SOUL SURMISE

JULIAN LENNON - LIFE'S FRAGILE MOMENTS

I love Julian Lennon. I came to his music later. I really enjoyed Jude. 

I like him as a dude as much as anything. When I am following him on social media he seems genuinely like the guy next door. He seems unaffected. As they say, he doesn’t know that we are mates but he is certainly mine.

I love it too that when the music became onerous because of the legacy, he had photography. No one should be surprised as a fitting in visual arts. His mother, as well as father, was at Art School. 

With no likelihood of an Exhibition in Belfast I will have to settle with the large coffee table tome that is Life’s Fragile Moments.

I love delving into it. As well as the art of his photographs I love what he is pointing his camera at. 

I love the sea and the beach, wondrous landscapes, portraits of the ordinary and the famous. U2 even get a page or two. Breaking the sections with huge colourscapes has had me pointing my iPhone into the very centre of sunsets!

Best of all is the travelogue. He’s been about this boy. I am taken, of course, by the crosses in Corsica. An African school and his White Feather Foundations work in them has me back in Uganda. I have taken some of these photos, a thousand miles away and not as well, but the same child, window, chair and playground. 

Very best one. It has to be the one in Cuba where the children are kicking a football, the wee boy’s technique perfectly captured. But it isn’t lost on me that they kick against a wall where a woman is lying looking up just like his dad on Mind Games. 

Black and white or colour.. vast horizon or close in… city or rural… sea or sky… poverty or decadence… this is a whole world through the lens of a travelling soul, seeking beauty and connection in life’s fragile moments. So well captured. 

CONCERTS IN FITZROY - APRIL - SEPT 2025

BRIANA CORRIGAN

The wonderful voice. 10 years since she last toured. Former voice of Beautiful South.

Saturday April 26, 2025 @ 7.30-10

TICKETS HERE

 

 

A CASE OF YOU; THE SONGS OF JONI MITCHELL

An intimate acoustic Retrospective of the music of Joni Mitchell

by Suzanne Savage,  Johnny Taylor, Rod Patterson and Aenghus Hackett

Thursday May 22, 2025 @7.30-9.30

TICKETS

 

 

BLUE ROSE CODE

‘A set of almost religious intensity and sincerity. Wilson makes widescreen soul in the spirit of Van Morrison' The Times

"My favourite songwriter right now" - Steve Stockman

Saturday September 20, 2025 @ 7.30-10

TICKETS HERE

 

These concerts are under the promotion of Capital Music and Fitzroy is merely delighted to be the venue...

 

YVONNE LYON & BOO HEWERDINE - THINGS FOUND IN BOOKS

It might have been the very same Greenbelt. I was thrilled that I, at that time music booker, had booked Boo Hewerdine. I was an early fan of The Bible (the group not the book) and followed on following Hewerdine when they broke up. Here he was at Greenbelt and I had no rider. I got enough to buy him a fish supper and a can of coke. And of course he was brilliant.

Yvonne Lyon approached me outside a tent. She said she was a singer and could she play the late night show that I hosted. Well, I wanted to be welcoming but she might be crap. Yes, I said, and gave her the last song of the night, when least campers might be there and least damage might be caused. She was of course fabulous. It was the last year that she was last on my show!

Here, twenty years later they are both making a record together. 

And a fascinating record it is. It is not about stories that Yvonne and Boo read in books. It is much more intriguing than that. 

It seems that in a second hand book shop at Culzean Castle, in Ayrshire, they had a notice board with all the wee notes, postcards and photos and whatever that were found in the second hand books that were donated. Seeing this, Yvonne thought what a great idea, not for a song, but for a set of songs. She mentions it to Boo and he was up for it.

I love the originality, the imagination. I love records that have a single focus and specific purpose, that looser concept than some prog rock opera. 

There is even a physical book with this one, beautifully curated photographs of the things found in the Culzean second hand bookshop that inspired the songs. It adds weight to the artiness of it all.

Some songs seem to have simple lyrics. Yet, across them all, they are clever in words and rhyme and full of the intrigue of books rather than records. There is an array of fictional characters and Paul McCartney, Salvador Dali and King George V, who we know. Wonder, love, heart ache and grief are all effortlessly dealt with. 

Musically, there is just enough music to allow the flowing dress of the lyrics a swoosh and sway - Pete Harvey’s evocative cello, David Lyon’s accordion and Gustaf Ljunggrenun a one man orchestra, though here the brass or strings are carefully used one at a time.

