THEY'VE BEEN touring longer than Jagger and co, and the glamour may have died, but The Chieftains can't get their heads around the idea of retiring, says their 'gaffer', Paddy Moloney , in advance of their performance in Carnegie Hall in New York on Monday, writes Willie Dillon.
Paddy Moloney recalls the night he persuaded Jean Butler to take off her Irish dancing costume. She was this gorgeous, willowy, young American dancer who had become a regular performer at Chieftains concerts. They were sharing a clattering, noisy stage in Brixton with The Pogues.
"She was in the costume for the first half of the show, and she looked really well. But I had seen her earlier in this gymslip thing, a black and white plaid mini, and she looked fantastic in it. So I said, for the second half, go out in that." It was an idea ahead of its time. Riverdance was some years away yet. Irish dancing was still about as sexy as pig's head and over-boiled cabbage. Not surprisingly, she went down a treat in her mini. "After that, we never bothered with the costumes," he recalls.
Paddy Moloney's conversation is peppered with similar cameos and flashbacks. You're never quite sure who'll pop up next, or in what context. Asking a question is like putting a match to a rogue firecracker; it immediately bursts into colour, but then shoots off in a completely unexpected direction.
He doesn't name-drop so much as casually mention people he happens to know - like when The Chieftains were starting to make waves back in the early 1960s. Big stars would sometimes show up at their gigs. One night in Dublin, it was Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull who, as he puts it, were "knocking around together at the time". In the audience for The Chieftains' first American concert, in a little Irish theatre in New York in 1972, were John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
The Chieftains have been on the road for almost 46 years now, a year longer than Jagger's bunch. In all that time, Moloney has been their leader and mentor - a consistently creative and endlessly energetic figure who has never fully grasped the concept of musical boundaries. On his next birthday he will be 70.
He has convinced his wife Rita that he is "in rehearsal for retirement". But frankly, the rehearsals aren't going so well. The band is currently in the US, playing 20 dates coast to coast in just under a month. The tour culminates in a big Carnegie Hall gig on St Patrick's night.
Moloney's head is still brimming with new plans and projects not yet completed. He still hasn't got around to recording with Bob Dylan, though the pair have discussed it more than once. It's a slightly different story with Bono, who dropped in to do backing vocals on Jagger's rendition of The Long Black Veil. But the results were deemed unsatisfactory by all concerned, including Bono himself. The Long Black Veil became The Chieftains' biggest selling album. Bono is on it, but his voice is buried deep in the mix and his name doesn't appear on the cover.
We're chatting in Moloney's local, the Roundwood Inn, when his mobile phone goes off. The sound emanating from his pocket is a surprising one. It's the theme tune from Benny Hill - the one that used to accompany Hill being chased by hordes of scantily clad women. It is Moloney's grandson who has installed the cheeky ring tone. The problem is Moloney has no idea how to get rid of the damn thing. Every time his phone rings, people laugh. He's laughing now himself.
Moloney has lived in this area of Co Wicklow for some 30 years, and has fond memories of this pub. We are sitting at the same glowing fireside where, in 1960, he recorded his first TV appearance, playing with Barney McKenna and Ronnie Drew. It was here too, years later, that the Van Morrison incident occurred. Morrison, it seems, can be great crack - something that might surprise even his most ardent admirers. In summary, Morrison was staying upstairs in the pub. When Moloney called to collect him the following morning, an alarming banging noise was heard coming from the bathroom. The proprietor, Jorgen, rushed upstairs to be told by an irate Morrison that there was a problem with the key. A puzzled Jorgen said there was no key in that door. It transpired that Morrison had jammed his bedroom key into the bathroom lock. It had turned, but now it wouldn't open. Moloney is laughing again: "They had to get a guy to take the door down, a lovely brand new door, and out he comes with a smile on his face, like a spoiled schoolboy. He came down and went out on to the road and he broke up laughing. He just thought it was the funniest thing. Up to then, he'd been terribly serious."
DURING THEIR CAREER, The Chieftains have released nearly 40 albums. They have a string of Grammys and were literally instrumental in landing an Oscar for Stanley Kubrick - the music award went to his slow-moving and now largely forgotten 1975 film Barry Lyndon.
But the years are catching up. The band now consists of just four core members, of which Moloney is the oldest. Flautist Matt Molloy recently turned 61, fiddle player Sean Keane is the same age, while singer and bodhrán player Kevin Conneff is 63.
The senior Chieftain admits they now find overseas touring a lot more difficult than they used to. Keane on occasion chooses to stay at home. Moloney deliberately kept the current US tour (which began on February 18th) to just a month because anything longer would be too arduous. "There's no glamour about being on the road any more. It's tough, hard going. We're not young fellas any more."
