Ronnie DrewTHE SINGER and musician Ronnie Drew, who has died aged 73, will be best remembered for three songs in particular - Seven Drunken Nights, McAlpine's Fusiliers and Finnegan's Wake. A founder member of the Dubliners, who achieved fame and notoriety as singers of street ballads and bawdy songs, interspersed with fine instrumental traditional music, he later pursued a successful solo career.
The American roots magazine Dirty Linen, contrasting the Dubliners and the Clancy brothers who emerged around the same time, wrote: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fistfights."
There was more to the Dubliners than a colourful image. The musician and critic Fintan Vallely pointed to their professionalism, Dublin-flavoured repertoire and singing ability as factors in their success. In addition, "[ Drew's] uncompromising Dublin accent and 'iron-on-gravel' bass delivery strongly identified the group with the city", and they attracted a strong hometown following.
Born in Dún Laoghaire in 1934, Drew was educated by the Christian Brothers. On leaving school at 17 he was apprenticed to an electrician, and later worked as a draper's assistant, vacuum cleaner salesman and night telephonist. Radio programmes such as Ballad Maker's Saturday Night and Ciarán MacMathúna's Ceolta Tíre sparked his interest in Irish music; Dominic Behan was an early influence.
In 1955 he went to Spain to teach English; he also learned to play flamenco guitar. Returning to Ireland three years later, he began singing in stage shows produced by John Molloy at the Gate theatre and was joined by Barney McKenna on tenor banjo.
Drew and McKenna hosted sessions in O'Donoghues' pub, Merrion Row, and with Luke Kelly (vocals and five-string banjo) formed the nucleus of the Dubliners. The original line-up was completed by the arrival of John Sheehan (fiddle) and Ciarán Bourke (vocals and tin whistle).
The group held residencies in the Abbey Tavern, Howth, the Embankment, Tallaght, and the Grafton Cinema before going on to enjoy success in North America and continental Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand.
They had their first Irish hit in 1966 with Nelson's Farewell, a song inspired by the demolition of Nelson's Pillar in Dublin following a failed attempt by republicans to blow it up. Their first British hit was Seven Drunken Nights, also sung by Drew. He got the song from the renowned sean-nós singer, Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh, and on its release it was banned by Radio Éireann.
On the record Drew sang of only five nights, claiming he would be jailed were he to sing the song in full. This was all grist to the publicity mill, and paved the way for the Dubliners' second chart hit, Black Velvet Band, with Luke Kelly on vocals.
The deaths in the 1980s of two original members, Bourke and Kelly, were a blow. But the group recovered and joined forces with the Pogues in 1988 to record a rousing version of The Irish Rover, featuring Drew and Shane McGowan on vocals.
In 1974 Drew left the Dubliners to pursue a solo career, returned in 1979 and finally left in 1996. As a solo artist he devised a stage show Ronnie I Hardly Knew Ya and, accompanied by Mike Hanrahan on guitar, performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1998. He later took the show to the US, Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Israel.
The show, a mixture of song and story, was based on the works of Dublin writers and on Drew's observations of the city and its many characters.
In the early 1960s he appeared in plays at the Gate theatre. He later appeared in some ballad shows and in the 1970s had parts in Richard's Cork Leg, by Brendan Behan, and in the musical, Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. He was a keen horseman and two of his horses carried off prizes at the Dublin Horse Show. His horsemanship was acknowledged when he was made an honorary member of the NYPD mounted police. In 2006 he was invited to act as Grand Marshall of the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin. That year also the Dubliners were one of four musical groups to feature in a series of postage stamps celebrating the worldwide success of Irish traditional music.
He saw himself as a journeyman singer and refused to be tied to one particular genre. Having collaborated with Antonio Breschi and Rory Gallagher for his 1995 album Dirty Rotten Shame, he recorded songs specially written for him by Bono, Elvis Costello and Shane McGowan. His album with Eleanor Shanley, El Amor de mi Vida, features songs by Nick Cave, Neil Young and Tom Waits. He teamed up with Grand Canal on his most recent album Pearls, which includes five tracks he recorded with Jah Wobble.
When it became known that Drew was suffering from throat cancer, Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead collaborated with Bono and the Edge to write The Ballad of Ronnie Drew. A recording was released earlier this year for the benefit of the Irish Cancer Society.
His wife Deirdre (née McCartan) predeceased him in 2007; their son Phelim and daughter Cliodhna survive him.
Joseph Ronald (Ronnie) Drew: born September 16th, 1934; died August 16th, 2008