Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:06 am
DECLAN LYNCH served this article to the SUNDAY INDEPNDENT last week, seven days before BARRY EGAN'S PIECE
Truly, there's nobody like Philip Chevron
A measure of the man's greatness is that he has been largely ignored by Official Ireland, writes Declan Lynch
Declan Lynch – 04 August 2013
ONE of the organisers of the Testimonial concert for Philip Chevron at the Olympia Theatre on the 24th of this month told me recently that it hadn't turned out quite as they had imagined.
Having assumed, in the way of these things, that about half the musicians on their wish-list would have other plans, and that the arrangements could get complicated, it turned out that almost everyone said "yes" immediately.
Indeed Christy Moore, who has included Chevron's Faithful Departed in his repertoire for many years, and who really couldn't make it on the night, went and organised a testimonial of his own with a gig in Whelan's.
Now the main logistical issue is just finding the right order in which to bring on Horslips, Shane MacGowan, Paul Cleary, Paul Brady, Declan O'Rourke, Johnny Duhan, Damian Dempsey, Mary Coughlan, Duke Special with Fiona Shaw, Luka Bloom, Terry Woods, Hot House Flowers, Camille O'Sullivan and the Radiators with whom Chevron started, changing the course of Irish rock 'n' roll at his first attempt.
Fans such as Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Patrick McCabe and Aidan Gillen will say a few words. Chevron himself aims to make a contribution on the night. His recent announcement that he has inoperable cancer has triggered this response from Phil's friends and admirers, who have known for a long time that there is nobody like him.
There's nobody like him ... usually those words would just make a pleasant noise, but in this case they have a precise meaning.
Philip Ryan of Santry became Philip Chevron of the Radiators from Space, the same Chevron who, still a youth, would work with Agnes Bernelle on the music of Brecht and Weill, who would help to create the Radiators' second album Ghostown, a work of such originality and accomplishment it left The Pogues in no doubt that, when a vacancy arose for a guitar player, in Chevron they were recruiting a man of some importance.
They were also getting his song Thousands Are Sailing, another that has entered the canon, but above all they were getting a man of tremendous grace and style and good-heartedness, the sort that every band needs because he is the only one who is liked by all the rest of them, all the time.
I have known Phil since around 1980, when to me he was already an Irish rock
legend. We met at some mad Battle of the Bands competition in Tramore, got drunk for about a week down there, and talked of many things.
We had a mutual friend, my Hot Press colleague Bill Graham, and this was important, because usually you could judge whether a musician was going to get anywhere in life by their attitude to Bill. The peroxided poseurs in the Bailey with their Harvey Wallbangers tended to regard Bill as being a bit uncool for them, with his many enthusiasms, his habit of reading 12 newspapers at the same time, and his urgings that they listen to more black music.
Chevron loved Bill for all the reasons that the Harvey Wallbanger set avoided him, for his great erudition and the wonderful connections he would make between apparently unrelated ideas. Bill would eventually help to direct Phil towards The Pogues. Other young musicians who rated Bill included Gavin Friday and members of the band U2. Interesting, that.
Phil had already known men such as Shane MacGowan during one of Phil's rare ventures into civilian life, working in the Rock On record shop in Camden Town.
This was roughly the same Rock On named in Thin Lizzy's The Rocker, and reputed to be the specialist record store in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, so it wasn't a venture too far into civilian life.
It also brought into play Phil's pursuit of great music in every form imaginable, his gifts as a collector and an archivist. I've always felt that he could be a brilliant journalist too, ideally writing about the theatre on which I believe he may well be one of the greatest living authorities.
Even in the most difficult days of his illness, he could be found making his trips from his home in Nottingham to theatre-land, to Broadway itself – the Nottingham bit arose when he fell in love with Brian Clough's Forest team of the Eighties, making him one of the few men out there who could count both the footballer Stuart Pearce and Garry Hynes of Druid among his personal friends.
I mentioned that we got drunk together, and we also got sober at around the same time in the mid-Nineties, though the nature of that sobriety might be questioned in the light of Phil's suggestion that we attempt to write a musical – a "tuner" – together.
From that he emerged with a few songs which may well be heard on this testimonial night, which may even last for a long time. And inspired by the experience, I started to write novels, books of non-fiction, biography, anything really as long as it wasn't a musical.
Phil, who has since worked with Druid and the Old Vic, continues with preparatory work for a Pogues musical.
We should also note, not just that Philip Chevron has done so much, so well, but that he has done it more or less unbeknownst to Official Ireland. There's been no eejitry in the man at all to snag their attention. And there's been nobody ... nobody like him.
Sunday Independent
