Philip King is mad about music. He writes it, he performs it and, in recent years, he has made films about it. His company, Hummingbird Productions, was formed in 1987 to make Bringing It All Back Home, a five-part series tracing the influence of Irish music on American country, folk and rock traditions.
The international acclaim with which the series was greeted encouraged King to stay behind the camera and call the shots from there. Further films on his many musical passions were later to be commissioned and produced, including The Juliet Letters with Elvis Costello and The Brodsky Quartet, Christy, a documentary on Christy Moore, and the Emmy award-winning Irish Music in America A Musical Migration. There was also a Grammy nomination for Rocky World, a profile of producer Daniel Lanois.
Born in Cork city in 1952, King studied trumpet at the School of Music and was later to become part of the much-missed group Scullion. As he sits in a Dublin production suite making the final edits to his latest project, he suddenly tells me that he's going to buy a flugelhorn for Christmas. Then, to explain this sudden urge, he fast-forwards to a shot of a man playing the flugelhorn introduction to a song by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, the subjects of Because It's A Lonely World, a film to be broadcast on Channel 4 on St Stephen's Day.
Elvis himself is due any minute to see the final cut, and even though the film is not quite ready, King is happily singing along with the flugelhorn and unconsciously displaying one of his greatest assets - an infectious enthusiasm for music.
"I grew up with three strands of music. First there were the sponsored programmes you heard on the radio; and that was the only pop music you heard on Irish radio. So that was the pop music diet. Then there was the ballad thing, because the Clancys had come home and that had an enormous effect - and they were ours! I remember very well being in the school talent contest singing The Bold O Donoghue, The Holy Ground and The Jug of Punch. Then my elder brother was a classical music nut, and he was listening to Shostakovich and Stravinsky; and my sister was more mainstream, listening to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert. So by the time I got to 16, I was listening to everything!"
While at University College, Cork, King came into contact with writers such as Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Michael Davitt, Gabriel Rosenstock and Liam O Muirithle. There was, as he describes it, "a quite revolutionary aspect" to language and music and, towering above it all was the presence of Sean O Riada. The pubs of Cork were also fertile musical ground, with people like Mick Daly and Christy Twomey playing everything from Carter Family to Rory Gallagher tunes, with maybe even Rory himself in attendance. It was almost inevitable, therefore, that King would eventually be part of some kind of musical venture of his own. It would have to be a group which had a uniquely broad musical vision and that group was Scullion.
ON one level they were an unlikely bunch. There was piper, Jimmy O'Brien Moran, guitarist Greg Boland, whose influences included The Meters and Zappa, Sonny Condell, who had been in Tir na nOg (if you know what I mean) and King himself on vocals and harmonica. They were to become a popular band in Ireland and were, at one point, quite capable of filling the Olympia or the National Concert Hall. Despite a deal with WEA, however, the potential for success outside Ireland was never really achieved.
"The problem with Scullion is that it was indefinable. We had a great time, but we lacked a conclusive direction - although there is a Sculliony sound, a rhythm or a cadence or a tonality that's there. In those days you could travel Ireland and play the folk club circuit and the `before the disco' circuit - where the young ones would sit on the stage with their backs to you - and I miss it very much. "Singing was always my thing. I was always extrovert and unstoppable, and once I started I'd have to be taken away! I always wanted to sing everything; it didn't matter whether it was Little Richard or Frank Sinatra. I think John Martyn was a huge influence on me and he was to produce the second Scullion album. He has a foot in the well of tradition, and everything he did seemed to be shot through with a sense of tradition. And I was always interested in that."
In 1987 King, Nuala O'Connor and Kieran Corrigan set up Hummingbird Productions with a specific project in mind. King was interested in the story of Irish music, how it had crossed the Atlantic and informed the American musical tradition of country, rock and folk, all of which had since returned to Ireland in various guises. Many people knew the story but it had never been told on television. Certainly, King wasn't the first person to propose such a project either, but he was the first one to pull it off. Somehow he managed to convince all of those who needed convincing that this was a very good idea.
"We set out on day one specifically to tell that story. As far as film-making was concerned, in terms of the detail and the technicality of making a film, we were all extremely ignorant. But we did it because of enthusiasm. I remember sitting at a meeting in London with the BBC. Present were BBC NI, BBC Books, BBC Records and this was the money that we needed. "I had to get it and it was like a house of cards; if one of them fell, it all fell. And these were people that knew nothing about Irish music! Nothing at all! I've said it before, that convincing commissioning editors to take your idea is a war of attrition, so you just don't go away. It's like the puissance in showjumping; the fences are built higher and higher. But I just sat down and started talking! And none of it was put on, because I loved the stuff so much and I managed to convince them that it was a fascinating story."
King has done a lot of convincing recently. In the immediate future there are no less than four of his films about to be screened - Ceolta Nollag O Chorca Dhuibhne (Network 2, Christmas Day), East Meets West with Donal Lunny and the Kodo Drummers (Network 2, December 27th) and The Making of the Joshua Tree with U2 early next year on ITV. The fourth is the Bacharach and Costello film to which he is putting the finishing touches as we talk. This degree of output, in the often soul-destroying world of independent film and television, is quite remarkable.
"You always do it for the sake of the subject itself. With Elvis it was the sheer enthusiasm and bravery and musical vigour of the man. It was the way he talked about Burt and their project and then me saying to him that it really ought to be documented. That's how it happened. It was very complex but at the heel of the hunt, I rang Michael Jackson who is chief executive at Channel 4 and I told him that it was happening in three weeks' time and that we had to do it. He said OK, do it. But it's never easy. I send proposals to all sorts of people and 90 per cent of them get rejected. I used to be really upset about it, but I've grown hardened to it and I've grown to understand and just get on with it.
"It's a commissioning editor's prerogative to say yes or no to a project; that's why they're there. However, I think that the business of trying to work in quality television (which is expensive) is very, very difficult. It's difficult everywhere and it's a very stressful business. There is no pension. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. It's on a project-by-project basis and it's all by dint of belief in something that you do it at all."
ANY performer takes a considerable risk by appearing in a film. By putting his or herself in the hands of people who may not be particularly musically aware, the finished product might well be an embarrassment and a disaster. Because of this, any programme-maker with whom a musician can develop a trust is a valued presence. This is precisely how people like Philip King manages to work on such wonderful projects such as the forthcoming film with Elvis and Burt. With Elvis literally on the way up the stairs, King is hoping that, above all, it is the actual subject of the film who will be most happy with the end result.
"I make films about music, but what I bring to it is the sensibility of a performer. It's almost like making the films from the inside out and it's a real privilege. It's a trust to be allowed into the confidence of musicians and it's a trust I would never abuse. Some filmmaking can be very invasive. But the camera can also be the instrument which enables you to get to the moment that matters in the music. That's why what Elvis feels about the film is extremely important. He is the performer, and I am the person who documents his performance and can give an aspect to that performance. I will be led by him in all musical senses.
"What I'm trying to give is a visual context to what is essentially an aural sensation. A lot of music television involves taking cameras into a concert and trying to capture the atmosphere that's there. But I think what the small screen can do for the individual is make a connection or a conduit from the individual like Elvis to you and you alone. It's an exclusive thing. I think if it's done right then you can fully relate to the person. And if the film allows Elvis and Burt's music to walk down that line to one person, then it succeeds."