Barefoot Pilgrimage

by Andrea Corr

  He advised us to save our per diems in the winter of a radio tour of America. Minded them for us while we were people-carried through the crunch of a snowed-in and lamplit Pittsburg. And on through a snowed-in and deserted Buffalo. And on through a rainy and windy Philadelphia. To end in the brisk cold and optimistic breath of a New York morning, cash rich and spree happy, just days before we flew home for Christmas.

  But what he loved more than any of this was our music. He loved what we made and how we played and sang together. It was la raison d’être, you see. It only stood to his reason that the world, once they saw and heard us, would feel the same way that he did. He just had to make sure that they saw and heard us. And so much was made of St Patrick’s Day in New York. The night before playing the Beacon Theatre. Hours later, Good Morning America, live from Rockefeller Plaza.

  So much he made of us.

  His kids, John, Helen, Anna and Marie Junior, sat on the couch in their living room in Blackrock, Dublin, when we visited, their sunlit ‘good’ room where we signed those first contracts, like we were already and always the biggest band in the world. Shy and giggling they watched us like we were live interactive TV. (The remote is down the side of the couch, John …)

  His own boy and three girls.

  And de blonde has got to be honoured here. Marie was married but her husband travelled the world with another couple’s kids while she mother-fathered their own through their school years. She lived the day in, day out in Dublin and, I imagine, looked forward very much to late-night, early-morning, jet-lagged, can-you-hear-me? got-cut-off, phone calls from hotels somewhere in Exotica.

  Behind every man, as they say.

  There is no doubt: I would not have this story to write without the work and the love of de blonde, Marie Hughes.

  Meanwhile, John could eat and eat and eat. The Reuben ‘heart attack on rye’ from Carnegie’s Deli in New York – conveniently a few blocks from our record company. He discovered a restaurant that served layers of bright pink bacon and swimming pale cabbage on, of all places, Sunset Boulevard in LA. He ate marmalade with his eggs. He liked chocolate sauce with his ice cream …

  He believed, you see. It was a vocation and it was a hungry one. And it could not put on weight.

  He chose always to sit by me on aeroplanes to get my sausages. No chance beside Caroline. I would automatically pass mine onto his plate as soon as we were served. Though I did eat a green triangular seaweed thing beside him on the bullet train from Tokyo once, and he has never sat beside me as easily since. Just a little hesitation before sitting down and a sideways, not-so-sure look, assessing my mood and the drink in my hand. But that’s probably also because when telling him ‘I am happy, Johnny!’ one day, I spilled my coffee all over him. We had just taken off in London, to fly to Australia.

  He was different to us but we lived like family pretty much and we learned each other’s ways. Him up at dawn in the kitchen in Malibu singing ‘Runaway’, the high bit, while Caroline and I lay on in the blue covered bunk beds of ‘the crypt’ (so called because its door was rarely open before midday) and Jim and Sharon likewise, in their own rooms. He also learned to turn a blind eye to family pool parties. Jean in the jacuzzi. Gerry playing the piano in his Speedos. Nothing to see here.

  He understood an American LA weekend. All the slogs and sweats and dog-walking, coffee-holding, brunching, stretching, running upstairs to run down them again, juicing, unshaven, hanging-out cool of it. We would bring picnics to Zuma Beach or Point Dume, Braeburns and bagels, and eat pancakes in Paradise Cove.

  Waitresses (actresses) loved him. His enthusiastic, direct air. So engaged in people. Buzzing, but with a kind of open shyness, too. A bit mad really. A different energy. A born Irish James Joyce Dubliner. The Corrs and Irish rugby. His Belvedere school tie. Philosophising on aeroplanes, St Thomas Aquinas, Khalil Gibran. Complaining when fellow passengers pulled down their window blinds and ‘shut out God’s good light’.

  His spiritual friends and, by virtue of that, ours. Jim Moran SJ. And the ultimate gentleman, Ollie Campbell. Modest and brilliant and a man we are honoured to know. Ollie was our early patron.

