Rob Strong spoke to David Hennessy ahead of his forthcoming show at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.
Rob Strong brings his band to the Irish Cultural Centre this week.
The Derry native is celebrating an amazing 60 years on the road and is one of the very few musicians still performing since the Showband years.
Many greats of Irish music have paid tribute to Rob over the years.
Phil Coulter said: “When I think of Rob Strong I think of a big voice doing Bluesy stuff with a raw edge. Rob Strong has a big engine and a great vocal range
Colm Wilkinson said of him: “Rob Strong is incredibly talented. In my opinion he is the best Blues or Soul singer to ever come out of Ireland. His innate gift is his voice and his timing is incredible.”
Mary Coughlan added: “I think Rob Strong is an incredible singer, an amazing talent. I just don’t understand how he hasn’t become much bigger worldwide!”
Fr Brian D’Arcy said: “I always regarded Rob Strong as the best pop singer in the country. He has an incredible voice. He can sing anything from Tom Jones to The Four Tops. He interprets each song in an amazing unique manner.”
This show will mark a return to London for Rob who has not played the UK in many years.
Rob Strong, 78, told The Irish World: “I’m certainly looking forward to coming over. I’d go anywhere to do a gig.
“I haven’t been in London in a long, long time now, since the early 70s.
“I haven’t done it since since I was with The Plattermen.
“I remember playing the Bull Ring in Birmingham and this was the days we all had long hair, beards, all that casual gear and all that.
“We did the gig there and we only did about three songs and had to get off the stage.
“We weren’t Irish enough.”
Is there any reason why it has been so long? “To tell you the truth, it just never happened.
“I was just playing around Ireland all the time.
“I used to go to Germany quite a bit and I recorded a couple of albums out there.
“Then I used to go to Denmark a lot and work with the Danish musicians there but just playing all around Ireland, north and south.
“I’d go to the ends of the earth to do a gig.
“All I know is music, music, music, and I love music.
“I’m in good health and I can get up on the stage and play away for about two hours, no problem so I’m good that way. I’m just not good at anything else.
“I’ve been teaching too.
“The head principal of the prison system used to come to my gigs and he says to me, ‘What do you do during the day?’
“I said, ‘I really don’t do anything much’.
“And he said, ‘Would you fancy coming and teaching the boys in prison?’
“That was a new adventure for me.
“I could write a book on that, you know what I mean?
“That was a new experience but I learned from that as well.”
You’ve been playing for 60 years, as I have said, so that is all of your adult life. Did you ever think of doing anything else?
“Not really.
“I come from a big family, there’s 10 of us and I come from a very working class family.
“My mother and father never had much.
“I mean, I kind of drifted into music.
“I never thought, ‘I’ll do music’.
“My mother had no money to send me to college or go to learn a trade.
“I was born and reared in Springtown, Co. Derry.
“The Americans had a base there that was used during the Second World War.
“All the Catholics were put there, we were the only Protestant family in the whole place.
“That didn’t mean anything to me.
“All my friends were Catholic.
“But they were dangerous times.
“I started to kind of learn how to play the guitar and as time went on, I started to play in little bands here and I played in a couple of ceili bands up in Donegal.
“Then I got into the show band scene.
“I got into Omagh and I played with Brian Coll and The Polka Dots.
“Then I joined The Plattermen. They were an Omagh based band as well.”
Rob would take over from a departed singer who did Mustang Sally and other soul hits of the day.
“Of course, I was slotted into his position.
“The Polka Dots were singing the kind of cheesy songs, Cliff Richard songs, etc.
“Then all of a sudden, these boys wanted somebody to sing all this Four Tops and Otis Redding stuff, Mustang Sally and Midnight Hour, Wilson Pickett stuff, and all that stuff at that time was very, very hard to sing.
“But as the years went by, I was singing all that kind of music so I learned how to sing that style of music.
“From that day onwards, that’s what I was doing.
“I was singing blues stuff.
“I got out of the showband stuff.
“So when I left The Plattermen then I got into that four piece, five piece band and doing kind of rock music, bluesy stuff with a band called The Rockets, a Dublin band.
“Then I was playing all around the south.
“The south of Ireland that time was very good.
“The music scene was fantastic down south compared to the north with all the troubles.
“Southern bands weren’t going up the north because of it was dangerous.
“God forbid what happened to the Miami Showband.
“I used to go up occasionally, take a chance and go up but the southern fellas in the band were very uneasy about going up and crossing that border.
“There’s no troubles now, there’s no bother now.
