John Dillon is an artist whose work is in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Dáil Éireann amongst others. He has been commissioned to paint many portraits and has also worked as an art director in film animation here and in America. He lives in Rathmines, Dublin
It was 1985 and I was managing a psychobilly band called Sharkbait. Psychobilly’s a more manic version of rockabilly. Eamon put one of their songs on a compilation album. The band were recording in a studio; Eamon came down, we were chatting away and he presented me with an American rock ’n’ roll fanzine, Kiss. After a cursory glance at its contents I realised I had a soulmate, it was that quick. I’d always had an interest in 1950s’ rockabilly and 1960s’ garage bands, the golden age of the teenager. But I wasn’t a fan of Horslips, Eamon knows this. By the time they emerged in the early ’70s, I’d kind of lost interest in popular music.
Over the next few years we’d meet at gigs and various watering holes and more importantly at art galleries. I gradually discovered he had a great enthusiasm and knowledge of art. I remember being quite taken aback that he was an authority on Harry Kernoff – he’d written catalogue notes for some of the Dublin galleries when they were having Kernoff exhibitions.
Eamon is a very social animal. I always remember his Horslips colleague, Barry Devlin, describing him as a boulevardier of some note. What I admire about Eamon is that he’s comfortable with anyone, from any background. Eamon is a more rounded individual than me – in the space of a few sentences he can talk on anything from poetry to boxing to painting to the arcane world of the provincial GAA.
He’s as garrulous and loquacious as I am but I overdo it; Eamon is always entertaining, very erudite and hilariously funny.
I'm from Booterstown originally, studied in NCAD and started painting in art college . . . I experienced a bit of success quite early on, then worked as a graphic designer, as an illustrator/designer as well as painting and exhibiting. Eamon took a great interest in painting and I'd always get honest criticism from him. I value his judgment very much. When he asked me to do the illustrations for Deirdre Unforgiven, I was flattered, it was a labour of love. And although I've known him for over 20 years I was taken aback at Deirdre – bleak and all as it is, I found it had a profound humanity. I didn't know till the book came out that Eamon had been to Loyalist drinking clubs . . . there's a depth to him that I didn't realise. I had assumed he was a shallow as
myself!
He’s one of the few people with the capacity to shut me up, but in an endearing fashion. I regard him as one of my dearest and closest friends, someone I would confide in if I was in any kind of trouble. He doesn’t make a big deal about it, just responds with great warmth.
Eamon Carr is a musician, journalist and poet and was a founder member of Horslips in 1970. His book ‘Deirdre Unforgiven’, a dramatic work that retells the legend of Deirdre of the Sorrows, was published recently. Originally from Kells, Co Meath, he lives in Harold’s Cross in Dublin
I was conscious of Johnny in the 1970s because he was one of the few Irish painters who had a sort of pop-art sensibility. I knew his brother Alan – a great actor and a great character – before I met Johnny. Then in the 1980s I was compiling an album, discovered that Johnny was mentoring a couple of psychobilly bands and used a track from Sharkbait on the album.
I was impressed that he was doing this and was also a serious artist. We’d have the occasional discussion, and I began to realise we had loads of friends in common. Then he went to America. We still weren’t close buddies but he sent me a photograph he’d got autographed by the Mexican Elvis, a pop singer call El Vez. That endeared me. He came back to Ireland and by the late 1990s/early noughties, we became pretty firm friends.
I grew up in Kells and in the late 1960s went off to Liverpool where I encountered the Mersey Sound poets Adrian Henri and Roger McGough. I came home and set up Tara Telephone with Peter Fallon. I also wound up in advertising – and then came Horslips.
It was an experiment which took off, meant that for 10 years we toured constantly, recorded an album every year. Horslips came back together after litigation over copyright that lasted 18 years and concluded in 1999. We remastered and re-released all of the albums, there was a documentary and an exhibition, and finally, some shows.
I wanted to be a journalist when I was at school but wound up going into advertising as a copywriter. Then after Horslips, In Dublin and Magill asked me to write stuff, and I started to do a regular column for the Herald. I did celebrity interviews initially, wrote colour stuff, ended up doing a lot of reporting, interviewing, in the North. I know it’s trite but I thought, it is like Deirdre of the Sorrows, there are brothers being killed, mothers in grief . . . I started scribbling things, trying to find a way of expressing that.
I dabbled in art as a teenager and concluded that all I could really do was write. But art is a big part of my friendship with Johnny. He’s an incredible draughtsman, a very good portrait artist but as well as that he has a vision, can paint things that seem ephemeral, lowbrow, but given a highbrow treatment. And he is an amazing raconteur, there’s an element of the boulevardier about him.
I do have to stop him from time to time and say “Johnny, please, stop, listen, I’m trying to make a point here.”
Deirdre Unforgiven: A Journal of Sorrows, by Eamon Carr with illustrations by John Devlin, is published Doire Press, €12
