On this day in 2007 we lost joe dolan
The text came in from journalist, Ronan Casey, just after lunch on St Stephen’s Day, 2007: “Joe Dolan has died”.
As I read aloud the words, brought my family to an immediate standstill. And after a stunned couple of seconds, the mother broke the air with the words “The Lord have mercy on him”.
“Aye,” we all agreed.
It was hard to believe it: he may have been 68, but it was a young 68, and even though everyone knew he was in hospital over Christmas, largely, outside the immediate family circle and close friends, few of the rest of us knew how ill he was, so it was a huge shock.
Everyone in Westmeath has their own “Joe” story. He was an accessible star, immensely popular on the world stage, but just “an ordinary Joe” when he was back in The ‘Gar.
My own memories date back to January 1991, when then Westmeath Examiner editor, Nicholas Nally, suggested I do an interview with Joe.
The suggestion came just days before I was due to travel to London to do an in-depth special feature on Westmeath emigrants to the UK, at a time when emigration was, as now, the norm for those who just could not find a job at home – or at least, a job for which they weren’t overqualified.
Because the interview was coming around the time I was due to go to London, it was decided that it would make sense to attend a planned Joe Dolan performance taking place at the legendary Galtymore in Cricklewood. It was my first – and last – time there, and I still recall that the place was mobbed. Joe was king.
For the interview, we sat in Dolan’s pub on Dominick Street, both smoking, having a laugh; he sharing the stories he had probably been asked about a thousand times before this particular interview, and as I wrote at the time, he “told his lifestory in exclamation marks”; the second .
His star certainly wasn’t on the wane, but he was on a plateau, and few could have foretold that even at that stage, having enjoyed almost thirty years in the music business, he would, as the nineties went on, enjoy a huge resurgence; reinvent himself, and earn himselves fans from the younger generations – the children and grandchildren of those who had first brought him to the fore on the Irish music scene, and then also, to the fore in a host of other countries as well – notably Russia and South Africa.
“The seventies were the glory years, and the eighties weren’t bad, and the nineties are looking good!” he said.
He was an interviewer’s dream, and maybe he was even extra-kind because this was a journalist from the newspaper in which he had started his own working career, starting off doing general jobs before undertaking the then seven-year long apprenticeship required of aspiring printers.
He was a great asset to The Westmeath Examiner, coming along, a year later, to the opening of the completely refurbished Westmeath Examiner offices on Dominick Street; coming along in 2007 for the opening of the offices to which the Westmeath Examiner had by then moved, at our current location, in Blackhall Place.
When he died, we in The Westmeath Examiner went back to work early, to put together a host of stories that would give due homage to a man greatly loved – and who is still greatly missed.
It’s difficult to believe that was all seven years ago.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilís.