Original subtitles

I just want an ordinary kind of...

walk down the streets without being recognised sort of life.

Of course, if somebody comes over and says "How you doing, Rory?"

that's fine, but I don't want to get into the Rolls-Royce

and the mansion and the cloak-and-dagger style of living.

Rory Gallagher was actually my first rock gig -

the Irish tour of '74.

He was a home boy and he was dressed as a generic teenager...

he was playing guitar

and he was Irish and he was local

and you could bump into him walking down the street.

Philo was the opposite.

I mean, Phil Lynott was a star, you know?

He was a truly Irish rock star.

Phil Lynott had come a long way from his corporation house in Crumlin.

With a top ten hit in America,

he was providing much-needed glamour to his beloved Dublin...

..with its crumbling economy and rocketing immigration.

I was tired of hearing rock and roll stars saying

how sorry they were for themselves, you know?

Like how they disliked fame and how they were bothered.

I jumped to it, you know?

I was famous, I thought, "Great, the women are after me."

Like, people want to buy me free drink, you know?

And they want to treat me, they want to take me here,

they want to take me there.

Great - and you know, I really went for it, hook, line and sinker.

# Guess who just got back today

# Them wild-eyed boys that had been away

# Haven't changed, had much to say

# But man, I still think them cats are great

# They were asking if you were around

# How you was, where you could be found

# Told 'em you were living downtown

# Driving all the old men crazy

- # The boys are back in town - The boys are back in town... #

They're a people's band.

Not a critic's band,

not a band that's going to win the record of the year,

but they're a people's band.

That's music that people turn to when they're having a hard time,

when they need a song to lift them up and make them want to fight.

# Dancing in the moonlight

# It's caught me in its spotlight

- # - It's all right, all right - Dancing in the moonlight... #

It's Phil's sensitivity in the songs, that I think is

the romance of Thin Lizzy, that most people overlook,

which is why they endure.

Yeah, they're a great hard rock band, but I think it's really Phil's heart

that carries the band through the ages.

# And I'm walking home... #

You'll never find a Dubliner

who would say a bad word about Phil Lynott.

The first Irish person who ever went onto a stage

at Madison Square Garden and said,

"Are you out there?"

was Phil Lynott and it was so fantastic, that one of us...

that any member of this rainy, miserable nation

would ever be given permission to do that.

# The girl's a fool She broke the rules

# She hurt him hard... #

But Phil Lynott's returning rock god act

was only a temporary respite from the grind of Dublin life.

CHORAL CHURCH MUSIC

In truth, little had changed in 20 years.

The power of the Catholic Church remained largely unchallenged.

Political corruption was on the rise

and the economy was in freefall.

Ireland had rock stars, but no rock business.

Come the moment, cometh the man.

There was nothing at all.

There were fans and there were showbands

and therefore, there were no rock gigs and so,

you had to go about setting up your own gigs

and doing your own posters

and creating a sensibility of pop and rock,

doing weird things during gigs.

- # Life pours down into the neon heart - It's late at night

- # Cement City is all a-spark - Yeah, that's right

- # The whores are loose and the dames are abroad - My pants are tight... #

What was great about Bob was he came along and said,

"We're going to take this over.

"We are going to change what happens in the Irish music scene

"and we're going to do it single-handedly".

Bob was the first person who actually ever came along

and sang in an Irish accent, but made it punky and cool, you know?

And that was terribly important, actually,

because whether he meant to or not,

he gave us a sense that it was OK to be Irish,

cos it really wasn't OK to be Irish, you know?

- # I picked her up at the bar that night - What did you do?

- # I took her home, she didn't put up a fight - What did you do? #

And they were angry and it was OK to be angry -

anger is still an emotion in Ireland that's looked on

as being terribly not OK -

and especially if you're a girl, you know?

But Bob was angry and that was good, you know?

I had nothing else going.

No exams, no jobs,

no economy, walk.

They're everywhere. The Boomtown Rats here -

a bit of social comment for you. Have a listen to the lyrics of this.

So come the moment, what do you think the songs are going to be about?

We were all in love with him. We all just fancied the arse off him.

He was just the sexiest thing to ever walk the earth, you know?

He was cheeky.

He delivered angry things, but in a funny way.

1977 pop music - that's what we play.

We're the only ones doing it.

And now, this week's number one. As we expected, it's up there again -

Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta and oh, those Summer Nights.

