I first saw him at a Fleadh
Cheoil in the packed town square of Enniscorthy, the very walls throbbing
with music, good fellowship and liquor. As a wild-looking, red-headed man - banjo in fist – climbed to
the roof of a car, whispers swept the square, “It’s Luke Kelly.”
For a long moment, he stood still
as a statue and stared out at us. A hush swelled and spread outwards. I was
stunned by the power of any man to still that unruly crowd.
And then Luke began to sing Kelly
The Boy From Killane and his words ricocheted across the same square that
Father Murphy and his Pikemen had stormed through in the rebellion of 1798.
It was one of those moments of
revelation, and I knew I’d never be happy if I didn’t at least try to do the
same myself some day.
When he finished the last thrilling
chorus he laughed heartily at the thunderous applause; with a shrug of his
shoulders he took a slug from a bottle handed up to him, then wiped his mouth
with his sleeve.
His point made, he continued with The
Leaving of Liverpool. This sailors’ work song gave us the freedom to join
in and we did with gusto on the choruses – our voices reverberating off the
walls until you could almost see the beautiful girl on the banks of the Mersey
that we were all leaving behind.
I prefer to think of Luke at that
moment – young and in control of his destiny. I suppose it had something to do
with the times: there was an air of possibility abroad, a sense that things
were changing.
Still, Luke’s vision was rooted in
the past, for he had that innate power of the seanchaí to summon back to life a revolutionary spirit that had
lain dormant in Enniscorthy for almost 170 years.
He summoned something achingly
familiar that had been kept at arm’s length from us - our own sense of
Irishness – something fierce and untrammeled that one never heard on the radio,
a dissident spirit that did not sit easy in the musty, lace-curtain parlors of
that time.
Luke had sensed its presence in
Enniscorthy Town Square and harnessed it to further his performance.
There were other occasions when I
saw him torn and almost hesitant to get on stage. As the years passed, the
venues he performed in with The Dubliners were often very rowdy – people were
more interested in hearing their own voices than creating the space and silence
he needed to delve into the heart of some lyric and find its truth.
In the course of the night he
always silenced them once, or even twice, but in the end what was the point in
trying to contain a Niagara of noisy banality fueled by flashfloods of
Guinness.
And so, with a shrug of his
shoulders, he’d belt into some up-tempo sing-a-long, but you could almost touch
a thin shroud of despair that cloaked him no matter how much he beamed.
My other favorite performance of
this galvanic talent was at the Television Club on Dublin’s Harcourt Street.
Cahir O’Doherty and The Gentry was the featured band.
Now a renowned balladeer in
Florida, Cahir had a tremendous soulful voice while The Gentry were very hip
and cutting edge.
In the midst of the dancing, Cahir
announced that he had a special guest. Everyone assumed it would be some other
showband luminary, instead out strode Luke, resplendent in a flower-power shirt
and matching turquoise velvet pants.
This caused consternation for Luke was
after all a folk-singer and tended to dress in puritanical blue denim.
The shock did not stop there, for
he launched into a bluesy, boozy, version of With a Little Help From My
Friends replete with Rockette kicks. And, oh my God, was he good –
hilarious and having the time of his life.
That was Luke Kelly – troubled and
triumphant – a rebel in the soul unafraid to question tradition or himself.
He’s still the man and a whole host
of us influenced by him will always be boys in his shadow.
