The following is a Paul Byrne Hot Press interview with Ian Wilson of RTE to celebrate 10 years of the Fanning Sessions, it appeared in print on June 14th 1990.
Ten years on and the importance of The Dave Fanning Session hasn’t diminished in the least. From U2 to Scale The Heights, The Virgin Prunes to Whipping Boy and The Blades to Power Of Dreams the recordings have provided invaluable experience for two generations of Irish bands. Paul Byrne meets the man who started the ball rolling a decade ago, Ian Wilson
“You could tell Five Go Down To The Sea? were no time-wasters the minute they walked into the studio.” Ian Wilson remembers “They just set up their gear, did some songs, stopped for tea, and then came back and packed up.
“Whereas most bands were with you ’til 10pm these lads were walking out the door at 7pm. And with most bands you’re lucky to get two tracks done; with these we had five done in record time, including a particularly manic version of ‘These Boots Were Made For Walking’ and such potential classics as ‘Lorry Across The Lee’ and ‘While My Guitar Meryl Streeps’.
“I assumed they were leaving early to get back to Cork because they had to sign on the dole the nexxt morning. But they had other plans. They headed straight to Herbert Park armed with 20 bottles of cider they’d gotten with the money they’d earned from the sessions, and got completely blotto drunk.”
“They woke up the next morning in the park, got into their car and drove home to Cork. Crazy people, completely crazy”! They never even bothered to get a copy of the session!”
Ian Wilson sits back in his wobbly chair amidst the hustle and noise of RTE’s Radio House and laughs.
“As it turns out it’s probably one of the best sessions we’ve ever done”
Over the last 10 years Ian Wilson, as producer and guru of Dave Fanning’s seminal radio, has given a lot of much needed exposure to a host of Ireland’s until then radio-unfriendly bands through the medium of the Rock Show sessions. Highly respected today, the sessions however had a humble though destined to be historic start in life.
“When I first arrived here in ’79 I was amazed to find a fully equipped studio just lying idle,” Wilson recalls. “It had literally been unused since in was first installed in ’73. And so I decided to get a band in to see if it actually worked.
“I phoned Paul McGuinness and told him to send the four lads in to do a couple of numbers. Everything went great; naturally we were only learning how to use the equipment but it was a good beginning!
“After that the sessions began happening on a haphazard basis for a couple of years. It’s only been in the last few years that RTE have fully realised their real worth. They’ve realised that this is in an area of vast development, and that if they want to keep up with the competition they’ll have to back this thing up. But probably the most important factor that sparked off the change of heart was the simple fact that they could make money with the sessions. Over the last year alone we’ve taken in about £1,200 in leasing out demos to bands. That kinda altered RTE’s point of view!”
Back at the beginning, as the initial onslaught of young bands descended upon RTE studios, the prevalent calm and tranquility of the Radio House was shaken ever so slightly.
“We were just at the tail end of the Punk thing, and it was a time of cross dressing and wearing whatever you wanted.” Wilson points out. “So when someone like The Virgin Prunes strolled in there was quite a few eyes widened. The problem here is that it’s a very closed-in existence that a lot of these people lead. Most of them wouldn’t have any experience of music besides some ‘come-all-ye’ back home. So when you walked into the RTE canteen when one of the bands were in it didn’t take you long to work out who were in the band and who worked in RTE.”
With the sudden intrusion of life upsetting the flow of things around the Radio House, was there ever any ‘friendly words of advice’ from any of RTE’s executives upstairs?
“There were a few people who though that the whole thing was just a waste of time and resources. You had people who used to work in the showband days who’d be baffled that it took us a whole day to record two or three songs with a band. In their day you took a band into the studio, played the song once , and then headed home in time for the Angelus. But that attitude has changed a lot. They’ve come to realise just what’s invoved with recording these days. That’s not to say they approve of it; it’s just that they’ve come to tolerate it now.”
In the early days what were you looking out for when you were sent a demo?
“The thing about the early demos was that you often couldn’t tell how good or bad a band were from their demo. Because in those dats there wasn’t that many studios, so lots of the stuff we got was recorded in someone’s bedroom or out in the garden. You took a great risk sometimes.
“But you soon learned what to look for. The bottom line has always been to find bands with good ideas anyway, so really the quality didn’t really come into unless the recording was really bad.
” Today the problem has gone the other way. It’s all production now. Everything is polished and perfected, if that’s the proper word. So much it’s hard to know if the band can actually do anything worthwhile. Bands should never forget that it’s the ideas that matter, not the production!”
It was “sometime in the mid-80’s” when RTE decided, without rhyme or reason to abolish the Fanning Sessions. It was a move that was to have far reaching repercussions, with every budding rock star and starlet up and down the country lending their voice to the hail of disapproval. As a result it soon became obvious to RTE that the Fanning Sessions weren’t about to roll over and play dead.
“The outcry was fairly large when that happened alright,” Wilson acknowledges. “It was definitely noticed! I never know at the time why they went, and I still don’t. The communications in here are sometimes very bizarre. In this communications business the last thing they tend to do is tell you what’s going on!”
But luckily, help was at hand; the mighty hand of the Arts Council to be precise.
