Paul McGuinness

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’ve known Gavin and his band the Virgin Prunes for as long as I’ve known U2 and for quite a while in the early days the Virgin Prunes were the obligatory opening act for U2, so I saw them many times. Perhaps more often than I liked. And on one occasion… the Virgin Prunes had some extreme theories: Dada, Theatre of Cruelty, things like that, which didn’t always mix with the… the rock and roll. But on one occasion I do remember after the performance, excellent performance, given by the Virgin Prunes, Bono arrived in time for the U2 gig and he said to me: Why are the audience in such a bad mood? And I said: Well, Bono, it might have something to do with the fact that your friend Gavin has just been throwing pigs entrails over them. They were a very unusual band and one of their earliest fans was Ms Courtney Love…

Courtney Love

Hi. I’ve never actually even been inside Carnegie Hall. I wasn’t asked to do this show, I demanded to do this show.

I didn’t expect the task of introducing one of the most important precious figures and bands and siren call that framed my rock and roll life for better or for worse. Nor do I have any idea of who I am speaking to, so I will just simply speak my truth about Virgin Prunes and about Gavin Friday.

Courtney Love - by Wout-er

I was a pudgy 15-year-old from San Francisco who thought randomly and maybe… I just, I don’t know to just go to Ireland and blag my way into Trinity College and become a theologian, seriously, and I would maybe get to meet that guy with the angelic voice that sung I will follow. Why I picked Ireland? I don’t know, accident or intelligent design… random, I don’t know, but it was one of my life’s great experiences. I saw the band with the singer with the angelic voice and the guitar player who I just knew from the I will follow riff was beyond words in their return of their station wagon tour of the States to do their show at Punchestown.

It was excellent, however a few nights later at a pub called McGonagles I had my ass truly handed to me. They were magnificent. Can I curse? Anyway, un- ff-ing genius they were, they would obviously take over the world. Swagger, charisma, shamanism, fury. I had never seen and have rarely ever seen since so much sex, snarl, poetry, evil, restraint, grace, filth, raw power and the very essence of rock and roll which was [ ? ] that night by the Virgin Prunes. The storm that raged on that stage astonished me. At that time their reputation was on a par with my own – minus the stuff that we should all just forget.

I loathe, I seriously hate this concept that rock musicians are somehow vulgar and stupid, idiots and that we’ve never read a book – and some of us haven’t – that we haven’t read Middlemarch or that we don’t know that Shakespeare’s last play was [ ? ]. The Virgin Prunes are geniuses. Lucifer; arch and cunning to U2’s Gabriel; angelic and gorgeous, I can honestly stand here and truthfully say U2 gave me lashes of love and inspiration and a few nights later the Virgin Prunes fucked. Me. Up.

So for the first time in 20 years from the council estate of Ballymun to the most prestigious venue in the world where one brings ones diamonds, I am so proud to present for the first time in many years per incendia ut astrum – which means through the fire to the stars: The Virgin Prunes.

After Courtney’s introduction, the original members of the band: Gavin, Guggi, Dik were joined by J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) to perform two classic Prunes songs: “Sweethomeunderwhiteclouds” and “Caucasian Walk”. Later during the show, Courtney and Gavin sang Magazine’s “The Light Pours Out Of Me” together.

This is the setlist of ‘Gavin Friday and Friends’ as performed at Carnegie Hall.

Act 1

1. Apologia – Gavin
2. Children Of the Revolution – Gavin, Flo & Eddie, Bono, The Edge, Herb Macken
3. I Want To Live – Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton, Flo & Eddie, Maurice Seezer
4. He Got What He Wanted – Gavin, Antony, Maurice Seezer
5. Paul McGuinness memories of the Virgin Prunes
6. Courtney Love memories of the Virgin Prunes
7. Sweethome Under White Clouds – Gavin, Guggi, Dik, JG Thirlwell, Herb Macken (piano), Maurice Seezer (on drums!)
8. Caucasian Walk – Gavin, Guggi, Dik, JG Thirlwell, Herb Macken (piano), Maurice Seezer (drums)
9. Thief Of Your Heart – Martha Wainwright, Maurice Seezer
10. Ballad Of Immoral Earnings – Gavin & Maria McKee, Maurice Seezer
11. The Light Pours Out Of Me – Gavin & Courtney Love
12. Mr Pussy – Gavin, Scarlet Johansson & Rufus Wainwright
13. Benares Song – Gavin & Rufus Wainwright
14. A Rainy Night In Soho – Shane MacGowan, Maurice Seezer
15. Falling Off The Edge Of The World – Gavin, Maria McKee, Joseph Arthur, Jenni Muldaur, Flo & Eddie

