Joe - the story behind the postcards

Thousands of music fans from across Ireland are expected to descend on Mullingar this weekend for the inaugural Joe Dolan Festival.To coincide with what everyone hopes will become a permanent fixture on the calendar, the Westmeath Examiner, in conjunction with Arc Studios and the Dolan family, are giving readers a set of four colour postcards depicting different stages in Joe's life.One man who knows better than almost anyone what made Mullingar's most famous son tick is his nephew, Adrian Dolan, whose relationship with Joe went far beyond the standard uncle-nephew dynamic: they were bandmates for more than 20 years, and Adrian also produced a number of Joe's albums.Picture 1This photo was taken about eight years ago, just after the Joe's 90s and 21st Century Joe albums came out. Around about this time he had sort of re-invented himself. He recorded the Joe's 90s album (in which he covered modern songs) and got a whole new audience. He had a top 10 hit with the Blur song, The Universal, and at Oxygen a few years back Damon Albarn, the lead singer of Blur, dedicated the song to Joe. A new, younger audience loved the songs but it took the older audience a bit of time to accept them. They eventually fell in love with them and started singing them at shows. At the same time the younger ones were also getting into the older stuff so it was an exciting time. He loved singing the new songs and made them his own. Around this time he also recorded Disco 2000 by Pulp and this became an anthem at his shows.The change of songs also brought about a change in image. Joe was always in the white suit, so for this album EMI (his record company) suggested Joe go with a black suit. It was around this time that he did the videos with different stars, such as Boyzone, who made cameo appearances. A lot of the younger bands began to look on Joe as the godfather of Irish pop music. He got the respect of the younger musicians and singers. Maybe before this they saw him as someone whom only their fathers or mothers would like, but at this period there were youngsters buying his records. I did an album signing with him in Dublin and the amount of kids that were out getting their albums signed was brilliant. I'd say that it was really good for Joe because he felt re-invigorated and there was a real buzz about the whole thing.Picture 2This photo was taken in 1995 in the Arts Centre in Mullingar when it was still the County Hall. We brought in all the equipment and recorded a video, This is Joe Dolan. The video was a fantastic success, but the funny thing is that Joe only recorded three videos. He only really got into it because that was the way things were going. So for footage of Joe there are only three full length videos, but there is also a lot of stuff from his television appearances at home and abroad. Joe was a natural in front of the camera. He had a charisma. When the camera was on, he was on. He had that special thing that you can't teach someone. You either have it or you don't have it. Even when we did TV shows with Joe, he would be able to do it in one take. He worked with cameras really well. I learned a lot from him. He was a real pro like that. The video was recorded in front of a full house. There were a lot of Mullingar people and a lot of fans that came to Mullingar just for the show. His shows in Mullingar were legendary. His fans always wanted to see Joe perform in his home town. At this period he was doing a lot of gigs around Ireland. He wasn't signed to a record company at this time so we formed our own label, Gable Records, and built a recording studio in Blackhall. We recorded two or three of his albums here.Picture 3You can tell by his shirt that this is the earliest picture. That one was taken around the late 70s. I think that photo was taken in Las Vegas. He had just starting wearing white at the time. The idea was that when he wore white you wouldn't see the sweat. Joe always had a wet brow, he always sweated on stage. Joe and Ben came up with a plan for him to wear white as it didn't show sweat as much. That's where his famous white suit came from. It became his trademark but there was a practical element to it as well. Another reason that they picked white was that you could be easily seen. If you look at the cuffs you can see diamonds on the wrists. Back then the idea was that if you were wearing something on stage you had to catch the lights to make it look good. In time he dropped the diamonds and stayed with the white suits. Joe was popular abroad because he had a sort of continental sound. A lot of people in Russia, Argentina, Spain and South Africa like that flavour and his voice had that sound. It wasn't an Irish voice. That's why his music travelled. Joe's voice had that universal appeal.Picture 4This is the show that we are playing now, The Reunion Show. This was an idea I had in my mind for a show that we did in Killarney in 2008. At the time people were saying that we had to celebrate Joe's life and I was thinking about bringing other bands down and having them sing his songs. Then I thought wouldn't it be great to have Joe singing them? I looked at what people were doing with the Elvis stuff and then found a video that Joe had done where one of the cameras was filming him all night long.At the time a lot of it ended up on the cutting room floor. I dug up the tape and worked with it in the studio so we could play live with Joe singing. His voice is from the original recording of the video in Athy in 1998. It was accepted really well by the fans. The first night we played it in Killarney I didn't know how it would go. Some people said it was too early but it felt like the time was right. At times on the first night it actually felt like Joe was up on stage, people were up dancing and singing. It was phenomenal the way it was accepted. Looking at the tapes actually helped us accept his death. We knew Joe was gone, but he left something here so why not celebrate it? We had to accept it by rehearsing you could say. We rehearsed it over a couple of weeks not just to make the show good but just to see if we could deal with it.