Paddy (centre) and his fellow modern day Chieftains

"42 albums and six Grammys". The Chieftains' Paddy Maloney is not only a gifted musician and leader of the most famous traditional Irish music outfit in the world but he's also a natural-born hustler, spruiker and salesman. Blessed with a quicksilver tongue he practically conducts his own interview - asks himself questions, whips off yarns while adding footnotes, facts, bio info and boasts as he goes. He's also a chronic, and gleeful, name dropper. Our conversation peppered with asides concerning the likes of Brian Jones, Paul McCartney, Elvis and Diana and Justin Timberlake (while I pushed him on others like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Van Morrison).

I grew up with Paddy's face beaming at me from the cover of Chieftains 3. Every weekend my father would play Chieftains records mixed in with a lot of Steeleye Span and other heavy folk music. I couldn't stand it as a kid. (Don't talk to me about Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat - it still makes me shudder). It took a decade away from home to even contemplate listening to a jig or reel ever again. But when the opportunity came to interview Paddy Maloney it surprised me how keen I was to do it. At age 66 he proved to be charming and quick witted - indeed, when he calls former Chieftains dancer (and renown lover) Michael Flatley a 'great flute player' I don't know if he's having me on or not. But I'd like to think he was...

Your name is Paddy, you play a tin whistle, you're a good looking fella - are you the quintessential Irishman?
I suppose so. I play these pipes called the Uilleann pipes, which is Gaelic or Irish for elbow pipe. Of course, I did start on a tin whistle when I was six years of age - my mother bought me a tin whistle. I taught myself how to play at that stage and I was raring to go at a very early age and had the God-given gift of picking up music fairly easily. But little did I know that I'd go from playing a whistle and pipes at home and people's houses to playing all over the world. That was my dream when I formed the Chieftains in 1962 to spread the gospel of this great folk art of ours. I just wanted people to hear this great music and that dream has come true - we've 42 albums now and six Grammy's and 22 nominations and an Oscar for Barry Lyndon.

When you first started the band what was your job, obviously you were a musician, but what was paying the rent at the time?
My mother always saw him as getting a decent job and right up to the very end she would say, 'you know that Paddy never got himself a decent job'. She always regarded music as a pastime and something to do in your spare time going round to parties and that. I was going to be an accountant and pushing a pen for 12 years in fact but I soon cottoned on that my calling was for music. I ran a record company for 8 years, Claddagh Records, and it wasn't until 1975 that we went full time professional. We did Barry Lyndon and many successes and we've made so many albums, as I say 42 albums. We've mixed it a bit, you probably noticed that after doing 25 solid traditional albums it was time to 'break out' you might say and having been musicians' musicians for a long time from the Rolling Stones to Paul McCartney, who had me play on one of his albums he did with his brother Mick McGear of The Scaffold. Things like that prompted me to do collaborations with the likes of Jimmy Galway and the likes of Van Morrison and eventually what I call my Chieftains and Friends album The Long Black Veil with people like Sting and the Rolling Stones and they all came to the party and they had a great time making the album. Then, of course, more recently which was a very obvious project to do, to connect with the bluegrass and old country music over in America. A project we called Down the Old Plank Road. But my pet name for it is the 'Bluegrass Green Grass Connection'.

First record in 1963, second record in 1969, you didn't professional until 1975 - why do you think it took so long for it to take off?
There wasn't much of a market. I always had the dream from the time I started the band that there would be great successes happening for us, the likes of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem they did wonderful things for the ballads in the 50s - they played Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall and Australia too. So I always thought our music should get the same sort of airing and treatment and that dream did come true eventually. But it was a limited market you might say. There was certainly not a living to be made but when the time was ripe in '75 I persuaded everybody to pull up the stakes and go for it. It was a tough battle and it still is. I mean we're very much traditional Irish musicians and that's our forte. No matter who we have on albums and things like that, as you'll hear in concert we're still the same traditional Irish band. I think that's what people have admired us for. But there certainly wasn't a living to be made for the first ten years of our career It was all on a semi-professional basis. Getting time off to play for the King of Belgium and doing the Edinburgh Festival for a week which was a sabbatical for different members of the band for two years from the Department of Post and Telegraph as it was then. There was a lot of hassles, a lot of goings on till the penny dropped you might say. I just felt the time was right and there was a market out there for people to hear the Chieftains 1,2, 3 and then 4. Then in 1975 Melody Maker voted us group of the year. Being on the front page of Melody Maker, my God, it was definitely time to go professional then.

