Mar 06 2008
An Irish Variant On The Stairway-Free Zone
Being a guitar player, I have visited many guitar stores through the years. Once I even made a longish side trip on a drive to Florida to stop at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville. I'm still alive, a testament to my wife's patience. In a fair number of those stores, there is (or was) a sign declaring the store to be a Stairway to Heaven free zone. Why? Because after hearing thousands of budding rock stars fumble through the opening to that tune, most guitar store employees had heard it butchered enough. Well, there is an Irish variant of that. One bar in the US is declaring a Danny Boy free zone for St. Patrick's Day.
"It's overplayed, it's been ranked among the 25 most depressing songs of all time, and it's more appropriate for a funeral than for a St. Patrick's Day celebration," says Shaun Clancy, who owns Foley's Pub and Restaurant, just off Fifth Avenue opposite the Empire State Building.
The 38-year-old, who started bartending when he was 12 at his father's pub in County Cavan, promises a guest free Guinness if he or she sings any other traditional Irish song at the pub's March 11 pre-St. Patrick's Day karaoke party. On other nights, guests will be rewarded with a surprise.Not everyone agrees.
Foley's is going head to head with a pub near Detroit — AJ's Cafe in Ferndale, Mich. — which is staging a "Danny Boy" marathon on St. Patrick's Day weekend, offering 1,000 renditions of the song over 50 hours.
Funniest thing about Danny Boy? It was written by an Englishman who never visited Ireland at all.
The lyrics for the song published in 1913 were written by an English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly, who never even visited Ireland, according to Malachy McCourt, author of the book "Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad." Weatherly's sister-in-law had sent him the music to an old Irish song called "The Derry Air" and the new version became a huge hit when opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink recorded it in 1915.
Well, we'd like to propose a substitute song. While it may not be any better or more uplifting than Danny Boy, it has a certain demented charm. Heck, what could be more fitting on St. Patrick's Day than Another Irish Drinking Song?





