Pól Brennan of Clannad spoke to David Hennessy about the band’s new album celebrating 40 years since Robin of Sherwood, their forthcoming show at Royal Albert Hall and why after 54+ years this will be their final curtain call.
Clannad this week release Legend Extended, a special 40th anniversary addition of the classic soundtrack to the acclaimed 80s series Robin of Sherwood.
The renowned and revered Donegal band will also play London’s Royal Albert Hall next week on 30 October.
This will be their final ever show.
Clannad’s 2020 world tour was their Farewell. Interrupted by COVID, the band and family would sadly have to say goodbye to one of its members Noel Duggan before they completed the tour only last year. Now this is really the end.
They announced to their followers recently that they will make their final curtain call in the iconic venue in London celebrating a project they are well known for and that means a lot to them. They also thanked their fans for the support over the last 50+ years.
The soundtrack to the show based on the legend of Robin Hood cemented Clannad’s reputation as bespoke writers of music for film and television.
Released in 1984, the soundtrack remained on the UK charts for the best part of a year. It garnered the group a BAFTA for Best Original Television Music.
In addition to the original remastered album, the anniversary edition also features 11 bonus tracks, which were thought lost for over decade by Clannad’s Pól Brennan until, with the help of BMG, they were located in an ITV archive vault. These tracks have been mastered and produced by Pól.
Clannad are one of the most influential Irish groups of the past five decades.
They have enjoyed multi-platinum success on both sides of the Atlantic and been honoured with Ivor Novello Awards and Grammys as well as the aforementioned BAFTA.
Clannad was formed in 1970 by siblings Moya, Ciarán and Pól Brennan and their uncles Noel and Pádraig Duggan (who sadly passed away in 2022 and 2016 respectively), and for a short time later became a six-piece with the addition of Enya Brennan who then went on to have her own successful solo career.
The band would go from Leo’s Tavern to touring Europe and it was then, on the road in Germany, that they decided to make a real go of it.
The multi-award winning band have taken Irish music and the Irish language to a worldwide audience.
In 1982 Clannad reached wider recognition when they recorded Theme From Harry’s Game for a powerful three-part TV drama depicting the troubles in Northern Ireland. The song became a commercial success upon its release as a single, peaking at number 2 in Ireland and number 5 in the UK, winning an Ivor Novello award and later being used in the movie Patriot Games. It remains the only UK hit single to be sung entirely in Irish.
As mentioned already Pádraig and Noel have passed away but the three Brennans remain and will mark the 40th anniversary of Legend with a new release and a celebration concert, that will also be their final bow, at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Pól Brennan told The Irish World: “This is our final show.
“This is our farewell as a band.
“We announced it on Friday.
“We had a chat, and this is it.
“It is emotional.
“But everything has to come to an end at some point.
“I think there could be nothing better than going out in an iconic building with the project Robin of Sherwood.
“It feels right to us.
“It was a very pivotal moment in our development as a band.
“It was fantastic to be involved in it.
“It was great that 40 years all coincided with this.”
It will be emotional and poignant, won’t it?
“It will (be emotional), it’s going to be a great show.
“We’re going to be joined by some of the actors, it’s going to be a very special.
“And it being the final show as well brings an extra narrative into it, it brings an extra emotional kind of importance into it.”
Clannad are synonymous with things such as Robin of Sherwood and Harry’s Game so did it feel right to go out with something like this..
“It did.
“As I said, the farewell tour was exactly that. It was announced as the farewell tour.
“There will be no more tours from Clannad.
“That’s not ever going to happen so it was just down to then, what to do?
“We were looking at putting on something in Donegal but the logistics just didn’t work out this year and then just looking at this iconic project that we were involved in: It was a top 10 album, it was a BAFTA-winning, it was an amazing show.
“It also developed us as musicians, doing film music.
“It all felt like this is a good time to say goodbye.
“It’s not something we’ll be going back on.”
Robin of Sherwood obviously followed on from Harry’s Game.