The Many Moods of the Chieftains

Do you feel there were lost opportunities, recording wise, between '63 and '69. That's a long time not to record.
It is but that album was meant as a one off. But it picked up on popularity and sales. There was a buzz happening and the whole London scene, the Flower people and the hippies and things like that were picking up on us. To play at the Cambridge Folk Festival to 25,000 people when you had people like Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention and groups like that, a very popular sound and we got up there, there were only four of us at that time, and we did three encores. There was no singing or dancing or flashing lights or smoke machines it was just good, solid traditional music. They liked the way we delivered on what we did. We have our own way, I had a vision of blending the instruments and music and presenting it in a way that people could identify with - you didn't have to be Irish to love this music.

Chieftains have always been able to cross over into a more rock crowd. Why do you think that is?
Well, with Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span if you listen closely enough you can hear strains of some Irish tunes. There was a band called Jig-a-Jig who were number one in Europe with two reels, two tunes that were on our first album. But people wanted to go back and identify where this all came from and they still do to this day. Just recently, name dropping another little bit if you don't mind for the younger set, I was going through Italy there in July and there was a phone call came through just a few days before I left from - I always go to call him Timberwood, but it was Justin Timberlake and he was asking would I go over to New York just to do something with him for a day and I said 'oh, yeah, fine, ok, I will' and then I looked up my itinerary and I only had a day before I was going off through Italy on a very gruelling tour and I had an ulcer that was bleeding and had to be operated on and my doctor he told me I got to slow down. I can't be doing things as I used to do. So I had to phone up the following day and say I was terribly sorry, I misread all this and I wouldn't be able to do it and could we do it at a different time. He understood and I got a very nice letter back to say 'get well soon' and we'd meet up in New York another time. But it still goes on - the point I'm making is there's still a young set out there wanting to delve into the Irish music. We go to Malaysia, Singapore and Japan and there are all these young people at the concerts. It's not even our generation, thank God they do come and support us, but we have a massive fan base in the younger generation who want to touch base with the roots of music. It's surprising, when I was starting out with the band, there were only a handful of pipers and little traditional Irish music clubs to go to but it was all on a very small scale. Rock n Roll was in there then, jazz and that sort of stuff so it took a while for our own people to come around to realising they had this great music never mind spreading the gospel around the world. But it did cotton on eventually and continues to gain a great audience. Just before Christmas there our very good friend Elvis Costello got married to Diana Krall and it was a great wedding held in the House of Sir Elton John and Elvis and Diana wanted the Chieftains to play after the dinner. We all sat together and told jokes but when the Pilatzke's (brothers Jon and Nathan) got up to dance Mr. McCartney couldn't hold back he was up dancing with them and doing very well let me tell you. So much so he got up at the very end of our set to do the same thing again. I remember in 1969 I needed to get into Abbey Road to do an acetate, you know the old system, and it was the only place I could go so I got EMI here in Dublin to ring up and they said it's booked solid by the Beatles. But when they were asked they said 'we'll give you half a day, no problem'. I was doing the acetate and John and Paul came in and said hello.

Have you ever been accused of being a name dropper?
I knew you'd come around to that! (Laughing) I'm really answering your question to say that the interest in traditional Irish music, it's not rock n roll you know it's still good, trad music and it gets people. I name drop people that appreciate what we do and listen to us.

