Billed as “A One Man Show – For One Night Only”, Gavin built on the foundations of his Laurent Perrier talk to create a visual and vocal journey and an intimate recollection of his growing up in Dublin and the people, musicians and artists who influenced him including his parents, his ex-wife, Protestants, Oscar Wilde, Bowie, Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, punk and Picasso.

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The Boy in the Bubble

If the best artists wear their hearts on their sleeves, then Gavin Friday laid his bare in his Dublin Fringe Festival show “I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey in A Bubble”. From the outset it was clear this was going to be no revelation of the chocolates and roses kind. Walking through the audience of the spectacular Spiegeltent in his green Ireland soccer jersey and shell suit pants, Gavin, the Dublin yob, verbally abused, not to mention pissed on anyone who got in his way via his specially adapted water squeeze cock. To a Big Brother backing beat he played the two faces of Dublin. The pissed, aggressive header of a teenage father, looking for ‘Jacintaaaaa’ to the highly pitched spoiled rotten Southside Sweetie. Both of which could only have struck a chord with anyone from the fair and not so fair city.

Having disposed of his Dunnes Stores ‘shoos’ to anyone who would take them he ambled to the stage and lay on the flat of his back like a man in the gutter looking at the stars. Or maybe a boy in his bed dreaming of Ziggy Stardust? Rising to his feet, he stripped to his underwear and socks, preening and dressing in his room — a pubescent lad torn over just what to wear. And then, having become “Gavin Friday”, fully dressed in his more traditional threads, he told us his story with the aid of poster sized picture boards.

The premise seemed simple. Surely any of us could do it. Just stand up and talk about our lives, loves, influences and failures. But then not everyone has quite seen their vision through to the extent that Gavin Friday has. ‘Handbag Hanvey’ was just one of the school nicknames attributed to a teenage boy who wore long hair, ear rings and ladies dresses and then WENT OUT ON THE STREET. Conventional punk gear could only have been pussyfooting it by comparison. And then there was the conviction. ‘THE DOLE OR THE CIVIL SERVICE’. The general ‘ARSEHOLE’ put downs of his father. The YES versus the NO’s all around. Breaking out of his car-less cul de sac of Cedarwood Road to hang out with the apparently wealthier prods. The Derek Rowans and the Paul Hewsons. Discovering Oscar Wilde at twelve. TWELVE! Having chats with David Bowie in your head, where he spoke back to you in that polite English accent of his.

For each head in the roll call Gavin easily wore a different hat, slipping in and out of character, playing a thousand parts in a one man show. Also featured in the gallery were Jaques Brel, ‘proof that punk started before ’76′ and Kurt Weill where Gav became most playful, totally immersing himself in a sharp and brittle nazi chic narration. But most touchingly of all was the prop for ‘Mr & Mrs’ where the captions were switched in a role reversal over an image of (ex-wife) Rene and himself plucked from a punk youth.

The innocence of the picture, two lovers side by side in long coats and bushy hair do’s presented an idealistic portrait of pure soul mates. That they split up a lifetime later prompted Gavin to concede that she was the inspiration behind much of his writing. ‘I FUCKED UP, SHE FUCKED UP’. What more could he say really? He finished this part of the set with a spoken word and eventual song version of Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. But if such moments were reflective there were the lighter ones too.

The sheer theatrics of Gavin’s – Bowie- MacBeth, where crouched from a table in the middle of the floor he became drenched in a glorious white spotlight. There was the love for his mother ‘ARE YOU OKAY FOR UNDERPANTS AND SOCKS LOVE?’ The begrudging respect for his father whose lines he steals: ‘he’d live in you ear and rent the other out in flats…’ and still steals for the title of the evening’s show. There was the impromptu reproductions of a Picasso featuring Doreen and Anto, unfortunate enough to be sitting in the front row seats. The tributes to Johnny Rotten. The anointing and kissing of eh, Gavin’s ring. If at the very least Friday is an art junkie and seventies pop culture connoisseur then the message of the evening was ‘GOD HELP OUR KIDS’. Indeed, given what’s out there now what will they ever have the chance to stand on a stage about at forty-three?

Other than that, the evening was as magical and entertaining as the best theatre demands. Gavin ‘Finner’ Friday was as riveting as ever, pushing the limits once again to produce and deliver something completely different. Tonight was extra special though. Tonight he made it personal. Having created the sights, sounds and smells of his city and his own unique place within it, as a fellow Dub, I found this an exceptionally moving experience. The sort that might linger in the head on the Northside Nitelink home.

