Singer songwriter Paul Brady: I was never fashionable, so I never fell out of fashion

Paul Brady is due to perform at the Ulster Hall on November 15 and will receive a Legend Award from the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast.

Brady has received a mantlepiece-full of awards over the years, but is especially chuffed with his latest honour.

“There’s something special about getting one from your fellow countrymen. Little did I think when, a callow 15-year-old, I took gig playing piano in a Donegal hotel for £4 a week plus my keep, that my path would lead me here. That path has taken me through many countries, many musical genres, many lasting friendships and thrilling collaborations and this award is the icing on a very rich cake. I feel so privileged.”

Paul Brady, 76, is one of Ireland’s best-known artists with a career that spans over 50 years. Born in Belfast, raised in Strabane, Brady, a singer-songwriter, musician and producer started out in bands while at college in Dublin, absorbing musical influences from jazz, blues, pop, soul and Irish folk. He went on to join legendry acts The Johnstons and Planxty and his dramatic interpretations of classic traditional ballads firmly established him as one of the cornerstones of the new wave of Irish music and song in the 1970s.

At the end of that decade, Paul moved onto writing his own songs and has since forged a reputation as one of Ireland’s finest. Songs such as The Island, Crazy Dreams, Nothing But The Same Old Story, Nobody Knows, Follow On, The Long Goodbye, The World Is What You Make It and Paradise Is Here have, over the years, given joy and emotional sustenance to generations of Irish at home and abroad.

For Brady, song writing is a mysterious craft – and despite having written a shimmering swathe of beautiful songs, he still seems baffled by the process.

“When people ask me to do song writing work shops I’m always a bit nervous because I don’t know how to write a song. I sit down and something happens, or some days it doesn’t happen. It’s a bit of a mystery to me, thankfully, but that’s part of the magic of it.

“Some songs start with a lyrical idea and I’d have a couple of verses written lyrically before I’d even bother with the music. Other times I’d have a piece of music lying around for years, which I have never known what to do with and then one day an idea comes into my head. There’s no rules on how to write a song, unless you want to write a song to formula, which a lot of pop songs are.”

Mention Paul Brady, and for many, The Island, will come to mind, an emotional hefty ballad comparing the tragic events of the Lebanese Civil War with the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

"I found the song really hard to write lyrically, although I had the music for years, because I found it hard to know what I actually felt. Everybody to some degree, unless they’re dyed-in-the-wool hard in one direction or another, has had ambivalent feelings about Northern Ireland, why things happen and what should be done about it – and I was no different to that.

“When I was in the studio recording the song it wasn’t finished lyrically...Eventually I just opened my mouth and words started to come out, and I was thinking where have these words come from and in a way the song wrote itself, or at least finished itself while I was in front of a microphone.”

Not long after Brady released Hard Station, his first album of his own compositions in 1981, his songs started to come to the attention of artists worldwide, with Carlos Santana the first of many interpreting Paul’s songs recording a version of Night Hunting Time. Since then his compositions have been recorded by many international artists including Tina Turner, Cliff Richard, Cher, Carole King, Art Garfunkel, Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Trisha Yearwood and Phil Collins and, closer to home, Ronan Keating, Joe Dolan, Dickie Rock, Maura O’Connell, Liam Clancy and Mary Black.

And he has performed alongside many greats, including Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler and the late Sinead O’Connor.,

“I did a season of shows back in the early noughties in Vicar Street, Dublin and I had a load of guests with me (there’s a live album of the shows called the Vicar Street Sessions). Sinead was one of the guests in that month of gigs. We sang a duet on a song of hers and that was a great experience. I hadn’t worked with her before that and that was the only time we crossed paths creatively, but it was an exciting cross for me.”

Brady puts his music’s endurance down to his lack of ever having been in vogue.

“One of the characteristics of my career was that because I was into so many different kinds of music at various different times in my career, the marketing departments in record companies never knew quite what to make of me, or what I was.

“I’ve never followed any trends and anything I’ve written has been sort of emotionally quite deep for me. I was never fashionable, so I never fell out of fashion. At my gigs now, the audience age group is from late teens up to 70s and a lot of older people are bringing their kids along to see me play and they seem to be getting as much enjoyment out of it as their parents.”

Brady continues to write and produce from a studio in his garden

“That’s been great to have, it means you can walk across in your slippers,” he laughs.

He is also still performing and in 2022 brought out his autobiography ‘Crazy Dreams’ to national acclaim.

“I’ve had a very busy spring this year from April through to the end of July and I am now just taking some time out. It’ll probably be next year before I do a lot of life work again.

Before he performs live he likes to drink a glass of white wine “to loosen up the vocal chords a bit.”

“I don’t like to eat much before I go on stage; it’s nice to have a wee plate of cold cuts when you come off.”

Despite decades living in Dublin, and before that years spent in London and New York, Brady hasn’t lost his Strabane accent.

"I never tried", he laughs.

Outside of music, Brady loves to swim and scuba dive

“I’ve scuba dived all over the world, and I’m still doing that. I also love the theatre. I love the garden and nature. I’m lucky enough I have a decent sized garden and I ‘footer’ about in it every so often.”

Brady is married to Mary, whom he met in 1973 and they have two grown-up children, Sarah and Colm.

Has he passed his musical gift onto them?

“Both my children and their children are very musical. I wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to encourage them to enter the music business because they might have more fun playing music for fun; the music business can be a very difficult place to be and very few people manage to keep their heads above water. I am one of the lucky ones.”

*A limited amount of tickets for Paul Brady’s show at the Ulster Hall on November 15 are on sale at https://www.ulsterhall.co.uk/what-s-on/

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