Act 2

1. Cabaret / Money – Joel Grey
2. Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves – Gavin & Joseph Arthur, Jenni Muldaur
3. You Take Away The Sun – Gavin
4. Patrick McCabe reading from first chapter of Breakfast On Pluto
5. King Of Trash / 21st Century Boy – Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton and Flo & Eddie
6. Knives In The Drain – Lydia Lunch
7. Caruso – Gavin & Eric Mingus, Maurice Seezer
8. ‘Red’ ( a Poker Face improv) – Lady Gaga
9. Angel – Gavin, Antony and Flo & Eddie
10. Love Is Just A Word – Gavin, Chloe Webb and Flo & Eddie
11. Another Blow On The Bruise – Gavin & Edge
12. Time Enough For Tears – Andrea Corr, Gavin
13. The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing – Bono, Maurice Seezer
14. Improv – Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn
15. Sonnet 40 – Gavin, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Larry Mullen, Edge, Shane MacGowan
16. Sweet Jane – Gavin, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, The Edge, John Zorn, Larry Mullen, Edge, Shane MacGowan, Bono, Flo & Eddie, Maurice Seezer
17. Jean Genie – Gavin, The Edge, Bono, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen, Eric Mingus, Courtney Love, Jenni Muldaur, Flo & Eddie, Andrea Corr, Herb Macken, Shane MacGowan (playing Bill Frisell’s guitar upside down) etc, etc

The band:
Doug Weiselman – musical director, arranger, clarinet, saxophone
Thomas Bartlett – keyboards
Steven Bernstein – trumpet, arranger
Knox Chandler – guitar
Bill Frisell – guitar
Hank Roberts – cello
Erik Sanko – bass
Jim White – drums

And while you are enjoying the slideshow, remember it’s Gavin’s 50th birthday today… come add your wishes (no registration required).

Pictures by Eva van der Valk for GavinFriday.com, all rights reserved.

Pictures by Wout-er

Photos by Babette Ross

Photos by folie rufie

Photos by Gerry Visco

Photos by aphrodite in nyc

Photos by tibetjb

photos by cafeconflores

photos by Peddieart

PROFILE GAVIN FRIDAY: He led an elite group of avant-garde chancers that included Bono and The Edge. A host of stars, including U2, will take the stage in New York to celebrate the former Virgin Prune’s 50th birthday

LYPTON VILLAGE was a little known area in Ballymun, Dublin. It only ever existed for a few years during the 1970s. Its residents included Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan. You could never find it on a map because it was a virtual village – a psychological place of escape for its inhabitants. Lypton Village had its own laws: art, music and weirdness were good, everything else was bad. It had its own language and its members were christened with new names – which is why Fionan Hanvey, David Evans, Paul Hewson and Derek Rowan are better known today as the musicians Gavin Friday, The Edge and Bono and the artist Guggi.

by Peter Hanan

Apart from all four members of U2 (who are down to do individual performances on the night), the cast also includes Courtney Love, Antony Hegarty (from Antony and The Johnsons), Scarlett Johansson, Rufus Wainwright, Andrea Corr and Shane MacGowan. Billed as “An Evening With Gavin Friday and guests”, the show will also include “Special Guests” who can’t be named in advance.

It’s a typically extravagant and fantastical Lypton Village gesture.Back in Ballymun, these Villagers would think big and dream bigger. For Gavin Friday, who was banned from RTÉ for an early “art performance” by his band The Virgin Prunes on The Late Late Show , who used to get beaten up by skinheads for wearing dresses and makeup around Dublin and who was regularly bottled off stage for his outré behaviour, headlining Carnegie Hall will be a breeze – and also the fulfilment of a boyhood dream.

