First encounters

In conversation with FRANCES O'ROURKE

CORMAC WRIGHT

met Tom Dunne in secondary school in the late 1970s, formed a band called The End with him, and emigrated to the US after training as a computer programmer with AIB. He now works in IT for Ford and lives in Northville, 12 miles outside Detroit, with his wife Terri and daughter Alexandra, 16 and son Iggy (aka Sean) 15. He still plays with local bands in Detroit in his spare time

'Tom and I were both at St James's CBS, but I was in a different class. He and Declan Connolly were attached at the hip – if you saw one you saw the other – but Declan persuaded me to go to the Gaeltacht. So Tom and I met at Irish college in Carraroe, Co Galway. We had the same sense of humour and a mutual interest in guitar. Did he tell you we played at the folk Mass in school, and about the time we slipped the opening bars of Satisfactioninto Morning Has Broken?

“Punk was starting, we shared the same sense of alienation and we got the idea of playing in public, said we’d start a band. I’m from old Kilmainham, and my dad has a barber shop there. We practised there – we were very vain and it had all these mirrors.

"It was before the glory days of U2, but they were a great inspiration to us. The music scene wasn't so glamorous, you had to pay for your own PA system. There was one episode when the audience consisted of just Hot Pressjournalist Liam Mackey and his girlfriend. But The End did have a cassette-only release. I sold it by mail order and years later, in Detroit, a girl sang one of the songs from it. A friend of hers in Scotland had bought our cassette and sent it to her.

“The band broke up before I left. I got into the IT department in AIB and then went with a contract agency to New York. I told my mother and father I’d try it for 12 months. My mother says it was the longest 12 months, but these days cheaper and better communication eases a lot of the frustration of being away.

“After I left, Tom and I didn’t lose contact: there was a lot of letter writing. When I moved to live in Detroit, I got into the music scene here, started a band. And I’d go on tour with Something Happens when they came over here. I got to live with them, it was great to be involved. I was best man at Tom’s wedding and he at mine.

“I just got off the phone a little while ago, slagging Tom – Manchester United had that big upset. Tom is a big Man U fan, so I can’t be. I’ve been Leeds United from way back, Man U was too fashionable for me. A few months ago I was over in England with Tom at a Leeds United match then a Man U match.

“Is it as close as women’s friendships? We have the friendship, but with a lot less words. We can meet up after months and the conversation picks up where it left off. It might have been the age we were, or the bond of alienation that brought us close, but he’s my closest friend, apart from my wife, definitely.”

TOM DUNNE

is a broadcaster and singer/songwriter who presents a morning chat show on Newstalk during the week and a night-time music show on Sundays. He is lead singer with rock band Something Happens, which broke up in 1995 but still plays occasional sell-out gigs (most recently in Whelan's, just after Christmas). He lives in Sandycove, Co Dublin, with his wife Audrey and two daughters, Eva, five and Skye, three.

‘Irish college was one of the happiest experiences of my life. There were 200 people your own age, girls had arrived, and I met Cormac, the funniest man in the universe. Punk rock had started, The Stranglers were playing . . . it doesn’t get better than this. Back in school they kept separating us – we were bad news together.

“We got a drummer, formed a band, The End – the next thing we knew, we were rehearsing. I was kicked out ‘cos I couldn’t play bass, but they let me back in as the singer. We played our first gig in McGonigle’s: half-way through I felt a tug on my leg – someone telling me the mike wasn’t switched on. We played 74 gigs to 73 people; word got out about us and then nobody came. Eventually, the band split up around 1981/82. And Cormac, who’d trained in computers in AIB, was head-hunted to the US and left Ireland.

“After school, I worked to make money to go to college. It caused ructions in the house, me wanting to go to university. My family had been Guinness workers – coopers -- for generations. But I got into UCD, studied engineering, graduated in the teeth of our last recession in 1983 when there were three engineers for every job. “I got a job with CIE. Six months on, I’m thinking, what am I doing with my life, buying buses, installing garages. Then the old drummer from The End told me he knew three guys who were searching for a singer. I said I’d give it a go. Dublin was a great place to be in the early 1980s. I had a natural propensity to write songs, and the punk rock idea was, just go and do it, don’t worry about talent. And Something Happens worked out pretty quickly.

“I remember playing our first demo tape to Cormac – it felt unfaithful, like ‘I’m in a band and you’re not in it’.

“By now I’d joined Aer Lingus but hadn’t told them about the band. Virgin Records signed Something Happens in 1987 and when I resigned, my boss said, ‘But what would Virgin want with a mechanical engineer?’ We were with Virgin from 1987 to 1993, did 14 tours of the US, heading off on three-month tours with Warren Zevon.

“Cormac and I were always in touch. We’d fly in for big gigs, he’d join us, travel with us for a few days. And he started up bands in Detroit, and he still plays.

“What is it that keeps us friends at such a distance and over so much time? I think we simply bonded in a way you very rarely do with people. We have a shared passion – music. We also share a sense of humour. I refuse to mention the L word.”