Going back to the beat

Think of the 1960s Irish music scene and chances are you're picturing showbands and crooners. But underground, the beat was just beginning, writes Brian Boyd

Most people will tell you that Irish rock music really only got going in the mid-1970s when the showband scene was waning and the country found itself playing catch-up in the popular music race. The 1960s in Ireland have long been portrayed as an era of sharp-suited crooners filling the dancehalls the length and breadth of the country. But dig a little deeper though and you'll find there was a thriving "beat scene" taking place in small underground venues, and that was taking its cue not from the mainstream but from blues, soul, r 'n' b and the dam-burst of bands that followed in the Beatles' wake.

When author Daragh O'Halloran decided to chronicle this oft-ignored area of Irish musical history, he drew more than a few blanks. "I've always been really interested in 1960s music and particularly garage rock bands," he says. "I did know that the showbands had a bit of a stranglehold on the Irish music scene in the 1960s but I knew there was some sort of beat group scene going at the time too, but when I went looking there was almost nothing recorded about this period."

A fortuitous phone call to a member of one of the more famous Dublin beat groups - Ian Whitcomb from the band Bluesville - gave him a start. "I tracked down Ian in California and he gave me a lot of phone numbers and I soon found that the whole project just snowballed from there," says O'Halloran. "I ended up talking to about 60 people who were involved in the scene but the real breakthrough was when I came across two people who between them had collected all the copies of a magazine from that time called Spotlight."

Although Spotlight was mainly devoted to the showband scene, a young scenester called Pat Egan (now a well-known music promoter) had a weekly column about the beat scene. "I went through every single edition of Spotlight and gradually managed to piece things together," says O'Halloran.

IN HIS BOOK, Green Beat - The Forgotten Era of Irish Rock, O'Halloran vividly describes the time. Thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated, Green Beat is an enlightening account of the margins of popular culture in Ireland in the 1960s.

"I found the people I got in touch with were very keen to talk about the era," he says. "All the bands, the managers, the promoters and the DJs of the time had plenty to say, and I learnt about this whole other musical world. It was fuelled by people who were getting records sent to them from abroad by acts such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and these would have been really exotic sounds back then," he says. "There was also blues, soul and r 'n' b enthusiasts out there, but the key moment I think was when the Beatles played the Adelphi cinema in 1963 - that blew the whole thing open and beat groups started forming."

For bands such as the Greenbeats, Bluesville, the Caravelles and the Creatures it proved difficult to find any sort of outlet for this new beat group sound. "The early venues would all have been these small basement cellars that would be packed with about 200 people," O'Halloran says. "The bands would have played for a younger crowd than the showbands got and the reason the beat groups had to play in these tiny venues is that they weren't allowed play in the big halls."

By the mid-1960s, a network of sorts had been set up. The key venues were the Number 5 Club in Harcourt Street, Sound City in Burgh Quay, the Scene Club in Parnell Square and Club A Go-Go in Sackville Place. "This really was the alternative music scene of the time," he says. "The rock 'n' roll music these people were interested in just wasn't catered for by the mainstream and you wouldn't hear it on the radio."

There were some success stories: Bluesville managed a top 10 hit in the US charts and a band called Eire Apparent toured with Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. Hendrix was so impressed by Eire Apparent that he brought them to the US and produced their album - the only time he ever produced anyone other than himself.

Later on in the period a Limerick band called Granny's Intentions made a name for themselves and would be able to fill out the National Stadium venue.

"There was a lot of potential there but it was never turned into long-term success," says O'Halloran. "There weren't that many record companies here at the time and a lot of the bands had to go abroad if they wanted a record deal. The bands didn't really develop and their careers were never nurtured. There simply wasn't a structure in place for them."

ALTHOUGH THE SCENE was primarily based in Dublin in the early days, beat clubs opened up all around the country, offering bands the opportunity to do national tours, but similar to Dublin, the showbands had a monopoly on the best venues, and the beat clubs remained, sometimes literally, underground. O'Halloran was surprised to find an almost total absence of female performers. "I think that's a combination of the fact that rock music then was pretty misogynistic and the level of women's liberation here at the time was behind that of other countries," he says.

Unfortunately very little audio or visual from the period was saved. "There's almost nothing there," he says. "There was a programme called Like Now on RTÉ towards the end of the 1960s which featured the beat groups, but all the tapes have been wiped. There was a compilation album released of the best of the beat groups but it's out of print. In a strange way the book I ended up writing is the book I was hoping was there for me when I began to research this area. It's important to remember that Phil Lynott, Rory Gallagher and Van Morrison were all involved with this scene. For that reason, I think that Irish rock history has to be rewritten and taken back a few years. It certainly didn't start in the 1970s."

• Green Beat: The Forgotten Era of Irish Rock by Daragh O'Halloran is published by The Brehon Press, €18.99