supplied the glasses. Not sure who produced the old bike. Occasionally I’m asked, “Have you still got that coat?”

I don’t. But I have the memories.

I’d been reading a few poems at an event in O’Connors Tavern on Hardman Street in Liverpool in 1969 and had a minor brush with the law, an undercover policeman. A bit spooked, I was put at ease by friends in the extended Liverpool Scene family. (I was staying at Adrian Henri’s place at the time.)

Artist Sue Evans and others suggested I join them on a trip to a street market on Scottie Road the next morning. A fervent fan of Mersey Beat, I knew the topography of Liverpool streets and clubs better than James Joyce knew Dublin so I wanted to see the road Cilla Black had lived on, Scotland Road. Cilla, former cloak-room girl at The Cavern, was still having chart hits at the time.

The road wasn’t what I expected. There were huge vacant lots. Some, possibly, old WW2 bomb sites. Clearance and regeneration seemed slow. But the car boot sale (without the cars) was intriguing. This was my first “flea market” experience and it seemed as if Liverpool’s sad heritage was on display.

Then I saw the coat.

Instantly smitten by the dazzling, brash herringbone pattern, I tried it on. Double-breasted, a generous fit with wide lapels, it stretched down below my knees. And it had a belt, with a leather buckle. In perfect nick, it was the sort of coat I’d seen in newsreels of excited men, with their wooden

clackers, going to stand on football terraces on foggy Saturday afternoons. This coat felt like living history. I paid ten bob for it.

Back in Dublin, it cocooned me in comfort against the winter chill as Tara Telephone did the rounds of clubs, colleges, and bars. It also proved inspirational, even prompting the occasional line in a poem.

“…….

Fists inside my pockets

Against the breeze;

Sometimes I wish I could not see

This sweet disease….”

Tara Telephone: (l to r: Paul Kennan, David Costelloe (d: Feb 2011), Eamon, a shaggy dog, Peter Fallon, Lucienne Purcell)

When our audition clinched the Fonn series for Horslips, we needed a new band photo so, with snapper Seamus Latimer, we took some shots in the Dublin mountains. It was January 1971 and the coat was there too, accessorised with a Biba scarf.

Later, I upgraded to a bright snazzy wool and canvas Scandinavian coat and, dreading the cold on foreign tours, “Irish” Jim (Lockhart) asked if he could borrow my tweed coat. And there the story ends.

I like to imagine it nestling snug in a chest with my old lyrics, doodles, and sleeve note scribbles that Jim stored in his archive. But, truthfully, it owes me nothing. It played its part. And witnessed a lot. These days plans are afoot to release an exciting new retrospective Horslips package. Tracks are currently being compiled and remastered for a UK release, Horslips at the BBC … and Other Adventures, so the ghost of my grand old coat won’t ever be far away.

Coat Tales

June 2024

April 2024