Liam Clancy was the youngest and last surviving member of the influential folk group the Clancy Brothers, who are regarded as Ireland's first pop stars. They recorded 55 albums, achieved global sales of millions and appeared in sold-out concerts at such prominent venues as Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.
Liam was generally considered to be the group's most powerful vocalist. Bob Dylan regarded him as the greatest ballad singer ever, whilst Gay Byrne described him as one of the "most famous four Irishmen in the world" at the height of the Clancy Brothers' fame. He was a central figure during the 1960s folk revival on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1976 as part of the duo, Makem and Clancy, he had a number one hit in Ireland with the anti-war song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (written by Scots-Australian Eric Bogle). Upon his death The Irish Times said his legacy was secured.
He was born at Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, Ireland. He was Robert Joseph Clancy and Joanna McGrath's ninth and youngest surviving child (two others died in childhood). As a child, he was known as William or Willie. He displayed an artistic disposition at an early age, while growing up in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. The first song he learned was "The Croppy Boy". He received a Christian Brothers education before taking a job as an insurance man in Dublin. Whilst there he also took night classes at the National College of Art and Design.
While still in his teens, Liam explored writing and painting, though he was particularly drawn to the theatre. In his early performing days, he began to call himself Liam rather than William or Willie. Before he was twenty years old, Liam had founded the local dramatic society now called "Brewery Lane Theatre and Arts Centre", and had produced, directed, set-directed, and starred in John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Liam also performed at the renowned Gaiety Theatre in Dublin. He encountered Diane Hamilton Guggenheim when she came to his hometown to visit his mother, and set off on a tour of Ireland alongside her. During her 1955 trip to Keady, Clancy encountered Tommy Makem for the first time. He would later pursue Guggenheim to the United States. He referred to Greenwich Village as "the island for people escaped from repressed backgrounds".
Liam Clancy began singing with his brothers, Paddy and Tom Clancy, at fund-raising events for the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Guthrie benefits. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, began recording on Paddy Clancy's Tradition Records label in the late 1950s. Liam Clancy played guitar in addition to singing and also recorded several solo albums. They recorded their seminal The Rising of the Moon album in 1959, giving live performances in the American cities of Boston, Chicago and New York. A record-breaking sixteen-minute-long performance on American TV's The Ed Sullivan Show on 17 March 1961 launched the group into stardom. They were supposed to only play two songs but the main act cancelled at short notice. There were international tours, which included performances at Carnegie Hall (a sell-out in 1962) and the Royal Albert Hall. Their trademark attire was Aran geansaí—these were sent across the water by Mrs. Clancy for her sons to wear against the unforgiving American climate. The quartet recorded numerous albums for Columbia Records and enjoyed great success during the 1960s folk revival. Liam was a close friend of Bob Dylan when they both were going out with two sisters in New York. He performed live for United States President John F. Kennedy.
In 1964, thirty percent of all albums sold in Ireland were Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem records. Although better known for their full-length albums, the Clancy Brothers' single, "The Leaving of Liverpool" (from the album, The First Hurrah!), which featured Liam in the lead, reached the number six spot on the Irish charts in 1964. Liam played the guitar in almost all the recordings of the Clancy Brothers, and he took lead vocals in many songs, including "The Wild Rover", "The Shoals of Herring", "Port Lairge", "The Juice of the Barley", "The Patriot Game", "The Gallant Forty Twa", "The Jolly Tinker", "The Nightingale", "Peggy Gordon", "Old Maid in the Garrett", and "The Parting Glass", which closed every Clancy Brothers concert.
Liam Clancy was the last surviving member of the original Clancy Brothers. Tom Clancy died on 7 November 1990, Patrick Clancy died on 11 November 1998, and Tommy Makem died on 1 August 2007. Bobby Clancy, who had joined the group in 1969, died on 6 September 2002. Liam said of his status as the last of the brothers: "There was always a pecking order, especially when you're working with family. But they all died off, and I got to the top of the pecking order, with nobody looking over my shoulder. There's a great sense of freedom about that".