# Had me a blast

# Summer loving Happened so fast...#

It's very hard to describe to people what it was like

when Rat Trap went to number one.

Not just in Ireland...

but in England, it was a great moment, he tears...

On Top Of The Pops,

Bob tears a picture of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John,

who had sort of... You know, Grease had been at the top of the charts.

It was like pop domination

and here was rock and roll, just biting it on the arse.

Top Of The Pops...

I decided I'd get a special suit for the occasion

and I bought this sort of space-age-y suit and I put an Irish flag here.

Never done it before in my life, never done it since,

but I just thought "Finally, the Paddies did it", you know?

I also tore up John Travolta's picture,

cos that was the end of that period, too.

# There was a lot of rockin' going on that night

# Cruisin' time for the young bright lights... #

Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats

were the blueprint for the modern Irish music business.

I mean, Bob had the star quality that Philo had,

that Phil Lynott had,

and they went out there and they took the applause,

whether they deserved it or not

and that taught a young U2

that you had to make your own luck.

Then he said some very important things about Ireland.

I mean, this is the guy who wrote Banana Republic 40 years ago.

We're still dealing with issues of political corruption,

abuse in the Catholic Church...

You know, many, many years before it was safe

to come out and talk about these issues,

Geldof and his band did.

Geldof and his band also bequeathed to Dublin a fledgling music scene.

By contrast, Belfast was a musical ghost town.

EXPLOSION

'Shortly after two o'clock,

'the bar security guard was held up by a gunman, who planted the bomb...'

'It follows ten days after a similar explosion

'in a pub in the Shankill Road.'

Mid '70s Belfast was a horror story.

There was murder on the streets.

The IRA were blowing our wonderful city apart.

The Loyalist murder gangs were killing poor Catholics

and it was horrific and you just didn't go out at night,

because our pubs had been bombed

and our friends had been shot going home from the pub

and it was a nightmare.

The whole country seemed to be having a nervous breakdown.

The city centre was a no-go area at night,

so punk music only existed in isolated pockets,

within the divided Catholic and Protestant communities.

In the midst of these divisions,

Terry Hooley thought music therapy could be the answer.

On the most bombed street in Europe, in the closed heart of Belfast,

he opened a music shop and called it "Good Vibrations".

The shop became a great meeting place for people on a Saturday.

The next thing, we would get people come in

looking for protection money and stuff.

So that was a bit difficult, but...

Somebody had given me all these country and Irish records,

which we knew that we definitely weren't going to sell.

So I gave them a pile of records, so I did, and they went away!

MUSIC: Big Time by Rudi

# Big time, you ain't no friend of mine

# Big time, you ain't no friend of mine... #

There was something wonderfully anarchic about Terry.

He's always set his face against

the narrow politics of this particular place.

He sets up a record label

and the first thing he puts out is Big Time by Rudi.

It's the revolutionary power of the seven-inch single.

# You've always got some money... #

With a local record label

and a few venues bravely opening up in the city centre,

an enthusiastic punk scene sprung up.

There's an identity for the kids

and a good excuse for Catholics and Protestants to get together.

It's just completely good, as far as Northern Ireland's concerned.

All the stuff that was going on around us -

being searched going into town, being stopped by the British Army,

bombs going off, guns...

You made it to the Harp Bar, you pogo-ed and you had a good time

and hopefully, you got home safe.

We just decided to start a group,

so we borrowed instruments,

we learned a few songs and...hey presto.

# Teenage dreams, so hard to beat

# Every time she walks down the street... #

The next band signed to Good Vibrations

weren't from Belfast at all.

The Undertones hailed from Derry.

# I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight

# Get teenage kicks right through the night... #

They arrived in their jeans and their parka jackets

and guitars in cardboard boxes with bits of strings

and they started talking and I just didn't have a clue

what they were saying.

HE SLURS IN LONDONDERRY ACCENT

"I think five o'clock, I think..."

And they quietly undid the nuts and they got their guitars out

and Fergal just went "One, two, three, four..." Bang!

- And we went, "Oh, my God". - Yes.

# I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight

# Get teenage kicks right through the night... #

Once their first single Teenage Kicks was released,

the band hatched a plot to get it played on John Peel's radio show.

What happened next was a never-to-be-repeated moment.

He phoned up John Peel -

surprisingly, phoned him and got straight through to John Peel.