Asked in an interview years ago what his musical ambition was, he replied that he’d love to play the fabled venue before he was 50. Earlier this year he and Bono had arranged Guggi’s 50th birthday party (the three are all best friends). During the evening, Bono asked Gavin what he had planned for his upcoming 50th. Friday said he was going to run away and hide from the milestone anniversary, but Bono had already made plans for him: “Gavin, you’re playing Carnegie Hall for your birthday.”

While Friday may be a well-known figure in art/music circles (and he does have a considerable reputation in Europe from his Virgin Prunes days) he wouldn’t have the same commercial traction as any of the other musical guests playing on Sunday. What he represents, though, in an Irish cultural sense, is that musically he was avant-garde before there was a “garde” to be “avant” of in this country.

Initially inspired by Bowie and T.Rex, it was only when whisperings of a new movement called punk rock reached Dublin in the mid-1970s that Friday found a license to put into practice his absurdist art-shock musical performances. Dadaism and Krautrock were the aesthetic backdrops for The Virgin Prunes, a band made up of fellow Lypton Villagers including Guggi, Dave-id Busaras, Strongman, Pod, Mary D’Nellon and Haa-Lacka Binttii. Some critics used to acidly note that their names were better than their songs. Dik Evans (The Edge’s brother) was so impressed by the band’s art-punk sound that he actually left U2 to join them – probably not something he needs reminding of.

THE VIRGIN PRUNES were like nothing this country had witnessed before: they dressed as gothic transvestites, adorned the stage with rotting meat carcasses and would specialise in doing a 20-minute version of The Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” – slowing it right down so it would take one minute to get one line of the lyric out. They came across like a northside of Dublin version of Throbbing Gristle and Devo.

For Friday, The Prunes were a reaction to the banal cultural wasteland of Dublin in the 1970s. “We were like a Third World country,” he has said. “If you go back to parts of the Eastern bloc of Europe now, that’s what Dublin was like in the ’60s and ’70s. Grey, dull, mass unemployment and complete poverty. Music became a lifeline to escape for kids. Punk gave you a licence to form a band with just an attitude. I turned 16 when punk kicked in and had plenty of attitude.”

If The Prunes came into being in order to épater la bourgeoisie , they soon developed a sizeable cult following. Signed to the coolest independent record label of the time, Rough Trade, they were one of the first punk era Irish bands to build up a fanbase outside this country – with Germany and Scandinavia at the top of the list.

As they toured their avant-garde travelling roadshow around Europe – shocking and surprising at most every turn (they were banned from many a venue for various sexual and scatological stunts) – the other, and at the time lesser known Lypton Village band, U2, were perfecting a very different music and type of performance as they warmed up for global superstardom. The links between the two bands are indivisible – both bands started playing together in Dublin’s Dandelion Market under the banner “U2 Can Be A Virgin Prune”; both bands had a member of the Evans family in their ranks (The Edge and Dik) and Guggi’s younger brother, Peter Rowan, is the child featured on the cover of the U2 albums Boy and War. Despite The Prunes having the early upper hand on U2, there has never been any rivalry between them. To this day, both bands see themselves as different sides of the same Lypton Village coin.

The Prunes stuttered to a halt in the mid-1980’s and Friday has been a freelance bohemian ever since. He’s had an exhibition of his paintings, I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey In A Bubble , in Dublin’s Hendricks Gallery; curated a series of cabaret nights called Blue Jaysus at the National Stadium and, alongside Jim Sheridan and Bono, he opened the short-lived Mr Pussy’s Café De Lux in Suffolk Street.

AS A SO LO ARTIST he has released three albums – Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, Adam ‘n’ Eve and Shag Tobacco – frequent collaborators including Maurice Seezer and the novelist Patrick McCabe. With Bono, he worked on the soundtrack for the Jim Sheridan film In The Name Of The Father , starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Acting wise, he turned in a very creditable performance as the glam rock singer Billy Hatchet in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto . He has narrated a version of Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf and toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company for a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He was last seen on a Dublin stage two years ago with his “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” show which was a personal tribute show about his lifelong passion for German music, art, literature and film.

