Finbar Furey: When we walked in, people went ‘What in the name of Jaysus is this!’
Finbar Furey on growing up in `Ballyer', appearing on Top of the Pops and how the Beatles wanted his uileann pipes
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Finbar Furey: Now, at the age of 71, he is still pulling in plaudits from all directions and has a UK tour on the horizon. Photograph: Ruth Medjber
Within a few minutes of speaking to Finbar Furey, it quickly becomes apparent that there is no such thing as a short answer. The Dubliner, whose reputation as a stalwart of the trad and folk scenes has transmuted into “legend” status for many, has lots of stories, plenty of memories and the time to recount them all.
Today, on the verge of releasing his new album Don’t Stop This Now in the UK (it was released, with a slightly different tracklist, as Paddy Dear in Ireland last year), he is in a particularly nostalgic mood. Looking back on his illustrious career – which saw him take up the uileann pipes at the age of seven at the behest of his musician father, Ted – it’s easy to see how one tangent leads to another. The way Furey tells it, his Ballyfermot childhood was a sepia-tinted fairytale; stories of delivering turf around “Ballyer” on the family’s horses blend into his brief foray into amateur boxing (“I won a few, lost a few”), fishing trips and family picnics.
Then, of course, there was the music. “Our house was full of instruments,” he explains. “My father would have fiddles and flutes and tin whistles in the place, and my mother played the melodeon and the five-string banjo. We entertained ourselves because there was no television in those days. The house was always full of musicians and, at the end of the evening, when everything was put away and you did your homework, the instruments would come out and we’d sit down and play a few tunes. It was always there; music was just a part of who we were.”
Top of the Pops wasn’t great, to be honest. It looked bigger on the television
Calling it an “inevitability” that they would eventually form a band, he initially teamed up with older brother Eddie as “Finbar and Eddie Furey” and they went to Scotland in the late 1960s for a 12-date tour to begin their career proper, rubbing shoulders with Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly and The Corries; “all these great artists”, he nods. “We took the cattle boat to Glasgow from Dublin; 19 hours, I’ll never forget it with the cattle screaming below. We went away for 12 days, and we stayed away for three years.”
