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Irish Connections <ICONSFESTIVAL>

	Liam Clancy by Steve Morse	484 Tage her
	STEVE MORSE'S CORNER Liam Clancy The name Liam Clancy speaks for itself. If there was ever an icon playing the ICONS Festival, it's him. "I'm the last one standing!'' he jokes, referring to the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, who put Irish music on the map back in the '60s. This year's ICONS lineup takes a major leap in historical importance thanks to him. Liam has performed more than 50 years and has no plans to give it up. "This is not a job. This is a lifestyle -- and you don't stop living,'' he adds with a wry chuckle. A feature-length film, with help from the Irish Film Board, is currently being made on his life. Director Alan Ginsenan just taped Liam in concert at New York's Bitter End with guests Shane MacGowan, Odetta and Tom Paxton. "Shane showed up in all his glory, with all his hangers on,'' he laughs. "But there was a fantastic vibe off of it. And Odetta is just an incredible person… I hope they got on film what we felt on stage.'' Liam also took the film crew to Provincetown, where he resided early on in America (he moved from Ireland in 1955). "I lived in Provincetown and I'm straight,'' he says. "I lived there in the winter where none of the shenanigans went on.'' The Clancys got so big so quickly – aided by appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show'' – that they played a concert on Boston Common in front of 45,000 fans in the '60s. "It will forever be etched in my mind,'' he says. "For one thing, it took two hours to get from the edge of the crowd to the stage … And where do you go to have a pee under those circumstances? You crawl under the stage and you do the best you can.'' The group boasted a jolly sense of theatrics as they mixed everything from drinking songs to protest tunes. But they suffered a backlash in some quarters because of their enormous success. "There was a big debate raging in Ireland in musical circles after the Clancy Brothers made it big in America,'' Liam says. "There was a faction that said we ruined Irish music forever. But other people said we opened doors where people didn't know doors existed. When we came along, there was a very localized and parochial cultural scene in Ireland. I suppose with the advent of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, it took it onto the world stage. It was just one of those happenings.'' Liam also befriended Bob Dylan in the Greenwich Village folk days and still hangs out with him. Dylan has called Liam "the best ballad singer I've ever heard in my life.'' "The last time I saw him was in Ireland, actually,'' says Liam. "He did a gig down in Country Waterford and we had a bit of a session then. But the last time I had a real session with him – a 6 o'clock in the morning one – was after the Madison Square Garden tribute concert to him (in 1992). We had a great old night with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson and the boys, and we were sharing the dressing room with Stevie Wonder. Then a whole group of us ended up at Tommy Makem's Irish Pavilion. And, of course, with Dylan, we had sort of come of age together in Greenwich Village, chasing the girls and doing parties. We used to have a song that we swapped verses on (called "Aileen Aroon''). I'd leave the room and he'd try to sing a verse in my accent, and then I would do a verse a la Bob Dylan.'' (Liam sings it over the phone and it's absolutely hysterical.) Liam remembers another night with Dylan in Dublin. "Bono of U2 threw a big party at the hotel and we stayed up until dawn. And Dylan and I got into a huddle because we had so many memories and friends and girlfriends in common. Bono was listening in to hear what Dylan and Clancy might be saying to each other. After about an hour, Bono said, 'I'm getting the (bleep) out of here because everybody you've talked about for the last hour is dead!' He was ticked off by that.'' But Liam and Bono remain mates. "I must say, he's really a friendly cuss,'' says Liam. "An old friend of mine had met him in a bar in London and told him that I was having a problem with my ear and I had to come to Boston to Mass. Eye and Ear to get it fixed. And a couple of days later the phone rings and it's Bono, just to find out if I'm OK and how it is. He was concerned.'' Throughout his career, Liam has stood up for real folk music – and that's something he is very proud of. "It's the soundtrack of our lives and it tells the real story,'' he says. "I often say that written history is nothing more than the propaganda of the victor. But the history you get in folk songs is the real history of the people who were living through the hardships or living through the great times. So you get a much truer picture of history through folks songs than you do through history books.'' And that comes from a true icon of the genre. Steve Morse is a longtime Boston Globe reviewer and has contributed to Rolling Stone and Billboard, plus been the Critic At Large for WBOS-FM. He can be reached at spmorse@gmail.com.
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