As a sideline he has also been an “aesthetic midwife” on every U2 tour since The Joshua Tree . He gave Bono his “MacPhisto” character for the Zoo TV tour and says of his tour consultant role: “I look at all the things that they can’t see because they’re on stage. I’m their eyes and ears in the audience, noting down this, noting down that to improve the performance. I understand the four of them very well because I’ve known them for 30 years or more. We speak the same language and I don’t blow smoke up their ass.” He’s leaving the new U2 tour behind shortly to get back to Dublin to begin work on a new studio album – and there are also further art, theatre and literary projects in the pipeline.

This punk renaissance man now lives in Killiney, is an avid swimmer and is only seen these days on his regular Friday night city-centre drinking sessions with Bono and Guggi. The mainstream was never his friend; he is happiest on the artistic margins and along the way he has become a bit of a pop culture polymath.

It has been suggested that with his background in and knowledge of both the French chanson and the German lieder tradition, he would be an ideal, if eccentric, Irish choice for the next Eurovision Song Contest. We’ve had a turkey (in fact, quite a few turkeys) over the last few years – maybe it’s time for a Virgin Prune.

Back in the Lypton Village days, Bono and Guggi awarded him the title of “Being in charge of being in charge”. This Sunday night at the Carnegie Hall he will be just that.

Question: What have Laurie Anderson, Andrea Corr, Courtney Love, Lydia Lunch, Maria McKee, Shane MacGowan and Rufus Wainwright got in common with Larry, Bono, Edge and Adam. Answer: They’re all fans of Gavin Friday and they’re all taking part in a one-of-a-kind show in New York next week, set to raise funds to combat AIDS in the poorest countries.

An Evening with Gavin Friday and Friends, on Sunday October 4th at Carnegie Hall in New York, is curated and produced by Hal Willner, someone with an unrivalled track record in one-off musical events inspired by maverick artists from Leonard Cohen to Kurt Weill, Tim Buckley to Thelonius Monk.

Gavin, of course, has been hanging out with the members of U2 since before they were the members of U2 and is invariably to be found with them in the studio when an album needs to be finished… or out on the road, when a tour is about to kick off. Right now, he’s working on songs for his own next solo album due in 2010. We caught up with him in Dublin to find out more about the Carnegie Hall show:

“Believe it or not, this was not born in my head. I think I was on some kind of TV show, maybe 12 years ago, and I was asked about my musical ambition and I said I’d love to play Carnegie Hall before I’m 50. That was the seed of all this. Then earlier this year a gang of us went away for a day to celebrate the 50th birthday of Guggi and at the party, Bono, who turns 50 himself next May, said to me, ‘Do you know what you’re doing for your fiftieth ?’ I said I didn’t have a clue and that I’ll probably run away to avoid the attention. He said he did know what I was doing, that I was playing Carnegie Hall.”

“A couple of weeks before, Bono had met up with our mutual friend Hal Willner and they’d decided on this event to celebrate my birthday and to raise funds for RED, the organisation which fights AIDS in Africa. And I was so taken aback at the idea that a very rare thing happened – I was completely silenced. I couldn’t believe it. I think everyone found that quite humorous: ‘Look, we’ve actually shut Friday up!’

Hal Willner is the moving force behind the whole thing, he puts these kinds of events together and I’ve often worked with him on them. They’re like creative extravaganzas where a whole gang of musicians come together to pay tribute to someone, like he did this incredible homage to the work of Leonard Cohen, another to Kurt Weill. More recently Bono and I worked with him on ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ an album of pirate ballads and sea chanteys.

There’s always this extraordinary twist that he brings – like his tribute to the music of Walt Disney where he had Tom Waits singing ‘Hi Ho Hi Ho’ and when we did it live, he had me singing the ‘Siamese Cat Song’ from Lady and The Tramp. I remember turning up one day for a Harry Smith tribute to find Jimmy Scott, the jazz singer, at the piano with Mary Margaret O’Hara and Nick Cave. Two days later we were performing it on stage.