“We can go into Catholic areas.
“Everybody thinks I’m a Catholic and I’m not a Catholic but my wife is Catholic.
“My parents weren’t too happy about that.
“That didn’t go too well with my family.
“When you’re a musician, it’s a different type of thing.
“You’re open to the world. You learn more and obviously by going to different towns and different countries.
“Southern Ireland, I was just amazed: Everybody’s in the pub, everybody’s drinking. There was a fantastic atmosphere down the south of Ireland.
“You can’t beat the Dublin sense of humour.
“Just southern people in general, they were just so friendly.
“When you crossed that border, everybody wanted to know what religion you are.
“I’ve no bad memories about things, it’s just
at that time, it was quite dangerous. You were taking the chance really crossing the border.”
Did you think you would still be playing music 60 years later?
“It was just I was so passionate about music.
“I just love the music so much and I’m healthy enough so I just keep on doing what I do because, as I said before at the start of this interview, I’m not very good at anything else.
“It’s quiet at the minute since the COVID came along as well.
“That’s really hammered an awful lot, especially musicians. Most musicians are not tradesmen.
“Any professional musicians like myself who are at it full time, you’ll find they’re not qualified to do anything else.
“I’m one of those.
“It has been a quiet time in Ireland for music with the COVID, there’s no doubt about it.
“It’s very, very quiet and it’ll never come back now to the way it was before.
“There are a lot of festivals that never came back.
“If I get about six gigs a month, I’d be happy enough with that but there’s an awful lot of bands not working.”
In my research I came across a video of you playing on television with Colm Wilkinson long before he came known for Les Miserables.
“Me and Colm Wilkinson did a duet on RTE.
“I know Colm Wilkinson a long, long time.
“I used to go into pubs down in Dublin and I went into this one that looks over the canal.
“I heard this fella sing and I said, ‘Jesus, who is this guy?’
“And it was Colm Wilkinson.
“I couldn’t believe it.
“This guy was doing all the bluesy stuff.
“I’ve never heard anything like him to this very day.
“But I couldn’t believe when I heard this man at that time, that would have been maybe ‘73 or ’72.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I said myself, ‘Jesus. Where did this guy come from?’
“I got to know him and, of course, we did a wee stint on the Joe Cuddy show.
“But he went off to England anyway and he auditioned for the part and he just went huge in America so he done extremely well.
“It really kicked off for him.
“He was on every television show in America, every prime TV show then.
“He’s come home.
“I talked to him not too long ago.
“He’s talking about, ‘If I got out doing a bit of a tour now around Ireland, Rob, would you come along and sort a band out?’ More or less put a band around him, that type of thing.
“I said to him, ‘No problem. No problem at all’.
“He was one of the greatest singers that ever came out of this country doing what he’s doing.
“There’s loads of other people, there’s Phil Lynott. He was just unbelievable and he was so down to earth, there was no big deal about him at all.
“If he seen you, he would come over. Just a Dublin man to the core.
“There are so many of them, the talent in this country is unbelievable.”
The music has clearly gone to the next generation as Rob’s son Andrew who got his start early playing Deco in The Commitments has had a successful career touring internationally.
“I did a tour with The Commitments.
“Andrew was off in America making an album so they asked me to come along and sing Andrew’s songs.
“It was a 20 date tour around England, Scotland and Wales.
“It was a complete sell out.
“I could hear a few voices saying, ‘That Andrew Strong fella hasn’t aged too well’!
“It was a phenomenal film.”
Rob tells the story of how his son ended up in one of the best known Irish films of all time.
“He was about 17 and he had a little school band.
“He used to do support to us and I’d get him doing sound on the desk, and then I’d bring him up and sing maybe one or two songs.
“They were auditioning for The Commitments so they were asking me, Is there anybody that I’d know?
“I said, ‘I really don’t know anybody that sings that kind of music’.
“I was the only one in the country that was singing like that and I was a touch too old for the part.
“I said to him, ‘Would you fancy going in and auditioning?’
“That was the part they couldn’t fill.
“They had everybody else sorted.
“To cut a long story short, he went in and that was it.
“He got the part.
“He was only 17.
“He was touring all over America.
“He’s 50 years of age now.”
This upcoming show will be your first in the UK for many years but would return again and not leave it so long?
“If you just put a tour together for me, I’ll be there.
“I love getting away and I love going to different countries.”
Rob Strong plays The Irish Cultural Centre on Friday 29 November.
For tickets and more information, click here.
For more information about Rob, click here.