Above this the voices of Lyon and Hewerdine, alone and in harmony. All that made me love them that Greenbelt nearly 30 years ago. Oh, Elton and Brandi will be getting the hype and the number 1 but here’s a duo I want to hear collaborate again. 

A sweet sweet surprise.  

MIKE CAMPBELL - HEARTBREAKER

Mike Campbell has written a rock music memoir full of grace, humility and gratitude.

Near the end of a well written, most enjoyable and gripping read, Mike Campbell describes his feelings around the time of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ final studio record Hypnotic:

There were moments then here I could see it all so clearly. I could close my eyes and see the whole epic story of the band, from struggling to make to all the way to the present. It almost seemed like a myth, like an ancient adventure pulling us all in its wake.

Heartbreaker tells us that epic story. About a young poor boy in Gainesville Florida who made it to the top of the world. From a freezing hut in the countryside of Florida to a beautiful house with a recording studio and animals in the garden, in the heart of LA. Mike Campbell tells rags to riches a Holywood story.

The engine of this story is the young boy’s genius. He can play guitar. However, this boy needed his friend to front the story, to drag him across the world. The Tom Petty in Heartbreaker is a complex kid to steal one of their titles. He’s full of warmth, humour and goodness but also selfish drive, totally focused commitment and a little arrogance.

Campbell’s grace made him a loyal friend to a front man who didn’t always treat him well. Whatever Petty threw at his band mates and however the rest reacted Campbell stayed true. He had a natural inferiority complex which comes across as humility and he stayed ever grateful to the life that he got to live as guitar player with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

“To me, being grateful was the key to everything. It was what made it possible for me to get through the hardest times in the band. Simple gratitude. Simple thanks for the blessings I had been given. For the life. For the music. For the crew. For the fans.”

Campbell tells the story of the band’s rise with great detail. The way songs came together, how producer Jimmy Iovine worked, how tours went, the management and legal complications and the drug addictions. Closer and more devoted than Petty is, his wife Marcie who has done the entire journey by his side.

Underneath the Petty tower, Campbell became a musician in his own right. Working up tape after tape of song ideas for Petty, a few taken and many discarded he gave one to the Eagles’, Don Henley, and had a massive hit with Boys Of Summer. It all ended with him starting his own band The Dirty Knobs and becoming a guitar player for Fleetwood Mac.

In between, Mike Campbell from Gainesville met and played with all the greatest musicians ever. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers became Bob Dylan’s band for a couple of years and this is perhaps the best writing on the inside track of that relationship. Then there is George Harrison and Jeff Lynne who became part of the family including The Travelling Wilburys. Johnny Cash, Paul McCartney, Joe Strummer… and a beautiful story of how his mother opened the door to Mick Jagger.

You get that feel for the gratitude. Michael Campbell has lived the life and his early years were not pointing to anything like this. Petty putting the old Gainesville mates together in Mudcrutch, thirty years after they broke up is an amazing chapter in the Petty career, as though he’d learned grace from his guitar player.

In the last pages of the book we have to deal with Tom Petty’s death. I hated it coming towards me as I read. There is grief. Yet, Petty’s joy on the 40th Anniversary Tour is consolation. 

Afterwards we hear about how he tried to finally sing a Petty song during a Dirty Knobs’ gig and when he broke down during Southern Accents and the crowd sang it home. Better still is when they did do a Petty Tribute evening and reaching for his lifelong guitar techie Chinner for a guitar as he introduced the next song he looks up and it’s Tom’s wife Dana handing it to him. I burst into tears!

I have admired Mike Campbell since at least Damn The Torpedoes. I knew he was so important to Petty’s sound. I knew he was a great guitar player. When I reviewed the one Petty concert that I am so grateful that I experienced. My conclusion was all about Campbell. 

Something happening on that stage was meeting me in the very depth of my spiritual life. As Mike Campbell dug his fingers deep into the fret board of one of his plethora of guitars and eked out this sound that was loud, melodic and beautifully piercing my soul was raised to a higher plain, ecstatic at living this life and energised to live it more to the full.

I too am grateful. Thank you Mike Campbell for that moment and telling me yours and Tom Petty’s story.  Heartbreaker has a perfect balance between the objective stories of the industry and the subjective stories of love and friendship and heartbreak and grief. Beautifully written.

MY TRIBUTE TO POPE FRANCIS - 1936-2025

For Janice and I, Pope Francis was our Pope. The only one that we have had the pleasure to meet and the only one that we ever really wanted to. Janice and I are saddened by his death. We had a wonderful time meeting him and maybe hoped that there would be another chance.   

