Baby You're a Star Read Free Page B

were based in Dublin. They used to give Time Machine support slots to the big showbands.”
    The promoters rarely met their schoolboy business associate. Instead they knew Louis by name only and were impressed by his conscientious and professional approach to his small business. Few realised how young he was because he spoke authoritatively. From Louis’ perspective, this was the essence of his success. He had unlimited energy and a clever wit, which allowed him to pass himself off as someone more experienced.
    He also was handling more money than most of his school friends could dream of.
    “We used to get £12 a night, which was fantastic money. And we would get into the gig for nothing. So we were having a great time and actually getting paid, going to the gig and meeting all the bands as well. We used to travel all over Connacht, doing supports, having a great time and I thought Time Machine were building up, getting me ready for the big time.”
    The money Time Machine earned was split four ways, earning Louis a tidy sum for his entrepreneurial endeavours. It was a lucrative business, considering his age. In 1967, £3 would buy you a stylish new shirt or a bundle of albums from the record shop in Castlebar.
    Louis maintains the money didn’t matter to him. “It was a chance for me to go and see the bands,” he says. “I loved music and the showbands were brilliant.”
    The showbands are often ridiculed nowadays but Louis was right. They were brilliant entertainers. They brought pop music to Ireland and contributed to a major national cultural upheaval. Every weekend, people from across the class spectrum would get out on the dance floor to break the monotony of life working on farms or local businesses in rural Ireland. Louis was captivated by the industry, which he saw as dramatic and vibrant.
    Before the showbands came to the west of Ireland, popular entertainment for most people hadn’t changed in a century: playing cards, telling stories, and singing traditional songs. The venues where the showbands played may not have been glamourous, but the bands more than made up for this with their talent for sheer rollicking entertainment. Louis saw this ability to entertain as equally important as musical talent.
    The showbands were generally made up of six to ten young men, occasionally with a woman “out front”. The band members would dress in matching suits, tailored in the latest style, and all played instruments: the piano, the drums, the bass, the saxophone, the trumpet, or the trombone. Most of the showbands, however, did not play their own music.
    “The showbands were judged mainly on their ability to reproduce the hits of the day, to take the top 20 and reproduce it,” explains John Coughlan, the author of a book on the era. “If they could reproduce it almost exactly, they were geniuses. Not many of them showed any great originality.”
    Not only did the showbands sing, they also performed comedy routines. The bands toured con-stantly, and played six nights a week, taking only Mondays off. In the mid-sixties, it was estimated that there were 450 ballrooms in Ireland and 600 show-bands travelling up and down the country. Few of these bands ever played to empty halls. The bands would play for up to four hours, with a break in the middle when a smaller relief act would take to the stage and continue to entertain the crowd.
    Louis quickly learned about the dynamics of the industry and the business of entertainment. He saw how people would think nothing of driving 50 or 60 miles to see one of their favourite singers perform. He was also enthralled by the showbands. He saw them as bringing excitement, glamour, and most of all, pop music to rural Ireland.
    His personal favourite was the Royal Blues Show-band, an ensemble formed in May 1963 in Claremorris, eight miles from his hometown of Kiltimagh. The band’s lead singer was Doc Carroll, who became famous after his band produced a No. 1 hit in the Irish charts