Saturday Evening News 2nd November

Back and better than ever.
By Suzanne Marriott

          Internationally acknowledged as one of the world’s finest musicians, Danny Cassidy says of himself, “If I hadn’t been playing hooky from Mass that particular Sunday in 1963 I wouldn’t have heard the riff that changed my life.” (The riff in question belongs at the beginning of the Beatles’ version of Roll over Beethoven.) “I’d never heard a guitar played like that before.” From George Harrison’s opening riff he quickly moved on to Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix. “I remember smuggling albums I’d begged or borrowed, or in one case stolen into the house. I had to listen to them when my Aunt Rose was asleep. ‘I’ll not have the Divil’s music playin’ in this house.’ She used to tell me. But whenever she was out I’d play them over and over until I could play along with them on the old upright piano in the sitting room, or on Rose’s old banjo.” (Rose taught him to play both instruments.) “After Billy Connolly, I’m probably one of the few R & B banjo player’s in the business.” If you listen to the end of ‘Cold Moon’ off their Crimson Swan album, you’ll hear Danny playing the track out ‘George Formby’ style on his Aunt Roses’ cherished old banjo.
         “Early in 1967,” he says with the look of man well used to learning life’s lessons the hard way, “I decided to put the music to one side and hone my skills as a boxer. But in between fights, and to keep body and soul together, I joined my cousin’s Ceilidh band. It wasn’t the sort of music I wanted to play, but it was a great experience. I bought my first guitar, a battered second-hand 1959 Fender Jazzmaster, with the money I’d saved from my first three month’s pay. And what’s more,” he said proudly, “I still have it.” Cassidy was playing with the band in Wexford when he met Grainne Maguire and despite family opposition (both were only seventeen at the time), the couple married a few months later. “Life was good. Probably too good,” he told me. “I believed I had it all, and I had it for keeps.”
         Towards the end of 1968 and after seeing him win his bout against Scotland’s Alistair Mackelhenny, his estranged father made the second of three brief appearances in his life. “Somehow he convinced me that I was good enough to come to England and turn pro.” So leaving a now pregnant Grainne behind with Aunt Rose, and through a close friend of his father’s, Christie Fahey, the late Tommy Fahey’s father, Cassidy signed with London promoter Solly Goodman. “Me da was right; I was good, but as I quickly found out, not that good.” He laughs, pointing to his five-times broken nose. “At least I won more than I lost, but by then music was fast taking over my life.”
        I asked him, somewhat tentatively, if he felt in any way responsible for the breakup of his first marriage. “Sure I do; Grainne wanted a husband with a steady job, not one who came home every night with a black eye or worse. And she certainly didn’t want a guitar player constantly on tour and getting up to God knows what behind her back.” (Cassidy’s one time capacity for whiskey, cocaine and women is legendary.) “But like most men, I thought that the harder I worked and the more money I threw at the problem, the sooner it would go away.”
         It was at this juncture I asked him about his relationship with his own son (they’ve been estranged for almost twenty years.) Although he remained courteous, something in his eyes told me I was treading on dangerous ground; needless to say, I didn’t pursue the matter. He was, however, a lot more open about his relationship with Tommy Fahey. “Despite what people have said about him, we all loved the guy; he was a real friend. If it hadn’t been for Tom’s energy, Aengus would never have existed.” Tommy wrote all but two of the tracks on their Crimson Swan and Pathways albums and all but three on their best-selling album, Perfume For The Soul. “Tom was such a prolific writer,” he says with pride, “that we’re still able to use some of his lyrics on our current albums.” 
         Early in 1971 the band’s dynamics changed when Tommy Fahey died of a heroin overdose. “It was a life wasted,” Cassidy says earnestly. “Perhaps If we’d taken the time to understand his demons things might have turned out differently, but back then we were all just kids, and kid’s hell bent on having the time of our lives.” Having the time of his life on the stateside leg of their 1971 sell-out ‘Smell The Perfume’ tour meant being helped on stage by three roadies in St Louis. “The guys had to stand behind me on the stage in case I fell off. I was that drunk.” He was arrested for brawling in Dallas, for lewd behaviour in Phoenix – in his defence he said that he hadn’t been aware that he was in a convent garden at the time – and he spent two nights in a Las Vegas jail, coming down, he says, “from one of the greatest highs ever.” Had his second marriage to ballet dancer Beth Reagan tamed him? “It might sound corny, but Beth’s my rock. She’s one hell of a lady.”
         By the late eighties the music press had rated Cassidy among the top ten greatest rock guitarists of all time. Others in that illustrious list included Jimi Hendrix, Gary Moore, Joe Satriani and Eric Clapton. “Frankly, I find all that stuff embarrassing. I remember being backstage one night with Phil (Lynott supported Cassidy on his first solo album Moonlight Dancer) and being blown away by Gary’s playing; the guy’s a real genius. I met Joe in the early nineties, before he joined Deep Purple. He’s an amazing technician, f***ing amazing. As for Eric, he’s a great guy and a great mate.” Berry and Hendrix? “I’d love to shake their hands the way I did Harrison’s in 1990 and say thanks for it all.” Does he miss the bright lights and the adulation that comes with touring? “Hell no. These days I prefer going home.” So is it really slippers and pipe time for Cassidy? Or will this next tour (their first in eight years) lead to more? “We’ve a European tour planned for early next year and there’s talk of one in the States next autumn, but nothing’s settled yet.” Are there other albums planned? Aengus`s latest offering, ‘Consequence of War,’ has outsold all their earlier albums. “At the moment I’m trying to get some studio time with Jools and the lads (Jools Holland and his band) to do some of the classy stuff my wife likes. Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, and then of course there’s next year’s fundraiser.” Cassidy is a major supporter of Cancer Research both here and in Ireland – his mother died of cancer when he was still a child – and of the Chernobyl Children’s Charity. “I cried,” he says unashamedly, “at what I saw; all these kids suffering from the most appalling cancers and their mothers without the means to pay for the simplest of pain relief.” At this point he became very emotional. “I had no idea of how bad things were until I saw it for myself. Thank God for women like Adi Roche; she’s remarkable.”
         So is the future looking bright for Danny Cassidy? “The brightest it’s ever been,” he says proudly. “For the first time in years I’m free from drugs. I’m in control of my drinking and from where I’m standing, now that I can see straight, life looks good.” With that he glanced at his watch, thanked me for a grand interview and left. Just before he left I managed to ask him if his Aunt Rose’s attitude towards popular music had softened in any way. He laughed and said, “She’s a shelf full of our albums, and a very soft spot for Meatloaf!” 
       After having said all I’ve said about him in the past, do I still feel the same way to-day? No, I don’t. I’m not sure which one of us has mellowed the most, but the Danny Cassidy I interviewed today is a long way removed from the irritating, bad-tempered s.o.b. my mother, Patience Marriott, interviewed twenty years ago.