Just a day or two after arriving in Dublin, we were walking around downtown, where lots of the historical sights and tourist favourites are, when we saw at the end of King Street South a statue of a man, obviously a musician, sitting in a chair with his right leg crossed and holding a banjo. The inscription on it read: ‘Luke Kelly, 1940-1984, Dubliner’. We thought it was cool but given that there was so much to see and do in our early days, we didn’t give it much more thought.
And then we started noticing his name and face popping up in all sorts of places. We were walking at the very east of the city and came across another sculpture of Luke Kelly, this one really large and with metal wires for his beard and hair. We had gathered from the other images that we saw that he had quite the head of hair, but this sculpture (pictured below) was really arresting, and made us decide on the spot to find out more about this clearly much loved Dubliner.
He is, it turns out, both a Dubliner and a Dubliner. Luke Kelly was born 17 November 1940 in Dublin to working-class parents. His father worked at the Jacob’s biscuit factory in Dublin. (Fun fact: Jacob’s Cream Crackers are made in Dublin!) Luke left school at the age of thirteen, and made his way to England. He became interested in the folk revival there, eventually getting a banjo and memorising songs. His musical influences were extremely varied, running from Fats Domino and Frank Sinatra to Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.
Kelly returned to Dublin in 1962 where the folk revival was in full swing. He became a member of the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group and they had good success. When two additional musicians joined, Kelly suggested the group rename themselves the Dubliners. He happened to be reading James Joyce’s Dubliners at the time. They put out an album in 1964. Luke left the group shortly thereafter and went to London for two years. He continued his interest in folk music there, along with his interest in politics (consistently left-wing).
He rejoined the Dubliners in 1966. There followed a string of hits and tours to the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia, mostly classic Irish songs. But in the ’70s his health deteriorated. He had had problems with alcohol for some years, and had become prone to forgetfulness. Then he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1981. He had two operations, but was back touring in 1983. In December of that year, however, he had a seizure on stage in Mannheim. A little more than a month later, on 30 January 1984, he died. At his funeral in Dublin, the church overflowed with people.
He has become an iconic figure for Dubliners, a singer of great talent with perfect diction, but one who would also take risks in his singing. His best-loved songs – or at least, the ones we hear several times a week – are ‘Whiskey in the Jar’, ‘Wild Rover’, ‘Dirty Old Town’, ‘Peggy Gordon’, and ‘Scorn not his Simplicity’. This last, maybe not well-known outside Ireland, is a song written by Phil Coulter about his son with Down’s Syndrome. Two weekends ago, on 13 August, we attended the Luke Kelly Festival put on by the city of Dublin. There were performances by old and young, and it was amazing to hear everyone singing along with gusto. There were also discussion groups, and – perhaps our favourite thing of all – a place for children (and adults!) to help create Luke Kelly’s hairdo, and then to make their own Luke Kelly wigs.