And I was speaking to a member of the band, The Undertones

who come from Londonderry and the chap I was speaking...

John Peel gave us a heads-up that it was going to be played on the show.

We assembled in John's front room

and then he played Teenage Kicks and then, I think he said,

"That was so good, I'm going to play it again"

and you hear it go back on again.

And it was just great.

So that was unprecedented,

cos we'd been listening to John Peel play from '73, '74 anyway, so...

He'd never, ever done that, at any time.

And he says he thought the singing sounded like Loudon Wainwright...

- I remember that. - Aye.

..which we didn't understand.

My ambitions were fulfilled very quickly -

making a record, getting it played with John Peel

and getting on Top Of The Pops.

# I've got a cousin called Kevin

# He's sure to go to heaven

# Always spotless, clean and neat... #

How could you not like The Undertones?

A great pop band. I mean, there was no bullshit about The Undertones,

it was just pure pop music, if you like.

Really good. Sometimes sublime.

There was that feeling that something has come back.

That energy again.

Punk didn't knock down the walls,

but it certainly chipped away at a few.

We're just tired of all the shit your ma and da tell you.

It's a load of balls. We live in a stone-faced country,

2,000 people dead, for what?

I mean, who wants a united Ireland?

Who wants to be in the United Kingdom?

It makes no odds to me, like -

I'm still standing on the corner every night

and going down the Harp Bar.

With punk, the youth of Ireland had challenged

much of the island's old certainties and tribal identities.

This song is not a rebel song.

This song is Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Post-punk, rock set out to expose the deep wounds of the island's past

and to imagine a healing.

It was very much the sign of the times - the new Ireland.

Our generation were just sick of the sectarianism.

We were a generation that felt

we were as capable as the rest of the world.

We didn't have to live under this downtrodden history

that we'd suffered from.

It's no coincidence that U2 are synonymous with modern Ireland...

..because they didn't really grow up in the old Ireland.

From around Clontarf, a coastal suburb of Dublin,

they were a mix of Protestant and Catholic,

Irish and English-born.

We were unusual, in that we came from a slightly broader base

than a reactionary Dublin.

If you were a Southern Irish Catholic,

you were inevitably pitted against Protestants, in a way,

and we weren't a part of that.

The mixed thing meant that they weren't exposed

or expected to live up to the Ireland

that we were all told existed.

My thing was, "Kick against it".

They didn't have to kick against anything, cos they thought

they were already living in this modern Ireland.

Even their school spoke to a different Ireland.

All four attended Mount Temple,

a rare Dublin non-denominational comprehensive school.

Mount Temple was set up as an experiment...

..and tried to bring Protestant and Catholic together

and very successfully did.

And Larry put a note on the notice board

looking for people interested in forming a band.

# Oh, no! Man, I just got here

# You got me thinking I'm about to leave

# Some day, maybe tomorrow

# I just don't know, I just don't... #

They would listen very closely to what advice you had

and they would come back a week later and say,

"Well, we've thought about that, that and that

"and we agree with this part, but not everything".

So they were thinking the whole time about

what they could take from what you said, for them.

From the start, U2 looked to America, rather than Europe,

and it was the key to their success.

America would understand Irish passion, you know?

Celtic passion, that would go down in America,

whereas England was all too cool for school.

# In the name of love

# What more in the name of love? #

But it wasn't just a commercial impulse.

Their first American hit, Pride

was a homage to Martin Luther King,

whose message they felt could speak to a divided Ireland.

The theme of Martin Luther King's passive rebellion

was a theme that was complex

and it related to the Irish situation, as well.

So there was cross-fertilisation.

We wanted to make music that represented

the constituency of the people we had come from.

For centuries, the Irish had looked to America for a new life.

For their breakthrough album, U2 repeated the journey,

not as penniless immigrants,

but interested observers.

MUSIC: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For by U2

The Joshua Tree is a concept album

that paints an Irish portrait of the States

and the Americans loved it.

We connected very much with

that idea of being an immigrant, of travelling west.

It was a way into that version of America.

The Joshua Tree moment happened

because U2 wanted to discover that stuff.

These were young Irish people, discovering America

and thinking about America - thinking about it from the outside, though.

And it is about the America that's inclusive...

..and welcoming to people

and the America that's imperial and punitive

and that's what delivered them to the entire world.

New York City, gateway to a new life

for so many Irish emigres over the years.