Harry’s Game did huge things for you, didn’t it?
“Harry’s Game was the door opener.
“That was huge.
“It was the moment that we went from being sort of a folk indie band to being a million seller.
“We went straight into millions of homes with that song in Gaelic.
“You couldn’t have written the script for that and then we followed up, as you say, with the BAFTA-winning Robin of Sherwood which is no mean feat.
“I mean taking on the responsibility to do the film music for the series, I wasn’t sure about it at the beginning but when I saw the intention of the directors and the producers to go down the mystical, mythical route with Robin and with Herne, it was a great fit for us in the end.”
The new album comes with tracks you thought were lost for many years, what was it like to rediscover those tracks you thought had been lost forever?
“There had been a fire in Windmill Lane and we believed that’s where they were lost and no copies had been sent on.
“When I sat down with BMG two years ago, we were sort of looking at something after the farewell tour.
“We started a looking again and lo and behold, sometime at the end of last year when I was in the States, I got a call from BMG in London saying they thought they’d found the tapes in the HTV archives.
“And then I started getting stuff down and I realised very, very quickly that we had the makings of an album here.
“Bringing the music back and all that was brilliant because it was the time of all those old synths: The Jupiter 8 and the Prophet and the Synclavia.
“It was analogue coming into digital and it was exciting to be working with this and the sound of those instruments still resonate so amazingly on the project and I was very pleased about that.
“I mean, it was a voyage of discovery.
“It took a while and then we did augment a little bit when we went in, not much.”
Speaking of the Robin of Sherwood project, I remember you saying before about how powerful it was for people especially in Eastern Europe around the time the Berlin Wall fell. Being one of the shows they could get, it became the show and sound of their freedom..
“It was phenomenal, and it still is.
“In Estonia and all those countries there in Eastern Europe, there was such a resonance.”
It just shows the power of music, doesn’t it? That’s far from, I imagine, anything you thought when creating it but it shows that once you put something out there, you don’t know what power it can have..
“I agree, music is so healing. It’s so powerful.
“I do dip in and out of our fans’ comments and they’re so generous.
“It’s very humbling to read some of these people’s stories and what they send on to us.
“You can’t answer (them all), it’s thousands and thousands.
“It’s just humbling to read their journey with us. That’s why it felt so important.
“Harry’s Game was like the door opener and let’s say Macalla with Bono was the bigger pop, it was the opening of the rock and pop side of stuff.
“But all our music wasn’t the hit parade, wasn’t the pop chart.
“So it felt so good to say goodbye on this note, with this project.”
Speaking of Harry’s Game and the doors it opened, it brought you onto Top of the Pops singing a song in Irish at a time when the IRA’s bombing campaign was creating ill feeling towards the Irish community, did it feel like the history that it was at the time? Did it have an air of breaking ground in that sense?
“Oh yeah, we knew that it was groundbreaking.
“We’d recorded three or four albums before that but Top of the Pops and selling millions and just having that exposure, it felt very special.
“We were definitely aware of the significance of it and it being attached to the programme that it was.
“It’s funny because we were up in Belfast for BBC recently.
“They had the three of us singing Harry’s Game with an orchestra and who did the introduction but Derek Thompson, who was Billy, in the actual series.
“It was amazing, hadn’t seen him in so long and it was very appropriate too.
“It’s been extraordinary times.”
As just mentioned it was a difficult time for the Irish in the UK..
“It was a hard time because we were still in London when there were bombs going on in the UK. And anybody Irish in the UK, you weren’t smiled upon.
“There was a war going on in the north of Ireland.
“It was a fricking war and it was tough going.
“And because we were from Donegal, we knew a lot of people from both sides of the community who lost their lives.
“The show was groundbreaking at that time, it was the most hard edged programme dealing with it and bringing it to everybody in the UK.
“It was a huge programme watched by millions of people on both islands.”
Clannad began in 1970 or perhaps even earlier. As it comes to a close now, I bet you could not have foreseen all the places it would take you to when you kick started it first..
