BIOGRAPHY: ANNA CAREYreviews The Thing Is . . .By Dave Fanning, Collins, 302pp, £14.99
IF YOU WERE a music-loving teenager in the 1980s and 1990s you owe a lot to Dave Fanning. For most of us his radio show, which ran from 8pm to 10pm every weeknight, was the primary source of decent music on Irish radio. Yes, there were a few pirate stations devoted to indie music, but they tended not to last very long, and trying to tune into BBC Radio 1 to listen to John Peel, the broadcaster with whom Fanning has been most often compared, was a frustrating process. So it was all down to Fanning to keep us glued to our stereos with our fingers hovering over the record button, ready to capture the new single from REM or Teenage Fanclub.
His new autobiography suggests that this role was inevitable. Music was Fanning’s passion from an early age. He spent his pocket money on singles and then albums, and his evenings solemnly listening to his stereo in the dark or painstakingly making compilation tapes. His parents, Barney and Annie, were more than tolerant of their son’s music obsession, even if they didn’t understand it. The Fanning family home, in Mount Merrion in south Dublin, became a social hub for Fanning and his college friends, who would listen to albums late into the night. By the time he left UCD he knew he wanted a job in the Irish music industry. The problem was that “there was no such thing as the Irish music industry”.
Fanning was one of the people who created one in the 1970s. He wrote for small magazines and presented shows on pirate stations until, in 1979, he was poached by the new RTÉ station Radio 2. It was the time when music radio in Ireland was still finding its feet, and Fanning describes it well. He was a passionate advocate of Irish music, but he also promoted international artists, and his accounts of interviews with everyone from Nick Cave (cranky) to Madonna (brash the first time but more likeable in a subsequent encounter) to Joni Mitchell (charming) are entertaining.
Unlike most memoirs by RTÉ presenters, The Thing Is . . .seems aimed at an international market, as Fanning explains the concept of teenagers going to the Gaeltacht in the summer and, most incongruously, refers to Garret FitzGerald as the "Irish prime minister". Presumably the U2 connection will attract more international readers, so these things need to be explained, but it still jars.
Speaking of whom, U2 fans expecting a fawning homage will be disappointed; Fanning doesn’t romanticise the band or his role in kick-starting their success. He does, however, misguidedly defend their business dealings, accusing of begrudgery those who object to the band’s transference of business assets to the Netherlands to avoid tax. “Has it not occurred to these same people that the band earned 99.999 per cent of their income outside Ireland?” asks Fanning, which doesn’t go anywhere near addressing the issue.
Those expecting a tawdry tell-all that reveals Fanning’s inner pain will also be disappointed. Fanning is a happily married man, doing a job he adores, who grew up in a loving family and has been close to his best friends for 40 years. Although he resists introspection and public displays of raw emotion in the book – this is a man who gave an interview just before his wedding in which he unthinkingly said he didn’t really believe in marriage – his affection for his family and friends is evident throughout, as is his passion for his work and his awareness of his good fortune. “When it comes to my job,” he writes, “I feel like I’ve won the Lotto and have kept on winning it.”
The Thing Is . . .is the opposite of a misery memoir, and, while this may not always make for hugely dramatic reading, it's still a likeable and entertaining account of a hard-working, music-loving life.
Anna Carey is a freelance journalist. Her first book for young adults, The Real Rebecca, will be published by the O'Brien Press next year