We’ve already got an amazing bill lined up for Carnegie Hall, I can hardly believe it. We talked about the kind of people we wanted to take part – those who influenced me over the years and some that I might have influenced. Some are very well known and some I hope will become more well known – like Eric Mingus, an unsung genius and the son of Charlie Mingus. Or Flo and Eddie, who many people don’t realise are the backing vocalists on all those great T Rex songs that people like me remember from being young.

Anthony from Anthony and the Johnsons will be something else and then Maria McKee, what a talent she is, and goes way back with our musical community in Ireland. She’s always been close to us, she lived here in the 1980’s and we often recorded with her. And Courtney Love, Hal bumped into her in New York and she said she’d love to be part of it. Laurie Anderson doesn’t need any introduction and we’ve also got Rufus and Martha Wainwright and, not surprising this, a big Irish contingent with Shane MacGowan, Andrea Corr and of course the Royal Family – Larry, Edge, Bono and Adam.

The thing with those four is that I know them all individually, so they’re all taking part but what’s unusual is that they aren’t going to be U2, so I think we’ll see something pretty different, which is something that always happens with Hal’s events.

Dik, Edge’s brother will be there, who was in U2 before they were U2, and Guggi of course, so I would love Dik and Guggi and myself to do some Virgin Prunes songs – it won’t be the Virgin Prunes reuniting because we don’t do that, but let’s see what happens. When Hal is involved you never know how it’ll work out.

He pulls together this potpourri of musicians for a day or so of rehearsals, which are like this musical workshop, very organic, where you never quite know what you’re going to produce. The spontaneity is what I love about it, it’s precious and so rare these days, when everything is over-rehearsed and over-marketed. The next day you have a soundcheck and before you know it you’re playing live in front of an orchestra and an audience.

I still don’t know what to say about it, I’m 50 not 80 and I’m not an icon but it’ll be a celebration of music and a beautiful thing to do for a friend. Hal for me is a real touchstone of a person, an inspiration and he creates quite unique musical moments, It won’t happen again, this collection of artists won’t be together like this ever again… which I love. It will be an unrepeatable night and I’m planning on enjoying it.”

Source: U2.com

Tickets are available now from Carnegie Hall.

Previously:

• Hal Willner presents: An Evening with Gavin Friday and Friends
• Q&A with Gavin about the event

Hal Willner presents:

An Evening with Gavin Friday and Friends

click to enlarge

Featuring Laurie Anderson, Antony, Elizabeth Ashley, Bono, Adam Clayton, Andrea Corr, The Edge, Flo & Eddie, Joel Grey, Bill Frisell, Guggi, Scarlett Johannson, Courtney Love, Lydia Lunch, Patrick McCabe, Maria McKee, Shane MacGowan, Eric Mingus, Larry Mullen, JG Thirlwell, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Chloe Webb, Plus Special Guests.

Sunday 4th October 2009
Carnegie Hall – New York City
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Tickets go on-sale Wednesday,
September 16, 11AM EST
Available at CarnegieCharge at 212.247.7800
www.carnegiehall.org and the box office.

Ticket price breakdown:
Parquet $250 (front & center) & $150 (left & right)
First Tier $150
Second Tier $100
Dress Circle $90
Balcony $70 & $35

A portion of the proceeds goes to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. www.joinred.com/rednights

• Read a Q&A with Gavin about this event

Gavin Friday, Guggi, Bono, Michael Stipe, Brandon Flowers, Dave Gahan and others tell the story of Anton Corbijn, “the ultimate insider who now finds himself outside the Hollywood system” in Shadow Play: The Making of Anton Corbijn, a documentary by Josh Whiteman now making the rounds on the festival circuit.

Anton has photographed Gavin many times over the years, but will be best known to Friday-fans for his iconic work on the Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves album sleeve artwork.

Anton Corbijn is currently working on his second feature film, a thrilller starring George Clooney based on the novel A Very Private Gentleman. He is also making a new photo/lyrics book with Tom Waits.

• Icon Movies
• Anton Corbijn on IMDB