  Johnny and I shared a love of books and places of learning. Not long before we set off for America to begin this journey, we sat together on a bench in the gardens of Trinity College. On a beautiful bright Dublin day, we said I would go as a mature student someday. Ancient is more likely now.

  I put my school copy of Julius Caesar by his bed in Dundalk when he stayed.

  He opened windows and fiddled with the air conditioning in the back of black town cars: ‘It’s hot back here.’

  And if truth be told, he was never meant for the backseat. For he needs to move and the room in which to do it. To be glasses-oning, jacket-offing, knee-rubbing, briefcase-searching …

  He was a leg-stretching son of a draper man, yes he was …

  He and I would go to movies on Second Street in Santa Monica. He liked popcorn with his butter. I didn’t really like milk duds but I had them. It seems like every film we saw was special there, though. The Madness of King George. Sling Blade. Brassed Off. Monster’s Ball.

  He has been called the king of vague but it’s the spider-web of ‘what if’s that cause the blur … I think …

  His cup was always half full. Our clouds, when with him, silver-lined. He lifted our heads to the bright side (not always appreciated … ‘No more bright side, please, Johnny,’ Sharon said one day) and Plan BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ … ad infinitum.

  A few times I went alone with him to New York and into Atlantic Records and to lunches, dinners and meetings, as his ‘little helper’. I even had a lanyard and laminate with my picture on it, smiling and wearing a Christmas hat, beneath the words ‘Johnny’s little helper’. I don’t remember who made that.

  In the meantime, as we toured and promoted the world, comparisons between us girls came to be a daily treat. Always two-faced and hard on each of us, three individuals. If one is favoured, the compliment comes bearing the sting, the thorny rose piercing your palm, of another’s weird and utterly unbidden rejection. It is all uncomfortable, in fact. And when you think about it, it is awfully rude, isn’t it? Imagine standing beside your siblings as grown adults and a stranger telling you who is the most beautiful, who is the brains, who’s the minx …

  I have always thought my sisters prettier, but ultimately I am happy being me. And in any case it is how we see and shine out of ourselves that matters. And how we learn not to compare – ha.

  Our faces age and change, but that never will.

  Speaking of my face, I got a lot of rashes on my poor self-conscious face in those days. I could blush red out of the blue. No provocation needed. And then I’d blush about blushing because now it looks like I’ve had a bad thought and that my face is telling the truth and betraying me. Facecrime. That is how my anxiety and insecurity in the family free-for-all fish tank manifested itself, I think.

  The rising red crept up my face like ivy on a flight to Venice once. We were to do a ‘HUGE!’ TV show there. Beside me, Sharon warily watched it grow and only when she was absolutely certain did she turn to me fully and say, ‘Oh Andrea, I think you’re getting a rash on your face again.’

  I could get a rash about getting a rash, you see, too.

  She had helped me the very first time it had happened, and has many times since. Trying to cover it up for me in the Ladies of the Berkeley Court Hotel in Dublin. Problem was, my face swelled too. Even bigger cheeks! Most of the time I just had to get on with it, do the TV show, blazing appendages and all. A literal scene-stealer. But this one time even the Italian record company recognised that in this state it would be best for our record and all concerned to hide me. We got a surprise day off in Venice, drank beers on a plaza and couldn’t find our way home along the dark canals to our hotel. Sharon, the navigator in black, disappearing into black, re-emerging from t
he black … Sorry, wrong way. This way. Not this way. Black in. Black out.

  She was the navigator, too, in Amsterdam. Ahead of me again, but this time in a faux-fur leopard-print jacket. Bopping along the cobblestones, very busy Bet from Coronation Street.

  Impossible to sneak into the hotel quietly, though, in this jungle camouflage and with the laugh of a hyena.

  Anyway … you get the picture. It was non-stop.

