Castlebar the venue for reunion gig from legendary Horslips

Date Published: {J}

Fans of classic Irish rock are in for a treat when Horslips come to the Royal Theatre, Castlebar on Sunday, November 28. The band played two well-received reunion shows in Dublin and Belfast last year, and their Castlebar show marks the first Horslips show in Connacht in over 30 years.

Although Horslips emerged when showbands dominated the Irish music scene, they saw themselves as a rock band and had a sound that set them apart from their peers. They released their debut album, Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part in 1972 and it outsold the work of many more established Irish acts, leading to a distribution deal with RCA and tours of England and Europe. Their gigs were also a success.

“I guess we were trying to do it right,” says Jim Lockart, who plays keyboards, uillean pipes and whistle. “We got a decent a PA, proper mixing desk and decent speakers. We gradually discovered that no one else was doing it like that at all!”

In the 1970s, Horslips took their progressive rock sound into the ballrooms – venues that weren’t used to guys with long hair coming in and playing loud.

“It was just a roof and a space but it filled up for the night with people that the bouncers never saw again – ‘til we came back!” laughs Barry Devlin, the band’s bassist and co-vocalist. “If you’re gonna play you might as well play in the biggest space available and we were lucky enough to pull in our own audience.”

Experimental bands like Yes were a formative influence on Horslips but, at the time, many Irish rock fans couldn’t hear that kind of music in their local halls.

“That kind of rock ‘n’ roll was an urban phenomenon,” recalls Devlin. “Any bands that came from the UK would play Cork, Belfast and Dublin – and that was your lot. We’d be in the Astoria, Bundoran, then we’d be in the Hangar or Seapoint [in Galway], then we’d be down in Limerick and Ennis. In between that we’d be in ballrooms like Cummer, Glenamaddy and Cong.”

Many Irish artists are keen to point out the importance of the Horslips in the cultural landscape of the early seventies. Author and former showband member Patrick McCabe used to sit on a wall in Clones and watch their bus pull in and deposit its exotic looking charges on to his home town’s streets.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.