Ronnie Drew

Blessed with a voice like a bullfrog with a hangover, Ronnie Drew has been at the heart of Irish ballad singing for nearly half a century. Born in Dun Laoghaire in south Dublin on September 16, 1934, his father was a carpenter and at first the family lived in a tenement but then moved to a council house in 1937 – “a very good, well-built house – inside toilet, bath, ranger, copper cylinder”.

He left school at 15 and his first job was cleaning out railway carriages. After spells in a tailor’s shop and as an apprentice electrician, he went to London in 1955 where he worked as a hotel porter and lift boy before returning to work in the Dublin Telephone Exchange.

“It changed my life”, he told Vincent Browne for Village magazine in 2006. “I met guys there who had the same questions in their head as I had in mine and for the first time I didn’t feel stupid talking about these matters. I realised these people don’t think I’m fucking mad. They also introduced me to books and I started to read a lot. There were a great bunch of fellows there – Michael Kane, the artist, Joe Hackett, a poet, Joe Kelly who later taught in the College of Art.”

“We had great fun”, he recalled. However, one night “a posh lady came on and demanded to be put through immediately to a number in England. I thought I’d let her cool her heels and I told her there would be a delay of an hour and twenty minutes. She became very impatient and I more or less told her what she could do with herself. She then said, ‘Do you know who you are talking to?’ I said I didn’t. She said she was the wife of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and she would have me sacked in the morning. I asked her did she know who she was talking to. She said no. I said, ‘Thanks be to Jaysus’ and pulled out the cord.”

ronnie After about nine months in the exchange he left and went teaching English in Spain for a few years, where he also learned some Spanish guitar. He used to return to Dublin for the summer.
“One summer I was home I met (actor) John Molloy, who was involved with the Gate Theatre at the time. He heard me tell a few stories at a party one night – I didn’t know whether people were laughing at me or with me. John said the stories were very funny and asked me would I do a few gigs at the Gate. I did. After a while Barney McKenna whom I had met joined us with his banjo and it started from there.”

Ronnie pursued his interest in Irish music through Ciaran MacMathuna’s radio programmes and also a Saturday night programme, Balladeers. “I came across people like Maggie Barry and Dominic Behan. I really liked Dominic, he was very talented and very funny.”

He met Luke Kelly in the International Bar in Wicklow Street . “In a strange way we got on from the word go. We were both of a similar mindset, though coming at things from a slightly different viewpoint in politics and music.

“Luke had a far finer voice than me. Luke could have been a very good singer in any arena. In my case, I hadn’t a good voice but had a certain way of putting a song across which kind of got me going but I mean there’s no doubt about it that Luke had the actual musical voice”.

John Mollay lived in Ely Place and Ronnie Drew used to meet him in nearby O’Donoghue’s in Merrion Row to get paid. Luke Kelly started to frequent the pub and then Barney McKenna and Ciaran Bourke.

“In those days you had to seek permission to play a tune. I think it was around about Christmas one time Barney and I said to Paddy O’Donoghue, could we play a tune and from that day to this we never stopped playing. Luke had a banjo but his forte was singing, and we began swapping songs. Luke had been in England, he’d been there quite a few years and he brought back an awful lot of industrial ballads from England and songs about the working class and so on, which were an eye opener to me”.

“Now what happened was we were in O’Donoghue’s – myself, Ciaran Burke, Luke and Barney – and we were singing away, playing away in the corner. Some fella asked us would we play – I think it was the Ashbourne House Hotel for a few bob – so we said ‘Why not?’”

According to Des Geraghty: “The turning point for what was still the Ronnie Drew Group came with a concert John Molloy organised in the old Royal Hibernian Hotel which Luke Kelly said was ‘the first organised ballad session as such, with people paying in’. It was a sensational success, so much so that John decided on a large-scale production in the Gate, called A Ballad Tour of Ireland.” The show “was an extraordinary success and made the group that wasn’t actually a group seem so in the eyes of Dublin people.”

Peggy Jordan introduced the group to the Abbey Tavern in Howth where they played to packed houses before moving across the road to the Royal Hotel. They also started playing in the International Bar and the Saturday midnight shows in the old Grafton Cinema. Before Luke Kelly came up with the name The Dubliners, they were touring the country as the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group and were once advertised in Naas in 1964 as The Ronnie Drew Ballet Group.

In 1963 Ronnie married Deirdre McCartan in Westland Row Church – the priest was Fr Michael Cleary. “We had our reception in O’Donoghue’s pub and finished up that night in a restaurant in Lincoln Place drinking wine out of a teapot.”

On St Patrick’s Day, 1967, The Dubliners released Seven Drunken Nights with Ronnie singing the old bawdy song they got from Connemara singer Seosamh O hEanaigh. It was instantly banned by Telifis Eireann, although O hEanaigh’s Irish version had previously been aired on Radio Eireann. However the pirate station Radio Caroline gave Seven Drunken Nights lots of airtime and within two days it had sold 40,000 copies, leading to Ronnie Drew’s first appearance on BBC’s Top of the Pops. With appearances in the same year on the David Frost Show and the Ed Sullivan Show in the States, the group were established on the international stage.

”We had a great time,” Ronnie recalled in 2006. “We had a party which started in 1962 and ended about 1970. We had fantastic times. A lot of drinking went on, a bit too much at times but in fairness, we managed somehow to keep it kind of even keel.” He left the Dubliners in 1974 and released two solo albums before rejoining the group in 1979.

Vincent Browne asked him if drink was a problem. “I’d say it was. It became a problem for all of us after a while. So we all had to take it a bit handy, you know. Because when you’re young and you go out and these things, you know, you don’t have any kind of clever plan in mind or anything. We were essentially living from day to day.”

He finally left The Dubliners to go solo – “my one-man thing” – in 1995, releasing Dirty Rotten Shame in September of that year. He continued to tour and record, including two albums with former De Dannan singer Eleanor Shanley.

The trademark beard actually came about by accident. He had warts on his face. His doctor told him not to shave and by the time the warts had gone away again he had a beard and enquiries were coming for “the fella with the beard”.

In 2006 he underwent treatment for throat cancer. He suffered a further blow when his wife Deirdre died after a short battle with cancer in June, 2007. He also broke his hip. He has two children, Cliona and Phelim.

Not one to be overcome by adversity, in October he released a spoken word CD Pearls, which includes cutting observations on changes brought on by the Celtic Tiger. In December, he guested on RTE’s Late Late Show – minus beard and wearing a hat – but in fine spirits. A few days later he was reunited with Barney McKenna and John Sheehan in Dublin for the belated launch of the 1965 film O’Donoghue’s Opera. In January, 2008, Bono, Christy Moore, Shane McGowan and a host of artists recorded The Ballad of Ronnie Drew as a tribute and also to encourage him in his battle with cancer.

Ronnie Drew died peacefully in St Vincents Hospital, Dublin, on August 16, 2008.