‘The earth is cold and the world is still
The sun’s not come back and it never will
I can’t remember when the sky was new
But I remember that I love you
And I can’t do
Winter without you …’
Exquisite timing, Tadhg Hennessy, as ever.The contrast between how our lives have turned out has never been starker.
Which might be why I can’t help thinking of the first time I heard that voice.
And the first time I saw him.
Chapter Two
1999
‘Who,’ said Katie, ‘isthat?’
It was a miserable February afternoon and my best friend Katie and I were doing what we always did on Saturdays when we were seventeen.We’d got the bus into town from Drumcondra and wandered around the second-hand clothes shops of Temple Bar and the charity shops of George’s Street, searching for kids’ T-shirts from the seventies to wear with our Hobo combat skirts.Then we strolled on to Grafton Street, and that’s where we sawhim.
Or rather, them.
They looked about our age (we would later find out that they were, like us, in sixth year at secondary school).But they weren’t spending their Saturday afternoon drifting about town.They were busking outside A-Wear, and they’d drawn quite a crowd.Of course, in 1999 buskers didn’t use amps and microphones, so this was, by necessity, an acoustic set.But you couldn’t missthem.Two of the band were playing guitar, and the other band member, a boy with a mop of black curls, was playing a single snare drum, sitting behind it on a camping stool.One of the guitarists was a girl with an intimidatingly perfect fringe and a glittery T-shirt worn under a fake fur coat, and the other guitar player, the one who was singing was … well, he was …
‘Why don’t we know any boys like that?’breathed Katie.
‘Because we hardly know any boys at all,’ I said, never taking my eyes off the buskers.
They were playing ‘Femme Fatale’ by the Velvet Underground, and the tall, lean frontman’s husky delivery managed to convey the melancholy, bittersweet vibe of the original without sounding like a parody.His short hair was dark and wavy, and he was wearing a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion T-shirt, which showed he had excellent taste in music, and Clark Kent-style glasses, which only served to make him even more good-looking.This was definitely not true of me and my glasses – at least, that’s what I firmly believed back then.
The band finished ‘Femme Fatale’ to a smattering of applause from the decent-sized crowd, and the frontman smiled in a slightly embarrassed way that made him look even better.
‘Thanks a million,’ he said.And then they launched into ‘The Ship Song’ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the most darkly romantic, swoony song imaginable.Even when played by three teenagers on a Dublin street full of busy shoppers in the middle of February.
‘I think I’m in love,’ I whispered to Katie, and I was only half joking.
‘I’ll fight you for him,’ she whispered back.
We stared at the band, enraptured – although, let’s be honest, we stared athim– until they finished the song.There was another round of applause; the crowd had grown bigger while they were playing and I wonder now if any of those applauding shoppers realised, years later, that they had seen Tadhg Hennessy –Tadhg Hennessy!– busking on Grafton Street when he was just a kid.Probably not.
I was both totally entranced and, I realised, wildly jealous.When I was fourteen I’d taught myself to play my dad’s old acoustic guitar and ever since then I’d longed to start a band.I’d even started writing songs.The only problem was finding potential bandmates.
‘Why amn’t I in a band like that?’I whispered mournfully.
‘Because you don’t know any incredibly hot musical geniuses,’ said Katie.‘Apart from me, obviously.’
‘You play the clarinet,’ I said.‘We can’t start a band with one guitarist who can’t sing and one clarinet player.’
‘Clarinettist,’ said Katie.
‘The fact that we’re having this conversation proves we’re just not cool enough to be in a band like that,’ I said.‘Why don’t you learn the drums?’
‘Why don’t you learn to sing?’retorted Katie, which was fair enough.I’d long accepted that I couldn’t sing, ever sinceI was in fourth class and our teacher asked me, as politely as possible, to mime during the end of year concert in which we were performing songs fromMary Poppins.And I didn’t care, not really.But it meant I knew I could never be a solo musician.I was always going to need someone else to sing the songs I wrote.