  Eight hours of interviews. One small couch, four people. Everyone assumes, it seems to me, that families want to be close. Bodies touching at all times. Sure aren’t we from the same womb. To a gig every night. At one point (a few years in, I might add) we rebelled, insisting ‘A travel day is not a day off!’ Arriving in Australia after twenty-two hours’ flying, to realise we had a quick freshen up and interviews waiting. (Oops, forgot we lost a day!) Then another ‘HUGE, cannot-be-missed opportunity’ TV show, in France (honestly, our very lives depended on it!) emerges, so back to France from Australia. TV done and back on a plane to Japan, to complete promo and live combined tour. Then to Canada, on to America.

  Four continents in three weeks.

  We learned quickly to keep answers short. There are certain countries where they love highly detailed interviews. Every word in a lyric explained. All day, every day, for, as long as you now could remember, answering the same questions …

  ‘What’s it like being in a band with your family?’ and Jim’s all-time favourite, ‘What’s it like being the only boy in a band with your three beautiful sisters?’ (Mmm – what??)

  I could forget there was a camera on me, drift off and suck my thumb, only to be elbowed into the moment by whoever was closest. ‘Is she all right?’

  I remember our translator in Japan using many sentences to translate our now monosyllabic answers. She knew them off by heart. We weren’t really necessary any more but at least we could snuggle.

  And all the while there were endless ghostly hotel corridors. Dragging your wheelie bag through the fire-doors and down the steps, bump bump bump, and round the sudden turns, keeping your bleary-from-the-tour-bus eyes peeled, while adjusting to this morgue’s death light. And your wits about you, too, because 186 just may be on the second floor. Like hurdles on the obstacle course to your all-brown bedroom (after a night on the town there’s nothing like a night in the brown … your home from home …) to find your key doesn’t work (you’re disqualified! Back to the beginning). Hotel elevators stood still on ground floors. Couldn’t seem to muster the energy between us to press a floor number. Confusion over strangers that seemed to ghost us. Butlers in Kuala Lumpur. Bodyguards in Johannesburg. Notes from insomnia slipped under Tokyo hotel doors. Roppongi prince seeks likeminded walking dead for lobby-haunting and wall-climbing. Here’s Johnny!

  (© Hayley Madden/Shutterstock)

  Oh if only we could’ve written the H word, then we wouldn’t have to sell it door to door.

  However. Now I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. I’ll come back to that later.

  But there were countries that adopted Forgiven, Not Forgotten, and us indeed, like we were their own. Spain, France and Australia. The latter interests me, now that I’m watching from the moon, and see a younger Gerry and Jean, strongly considering emigrating there. I am time travelling to a Christmas present. Two first-class tickets to tour with us in January. Cairns, Sydney, Melbourne. People queued up at an exploding in-store signing, to get their autographs.

  Ouch now.

  I am so grateful that we did that.

  The UK, our next-door neighbour, eluded us though. Searching for our CD in the record stores only to find one (here it is!), cobwebbed and crying ‘Mama’ in the folk section. Obscure radio stations like hidden cavernous underworlds, which had you questioning whether you had indeed died in the ‘Manager sole survivor’ crash that John darkly joked about. But we were in the nowhere between Nirvana and Britney Spears.

  And, it must be said, this was another time of terror. A time in which English buses were blown up by the Irish. Understandably, we were not so popular.

  Oh, and then there was that radio gig when despair and resignation (the first and only time I’d ever heard John admit there was a chance we wouldn’t make it till our second record) led to tears streaming down faces, please stop, painful, ab-inducing laughter.

  Our record company had organised a radio showcase in London, enticing guests there with bottomless free drinks. It must be thirsty work being jaded, because it was a nightmare. Literally. Crazed angry drunks, like the cast of the ‘Thriller’ video, yelling through our set. We couldn’t get off fast enough. We made it to our dressing rooms with ‘never again’s and ‘that’s it’s, only for Sharon to arrive in last with ‘Someone just puked on me!’

  We had an inkling, then, that they didn’t quite like us, but I was yet to be convinced. We were in the van ready to leave and I saw a skinhead woman and her boyfriend making their way towards us and I recognised them from the gig.