After The Clancy Brothers split up, Liam had a solo career in Canada. He made several television performances on the CBC's national television variety program, The Irish Rovers Show from Vancouver. He had a hit with "The Dutchman" at this time, and he presented his own television show in Calgary, also appearing on the CBC concert series Summer Evening in 1976. In 1975, he was booked to play a festival in Cleveland, Ohio, US, where Tommy Makem was also playing. The two played a set together and formed the group Makem and Clancy, performing in numerous concerts and recording several albums together until 1988. The original Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem line-up also got back together in the 1980s for a reunion tour and album. After the death of Tom Clancy in 1990, Liam sang with Paddy and Bobby Clancy and nephew Robbie O'Connell as part of The Clancy Brothers and Robbie O'Connell. He also performed alongside his Fayreweather Band and the Phil Coulter Orchestra. With Coulter, Clancy had a top four hit single in 1989, "Home from the Sea".
In later life, Liam maintained a solo career accompanied by musicians Paul Grant and Kevin Evans, whilst also engaging in other pursuits. He lived in Ring, County Waterford at this stage. His home in Waterford was designed by the celebrity architect, Duncan Stewart, and featured solar panels which were innovative at the time. He subsequently converted his large garage into a recording studio.
In 2001, Liam Clancy published a memoir titled The Mountain of the Women. He also was in No Direction Home, the 2005 Bob Dylan documentary directed by Martin Scorsese.
In 2006, Clancy was profiled in a two-hour documentary titled The Legend of Liam Clancy, produced by Anna Rodgers and John Murray with Crossing the Line Films, and screened on the Irish channel RTÉ. In February 2007, this documentary won the award for best series at the Irish Film and Television Awards in Dublin. In 2008 Liam performed in a filmed concert titled Liam Clancy and Friends: Live at The Bitter End which featured the last filmed performance of his friend Odetta, as well as songs from Tom Paxton, Shane MacGowan, Gemma Hayes, Eric Bibb, and Fionn Regan as well as members of Danú.
The same director Alan Gilsenan went on to direct a full-length biography of Liam Clancy, The Yellow Bittern: The Life and Times of Liam Clancy. This was released at the 2009 Dublin Film Festival and went on to have a theatrical and DVD release in Ireland the UK. The film includes appearances by Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie, Bob Dylan, Odetta, and many others as well as much unseen archive such as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Newport Festival. The Irish Times praised the film and director Gilsenan who it said had "tracked down an impressive number of secondary sources, and his use of other performers' music is often inspired".
His final album The Wheels of Life was released in 2009. It included duets with Mary Black and Gemma Hayes as well as songs by Tom Paxton and Donovan.
Liam was an ardent proponent of political views and often outspoken on matters of social injustice right up until his death. He criticised both Gulf Wars and the grim, harsh economic climate which gripped Ireland during his last months alive.
Clancy told The Irish Times in September 2009 that he was on his "last legs". He had already given his final performance, at the National Concert Hall the previous May, during which he recited the Dylan Thomas poem "And death shall have no dominion". He was unable to perform a full-length show on the final night of a two-night sold-out run but put in a 40-minute appearance nonetheless. His manager described it as "a very profound moment. He expressed his fear of dying, but he did it with great dignity".
Liam Clancy died from pulmonary fibrosis on 4 December 2009, in Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, Ireland. His brother Bobby died of the same disease seven years previously. Liam was buried in the new cemetery in An Rinn County Waterford, where he spent the last number of years of his life, owning a successful recording studio. He was survived by his wife, Kim, and their four children, Eben, Siobhán, Fiona and Donal, as well three previous children Sean, Andrew and Anya. His son Eben was in the process of coming over from the United Kingdom and he had had a chat with his son Donal who was in the middle of a tour of California. The other three sat beside him as he died. Liam had intended to give another interview at the time but succumbed to the disease before this was possible.
The leader of Fine Gael, Enda Kenny, mourned the loss of a "brilliant musician". Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism Martin Cullen said, "Liam Clancy was a nationally and internationally renowned folk singer and was an example of an absolutely dedicated artistic craftsman. This generous and life-giving person enriched all of our lives with memorable songs and was part of the fabric of Ireland's proud traditional music culture". Alan Gilsenan described the death as the "end of an era".
The American city of Boston was said to be in shock at the news as his influence there is "inescapable".[24] Radio disc jockeys in New York paid tribute to the man who, according to the New York Daily News, "played a major role in defining how Americans heard Irish popular music over the last half century", with one DJ saying The Clancy Brothers had "broke down a wall that was long overdue". Christy Moore, on a prescheduled appearance on The Late Late Show aired live on the night of Liam's death, said, "I would have been listening to Radio Luxembourg and rock 'n' roll as a young fellow and then I got to hear of the Clancy brothers, when I was 16 I came to Dublin to hear them in a concert. It was about 1962, I think it was the Olympia, it was the most exciting concert I had ever attended. It was Irish, it was rock 'n' roll, it was funky and it was even sexy".
Clancy's mid-day funeral at St Mary's Church in Dungarvan on 7 December was attended by hundreds of mourners, including both the Aides de Camp of the Taoiseach and President of Ireland, Minister Cullen and various musicians and artists. He was later buried in Ring.
Rocky Road To Dublin
Liam Clancy Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Left the girls of Tuam so sad and broken hearted,
Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother,
Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother,
Then off to reap the corn, leave where I was born,
Cut a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins;
Bought a pair of brogues rattling o'er the bogs
And fright'ning all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin.
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !
In Mullingar that night I rested limbs so weary,
Started by daylight next morning blithe and early,
Took a drop of pure to keep me heartfrom sinking;
Thats a Paddy's cure whenever he's on drinking.
See the lassies smile, laughing all the while
At me curious style, 'twould set your heart a bubblin'
Asked me was I hired, wages I required,
I was almost tired of the rocky road to Dublin.
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !
In Dublin next arrived, I thought it such a pity
To be soon deprived a view of that fine city.
So then I took a stroll, all among the quality;
Me bundle it was stole, all in a neat locality.
Something crossed me mind, when I looked behind,
No bundle could I find upon me stick a wobblin'
Enquiring for the rogue, they said me Connaught brogue
Wasn't much in vogue on the rocky road to Dublin.
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !
From there I got away, me spirits never falling,
Landed on the quay, just as the ship was sailing.
The Captain at me roared, said that no room had he;
When I jumped aboard, a cabin found for Paddy.
Down among the pigs, played some hearty rigs,
Danced some hearty jigs, the water round me bubbling;
When off Holyhead I wished meself was dead,
Or better for instead on the rocky road to Dublin.
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !
Well the boys of Liverpool, when we safely landed,
Called meself a fool, I could no longer stand it.
Blood began to boil, temper I was losing;
Poor old Erin's Isle they began abusing.
"Hurrah me soul" says I, me Shillelagh I let fly.
Some Galway boys were nigh and saw I was a hobble in,
With a load "hurray !" joined in the affray.
We quitely cleared the way for the rocky road to Dublin.
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down
the rocky road and all the way to Dublin,
Whack follol de rah !
The Rocky Road to Dublin is a folk song that describes the singer’s journey from Tuam, a small town in Galway, to Dublin, the capital of Ireland. It depicts the hardships of traveling in the mid-19th century and the challenges that the singer faced to reach his destination. The song starts in May; the singer left his hometown and his family and saluted his father and mother before embarking on the journey. The song portrays his journey as he cuts a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins, buys a pair of brogues that rattle over the bogs and frighten all the dogs along the way.
The song also talks about how the singer rest his body in Mullingar and continued his journey next morning with a pint of pure to keep his heart from sinking. The singer meets some lassies along the way who smile and laugh at his curious style, and after enquiring about his travels, they are also tired of the rocky road to Dublin. The song describes the singer's experience in Dublin where he takes a stroll among the quality in the city, but his bundle was stolen from him. He then decides to leave Dublin by boarding a ship from the quay. The captain of the ship initially thinks there isn't any room for the singer but finally allows him to board. The song ends with the singer's arrival in Liverpool, where the locals called him a fool, and he ultimately had to fight his way through with a Shillelagh to clear the way for the rocky road to Dublin.