The strangeness of a Presbyterian minister being so fond of a Pope goes back to the night that the white smoke went up and he was announced as Pope. 

Us Presbyterians from Fitzroy were in Clonard Monastery doing The Gospel According To... Christy Moore. Strange indeed. It was one of the first ever 4 Corners Festival events. It had been postponed in January because of snow but the West Belfast Féile invited us to do it at a mini Spring Féile.

My phone was pinging with texts from Rome. Another Fitzer, Paul Clark, was there with UTV News. He was determined to get the news of a new Pope to Presbyterians first!!! So we could tell our Catholic friends! 

I am not sure how the timings worked but I do remember that we did indeed announce the new Pope. I think everyone was taken by him choosing the name Francis. Everyone loved Francis Of Assisi. May I Be A Channel Of Your Peace for goodness sake.

It was no surprise when one of his major encyclicals was Laudato si, an appeal for us all to consider the planet. Very Francis of Assisi.  Followed up with a film The Letter that we showed at 4 Corners Festival this was all widely discussed and hopefully acted upon. I remember being invited with Fr Martin to an evening at Queen’s with John Barry and Jonathan Hanson.

Watching his time as Pope, as I did from a distance, I was taken by Pope Francis. He seemed to be quite evangelical. I would later meet Austen Ivereigh who wrote books with the Pope and Austen’s first book about him was called The Reformer. 

It did seem like a Reformation when he went to all the synods of the world and asked the opinions of every Catholic. This is not Magisterium pontificating down but the hierarchy bending down and listening to the pew sitter. I wonder if we are doing that in our so called Reformed denominations?

I was asked, as a Presbyterian, to review his book (with Austen) Let Us Dream. I found it powerfully prophetic. On hyper, individualism, on care for the poor, on rigidity being the sing of a bad spirit, and the need to walk together.

Even more needing to be heard, for these days we are living was “I criticise the self-evidently fictitious idea that wealth must be allowed to roam unhindered in order to provide prosperity to all.” Instead he sees the secret of a better day “to put the economy at the service of the people to build peace and justice and defend mother earth.”  This is Biblical stuff. Jesus preached.

The chance to meet him was a thrill for Fr Martin, Janice and I when in celebrating 10 years of 4 Corners Festival we were invited to a private audience along with a bunch of students celebrating 50 years of the Catholic Chaplaincy at Queen’s University Belfast. Our hour with Pope Francis was unforgettable. His humility. His welcome. His passion for Jesus. His genuine interest in us. His willingness to engage with us. 

He was mentally very sharp at then 85 years of age. He opened the floor to questions that meant he was confident to answer quickly whatever came his way. I was immediately impressed.

When we got talking about relationships across denominational lines Pope Francis was warm in his respect for those of us who weren’t Catholic. He asked that we work together. He also suggested that we should send those who were divided over theology to an island to fight it out while we get on with IT.

That struck me. What was his IT? IT was not theology. Oh he was not dismissing theology. Of course not. He understood too that our theology was different. BUT it shouldn’t get in the way with getting on with IT.

I can only go by what else he shared with us in that library. His big but gentle preach that morning was that we would read the Gospels of Jesus so much that we would start to wear Jesus. “The soul is moved by witness”, he said. If that is IT, then I am in.

I was asked on to different radio programmes today. Before I went on I wanted to capture Pope Francis in a few words, so that I'd have something when I didn't know what the next question was. It was easy to trot them out.

He was welcoming. He welcomed us warmly into his private library.

He was committed. I found it beautiful that the day before he passed, he was working on resurrection Sunday. People have said that they felt sorry that they made him work when he was so frail. From meeting him I know that he would have wanted to be out there saying even just a few words. He walked across a room to the door and back to welcome us, on very painful knees.

He was humble. His humility seemed to not just be in words. He was a no frills Pope. No limousines or fancy shoes. There are so many stories of this and his posture in our presence was of deep humility. He always asked people to pray for him. He was the Pope for goodness sake.   

He was Jesus centred. I have had my fill of the theologically centred, the legalist centred and the denominationally centred. The only times I find authenticity of Christian faith is when I am with someone who exudes the Jesus who they are clearly mesmerised by and are attempting to stumble and tumble after. Pope Francis was one of those. 

My biggest regret in life was that the he asked me to pray for him, as we said goodbye in his private library, that I promised I would but didn't just put my hand on his shoulder and pray for him right there in the Vatican.

So, this Presbyterian Manse is heartbroken at the news the death of Pope Francis. Janice and I are so very grateful that we got to meet him and are so sorry that our daughter Jasmine will not get to meet him on her trip in July.