The story goes that when Ronan Hardiman, who wrote the music to Lord Of The Dance, was working in the Bank of Ireland a few years ago, he had a "testy" relationship with one of his bosses. Now, with 600,000 copies of the album sold, and a performance royalty going his way whenever and wherever in the world the music is performed, he needs to keep track of his money: then, he rings through to his old boss in his old bank and gets him to read his balance out over the phone. Revenge is obviously a dish best served in six-figure sums.
When Van Morrison couldn't, for one reason or another, do the Lord Of The Dance music, Michael Flatley - who was working on a tight deadline to get the show up and jumping - went through a bag of demo tapes that had been sent his way in his Riverdance days and got "vibed" by Ronan's spacey Celtic swirls. It's not as showbiz "lucky break" cliched as all of that, as Ronan explains: "To throw you another showbiz cliche, I'm an overnight success after 10, 15 years of work," he says affably. "People just see the Bank-Of-Ireland-to-international-acclaim side of the story, but there's a lot more to it than that." Hold that for a sec, is Flatley really an "invading Czechkoslovakia" type of person? "Michael was an absolute joy to work with, he gave me loads of freedom, help and encouragement. He was great."
Thanks to the career trampoline effect of LOTD, Ronan's music came to the ears of most every record company in Britain and America and last year he was signed to a solo deal to bring out his own albums. Sort of Lord Of The Dance II - The Musician's Revenge? "Not at all, I've a wild musical taste and am happy with anything from Nine Inch Nails (industrial-strength US alterno-rocker weirdos) to Ennio Morricone. This first solo album I've just released is not going after the typical LOTD audience, but I think there's enough variety on it to appeal to everyone, regardless of age and/or musical tastes."
A strange beast the album is, too - mixing New Age/Trance type sounds (or music for colonic irrigationists, as the genre has been described), with muted hiphop beats, alongside Enya-esque type studio arrangements and spooky Irish-language vocals: it's the sort of album that could sell millions if he finds an audience willing to go with the considerable flow of the eclectic sounds. "I suppose initially it will be described as a `Celtic' album and that's fine by me because I come from a family of trad musicians - but I wanted to bring in classical music as well and to cater for my own contemporary tastes; I wanted to put in some dance music with bits of hip-hop - the whole electronic way of recording with samples and synthesisers appeals to me. The only thing I wanted to avoid was that meandering aspect that you get with this type of music, which is why I tried to get that dance edge in there."
Already a success in clubland, some re-mixes of the tracks were found to be floor fillers around the dance establishments and scored very well in the specialist dance charts. The chill factor on the album comes from the vocals of Lesley Dowdall (ex-In Tua Nua) whose voice was multi-tracked up to 70 times to create vibey choral effects: by feeding trad music through state-of-the art synthesisers, Ronan is breaking new ground.
"I feel particularly strongly about using only electronic instruments," he says. "If they are manipulated properly they can communicate something emotional. Composing is a very emotional experience, you have to get yourself in a mood, almost a trance.
"I can't sit down and write if I'm preoccupied with something or if I'm tired. You have to vacate your mind almost and just get lost in it. It's you and the equipment and your emotions."
On a national music level, he says that after listening to Phil Lynott, The Boomtown Rats, U2 and Sinead O'Connor et al he found, layered beneath their disparate sounds, a strong melodic leaning which is drawn from traditional Irish music. Emphasising that he had the idea for the album even before the profitable Lord Of The Dance sojourn came along, he says it's a sort of tying up of all his loose musical ends. "I was able to play the piano almost before I could walk and I went to the Royal Academy of Music for 12 years, but besides all the classical stuff, I really got into pop and rock music as well." Following the fashion of the time in the mid 1980s, he got involved with the New Romantic sound - "all big hair and frilly shirts" but when he and his band found out they weren't going to be the next U2, he went to work in the Bank where he was a teller for 12 years.
A voluntary redundancy package helped him back into music and he made a respectable living writing tunes for television programmes (he did the RTE news signature music and the Lotto music) alongside Guinness and Coca Cola ads. Then Michael Flately flounced into his life.
"I got the gig because of all the tapes I sent to him. From the day I first met him, I had exactly 15 days to come up with the music for a performance he was doing at the Royal Albert Hall. I delivered that in time and then I had just 10 weeks to do the whole Lord Of The Dance music. He really got a visual impact in his own mind from the music that I had sent him. He saw images immediately and, equally, when we met and he started talking about what he wanted to do, I heard music. It made the working relationship very easy because we communicated very well."
The new album is out on Monday and once Ireland and Britain have been taken care of Ronan, now 37, has America in his sights. While he knows that his Lord Of The Dance background will open doors for him there, he's willing to take the hard route and establish himself first and foremost as a solo artist - "after all, it's what I have been for the past 20 years".
Solas by Ronan Hardiman is released on the Polydor label next Monday