Line by Line Meaning
While in the merry month of May from me home I started,
I left my home in May
Left the girls of Tuam so sad and broken hearted,
The girls of Tuam were sad when I left
Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother,
I said goodbye to my father and then kissed my mother before leaving
Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother,
I drank some beer to suppress my sadness and tears
Then off to reap the corn, leave where I was born,
I left my hometown to harvest corn
Cut a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins;
I cut a strong black thorn to scare away ghosts and goblins
Bought a pair of brogues rattling o'er the bogs
I purchased a pair of brogues that made noise when walking on bogs
And fright'ning all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin.
My brogues were scaring all the dogs on the way to Dublin
One, two, three four, five,
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
all the way to Dublin, Whack follol de rah !
In Mullingar that night I rested limbs so weary,
I rested in Mullingar after a tiring day
Started by daylight next morning blithe and early,
I started my journey early in the morning
Took a drop of pure to keep me heart from sinking;
I had a sip of alcohol to lift my spirits
Thats a Paddy's cure whenever he's on drinking.
It's a typical Irish cure when someone is drinking
See the lassies smile, laughing all the while
The girls were laughing at my appearance
At me curious style, 'twould set your heart a bubblin'
My strange appearance would amuse anyone
Asked me was I hired, wages I required,
Someone asked if I was employed and wanted to know my pay
I was almost tired of the rocky road to Dublin.
I was almost fed up with the difficult journey to Dublin
In Dublin next arrived, I thought it such a pity
I felt sad that I couldn't enjoy the view of the city for long
To be soon deprived a view of that fine city.
I was soon going to miss seeing the city
So then I took a stroll, all among the quality;
I decided to roam around the affluent areas
Me bundle it was stole, all in a neat locality.
Someone stole my bag in a sophisticated environment
Something crossed me mind, when I looked behind,
I realized something was wrong and looked behind me
No bundle could I find upon me stick a wobblin'
I couldn't find my bag while walking unsteadily
Enquiring for the rogue, they said me Connaught brogue
When I asked about the thief, they said he was from Connacht
Wasn't much in vogue on the rocky road to Dublin.
Robbery was not unusual on the difficult journey to Dublin
From there I got away, me spirits never falling,
I left that place with a positive attitude
Landed on the quay, just as the ship was sailing.
I reached the dock when my ship was leaving
The Captain at me roared, said that no room had he;
The captain shouted that the ship was full
When I jumped aboard, a cabin found for Paddy.
I jumped on the deck and got a cabin
Down among the pigs, played some hearty rigs,
I enjoyed heartily among the pigs
Danced some hearty jigs, the water round me bubbling;
I danced and the water below me vibrated
When off Holyhead I wished meself was dead,
I felt miserable while leaving Holyhead
Or better for instead on the rocky road to Dublin.
Or it would have been better if I had skipped the difficult journey to Dublin
Well the boys of Liverpool, when we safely landed,
The boys of Liverpool greeted us when we arrived safely
Called meself a fool, I could no longer stand it.
They called me a fool and I couldn't tolerate it anymore
Blood began to boil, temper I was losing;
I got angry and lost my temper
Poor old Erin's Isle they began abusing.
They started abusing my beloved Ireland
"Hurrah me soul" says I, me Shillelagh I let fly.
I yelled "Hurray!" and hit them with my shillelagh
Some Galway boys were nigh and saw I was a hobble in,
Some Galway boys saw me struggling
With a load "hurray !" joined in the affray.
They cheered and joined in the fight
We quitely cleared the way for the rocky road to Dublin.
We cleared the way gracefully for the tough journey to Dublin
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Barney McKenna, Ciaran Padraig Maire Bourke, Luke Kelly, Ronald Joseph Drew
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Nowikens
Great animation !
Patrick Hannon
Where did you get this recording? Or can anyone else tell me if it's off a particular album?