Track 12: 'If you should ever leave me, well life would still go on, believe me...'

"We are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events-a story-and when we can't figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.” D Coupland

Occasionally, I pass it by on a night out in the city.

Slowing down as I approach, the memories come flooding back. There is that little pull of longing, that ache, but there is also that stark realisation - we can never go back.

 At the intersection between Dame Street and George’s Street it stands, a shabby black door, faded gold lettering. It is now a ‘Gentleman’s Club’, whatever that means in 2024.

Club Lapello.

But there was a time when it pulsed to a different rhythm.

A sound, a furious maelstrom of noise that would rush up the narrow staircase, daring you to give in to curiosity, and descend for the first time. And once you succumbed, that was it. There was no going back.

It felt like….belonging.

(Photo: Jeff Brennan)

The Underground closed its doors for the last time in the Autumn of 1991.

We were all there on the final night; it was the end of an era.

So many great bands had taken their first tentative steps on that tiny stage; the Gorehounds, A House, Something Happens!, the Slowest Clock, Blue in Heaven, The Blades, Into Paradise, the Real Wild West, the Stars of Heaven, Guernica, the Golden Horde – a stellar roll call that is slowly fading from the memory with the passage of time.  But they all were part of an exciting, vibrant Dublin music scene in the late eighties.

I had seen all these bands and more for the very first time in the Underground.

Earlier that year, we played what turned out to be our last gig in the Underground. That night, we were supported by a relatively unknown band from Larne.

Therapy? played a storming set, blowing everyone in the venue away. They were so tight, so ferocious - you just knew that this was a band on an upward trajectory.

While the music was important, The Underground was more than just a music venue – Jeff and Noel (possibly without realising it), had created a close knit community of musicians & music lovers, somewhere for like-minded souls to gather and hang out, an escape from the grim realities of eighties Dublin. I met my future wife there, as did Mylie. There were lifelong friendships formed; dramas, betrayals, broken dreams - if those walls could talk, the stories they would tell!

 (Photo: Jeff Brennan)

On that final night, there was laughter, tears, heartfelt goodbyes, drunken promises to stay in touch, mementos torn from the walls. There may even have been an attempt at karaoke; a drunken duet with me and Fearghal butchering Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’ would not have been a highlight of anyone’s night.

As we stumbled out on to the streets in the early hours and watched the doors close behind us for the very last time, we knew we had lost something special. Jeff would go on to manage a new music venue in Temple Bar, The Rock Garden, which would also become an important part of our story but that night was the end of an important chapter for us all.

The closing of the Underground coincided with a growing sense of change in the country.

The Ireland of moving statues, compulsory mass on Sundays & the weekly ritual of watching Glenroe on RTE was beginning to feel obsolete. The church was losing its grip on young minds, and there was a newfound sense of optimism emerging, as the economic situation began to improve.

The global success of U2 and Italia 90, where Ireland qualified for the World Cup for the first time, are often cited by opinion leaders as contributing factors to that developing sense of confidence we enjoyed as a nation back then.

Maybe there is something in that. Or maybe it is just a coincidence.

But there was a perceptible change happening, slowly and incrementally at first, but the undeniable sense of optimism was palpable.

Our time with Cheree Records had come to an end.

We were an unsigned band once again, pondering our next steps.

We didn’t have to long to wait. We learned of interest from a new Irish record label.

Liquid Records was an offshoot of Solid Records, a well-established label that had a roster of some of the most successful acts on the local scene, notably The Stunning and the Sawdoctors. Liquid was pitched to us as a label that would focus more on local alternative, non-mainstream type acts. Toasted Heretic and the Honey Thieves were the first bands they signed, and they wanted to add us to the roster, with a promise of an album deal.

We were initially suspicious – the label was founded and funded by two big players in the Irish music industry. That alone, was enough to make us very wary. We had heard stories – the Irish music scene was relatively small, incestuous; rumours travelled fast. But we agreed to meet them, to hear what they had to say.

We had developed a reputation as a band for being difficult, truculent even, largely based on a perception associated with our live shows. Offstage, we were nothing like that; we were genial, easy going - unless we were pushed, or provoked. That would often reveal a very different side of us, but in general, we treated people the way we expected to be treated.

That initial meeting with Liquid Records – it is fair to say there was wariness on both sides. They were sizing us up, trying to figure out if this reputation we had garnered was well earned. But we listened and probed, as they laid out their plans for us. There was the usual massaging of egos that is part of the process of trying to sign bands – the label wants you to believe that you are their number one priority. They tell you how much they love the music. They promise the moon and the stars in terms of how they will promote the record.

 They reach for all the right words to pitch a shiny dream – that dream often turns to dust very quickly once you sign on the dotted line. We left the meeting, and discussed the proposal over the next couple of weeks.

A one album contract. They would fund the recording, the promotion, press the record. Vinyl, cassette and CD. There would be no advance, and probably, no money from future record sales.

As a band, we agreed the next logical step was to record our debut album if we wanted to maintain the little momentum we had built up. We didn’t have the money to do it ourselves, but this offer gave us the means to do so.

We put our wariness to one side and signed the deal.

The recording budget was tight, so we would need to have our shit together before going in to  the studio. There could be no faffing around, every minute in the studio would count.

 Sun Studios in Temple Bar was suggested – it was a small, compact studio, but reasonably well kitted out, and we could stretch the budget to about 12 days. Twelve days, ten songs. Recorded and mixed. No budget for a producer, just us, and the house engineer. No leeway for an overrun, so the pressure was on.

The new songs we had written felt like a big step up from the first two EPs.

The noise aesthetic we had been so in love with on the debut EP had been refined somewhat – the new songs had more space, more light and shade.  The melodies were stronger, but it was still heavy, guitar based music that betrayed our influences a little too obviously.

But we were trying to incorporate new ideas, new approaches – I remember we were all in love with ‘Pet Sounds’ by the Beach Boys around that time. We were listening to Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Robert Johnson. You wouldn’t know it from listening to ‘Submarine’, but discovering new music like that broadens your horizons and opens your mind to trying new things in the studio. Liquid wanted us to start recording as soon as possible – we had the bulk of the album written, but there were still a few unfinished songs that needed polishing.

Fearghal had still to write the lyrics for three or four songs, but he assured us it would be ok.

A date was set for the start of the recording.

 We didn’t know it at the time, but what would follow would be our first experience of real pressure. Over the course of 12 intense days, tempers would fray, we would fall out spectacularly, split up, then reform again & emerge stronger and tighter than ever.