Singer-Songwriter: From a massive creative block to non-stop writing, John Spillane has been there and back, and then some. 'The song is the thing, and singing,' he tells Tony Clayton-Lea
There's more to John Spillane than meets the eye: he's a private man who lays bare his soul through his songs. He's an honest songwriter who isn't afraid to lie. He's been through hell and high water over the past 10 years, a retiring guy with ambition the size of Mount Everest. He's a singer/songwriter who experienced a severe creative block in the early 1990s - to use a marathon metaphor, he hit a wall. "The dream just wasn't coming true for me. I felt like a failure. I had no money. I separated from my partner and daughter. I was down and out, on the beer, depressed."
Yet he now writes songs virtually non-stop. He's gone through more musical phases than most - rock, acoustic, traditional, swing, pop - and has ended up pretty much back where he started. He was always aiming to go to where he is now, he says with such a definite sense of purpose you'd wonder how it took so long for him to get here.
But then life has a way of playing cruel time-delaying tricks on a body.
Spillane is the embodiment of a creative person whose time, quite simply, was always ready - it was just other people who were late. "Playing with a band is a wonderful thing," says Spillane, "but it's also very difficult, in the sense of democracy and the direction the band is going. I enjoyed and had a great time playing in bands, but I always struggled in the end and left, wanting to go my own way."
Did he tire of the democratic vote within band structures? "People just will not do what they're told!" he says jokily.
"I was very shy and introverted when I was younger, as well as confused and angry. I played the bass and I'd look at the stage, and stay in the background. The first few times I did go out singing lead, I'd tremble a lot and not be very effective - I was absolutely terrified. I've learned various tricks along the way and am quite confident these days, but it's been a long haul. I'm a slow burner, though, a great believer that we'll all get there in the end."
Like other performers who are adept at putting an audience at ease, Spillane has perfected the art of blending comic asides and patter with songs that pluck the heartstrings. He says he would never have seen himself as a humorous person because he was always quite pensive, yet because of the overall seriousness of his songs ("slow and depressing" is how he describes them) he eventually learned how to lighten the on-stage earnestness, finding a way for the audience to step outside it. "Now people see me as being a bit of a comedy routine," he accepts, wary of such an admission, fully realising there's a fine line between being a stand-up act and a singer/songwriter.
"I have the songs, though, for the live gigs to work," he states, assuring his doubters that the most important part of the equation - the audience - will not lose focus on the music. "What I can do is make them laugh, but then I tear their heart out with a serious song, and that brings them to their knees. What I love is when you start a song and they're still smiling from a joke I've just told, and then you see the realisation dawn on their face when they know the subject matter is really serious.
"The song is the thing - the singing, also. When I'm singing certain songs, I concentrate on pictures in the songs and if I concentrate hard enough I know the audience can see those pictures, too."
Spillane believes that he has three or four different areas he has to operate within if he is to be successful in getting his point across. "I'm a poet, and the poet on his own is fairly useless for engaging with the world, but I have to look after him because he is the main thing; I'm a composer setting the poetry to music, arranging it; I'm an entertainer, standing up in front of a crowd and taking them on; and then I'm a bit of a politician, meeting people and making sure teamwork takes place." Spillane's lack of confidence and overbearing shyness seem well and truly banished.
YET, he's right in one matter - the song is the thing, proven present and correct by his latest album, Will We Be Brilliant Or What? He quotes lines from two poets in his attempts at a fuller explanation: "All which is not singing is mere talking and all talking is talking to yourself" (e.e. cummings) and "All poetry is lies told in short lines with style" (Patrick Galvin).
"The songs are all personal and about myself," says Spillane. "There was a big barrier within me to telling people all my secrets, but it's a barrier you have to pass, where you're willing to show yourself. It didn't come easy - in fact it was quite a big problem at one stage - but I did it. Yet even that was difficult. There were certain songs where I felt I was telling the listener too much, if you know what I mean - and I was scared of that.
"But then I discovered that the audience didn't think about me at all when they were listening to the songs - they were thinking of themselves.
"Something personal to me was taken as being personal to the audience." So are his songs abjectly honest? "I'm not sure if abject honesty is the best way to describe them," he replies. "They're honest in one way, perhaps an emotional way, but you can tell whatever lies you want in a song. The truth is not really important - the finer details can be argued out."
John Spillane's latest album is Will We Be Brilliant Or What? He is playing The Glen Theatre, Banteer, Cork, tonight; Kings Bar, Waterford, on May 30th and The Cobblestone, Dublin, on May 31st. For the June dates of his countrywide tour, see www.johnspillane.ie.