Until you've made it here, you haven't really made it.

20,000 people have come here tonight to see U2.

To be here, when the four lads from Dublin

celebrate their conquest of the New World.

MUSIC: Where The Streets Have No Name by U2

# I wanna reach out and touch the flame

# Where the streets have no name... #

The Joshua Tree sold 25 million copies.

U2 were now the biggest band in the world.

We managed to have two songs off that record

that really were genuine top ten hits

and that changed everything, right up to now.

You know, people see us differently, they listen to us differently.

I do think that U2 probably led the idea of Ireland

as being connected to the world...

..which was not my generation.

It fed into Ireland as part of the EU.

It fed into acknowledgement of the Irish diaspora and returning,

it fed into international sporting events...

An outward-reaching Ireland,

as opposed to tightening our inferiority complex.

But there was one missing piece to the Irish rock jigsaw.

Sinead O'Connor used rock

to confront male domination in Ireland

and in rock music itself.

We didn't have a voice, we didn't have independence.

For me, as a young girl, I noticed very, very early that

it was important to become financially independent,

as quickly as possible.

My granny had drilled it into me at a very young age

never to reveal my cash stash to any male relative,

so that one's life wouldn't be controlled by the men -

whether it was your father, or whoever it might be.

And also to get out - to get out of Ireland.

Couldn't wait to get out.

Deliberately never looked behind me, out the window on the plane.

# I'm dancing the seven veils

# Want you to pick up my scarf

# See how the black moon fades... #

You know, in the '80s, you weren't really seeing women who were doing

something very much on their own terms

and then, Sinead comes along

and I think she was 20 when Mandinka came out

and there was this young,

shaved-headed, doe-eyed girl

with this unbelievable, huge,

gospel-y, part-bardic voice.

# I don't know no shame, I feel no pain

# I can't

# See the flame... #

Somebody who was very much in charge of their own destiny,

but just had this almost Amazonian...

one-off-ness about her.

There was nobody you could compare her to.

# I do, Mandinka... #

The passion is coming right up from the earth.

She's like a tree or something.

She's coming straight from the human soul.

We can all kind of feel what she is expressing.

She's like, expressing it for everybody else.

In 1990, Sinead O'Connor's cover of the Prince song

went to number one across the globe.

She became the year's most unlikely pop star.

It bought me, as a woman, enormous financial freedom.

I didn't have to marry anyone,

for any other reason other than I loved them.

I didn't have to be with a fella to offer any reason I loved him.

I could be with any kind of fella I liked.

# Nothing can take away these blues

# Cos nothing compares

# Nothing compares 2 u... #

While the money was very freeing,

being a pop star all of a sudden

and being expected to behave like one

and all that kind of stuff was very, very confusing.

Because it is required, if you're going to be a pop star,

that you're not going to upset the boat about anything.

If someone asks you what you think about Israel,

you've got to say nothing - you're going to change the subject.

If somebody asked you about abortion,

you weren't going to answer the question, you were going to...

play the game, as such.

And that wasn't really in my nature.

# We have confidence

# In the victory of good

# Over evil. #

Fight the real enemy.

It's a weird thing about pouty pop singers.

The last thing they want to do when they get on telly

is to talk about their new record or flog it, you know?

They've got to go, "And another thing!

"And this is wrong, and that..."

All of them. You know, they never shut the fuck up, you know?

It's true, isn't it?

Like, they're always crapping on...

You know, whatever, about me starting off, get Bono going -

Jesus, he never shuts up.

MUSIC: One by U2

Rock music had become so symbolic of a changing Ireland

that when a peace agreement was finally mooted in the North,

the Yes campaign enlisted Bono to help them get their message across.

I just think it's a great time to be here in Belfast

and to be with these men...

who've put aside...a lot.

# You say

# One love

# One life

# When it's one need

# In the night

# One love

# We get to share it

# Leaves you, darling

# If you don't care for it... #

I think that Ireland couldn't have been transformed

without that sort of group of musicians.

U2 and The Rats

and Sinead O'Connor - my sister -

and the earlier people, Rory Gallagher and everybody else.

I think those people changed their country

and their society for the better

and they had a lot of fun while they were doing it, you know?

They made fun legal in Ireland

and for that alone, they should be celebrated.

# Is it too late

# Tonight

# To drag the past out into the light

# We're one

# But we're not the same

# We get to carry each other

# Carry each other

# One... #