In this special edition of the Album Club, DARAGH DOWNEShears from one-time members of Dublin's homeless community about their favourite albums of all time
JAMES PRIOR, James Harte and Dave O’Brien have two important things in common. Each has experienced the nightmare of homelessness. And each is a devotee of good music.
Prior, a blues-harmonica-playing Scot who has been based in Dublin for more than two decades now, has spent the past few days agonising over which album to single out as his all-time favourite. He takes us through an impressively eclectic list of candidates – with classics such as Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home, Bob Marley's Rastaman Vibrationand The Pogues' Rum, Sodomy the Lashgetting namechecked – before announcing his winner: Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
The memory of first hearing The Wind Cries Maryon AM radio back in 1967 is still gloriously fresh. "It was the B-side of Purple Haze and I thought, 'This is something different'. It was this lovely ballad with a really poetic lyric and lovely guitar riffs. And I remember getting the whole of the album and playing it on the old Philips Hi-Fi in the house and driving my parents mad with it."
Prior gave the album a fresh listen only the other day. It blew him away all over again. "Looking back at all the cuts on the album, it really has everything. It's got this kind of funky rhythm and blues sound to it. It's got these philosophical lyrics like 'Is this love, baby, or is it just confusion?' Hendrix is a really old soul! And then there's this other song on it, an instrumental called Third Stone From the Sun. It's really jazzy – drum and bass, even. They were like the precursor of these styles that came later.
“And even when you’re listening to it now, it goes on and on, it’s a really long cut. At that time, most rock-pop tunes were the standard two or three minutes, but these ones were really long, you could get into it and just drift away.”
Even the cover photo is a masterpiece. “Jimi’s wearing this psychedelic flurry shirt, when all the other bands at that time had on this collegiate look. And there’s this sort of fish-eye lens, with the three guys sitting there and Jimi with his hands in front of him. Those amazing hands he had!”
PEACEFUL AND SPIRITUAL
James Harte is a longtime fan of bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but it's the human and humane simplicity of Cat Stevens's 1970 album Tea for the Tillermanthat gets his top vote.
“I was only about 13 or 14 years old when I started to listen to Cat Stevens’ music. He always came across to me as being both peaceful and spiritual. Because some of the words of these songs, he actually shows he cares.”
To care: it’s a verb that Harte uses a lot. His favourite track on the album is Wild World. “She’s going out there into the world for the first time and he’s telling her to be careful because you can’t ‘get by just upon a smile’. It’s a moving lyric, because in the song he actually shows he cares very much not just for her, but actually for her safety. That comes across crystal clear in the song.”
Harte currently lives in a flat in Dublin. There are no cooking facilities so he continues to avail of the services at Merchants’ Quay.
Mercifully, he hasn’t had to sleep rough in more than a decade. But he still finds himself haunted by the spectre of homelessness – “It was the first time I could understand that word stigma” – and will be thinking this Christmas of those currently without a place to call their own. He wishes Christmas was less about money and more about the birth of Jesus in a stable. “I do believe in God. Sometimes I’d even get angry with God as well because of the situation I’d find myself in. And not just for me. I’d see certain things out there, you know, like people on the streets and other things, and the way certain people are treated as well.”
He feels there is something scandalously unchristian in the fact that “to have a good Christmas now, you have to have money in your pocket”.
ALL THE CARE IN THE WORLD
Dave O’Brien is dreading Christmas. On Christmas day 1995, he lost a brother. On new year’s eve last, he lost a second. “Christmas to me is not Christmas, you know? Fifteen years between them. Christmas is a haze.”
Again and again, what helps him reconnect with better, happier memories is music. “I can remember before my brother died in ’95, we were at Glastonbury that year. Oasis were headlining. We had a good time then, so a lot of bands that played there, you know, their songs bring the good memories back.”
Another happy memory, one from even farther back, has made the selection of a favourite album an easy task. “I was only a young lad, about 10. I was sitting with my sister and her friends and they were listening to Legend by Bob Marley and The Wailers.”
It was love at first listen. O’Brien went out and bought himself a copy on vinyl, his first-ever such purchase. “From there on, it just opened doors for me. I went on to get earlier and earlier Bob Marley editions and I have nearly every one of them now. Legend opened up a big doorway to reggae for me, and Rastafari, the whole religion. I’m not a believer, I don’t believe in God. But there’s a lot of passion in that music. The rhythm hits you, the people, the lyrics.”
Jamaican music has always evoked something that is very close to O'Brien's heart: a sense of community. His favourite track on Legendis No Woman, No Cry.Like Wild World, it is a tender, protective song sung by a man to a woman. As O'Brien quotes the line, "Then we would cook corn meal porridge/ Of which I'll share with you", you can just see how powerfully affecting he still finds it. "When they sat around and cooked, if one family hadn't got enough, they shared with another family. That's the way they were, you know? They were a caring people." Caring. That word again. O'Brien makes a plea to readers of The Irish Timesfor greater understanding of just how frightening the experience of homelessness is. "Walk in their shoes for a day. See what it's like being homeless. You become invisible when you're homeless. People look down on you. But you're just the same as the next person."
Whenever O’Brien sees someone homeless on the street, he makes a point of going over and having a chat with them. “If I have a cigarette, I’ll give them a cigarette; if I have the price of a cup of tea, I’ll give them the price of a cup of tea. But I’ll stand there five minutes talking to them, because that means more than anything, a lot more.
“You’re not just being passed, you’re being recognised.”
With thanks to Merchants Quay Ireland (mqi.ie)