When you first started playing this music were you a strictly traditional Irish music fan or did you like rock n roll music too?
We were a tradition Irish band and that's what we played and listened to. And that's what we still continue to do no matter who we might collaborate with and we're certainly not going down the road of rock n roll - that would never work. It's a blend of and when you think of, say, the track we did with Sting (on Long Black Veil) where he's singing in the Irish language, 'Mo Ghile Mear', so it's inviting them to come to our party and participate and do their version of the music that we play do. We do a few things for a bit of fun like when we do the 'Rocky Road to Dublin', the song we did with the Rolling Stones, I incur a little riff in there of 'Satisfaction' which we still do in concert for a bit of fun. I mean, back in the 50s, I used to love the Lonnie Donegan songs, the skiffle songs that the Beatles also loved, you know 'putting on the agony, putting on the style'. And 'Freight Train'. And there was a time there when I put together a skiffle group with the tea chest bass and played the ukulele and wore beards and cowboy hats and straw sticking out of our boots. This was before the Chieftains so I was very interested in that stuff. The first LP that was ever bought for me in my late teens was a jazz album by the Clyde Valley Stompers they were called. And the second album I got was Segovia playing guitar. I had an interest in all kinds of music, in classical music as well and part of my repertoire of orchestral, we have a big orchestra programme that we do, and I composed a piece called 'Planxty Mozart' which blends Irish music into the horn concerto. Then we've done ballet, we've done everything but always with the overtones of traditional Irish music. Just recently I was offered the Songwriters and Composers Society in London the Golden Badge which I think is a great honour to come from that particularly Society for my contribution to all kinds of music. Trinity College gave me a Honorary Doctorate of Music for what I've done over the years. But the question you asked over twenty minutes ago - is traditional Irish music what we did, well it was. I mean after the Long Black Veil we did a harp album, a more traditional than anything we've done which was just music from the 17th Century. That won us our fifth Grammy.

Should I be calling you Dr. Maloney?
No, no, no Paddy's the name. Oh, God, no, don't go down that road. (Laughter)

You've covered a lot of music ground - what's the furthest you've got away from your Irish roots?
Perhaps in exploring the likes of other Celtic countries the likes of Brittany in the North-West of France because that music is notably different but has certainly a great connection to Irish music as well. Also Galicia in the North West of Spain, the music of Galicia which you can hear the Spanish but you can also hear the Celtic music within. Just making two entire albums there of that stuff. We play some of that for you, we include those things in our programme aswell. The album Santiago got us our sixth Grammy and that even brought us down to Cuba and brought Ry Cooder with us and there was a connection between Ireland, Galicia and Cuba and Mexico and as far away as all that. For instance there's an O'Reilly St. in Havana and there's O'Reilly's bar where we used to have tea every afternoon. But we spent two weeks there exploring and filming with the great musicians. Six weeks later Ry, himself, went back with the same old musicians that we put together and did Buena Vista Social Club which became a huge success. So that was the beginning of that.

I know that you've worked with many people but I was wondering if there was anyone that you would like to work with?
To be honest I never go out of my way just because this person is that person - there's always a reasoning. If the project would suit to have people involved, a project that makes sense. Like, for instance, the women's album Tears of Stone, I call it my women's album, so we had Joni Mitchell sing a song that had to do with Dublin, The Magdalene Laundries, Mary Chapin Carpenter singing a song in the Irish language and Bonnie Raitt singing in Irish. We were going all over the world recording different females in different countries to contribute and sing their version of our songs. So there would always be a reasoning for asking somebody to do something. Like, for instance, getting Vince Gill to sing on The Long Journey Home 'The Bard of Armagh' because it's the same melody as the 'Streets of Laredo' and putting in two verses of each song - that kind of thing. There was one I was disappointed in and that was Bob Dylan. I always wanted Bob to sing a song on that Long Journey Home record which was the 'Irish Connection'. It nearly happened but Bob being Bob the calendar doesn't mean anything, the deadlines don't exist. So that was one that I failed on because I know the guy very well but maybe something else will come up in the future.

Now Van Morrison - is he as grumpy as we're led to believe?
(Laughing) There's a many a story - I could write a book of my association with Van - the good times and some of the bad times. Most of the stories go on forever but there's a story when we were doing the Irish Heartbeat album, I think this is a great one and this is a musical sort of a thing, but when we were doing a song 'Raglan Road' and he would go into a thing, a scatting thing that would go on and on so there'd be no coming down, no chance to end it out at the same time. So I'd say Van 'when you're coming to the end will you give me the billy, which is an expression we have over here - 'give us the billy' - as in 'give us the nod'. So he was going on and he was singing away, doing that scat thing, mumbling like he does not a smile on his face and suddenly out of nowhere he shouts out 'Billy, Billy!' We all fell apart the place laughing. So we've had great times with Van, very funny times when he wouldn't be in the best of moods and then he would. He's a great character, as I say the stories can go on forever. A great musician too, I've got wonderful admiration for him.

