The Return of Horslips

There’s no doubt that many people reading this will struggle to recognise the name ‘Horslips’. If, however, you lived through the ’70s and had a penchant for the folkier side of rock’n’roll, there’s every chance that you — like me — were an ardent follower of the extraordinary Irish fivesome who invented a musical genre known as Celtic Rock.

    From 1970 until their split in 1980, Horslips occupied a territory somewhere in between trad folk, prog rock, classical, jazz and blues, and in borrowing from each style they somehow created an original and highly accessible sound of their own with anthems ‘Dearg Doom’, ‘Trouble (With A Capital T)’ and key albums The Táin and The Book Of Invasions.

    Crucially, for the likes of U2 and the Boomtown Rats, they helped establish a bona fide touring circuit in Ireland in an era of devastating social and political crises.

    But there was always a sense of unfinished business about this band. To the delight of their loyal fans, 29 years after their last major live appearance, Horslips — Barry Devlin, Jim Lockhart, Charles O’Connor and Johnny Fean — reunited for two sold-out pre-Christmas shows at Belfast’s Odyssey Arena and Dublin’s O2 (formerly The Point) that I’d argue easily rivalled Led Zeppelin’s 2007 one-off for emotion, anticipation and delivery.

    Certainly, the O2 show I attended had the word ‘classic’ written all over it. The band’s versatile musicianship was at all times stunning and even the most vocal of football crowds would have had trouble keeping up with this audience’s reaction. It’s safe to say that this was one of the most moving gigs I’ve ever witnessed.

    The fifth member of the band, drummer and genius lyricist Eamon Carr, whilst fully supportive of the reunion, remained on the subs bench although he magnanimously showed up for the Dublin encore with a gift of platinum disc displays for his old chums.

    Ray Fean, guitarist Johnny’s brother of Celtic Woman and Riverdance fame, sat in on drums and instantly earned the die-hards’ respect with his energy and showmanship.

    Horslips’ re-emergence as a working unit has also seen some old faces return to the fold. Whilst their road manager from the ’70s, Pat Maguire, has always been ready with the van for any potential reheating of the soufflé, the reunion has also seen ex-Lips crew man Steve Iredale in action as production manager.

    Soon after the Horslips split, Iredale jumped onboard the good ship U2 for a 20-year stint during which he helped steer the youngsters to worldwide stadium fame. Back in the bosom of his first industry employers, Iredale was relishing all the challenges of putting them onstage once again.

    “It’s been interesting that there are some parallels to be drawn between this and the Zeppelin reunion,” said Iredale who production managed both events. “Horslips were already up to speed by the time they came to us, but getting them to actually run through songs instead of chatting and joking about the old days has been challenging!

    “Like Zeppelin, they have a very wide pool of material to choose from once you get past the obvious titles, so the set list has been difficult but made even harder because there are three lead singers in the band and there had to be some kind of equality. Also, working for my wife has been interesting!”

    Steve, of course, referred to the Duchess herself, Sue Iredale, with whom he has partnered on many a U2 tour as well as numerous projects for Denis Desmond at MCD, the promoter of the Horslips shows.

    “Steve was away with Coldplay when the band asked us to organise the production, so I assembled the team and managed the supplier bids and quotes, doing everything possible to keep within a sensible budget for only a couple of shows,” explained Duchess. “It was pretty much in the bag by the time Steve became free in mid-September. At that point I moved over to more of a tour management function.”

    Mindful of rising to the occasion, the band were no slouches when it came to preparation and got the ball rolling with five long days of rehearsals at The Village club venue in Dublin with Eamon Carr on drums to help routine what was eventually trimmed to a two and a half hour set.

    This was followed by three weeks of intensive rehearsing at Rathcoole’s Beechpark Studios, whose sound engineer Daire Winston would later record the shows. It was at Beechpark that drummer Ray Fean came in to deputise for Carr.

    As the dates drew closer, Horslips relocated to McHugh’s Live Music Bar in Drogheda for another five rehearsal days that culminated in two invitation-only warm-up gigs, followed by two production rehearsals at the Odyssey Arena where the first of the two gigs was staged on December 3.

    “Drogheda was where everything came together for them as musicians... as a fully functional live band,” said Duchess. “It gave them the confidence boost that they needed to play to the two arena audiences [totalling around 22,000], as well as a chance for our key crew members to take notes and be prepared for what was around the corner.”

THE VISUALS
Originally known to TPi through his work with The Corrs, Liam McCarthy became Duchess’ first call to design the lighting for the Horslips shows — a position originally graced by the legendary Gregory ‘Ashtar From Mars’ Brown of Krishna Lights.

    “The band didn’t brief me as such but I wanted to start the show with a very old school look, as if it was an extension of the band’s last gigs in 1980. So the first four or five songs rely just on big blocks of colour from 28 bars of six PAR cans, plus ACLs, Molefays and stuff you don’t see much of today.

    “As the show develops I add some moving lights and gobo textures, and drag them into the 21st century! Our supplier, Just Lite, is a major rental house in Ireland for Robe equipment and I’ve gone for around 60 Robe ColorSpot and ColorWash 1200 ATs, plus some Martin Atomic strobes, which I run from my personal choice of a Hog III board — better the devil you know!”