  ‘Oh look … fans!’ I said, rolling down the window and turning up the volume on their contorted faces.

  It wasn’t something a fan would say.

  We skidded off to their Doc Martens kicking the van.

  Time for the hardest record of all now. Number two. We go from nothing to lose, everything to win, to get it wrong and it’s all over. Follow-up. Or down, as the case may be. It was so much pressure, as Forgiven, Not Forgotten had done enough to show our record company that we could be extremely lucrative. And people, and critics in particular, are forgiving (pardon the pun) on your first, but now the sound of knives being sharpened rang like a constant tinnitus in our communal Jean-pooled head.

  Also, when can we write, while dizzy and spinning?

  I am going to have to face the H word now, as this was the first time it was to rear its tiny big head. And once it did, I must add, it remained up there. It is here right now, in fact. Taunting and teasing: ‘Nananananaaa’. Like it is something you are so close to reaching, but never quite can. There were guitars and keyboards brought to hotel bedrooms and songs beginning, but apparently a ‘hit’ (there, I said it) wasn’t something we could write alone. So the writing sessions in California began. Pairing each of us off with different, tried-and-tested ‘hitmakers’. Jim rebelled and continued in his bedroom.

  I felt like I was made of veins in those days. With coffee for blood. It was unrelenting.

  But there are songs that we all love now and that we would never have written alone. Relationships made and experiences had that we would never be without. Oliver Leiber, ‘Only When I Sleep’. Glen Ballard, ‘Queen of Hollywood’. Personally, I feel I became a lyricist then, albeit a quirky one. And there were days that the words came, like I was transcribing something that had always been. Like I was back on the bumping chair. Listening and writing into Mum’s red lyric book again.

  And at the end, home at last, where we never were any more, just as John had prophesied, only to hear it wasn’t enough. It still wasn’t there, but was back in LA, singing, ‘You can’t catch me!’

  Finally we had it, a mix of self-penned songs and collaborations. So now to a listening session for Atlantic’s über-important head of radio.

  And the most holy of the insured ears are on …

  The Queen of Hollywood.

  She walked out.

  And then there were full-on shouting matches between John and the company heads.

  ‘THIS [fill in a raging expletive here] RECORD IS NOT COMING OUT!!!’

  ‘“So Young” [a song Sharon had written in her hotel bedroom] IS NOT GOING ON THE RECORD THAT IS NOT COMING OUT!!!’

  John knew we couldn’t take it. We were, all of us, broken. We wouldn’t survive it as a band.

  He overruled. We flew to London. He walked into Warner on Baker Street and found us a champion. Andy Murray – not a tennis-playing champion, but a till-the-bitter-end, how-else-could
-we-sweeten-this-life, music lover.

  ‘Queen of Hollywood’

  She drove a long way through the night

  From an urban neighbourhood

  She left her mother with a fight

  For a dream misunderstood

  And her friends they talk on corners

  They could never comprehend

  But there was always something different

  In the way she held a stare

  And the pictures that she painted

  Were of glamour and of flair

  And her boyfriend though he loved her

  Knew he couldn’t quite fulfil

  He could never meet her there

  She’s never gonna be like the one before

  She read it in her stars that there’s something more

  No matter what it takes, no matter how she breaks

  She’ll be the Queen of Hollywood

  And the cynics they will wonder

  What’s the difference with this dream

  And the dreams of countless others

  All believing in TV

  They see their handprints in a sidewalk

  Flashing cameras on the scene

  And a shining limousine

  She’s never gonna be like the one before

  She read it in her stars that there’s something more

  No matter what it takes, no matter how she breaks

  She’ll be the Queen of Hollywood

  She is believing in a dream

  It’s a loaded fantasy

  Now her mother collects cutouts

  And the pictures make her smile

  But if she saw behind the curtain

  It could only make her cry

  She’s got handprints on her body

  Sad moonbeams in her eyes

  Not so innocent a child …