Baby You're a Star Read Free Page A

didn’t complain about the school but accepted his predicament. But his experiences there left him depressed. His parents didn’t realise how much he hated the school until he failed his first set of exams. He could find no way of fitting in, no matter how much he tried.
    “I didn’t realise for about a year. We always thought, ‘Oh, he’ll settle. He’ll get used to it’ but he didn’t really,” says his mother. In truth, Louis’ mother had no other option but to send him to St. Nathy’s. The reason was simple and obvious, as she explains: “You couldn’t do your Leaving Certificate in Kiltimagh at that time.”
    But he used his time at St. Nathys to learn hard lessons about life. Reminiscing on this period, he says: “Going to boarding school . . . the food was horrible. If I had kids, I don’t think I would send them to boarding school. It’s like being on religious retreat all the time. I wasn’t lonely, but there was no music, there was no television – the things I like. There was no good food, there was nothing. It was either Gaelic football or studying, and I had no interest in either; none at all. But I think it was good for me in one sense because it prepared me for the big bad world.”
    Although he was probably far brighter and more astute than he realised, he did not succeed academ-ically. He failed to pass his Intermediate Certificate, the compulsory national exam for 15 year-olds. After that experience, his mother decided not to send any of her children to St. Nathy’s. Louis eventually completed his education at St. Patrick’s College in Swinford, nine miles from his home in Kiltimagh.
    Of St. Nathy’s, he says, “I left the school because I failed almost everything in my Inter Cert. They advised my mother not to send me back. I wasn’t expelled. So I went to day school in Swinford. That was great fun, because I used to go down on the bus every day, having a great laugh, great fun and I got my Leaving Cert.”
    Louis Walsh was different from his school contem-poraries in many respects. Along with having no interest in his studies, he was also uninterested in many of the passions shared by his school friends. He disliked Gaelic football, the bedrock of local life. Louis, though, had a passion of his own – pop music. He possessed an uncanny ability to remember tunes and lyrics of songs, countless songs. There was scarcely a style of popular music with which he wasn’t familiar.
    “All I ever wanted to do was work somehow in music. To be a DJ, or work in a radio station, or an advertising agency, or a magazine. I just wanted to work in entertainment,” he says. For a youngster growing up in rural Ireland, the bright lights of show business were nothing but a far off dream. But Louis possessed both a sincere love of music and great determination, and few traits could have served him better in his ambitions to succeed in the music industry.
    Pop music mesmerised Louis. He thrived on it. Music afforded him the opportunity to escape the frustration of small-town life in rural Ireland. More than anything, he wanted to be part of the music scene. At the age of 15, he got his first break.
    “When I started going to St. Patrick’s, I had lots of free time. I was going home every day and I wasn’t studying. So I started booking this local band, a local three-piece. They were like Status Quo. They were called Time Machine.”
    Louis’ career in the music business had begun. Soon he set about persuading more prominent band managers to give Time Machine supporting roles at concerts. As there was no telephone in the Walsh household on Chapel Street, Louis organised his fledgling business using the local phone box. He would wait anxiously outside the public telephone in Kiltimagh village until he heard it ring. He was dogged in his pursuit of securing support slots for his act.
    “I used to use the local public phone box to get through to promoters like Oliver Barry, Jim Hand or Jim Aiken. They