    McCarthy used a Hog III to run the lights, which also included four 1200W Lycian truss spots. “The band didn’t want to be blasted and as we’re not filming for DVD, I axed the front spots. They’re always covered with plenty of light but we’re not getting into specific key lighting.”

    Maurice Linnane, the director of Horslips’ 2004 documentary DVD, The Return Of The Dancehall Sweethearts, assembled an historical audio verité soundtrack to accompany the show’s video intro which was fed to the screens at the sides of the stage.

    Video supplier CAVS (Corporate Audio Visual Services) of Dublin provided Christie Roadster S+20K projectors for the task along with the 16 x 9 screens and five cameras. In several numbers, live I-Mag camera content was overlaid with archive footage of the band — again provided by Linnane — for a ‘then and now’ effect.

    Said McCarthy: “We were planning to have an Element Labs Stealth screen but as we were only doing two shows we decided to keep it simple and used a big Horslips logo backdrop that Hangman produced for us very quickly and at a great price.”

    The backdrop enabled McCarthy to project a dazzling range of gobo patterns behind the band and add colour to the classic white 1973-period logo, creating different song identities. McCarthy regularly works with Just Lite in Ireland and his first connection with Horslips occured when he lit the band’s appearance on RTE’s Other Voices, a live music TV show he has been lighting for seven years.

    “It’s always a very interesting and varied show,” he said. “Having Horslips on the show was amazing and to then be asked to be their LD for these arena dates has been a dream.”

SOUND
The PA was supplied by Belfast-based Production House (N.I.), whose John Willis was brought in to mix at FOH after it was realised that Horslips sound veteran Robbie McGrath would be too committed with Kasabian to make the reunion.

    “We pitched successfully against a couple of other Irish sound companies and then Duchess asked if I’d do the mix as well,” said Willis. “It’s an honour to step into Robbie’s former role because I’ve admired his work with the likes of the Rolling Stones and I’m very conscious of the big shoes I’m filling.

    “I was too young to appreciate Horslips first time around but my father thought it was a very cool job for me to get and as soon as I started with the band in Drogheda, I realised how fantastic their music is!”

    Primarily an L-Acoustics rental source since 1996, Production House invested in a Meyer Sound Milo line array three years ago to handle festival work with the likes of Van Morrison and it was this system that was chosen for Horslips’ arena shows.

    Said Willis: “I was invited over to California in 2006 to check out Meyer’s factory and I was so impressed with their approach. It was probably the softest ‘sell’ I’ve ever experienced and it was perfect timing for us to invest in a second system. The combo of Milo, M’elodie, dV-DOSC and ARCS really works for the Irish market.”

    Processed by Meyer’s Galileo system, the self-powered PA was configured as L/R hangs of 15 Milo cabinets and two 120° Milos underneath with 10 HP-700 subs on the ground.

    Willis’ choice of FOH console was a full-size Digidesign Venue D-Show. “The office packed a Midas Heritage 3000, a Midas Pro6 and the D-Show because I couldn’t make up my mind. I did the rehearsals on a Profile as there was a real space issue, so I was able to program snapshots for EQ and fader positions. And, of course, when we got to Belfast it just seemed appropriate to step up to the D-Show.

    “It was a choice between digital flexibility over analogue, and digital won mainly because of the multi-instrumental style of the band. I use about four of the plug-ins for delays on a couple of songs, but generally the sound is kept pretty edgy and natural, and my job is really to balance.”

    The mics were all standard choices including regular Shure Beta 58s on vocals and Shure KSM-137 cardioids around the kit.

    Monitor engineer Gerry Brady — a big Horslips fan — also ‘went digital’ with a Yamaha M7CL and his choice of wedge was Logic System’s low profile LM20.

    Willis explained: “Gerry did some work with Chris Scott at Logic and they came up with a really stunning wedge that has tons of clarity and power, and the band are very impressed. They’re a loud band on stage but the LM20s cut through very well.”

    The world of live audio has changed dramatically since Horslips last performed at this level and whilst guitarist Johnny Fean has continued to tour with his own bands over the years, the December shows were a huge eye-opener to the other members. “There’s definitely been a learning curve,” said Willis, “although my role has been fairly passive whilst trying to instill confidence in them.

    “Working with Steve and Duchess has been an absolute joy and they’ve made the whole thing virtually effortless,” added Willis. “It could’ve been so different with other people but they have a great relationship with the band and that feeling has passed down throughout the crew.”

    The crew also included backline techs Fred Bourke and Chris Somers, stage manager Terry Power, rigger John Heffernan and production co-ordinator Ciara Davey, and the management team of Shay & Alan Hennessy.

    With a new ‘Best Of’ collection, Treasury, doing good business in the Irish album chart, backed up by a series of digipak reissues, the Horslips renaissance is in fine form. After the roof was nearly blown off at the O2, one burning question remained: will there be a further chapter to this reunion?

    Whilst a campaign to secure them a slot at Cropredy is well under way, Horslips are already talking about a string of summer 2010 festival dates. That’ll be touring with a lower case ‘t’.
TPi