Episode 10
Room to Roam
by The Waterboys
“I had such a good time talking to Paul McDermott for this podcast about #TheWaterboys and #RoomToRoam and the ould days of wild and mischief in Ireland.”
Mike Scott
Episode 10 - Preview
Room to Roam (Ensign Records, 1990). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
Episode Notes
Episode ten of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited focuses on Room to Roam by The Waterboys.
While touring Fisherman’s Blues the four-piece Waterboys of Mike Scott, Steve Wickham, Anto Thistlethwaite and Trevor Hutchinson was augmented by Sharon Shannon, Colin Blakey and Noel Bridgeman and it was this seven-piece line-up – The Magnificent Seven as Noel Bridgeman named them – that recorded the fifth Waterboys album Room to Roam.
After touring throughout 1989, the band returned to Spiddal House in Galway, where the last sessions for Fisherman’s Blues had been finished, and over a period of four months in early 1990 recorded Room to Roam.
In this episode I chat to Mike Scott about The Magnificent Seven line-up of The Waterboys, post Fisherman’s Blues and up until the release of Room to Roam in October 1990. We chat about The Waterboys playing small towns throughout Ireland, recording Room to Roam in Spiddal House, the response of the UK music press to the album, The Waterboys post Room to Roam line-up. Mike also chats about putting The Magnificent Seven boxset together and the recording of his forthcoming album All Souls Hill (due for release in April 2022). Mike also pays tribute to drummer Noel Bridgeman who passed away in March 2021.
“The band have toured extensively from the bars of Kerry to sell out shows in New York and California” - advert from Music Week (06 October, 1990).
As I explain to Mike in the episode I had a real connection with Room to Roam not least because it was the first CD my brother purchased for his new CD player in October 1990. I hadn’t listened to the album in years and it was a huge pleasure going back and revisiting it for this episode - I remembered and loved ever second of it.
For this episode I also solicited recollections from two old friends, Jim O’Mahony and Pádraig Collins, who have vivid memories of witnessing The Magnificent Seven line-up of The Waterboys on that 1989 tour. Their contributions are reproduced below.
“On June 10, 1989 a few of us went to Mallow, we had no tickets, it was myself, Mark Healy, and Skoda drove. I can’t remember who else was there. It was absolutely spectacular, made all the more so because we weren’t expecting it to be – one of the three greatest gigs I’ve ever seen. The Virgin Prunes farewell gig in 1982 in McGonagles and the Bunnymen on the Ocean Rain tour in the SFX in 1984. But The Waterboys was something else - imagine witnessing Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue – it was like that but in Mallow of all places. It seemed a bizarre place for them to be playing but when they walked out on stage it just made complete sense, the place went crazy. They finished the main set with ‘And A Bang on the Ear’ and then launched into ‘This Land Is Your Land’ - a load of mandolins up on the Majestic Stage playing Guthrie – it was just absolutely amazing.”
Jim O’Mahony
Poster from Mike Scott on twitter @MickPuck.
“Monday, October 23, 1989 was a freezing cold night in Boston, but The Waterboys played the best show I'd ever seen them do.
Supposedly it never rains in southern California, but it was teeming rain in Los Angeles on Wednesday, November 8, 1989 when I saw The Waterboys play a show even better than Boston. I was astonished there were so many people calling out Irish county names. I thought me and my cousin Fr James Kavanagh were the only Irish people in LA. I roared out “Up Limerick”.
On Monday, December 18, 1989, I saw The Waterboys for the third time in exactly eight weeks - three concerts, three venues, two continents. Unlike LA, which is six thousand miles from my home village of Adare, Croom is six miles away. There was an electric party atmosphere. A girl who sent me a Valentine's card when I was 12 was one of the dancers brought on for one song. I'd never seen her dance before. The show was even better than Boston and LA.”
Pádraig Collins
Ticket stub from Simon Pope on Pinterest.
Tour posters - images from @MickPuck, adverts.ie and @MickPuck
For Further Reading/Listening:
“I know Mike saw Room To Roam as The Waterboys’ Sgt. Pepper’s,” says Dunford. “Anything was allowed. There were no rules.”
The above quote from John Dunford (The Waterboys sound man) that I put to Mike in the episode is taken from “Songs of the Land, the Sea and the Stars” Graeme Thomson’s great feature on the making of Room to Roam in Uncut magazine.
Uncut
Issue 295: December 2021
In the episode I mention that Allan Jones from the Melody Maker and Stuart Bailie from the NME reviewed the late 1988 Salthill, Galway gigs. The Melody Maker review is here, and the NME review is here. Both images scanned by @nothingelseon.
In the episode we chat about when Mike first met MCD’s Denis Desmond in 1986. The promoter said, “I'm not interested in your art, I only want to make money out of you”. Mike recounts this story in the chapter “The Ballrooms of Ireland” of The Magnificent Seven book. The chapter then goes into great detail on how The Waterboys and Desmond put together a tour of Ireland’s old ballrooms, community halls and other venues in 1989-90. The book is Mike’s 50,000 word account of the seven-piece Waterboys line-up that flourished from the spring of 1989
to the summer of 1990, it contains maps, lyrics, manuscripts, ephemera and other archival memorabilia.
Image taken from Mike Scott on twitter @MickPuck.
The three weekly UK “inkies” may have derided Room to Roam but Select magazine gave it a positive review (Select, October 1990). Image from selectmagazinescans.
The US industry trade magazines and radio tip-sheets were kinder to Room to Roam than their UK counterparts - (L-R) The Gavin Report (21 September, 1990), The Album Network (12 October, 1990) and The Gavin Report (21 September, 1990).
I admitted to Mike that I had run off numerous tapes from my brother’s CD copy of Room to Roam. Chrysalis’s own research showed that “only one per cent of the group’s fans actually own their album” and a huge advertising campaign was planned for The Waterboys “Best Of” album. Music Week (06 April, 1991)
The Waterboys
The Magnificent Seven - The Waterboys Fisherman's Blues/Room To Roam Band, 1989-90
Chrysalis Catalogue 2021
5CD + DVD + 240 page book
Featuring home demos, radio sessions, rough mixes, live tracks, rehearsal jams, unreleased studio tracks, and a remastered Room to Roam
McCormick’s Waltzer, Tramore, Co. Waterford. Image from Discogs.