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Gavin will be performing “I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey In A Bubble”, at the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival 2003.

“I Didn’t Come Up The Liffey In A Bubble”
A One Man Show – For One Night Only

“A ‘visual and vocal journey’ an intimate recollection of Gavin growing up in Dublin and the people, musicians and artists who influenced him….”

Venue: The Spiegeltent.

Tickets: € 18.50. Order by phone on 1850 FRINGE (1850 374643), between 11am and 6pm, Monday – Saturday. In person at the Fringe Information & Box Office, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 [Formerly DesignYard]. Online ticket sales will start September 5.

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Love at first sight - Gavin Friday

New Year 86/The Blue Light/Guggi, Charlie, Gavin, Bono/FourPints/Lots of Talk/Three Pints and a Jack Daniels/Talking About Paint and Pain/What’s The Story?/The Pink Room/A Sky Above/Sounds of an Empty Estate/Four People Painting/No Mercy/On Canvas/Barbaric/Meticulous/Scat-Illogical/Holy Mary of O’Connell St/Warm Hearse Lizard Thoughts/Is That It?/No?/Motorcycles/A Tragedy/Crashed Cars/Tupelo Honey/Haircuts/Whiskey A GoGo/Writing Songs/Ethiopia/Six Foot Woman/Cucumber and Rosebud Sandwich/Spanish Wine/Spanish Eyes/Painting/The Hendriks Gallery New Year 88

Thus read the invite Gavin wrote for the `Four Artists – Many Wednesdays’ exhibition that took place January 1988. Gavin exhibited a series of paintings entitled: I didn’t come up the Liffey in a bubble. (i.e. I’m not stupid) After ending the Virgin Prunes late ’86, Gavin sought refuge in painting with his mates Derek Guggi Rowan, Charlie Whisker and Bono. Painting, a self-disciplinary occupation, brought him back to finding out who he was after the confusion of ending the band: `like an eight year relationship breaking up’. There was no hassle from record companies or band-members, and the conflict was between him and the canvas, meaning that if he fucked up, he fucked up and no one else. `It was crazy, I made more money out of painting than out of six years with Rough Trade!’. The four would meet Wednesday evenings in Danesmoate, a mansion at the foot of the Dublin mountains, which was later to become Adam Clayton’s residence. They had little in common when it came to painting but found the same things funny and, in Charlie’s words: `We all seemed to enjoy being on two wheels.’ Of course Gavin, Guggi and Charlie were accused of jumping on Bono’s bandwagon, but the truth of the matter was that Charlie Whisker was the one who had the necessary connections with the Hendriks Gallery.

Originally, the plan was to research various characters and situations around Dublin, particularly street characters, religious soap-boxes etc. But in the end the original plan was abandonned and each worked on individual themes, though Gavin seems to have stuck close to the original idea. Gavin on the exhibition:

`That’s me being visually violent, not verbally or musically. It’s all about Dublinisms. I love this city…’
Painting is a different release for him than music. Basically, writing songs comes forth out of the things that hurt or confuse whereas painting is an outlet for the lighter side of life and the things he cannot express in music or lyrics. If the music on Each Man Kills comes accross as dark and brooding, his painting is quite the opposite. There is humour in there, big colourful views of the world and its people, loud, brash and vulgar. A bit like his sense of dress, perhaps. Some deal with Dublin characters such as a woman, `a bit of a religious nut’, a believer in John Paul III who frequents O’Connell Street, preaching the word, claiming that when the end of the world is nigh, Ireland and Poland will be OK. She is the subject of two of the paintings exhibited. In one of them, Sin ‚ an l , Gavin paints her in a bright blue dress, the way a child would draw a woman and adds the words `Sin ‚ an l arth inig an tiarna’, Irish for `This is the day that the Lord will come’.

Gavin is a little colourblind, which makes everything he does come out bright and clashing. This is no handicap; as his painting is more concerned with character and statement, the wildness of the colours helps convey that which he is trying to put accross. The paintings have an impact much like pictograms, simple and naieve in the best sense of the word, with clear-cut images. He mentions Picasso, Heckel and Velasquez as influences and likes to `take the mickey out of machoism’. A visitor of the exhibition was moved to say `Gavin Friday’s paintings seem to dwell a lot on a certain part of the male anatomy.’ One particular painting shows a smallish man both intimidated and excited by the overpowering woman he approaches. Another one was inspired by a close friend who was vibed out one night as they were painting in Danesmoate, imagining `flying mickeys’ much like a flight of ducks. Gavin brings that vision to life on canvas. Yet another pictures himself on stage, with six of his audience. With a healthy mixture of arrogance and self-disrespect he calls it Gavin is God, derived from the Virgin Prunes’ I am God.