“I know for a fact that the Arts Council wrote to the Director-General here, which is a little-known fact, The Arts Council writing is quite… (widens his eyes and drops his jaw!) – it really raised people’s eyebrows. A letter from the Arts Council saying that this was a very valuable part of Ireland’s artistic scene sort of thing; that, more than anything, must have put the slides on it.
“It came back pretty soon after that. It was only a short gap anyway. The proverbial shit hit the fan, so it won’t happen again. I’m pretty sure of that. Looking back it was a kind of blessing in disguise, because when this hiccup occurred it suddenly dawned on a lot of people just how important the sessions were!”
The need for an outlet such as the Fanning Sessions has never been more necessary than it is today, with more and more bands cropping up all around the country. “It’s great at the moment,” enthuses Wilson. “Donegal, Cork, Limerick, all across the midlands – there’s great bands coming from all over the country. It’s no longer just a Dublin thing!”.
It was Fanning who once said that ‘unemployment brings out the guitar in everyone!’. Would the producer agree?
“Well, I don’t know if it’s really unemployment, but it’s certainly a working class occupation. I remember filling in for Dave once on some teacher’s discussion about ‘the kids’. I told the people there that they must understand that music for a lot of young people is a way out; if you’re a youngster living in Tallaght or wherever you don’t have many choices. You can get drunk on cider every weekend, or you can start a band. To a lot of these kids it’s like boxing; a way to break out of their surroundings. I said that unless they understood that they were going to have a lot of trouble understanding the kids.’ And they flipped out: ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, that’s not our experience with kids. Oh, no, no, no, no!’
“One guy started insisting that The Beatles were upper class; they weren’t, The Beatles were working class – all the great band were. You had the odd exception like Genesis, who all came from private school, but all the really important bands were predominantly working class. And long may it stay that way. Otherwise they’ll all be as boring as Genesis are!”
Genesis are not the only form of music that riles Wilson. Recent non-developments in the Irish folk scene manages to bring his blood to tropical heat as well!
“I’m amazed that folk music in this country is so stagnated. There has been no significant changes at all in the last 15 years. There’s really been no changes in Irish folk music in about 1,000 years. It’s still red-faced men in Aran sweaters belting out appalling ballads.
“You’ve got great developments going on all over the world; different cultures criss-crossing with each other to spark off some great music. Sure look at The Pogues; taking your basic Irish folk and traditional and blending it with the rawer elements of Punk and what-have-ya; that’s what should be going on over here. No-one’s doing anything exciting over here with folk music. There’s been a gap left since the likes of Planxty split up.
“What we need now is some band to come along and break up their fiddle and bodhrans on the stage. And maybe they could burn their Aran sweaters while they’re at it!”
Is there anything in today’s Irish music scene that manages to excite him?
“Oh, yeah! There’s quite a lot of garagey bands at the moment that are really good, There’s bands like The Whipping Boy, The Slowest Clock, The Golden Horde, Power Of Dreams. Power Of Dreams are a band that we’ve given a lot of support to, their simply a great band, and now they’ve got themselves a record contract. Which is great!
“That’s the good thing about Ireland at the moment. There’s a very healthy structure now for bands to grow from. There’s a lot of money coming into Ireland’s music industry right now, and that’s reflecting back in the form of better facilities for young bands. There’s plenty of room for development now for bands starting out.”
This year Wilson hopes to see some of the Fanning Sessions released on vinyl, probably as mini-LPs, a move sparked off by the success of “The Peel Sessions“, released in Britain by Strange Fruit Records, though Wilson concedes that the Rock Show wouldn’t have anything like it’s extensive or interest-worthy a back catalogue to plunder.
“I do have a number of sessions that are well worth releasing though,” he adds. “Stuff like The Prunes, A House, Stars Of Heaven, Golden Horde, Blue In Heaven, The Blades… they’re all pretty good sessions. And I reckon, as 6 or 8 track ,mini-lps, they would have a bit of cred and they’d sell in reasonable quantities too. I’m hoping I may have enough bits and pieces for a hardcore compilation as well.”
The commercial potential doesn’t end there either; many bands are now buying their demos to use as promos, or to release to the public.
“This, and the release of the mini-LPs, have obviously appealed to a lot of people in here; where there’s money there’s a way!”, Wilson comments with a smile. “It’s only a recent development that the session have begun to show sign of paying for themselves, which is basically what we hope it will achieve. The more money we can earn from releasing, and leasing, the sessions the more we can put back into them!”
What about the copyright control on the recordings?
“Basically RTE have copyright on the recordings for ever and ever. The artist owns the songs and suchlike, RTE just own the performance. The bottom line for bands is the experience of recording, and the airplay.”
And airplay for the sessions can come up in the strangest of places!
“No-one seems to know this but all the background music used in ‘Fair City’ is taken from our sessions,” he reveals. “So you have people ironing their underwear, or having tea and an argument whilst An Emotional Fish or A House are playing in the background.
“It’s a fairly weird means of exposure from the bands’ point of view!”
Should look good on the posters: As featured in RTE’s ‘Fair City’!” Or maybe not.
Stephen Travers, Emily Dollery, Siobhan Bardsley, Eileen Hogan and Rob McKahey in conversation with Michael Murphy at the Cork launch of ‘Punks Listen’ in UCC library. Photo by Niall McGuirk of Hope Collective.
The Fanning Sessions Archive 