Airport security has made it even worse. "Travelling has become a nightmare. Sometimes you might have two flights on the day of a concert. You have to be at the airport two hours in advance. And things go wrong. Last March, for the first time in our career, we missed a concert. We didn't make it to Chicago on time. We just couldn't get out of Lincoln, Nebraska, though a combination of bad weather and just the way aeroplanes are now. We were stuck in this pokey little place from 10 o'clock in the morning until 9.30 that night.
"You're in the middle of a tour and you're tired and fed up and you're eating aeroplane food. It's just horrific. You go mad almost. Young people can just go to sleep, but we're beyond that now. It just doesn't happen that way."
There's a dilemma, though. Touring is their main source of income. Moloney says he hasn't a clue how many records The Chieftains have sold over the years. They've all done reasonably well financially, but he says their individual earnings "wouldn't be in the league of some of the CEOs of major companies".
"Matt has done extremely well because of his pub. He was the cute hoor," he chuckles. Moloney used to give Matt Molloy's in Westport a free plug every night, telling audiences they'd get a drink on the house if they called in. That went on for about a year, until Molloy called a halt - too many people were taking up the offer.
In reality, Moloney has no notion of retiring. Among many other things, he is a director of the National Concert Hall. Music is his life and he'll keep playing until he drops. "It'll be a boots-on job," he says, referring to the manner in which he intends departing to the celestial pipers' club.
As long as he keeps going, The Chieftains will continue to exist in some form. In recent years, a number of regular guest musicians have become part of the line-up. Before a tour, prized invitations also go out to other hand-picked players and singers. And in what has become a feature of Chieftains performances, local musicians are frequently invited to join them on stage.
Moloney admits that there were often times over the years when the group nearly came apart. But they have a policy of not bringing their rows on stage. "I'm not always the easiest person to get on with," he concedes with a laugh. "But having said that, they wouldn't be still with me, would they . . ." he says, making the relationship with his three fellow Chieftains sound a bit like a marriage. "As Matt says, I'm the mammy." The others have an input into what the band does, but ultimately he makes the decisions. He says he wouldn't do anything they were uncomfortable with. He likes to think there's "democracy up to a point" in The Chieftains, but says they regard him as the gaffer. "I'm the boss. I'm the fella who started it all."
Collaborating with people from other musical genres has been his speciality. But not everybody gets the nod. Justin Timberlake got in touch to see if they might work together. However, Moloney had severe ulcer problems at the time and didn't think there was much common ground between them anyway.
He has, arguably, engaged in stranger collaborations. The Chieftains' sessions with avant-garde rock composer Frank Zappa, shortly before the guitarist's death in 1993, have never been released. At the other end of the musical spectrum, Moloney mentions the musical makeover he did for one Eros Ramazzotti, an Italian sex-god pop star who just happens to be a Chieftains fan. He deconstructed one of Ramazzotti's songs and reshaped it around a bank of mandolins and harps. The sex god was thrilled.
Moloney worries about the time when he won't be able to play music any more. "At parties, when I whip out the whistle, people just go dead silent. I still love that. I get a great kick out of that. My health is still okay, but I have to watch it. I don't drink pints any more, but I love red wine, which can be dangerous. I have to take it very easy. It can take days to get over it, if I step out of line."
When pressed, he will reluctantly admit that - just maybe - The Chieftains are appreciated more abroad than at home. They have performed live with several symphony orchestras, mainly in the US. But, he says pointedly, they have never been invited to play with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. There's the merest hint of annoyance in his voice. "It would have been nice to be asked."
THE DEATH IN 2002 of "dear old ding dong, Derek Bell" was a huge blow to the band. They have since found an excellent stand-in harpist, Triona Marshall, in circumstances eerily similar to those in which they first met Bell. Moloney feels the incorrigible and mischievous Bell, who believed in reincarnation, somehow pointed them in Marshall's direction. The Chieftains' frontman describes a strange experience he had last year walking in a park in the US. His attention was captured by a beautiful white dove. The strangest feeling came over him.
"I can still see it," he says in hushed tones. "And I remember thinking 'that's Derek . . .'" But Moloney's face immediately crinkles in a huge laugh: "And I thought, the little bollix, he's come back to haunt me! But I swear to this day that it was him."
Maybe The Chieftains have occasionally been taken for granted by Irish audiences. He recalls a concert many years ago in a Monaghan hotel. There was a reasonable crowd, but rather less than he would have expected. Talking afterwards to the owner, it emerged that another well known act had played there the previous night to a bigger attendance.
The competition was in fact a certain glove puppet. Paddy is laughing yet again at the vicissitudes of show business. They had been outsold by Bosco.