This Then Is That
Charlie Whisker was brought up in Northern Ireland. He moved to Dublin and taught at Dublin’s National College of Art, but got frustrated with teaching as he began to see all his own ideas, images and references come back in his students’ work in such a way that he would have to abandon them. He now works as head of computer graphics in Windmill Pictures, his speciality being `paintbox’ on pop-promos. He met Gavin through his friendship with Bono, they found out they had many ideas in common and started working together. He says that most of the works are basically autobiographical, going back over things that he has done in the past, relating to childhood and loss of innocence. He regards himself as a great voyeur of things taboo and on the edge: the extremes of of violence, cruelty and sex, beauty and ugliness. He approaches painting and drawing much like letter-writing, starting out at the top left corner with a small thing and going along in lines towards the right-hand side, adding comments and stories as he goes along. He says he is impatient and therefore does not do a lot of painting as he cannot be bothered to wait for the paint to dry. He prefers pencil and charcoal, which has the immediacy of writing. Rather than turning to other painters for inspiration, he gets more from writers and poets: William Burroughs, Dylan Thomas, Shelley in particular.

The First Day
Derek Guggi Rowan fronted the Virgin Prunes together with Gavin up until 1984. He was always more interested in the visual side of performing, not in the music. He did artwork for the covers of A New Form Of Beauty. In interviews he has stated that a lot of his paintings are simply what they are and deal with visual impact. The paintings he exhibited at the Hendriks Gallery, such as The First Day, were finely tuned in colour and composition, they had a feel of `airbrush’ abound them. Many were sky scapes: clouds, deserts. His painting The First Day was inspired by the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and deals with the creation of light. He calls what he does now `abstract portraiture’. He started out doing portraits of people that he knew: Gavin, Van Morrisson, The Edge, Shane McGowan. His portrait of Bono was called Man With Half A Mouth, the one of Gavin Man With Square Head and Two Earrings. He went on to do a series of paintings called `The Traveller’s Series’. He had a second exhibition at Dublin’s Kerlin Gallery in March 1990 and a two-man show with Sibylle Ungers at Schur Gallery, Cologne in july 1990.

A String Of Pearls
Bono chose to exhibit twenty-five of the photographs that he had taken in Ajibar, which is in Wello, a northern province of Ethiopia where he and his wife Ali had worked in a refugee camp in September 1985. He knew the photos were good and they needed to be seen, because they gave a different perspective on the trauma of the country and showed a sense of dignity and hope in the people. The photographs, the negatives of which were destroyed, cost 1,000 pounds each and all the money, including the sales of a book on the exhibition called A String Of Pearls went straight back into Ethiopia through Concern/World Vision, the relief organisation that had organised the visit. It was Bono’s way of giving something back to the country he felt he had got so much out of. Bono: `At first, as we walked through the camp, we kept our eyes down and were so overpowered by the suffering we saw around us that I couldn’t even take my camera out of its case. Weeks later, a different but more lasting impression set in of the beauty and strength of spirit of the Ethiopian people. It was then that I started taking photographs, not to deny the waste of human life that was and still is Ethiopia, but to make the people and therefore the tragedy real by bringing their sense of dignity back into the picture. In the end we received more from the Ethiopian people than we could ever give.’

Gavin is careful not to mix painting and music too much: `I’m always suspicious of people who are in music and they think they are actors, painters, writers etc. I went away from the whole music thing and painted for a year and a half, it was very productive for me, I found it very self-disciplinary, and I did an exhibition and things like that, but it was after the exhibition that I wanted to get involved in music again, and I don’t think the two go hand in hand. If you want to paint, I think you should just paint — go away and paint. If you wanna write or make music, you should just do one thing. But it’s still a big love of my life. I’m sure, one day when I knock this on the head or whatever I do — I don’t know, I’ll paint for a long time. But I don’t believe in these characters that can do everything. You know what I mean? It sort of takes away from art if ya go: “Yeah, I’m… multifacet vibe.” I don’t like that.’

The exhibition was successful enough to be prolonged well into February of 1988, after which Gavin got `itchy feet’, his `ego needing and audience’ and he was ready to get back into music. He realized that what he liked best was writing, performing and singing, but he was not ready for the hassle of dealing with a band, so he started a cabaret in Dublin called the Blue Jaysus, which was sort of a vaudevillian experience.

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1987 painting by Gavin Friday

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