Showband legends attend launch of memoir by Miami Showband Massacre survivor

Westmeath showband legends, Tommy Swarbrigg and Donie Cassidy, were among those from entertainment business, media and public life who gathered in Dublin for the launch of a new memoir by Des Lee, a survivor of the Miami Showband Massacre.

My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee and written with Ken Murray was launched by Fr Brian D’Arcy on Monday, July 28.

The book describes how three members of the Miami Showband – one of Ireland’s most successful groups in the 1960s and ’70s – were killed by Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) terrorists on July 31, 1975. The band were returning to Dublin after performing in Banbridge, County Down.

Saxophone player, Des Lee, and bass guitarist, Stephen Travers, were the only survivors.

Fran O’Toole, Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy from the Miami were murdered at a bogus British Army checkpoint on the A1 Belfast to Dublin road in the early hours of that day in 1975.

Two of the UVF gunmen were also killed when a timebomb they were attempting to hide on the band’s bus exploded.

Three members of the UVF gang – who were also former (1) and serving soldiers (2) with the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) – were found guilty of the murders and received life sentences.

According to Lee, Captain Robert Nairac, an undercover British Army officer, was central to organising the massacre. He writes that British Ministry of Defence documentation he has seen, as well as his own memories of the paramilitary attack, left him “in no doubt” as to Nairac’s central involvement in the atrocity.

Detailing his and Stephen Travers’ efforts to get answers and justice from the British government over five decades, Lee writes that the horrors of that night continue “to haunt me and remind me repeatedly of how lucky I am to have made it this far”.

Half a century on, the survivors are still seeking compensation from the British government for their pain, suffering, trauma and loss of earnings.

Born in Belfast in 1946, Des McAlea formed his first band, the Sinners, in his teens. The vibrant Belfast music scene attracted all the major acts of the day. When the Boom Boom Rooms opened in 1963, the Sinners played support to Lulu.

Following a move to Cork, a stint with two local bands and adoption of a stage name, Lee was asked to join Dickie Rock and the Miami in 1967, then one of the biggest bands in the country.

They played to packed audiences all over the island. “The public couldn’t get enough of us,” writes Lee.

Tours of the US, including performances in Las Vegas and Carnegie Hall, followed in 1968 and 1970, before the bombshell announcement that Dickie Rock wanted a solo career, and he left the group in 1972.

That opened the way for a charismatic new frontman, Fran O’Toole, who had joined the group in 1967 and proved popular with fans. Lee and O’Toole co-wrote the band’s 1975 hit single, ‘Love Is’.

At the same time, Northern Ireland was convulsing with the start and rapid escalation of the Troubles. Despite the political violence, the Miami continued to perform there. Their gig in a packed ballroom in Banbridge in late July 1975 “offered locals an opportunity to switch off from the madness that was going on around them and socialise in a regular environment”, says Lee.

He was not to know that “the madness” was to change forever his own life, those of his family, and of the other band members and their loved ones.

According to the PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team 2011 report into the Miami Showband Massacre, 10 people were involved in the attack, five of whom were never questioned by the RUC. It’s “written in black and white [in the report] that people within the wider British security forces and elements of the RUC colluded with and protected the UVF gang responsible for the deaths” of the band members, states Lee.

Although the massacre has cast a long shadow in Des Lee’s life, his memoir is about much more than the Troubles. He offers an inside account of the changing face of the entertainment industry, including a spell working with Louis Walsh and his time performing in South Africa; as well as personal tragedy with the loss of his wife Brenda in 2005 and eldest son Gary in 2019.

Despite his own battles with alcoholism and illness, Lee writes that today he has found “a new sense of purpose in life”.

My Saxophone Saved My Life is published by Red Stripe Press, priced at €19.99. It is available from bookshops and online from www.redstripepress.com.

The Miami Showband 50th anniversary memorial concert will take place in Vicar Street, Dublin on 29 September.