Let me throw some more names out for you…Peter Sellers
Peter I met the first time in 1966 in London - I was in the house of Brian Jones, the late Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. We're getting into a lot of name dropping now - it could go on forever but when I walked in they had the Chieftains album on - this is in Eton Square in London. I was listening to the album thinking 'what the hell are they playing this for?' But Peter was a fan and chewed my ear off that night. A wonderful character, lovely fella - I had great admiration for him. He ended up writing a piece on one of our albums - Chieftains 4. He had a house here in Ireland, down in Cantiltil(??) there, one of these big houses where I met Spike Milligan at one or two of the parties. He was such a character too. He used to eat in an Italian restaurant in London near Hammersmith. I remember meeting him there and I had my daughter, she was nine and she was singing a song and he starts clapping along and then he took out his trumpet and the music just started up. He wrote beautiful Irish, he wrote in a book to my eldest son - signed it for him and wrote a message in beautiful Irish. But we used to meet up on the road because he'd be doing the rounds of England at the time and we'd often meet somewhere and have a few jars and talk about rugby and things. He was a great rugby fan.

Paddy, you're known as a gifted musician and also a renown talker...
As they say I could talk a hole in the pot. (Laughing)

When do you take the time to get away from being surrounded by sound and sit quietly?
Oh, Jesus. You know I can hear noise in the background here - some builders are always messing around with the house putting in bits and pieces and gardens and that sort of stuff I'm very interested in wildlife and wild gardens. The house I have in County Wicklow has a wild meadow and I'm trying to bring back the old trees, Irish oaks and chestnuts and things like that. So I have a great interest in that kind of stuff but music is everything, it never stops. The show we have incidentally it's not just the band playing the same old music everytime we go out there it's different, there's something happening. Like, for instance, we have Jeff White who's Ben Stihl's(??) right hand man - a great bluegrass singer and guitar player. Jeff will be with us in Australia and we'll be doing music off The Old Plank Road. The bluegrass/green grass connection. Although I have managers and agents and all someone has to pull the strings, someone has to manage the managers you know. I just never stop. Everyday there's something. Today I'm compiling the list of pieces from two concerts that we've done in Dublin for our next album which will be a live album because we had many guest come and play with us when we lost Derek Bell our harp player. I had a concert with Van Morrison on it, Ronnie Drew from the Dubliners and quite a lot of famous people from the traditional world. Allison Moorer came from Alabama, Jon from the Pilatzke's took part in that particular show.

Tell us about the dancing in the Chieftains show. You've long had Irish dancers to complement your tunes.
There's four of the Chieftains up there playing but we've got a bit of young blood to help us out. We've got two guys called Jon and Nathan Pilatzke from Ottawa, Canada and they do this amazing dancing - the Ottawa Valley style of dance and Jon plays the fiddle too. And we've got a beautiful girl with long legs - we call her 'Legs' - she's an Irish dancer called Cara Butler, sister of Jean Butler of Riverdance fame. As you probably know we started Mr. Michael Flatley on his road to success, he danced with the band for seven years.

Michael Flatley is infamous for having to have sex straight after a performance...i'm just wondering how the Chieftains helped him out in that regard?
(laughter) He did it in private. He didn't let us know much about that at all. But we did introduce him to his first wife, in fact, many years ago in London. She was a Polish girl and we were playing in the Albert Hall in London, this is many years ago in the 80s. Of course, Michael was very successful with all the ladies. A wonderful character, a great flute player and he was with us for seven years. He went away and then came back again. He tried out doing a little bit of acting in Hollywood but then after three years came back and joined the band again for a year or two and soon after that him and Jean Butler, who was dancing with us for five years, they got together and did that Riverdance thing that took off in a big way.

What's your favourite film that has featured your music?
There was a film that didn't make it - like nine out of ten films. It had Richard Burton in it. It was Tristan and Isolde. It was my first film and the first time that pipes were ever matched with a symphony orchestra and I wrote a lot of music for Tristan and Isolde. It was nothing to do with Wagner who did his best 'Tristan' thing. This was the original 9th Century Irish tale. Strangely enough there's a friend of mine Carlos Núñez, he's a Galician piper, he was with the last time we did Australia as a guest but he has his own band now and we did a big piece of one of these tunes out from Tristan using two pipe bands and a big orchestra, so many people on the stage. It was incredible. I love that music. Of course, the theme music from Barry Lyndon, which won us an Oscar, it still always requested. As a matter of fact I'm probably going to play that piece because of Derek Bell as a tribute piece in Australia. I've just been doing it a bit in the last year or so. It's called 'Women of Ireland'.

And you've done a bit of acting in the past...
Oh, God no, I have not. Actually I was in Tristan, my first appearance, but I was well disguised. They dressed me up in a big long cloak thing. We did do something for the Year of the French and Robin Hood with Kevin Costner was one that we were meant to do but I couldn't get everybody together for it. We were meant to be musicians sitting down, playing but it didn't quite work out. I'm not too keen on that part of things - I have been offered quite a few parts here and there

I'm sure with your dashing good looks you've been offered a few...
I'm sure when you say that you're looking at the wrong photo.

Tell us about doing Jimi Hendrix's 'Little Wing'. The last thing you'd think of is Paddy Maloney Uilleann piping on a Jimi Hendrix track.
Or a Bob Marley one - think about that one. It was a return favour for the Corrs. They're a great family and lovely people to work with. It was a really interesting sound with the pipes on a Jimi Hendrix song. We did Bob Marley's 'Redemption Song' with Ziggy Marley on the 40th Anniversary Album. In fact, tt's from a tune called the 'Night of the Kerry Dancers', an old Irish song. Bob used to listen to Irish music so I put that in at the beginning and his son, Ziggy, came along and sang the tune. In recent years - particularly the songs we did with Sinead (O'Connor) and the Corrs for instance on the women's album doing 'I Know My Love' dancing around the studio with them by the end. When I proposed the piece to them it was an elderly woman singing with a harp and they were like 'you can't be serious'. I said 'take it easy, that's not the way we're going to do it. I'm going to put a flamenco South American beat into it' and I had a Cuban tabla player who played his drums and you hear all of that with the bones and the rattling going on. By the end we were dancing around the studio with them, there's some photos of me and Derek dancing around with Andrea doing the 'cha-cha-cha' around the studio. It was great fun and the thing was we were sober. You can imagine if we'd had a few jars. Anyway, we won't go into that. But it was a similar atmosphere recording with the likes of the Stones. They came late at night and we'd be waiting there all day thinking 'this is not going to happen'. I had it all worked out as I thought it would go but the boys got in with their cigarettes hanging out making all kinds of racket. By one o'clock in the morning there was just a big party going on, it was incredible. Jean Butler was there and she was dancing around, you could hear people dancing. I was getting a little anxious thinking we have to press the button and go otherwise we're going to miss this. They were like 'ok, ok, Paddy, ok, ok' and they just blasted away on it.' And I kept nodding, like 'finish' and there was no stop so I had to do the mechanical fade I'm afraid. See, I had a pub laid on around the corner and they stayed open for us so I was keen to go and have a few drinks. We sat up drinking pints of Guinness till six o'clock in the morning. That was an occasion to remember.

What is the most political song the Chieftains have done?
With the Chieftains we've always avoided getting involved in any way with politics or religion. That's always been left out so therefore we have an invitation all over the world. That's always been my theory and belief that the powers that be don't have a tin whistle in their pocket or a song book. Every time they met up they talk music instead of war. The world would be a happier place. 99% of people in the world don't want all the atrocities that happen which is rampant today, it's just sick. But I would never put down a piece of music to make a political point but, often, there's so many great songs written about different times in our history. And we have a long history of the neighbours who came to visit and forgot to go back. It led to quite a few songs being written. I think the song we did with Sinead - the 'Foggy Dew' - that's a great song and a song we learnt in school. And I suppose that had to do with the Irish Rebellion which changed the course of Irish history, eventually. We got our country back, almost.

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