McGarrigles are bound up with our youth

The album ‘Kate Anna McGarrigle’ conjures up 1970s Dublin just as surely as the tang of roll-ups or the pulse of a SuperSer

THEY DON’T make women like Kate McGarrigle any more – no 12-week blow-dry for her. What on Earth is a 12-week blow-dry anyway? Hairdressers keep on texting me about it, advertising the fact that their 12-week blow-dry is on special offer for only €190, but that sounds pretty stiff to me. Apparently they coat your hair with so much keratin that it stays in place for three months. Anyway, Kate didn’t look like a blow-dry kind of girl.

It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of Kate McGarrigle, the Canadian songwriter who died last Monday at the age of 63. She was either Anna McGarrigle’s sister, or Rufus and Martha Wainwright’s mother, depending on how old you are.

I fall rather hard on the Anna McGarrigle side of that divide. I had lunch with three contemporaries last week who were completely unmoved by news of Kate McGarrigle's death, but to many of us the plaintive yet confident sound of the first album, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, conjures up Dublin in the 1970s just as surely as the tang of roll-ups or the persistent pulse of a SuperSer.

Folk music was respectable and very much respected in those days. It was being re-examined, not least in Ireland, and used to make something new.

Kate & Anna McGarriglebecame Melody Maker's Album Of The Year at a time when such things mattered. Both the McGarrigles used the folk music they knew so well to write their own songs, most famously Heart Like A Wheel(by Anna) and Talk To Me Of Mendocino( by Kate).

Heart Like A Wheel, in particular, was a staple for the post-pub session. The best female singer present got to sing it and there was always much shushing for silence – the 1970s being a pretty puritanical time, and left-wing lovers of folk or traditional music being the most frightful puritans – but the rest of us always joined in anyway, gazing rather sadly at our clogs.

It is not to denigrate Heart Like A Wheelin any way to say that, in the post-pub session of the 1970s, it became the female equivalent of The Boxer, by Simon and Garfunkel. Guys always liked singing the line in The Boxerabout "the whores on Seventh Avenue" in a knowing sort of way, even though you knew for a fact that they had never been further than Templeogue; of course, you hadn't either, but you weren't going to let them know that. ( The Boxeris currently available as a ring-tone.)

What I am trying to say is that for an entire generation, maybe two, the McGarrigle sisters are bound up inextricably with our youth – a youth which had appalling clothes, food and politics, but was greatly blessed in its music.

But I’m also trying to say that the McGarrigles, who came to international fame in 1976, present an interesting contrast with just about every musical success of today.

For a start they were sophisticated musicians who presented themselves as artless performers, as was the fashion and indeed to some extent the snobbery of the time.

In fact they were very serious about their work, and accomplished. Their admirers include Bob Dylan and Nick Cave, who praised Kate McGarrigle’s “schoolteacher piano”.

After Kate’s death Anna was honest enough to say that her sister “Felt she hadn’t got the recognition she deserved, or made the money, though in recent years Rufus had brought her to the forefront to make sure that she did.”

So, life was not all beer and skittles. But hippies are tough. Martha Wainwright said of her mother: “Kate was a very mystical woman, but not namby-pamby.”

She faced her cancer bravely. Before that, she preferred to knit Scandinavian sweaters and ski – an interesting combination of activities – rather than revel in the luxury of celebrity. All of this was secondary of course to the fact that both McGarrigle sisters, to the despair of their record company, had come off the road to raise young children.

Recently, Sharon Stone compared Meryl Streep, in a loving sort of way, to an unmade bed. Sharon meant, presumably, that Meryl does not try to emulate Sharon's strenuous regime of grooming, diet and surgery in order to appear permanently youthful and glossy. Yesterday in the Sunday Times, Shane Watson broke the female celebrity world into Unmade Beds – Tilda Swinton, Stella McCartney, Kirsten Stewart and Helen Mirren, and Pristine Pillows – Cheryl Cole, Stephanie Beacham, and a whole lot more.

Kate McGarrigle belonged firmly in the former camp. She was an inspiration, both to her contemporaries and to younger musicians.

But it is chilling to note, as her sister did, that her recognition at the premature end of her life came about because her famous son – who has always been a lot more organised than his mother or his aunt – had the power to bring her centre stage.

If she had not had such successful offspring we would have been reading, as we do of so many female musicians, “Whatever Happened To Kate McGarrigle?” articles last week, and lacked any recent photos of her.

As it is we have been given an excellent role model, even though we have discovered her just in time to kiss and say goodbye.