Planxty dragged traditional Irish music kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Now they're aiming to swing it firmly into the 21st century, writes Siobhán Long
With a shared penchant for esoteric tune sets, tormented love songs and dodgy haircuts, it's a wonder that Planxty's Christy Moore, Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine and Liam Ó Floinn haven't pledged lifelong fidelity to one another.
The landscape is hardly well-scattered with musicians who can rekindle past magic some three decades on. But Planxty, whose individual members have shared billing with everyone from Gina Lollobrigida (an eight-year-old Irvine was in A Tale Of Five Cities), to Elvis Costello, to a slew of symphony orchestras, are safe in the knowledge that they will be greeted by packed houses on their forthcoming tour.
It has been a picaresque journey since their first incarnation in 1972, when Planxty's feisty repertoire, which married the commercial success of The Clancy Brothers with the subtlest of tune arrangements, woke up a generation to the heady pleasures of traditional music. Their first gig, supporting Donovan in the Old Hangar Ballroom in Galway, set a frenetic pace that gathered momentum from the get-go.
Andy Irvine recalls his amazement at the reaction to the band with wry humour: "We played Raggle Taggle Gypsy and Arthur MacBride. I couldn't see the audience behind the banks of lighting and, it seemed to me that some kind of a riot was breaking out. I looked at the others in fear and bewilderment. They appeared to be smiling broad smiles and I slowly realised that it was not a riot - but a large crowd of people who were discovering something they had not expected to discover that night. The audience was going wild . . . about us!"
Donal Lunny's bouzouki played a pivotal role in Planxty's idiosyncratic identity. Andy Irvine had given Lunny his first roundback (Greek) bouzouki, igniting a lifelong torrid love affair between player and instrument.
"It changed me life," says Lunny. "The rhythmic potential of the bouzouki, and the syncopation is something that really grew on me, so it was natural that I gravitated towards being part of the band's 'engine', as it has been described."
The band split in 1975, reconvening in 1978, and sundering again in 1982 (Christy and Donal had both left to form Moving Hearts), but now it is time for what the band have wryly christened Planxty's "third coming".
Having played a tester gig in Lisdoonvarna last October, it appears that either some kind of magnetic force is drawing the band members inexorably together, or else they have a death wish which forces them to share the same stage at sporadic intervals.
Andy Irvine suggests the answer probably lies somewhere in between. "I think after the first time we broke up, it was always on the cards that we would get back together again. We're very old friends, and there are a lot of shared great times from the past which would lure us to do it again. Having once been Planxty, we are always Planxty."
Liam Ó Floinn is quick to admit it wasn't simply a case of picking up where they'd left off when they last shared a stage some 20 years ago. "Each of us got a new surge of excitement in making music together again. There's so much of the old repertoire there, and a lot of the arrangements are quite complex. The idea was that we'd attack the old repertoire again, and if it all happens as we were hoping, after these Vicar Street gigs, we would do an album of new material."
With plans to record some of the Vicar Street concerts, Planxty finally seem to be taking control of their destiny, after decades of receiving paltry royalties from their back-catalogue of eight albums, spanning the period 1972 to 1984.
Planxty's sound hit the public like not so much a breath, but a whirlwind of fresh air, levitating all in its path with its muscular rhythms and calculus-like arrangements.
Andy Irvine's mandolin and mandola cosied up alongside Donal Lunny's bouzouki as if they'd been lifetime bedfellows.
"Andy and Donal evolved a unique style of accompaniment, which I always describe as 'musical filigree'," says Liam Ó Floinn.
"The lovely thing was that they never held a tune down, but instead they wove in and around it beautifully."
At the core of Planxty's identity were Liam Ó Floinn's uilleann pipes, an instrument which was a stranger to most ears at that time. The purists viewed Ó Floinn's membership of Planxty a travesty, an abandonment of all that was good and holy about the tradition, but he was nonplussed.
"I've always had a great musical curiosity. It was always a dream of mine to make my living through music, but the pipes were virtually unknown back then. When Christy released Prosperous [the album that initially brought the foursome together in 1972\], our excitement was huge. Playing with the band was a completely different musical experience. I've always been interested in singing, whether sean nós or accompanied singing, and to me it's critical to know the words of a song when playing a slow air, for example, because the style of playing is so influenced by the content of the song."
Fans and critics would claim that there was a subconscious readiness in the Irish psyche for what Planxty did with traditional music, which might go some way towards explaining their spitfire success.
"That would certainly seem to be the case," says Ó Floinn. "To have had such an impact at the time and then subsequently to have such an influence is a difficult one to explain. It was as if people were waiting for something like what we did.
"When I listen back to Planxty albums, I've always been delighted by the continued freshness. There was huge attention paid to accompaniment of songs and tunes, and to the approach to arrangement."
Andy Irvine's introduction of eastern European tunes broadened Planxty's palette, and they also challenged the taste buds of the band's audience, most of whom were only too willing to embrace new sounds.
"We used to do a piece after my song, Báneasá's Green Glade, called Mominsko Horo, a Bulgarian dance tune, which on the record only Donal and I played on, says Irvine. At some later stage, Liam said: 'I've learned that, do you want me to play it?', and of course we said yes! Liam was always a surprise. He'd always come up with the unexpected. But honestly, the success we achieved was the last thing I expected. It was staggering."
Planxty's following three decades ago was as eclectic as it was unpredictable. For the first time Aran jumpers, winkle pickers and bell-bottoms kept company in crowded, sweaty venues across Europe. "From the time we played that first tour with Donovan, we realised that we were getting through to the people who normally listen to rock 'n' roll," recalls Lunny.
"We were astonished and elated by that, and when we toured in our own right, we were equally amazed at the range of generations who came to the concerts, from kids to very old people and everybody in between. It was definitely of its time. In a certain way we bridged the gap between traditional and contemporary music, without compromising the traditional music too much."
Let's see what the next generation will make of Planxty's cross-pollination now.
Planxty play two gigs in Glór Irish Music Centre in Ennis tonight and tomorrow night. They play a further 10 nights in Vicar St. on January 30th and 31st, February 4th, 5th, 11th, 12th,17th, 18th, 24th and 25th February. All gigs sold out.