“Not at all, I was still at college.
“We were like a summer band playing in my dad’s bar in Donegal.
“We were just mad for music, and then we won a competition, and then did the first record in ‘73.
“I was still at college.
“We just took a gamble and it worked.
“We went off on a tour of Germany, I think was ’74 and the Germans loved it.
“We decided, there and then, that this might be worth a crack, it might be worth spending a year or two seeing if there was anything in it.
“And here we are.
“It was just the passion for the music that had us getting together for various gigs.
“There was no livelihood in it then but on the back of that German tour which we were gifted once somebody heard the record, we took that decision, and we said, ‘Look, let’s see’. “And then off we went.”
And then everything else followed.
We have mentioned the BAFTAs and other huge awards. Is there any particular thing you’re most proud of?
“I think it’s all of it, when you put the whole thing together.
“We always moved on.
“We experimented after Harry’s Game.
“It was a calculated risk to do Robin because what was enormously successful could have easily gone the other way.
“You never can be sure of anything and certainly when you’re in the arts and in music, you’re taking a risk all the time.
“Then we had the Macalla album and we were joined by Bono and we went on following that to Sirius and we had Steve Perry of Journey, Bruce Hornsby, the list goes on.”
It must have been a magical time as well when you rejoined the band after leaving for some years. Again because you’re family also.
“Yeah, I remember I came back.
“We did a Christchurch thing and the gigs were completely sold out.
“I remember that felt so great.
“That was the hook for me to come back in.
“And then the following year, we kind of made a plan to do the first world tour.
“And then we lost Padraig, of course, and it kind of changed everything.”
You lost Padraig in 2016 and more recently Noel in 2022. This upcoming Royal Albert Hall show, the final one, will be emotional for thinking of them, won’t it?
“Yeah, that will be the emotional thing when we’re on stage for the final time, it will be sending all our love to all of them: My dad, who is so much part of it as well, passed on and my grandfather as well who would have been so invested in us very early.
“The early ‘70s he just was such an empowerer and loved and kind of funded stuff for us when we were at school because he was a creative as well as a teacher, so we’ll be remembering lots of people.”
We spoke about the Irish language before. I’m sure you have seen the recent resurgence with it but it was different when you were singing in Irish, people (labels etc) would really have preferred you didn’t..
“It was not en vogue at all.
“We couldn’t get arrested.
“I mean it was definitely more in Europe that it was a factor in our career.
“Certainly in Ireland, there was no appetite at all for it.
“I remember my dad drove us up to Dublin for an audition.
“They turned us down because we didn’t have enough material in English.
“It wasn’t easy but it was just a natural path for us.
“It was the way forward.
“There was no deviation from that path, it was just the way.”
More than that, wasn’t it not just that there was no deviation but the more you were encouraged not to do it, the more determined you were?
“Yeah, there probably was a bit of that.
“We would have loved to have had more support way back then.
“Now, as you say, there is definitely a huge love for it and it’s fantastic to see it.
“I love the fact that there is so much focus and young people and vibrancy in the language and the culture and music in general, and we would have loved more of it but that’s how it is. I don’t resent it or anything like that.”
We have mentioned the farewell tour of 2020 a few times. Of course it got interrupted by COVID. Was it a scary time?
“It wasn’t because we were learning, as everybody was, about COVID.
“We started it March 2020.
“We got as far as Bournemouth on our way to the Palladium for our sold out show and we were in the production office waiting for Boris Johnson to say something. He came on and said nothing but everyone’s phone started going that all the theatres in the UK had shut down that night.
“It was funny. We thought we’d be back out in a month or two, like everybody.
“We didn’t know what it was.”
That was the farewell tour and now this really is goodbye, will you miss it?
“Of course, we’ll miss it.
“Moya and Ciarán and I made this decision and we talked after the announcement, all three of us were extremely emotional about it.
“But it feels good.
“There’ll be no regrets.
“It’s going to be a right auld hoolie.
“Obviously Legend is the priority there and the focus of the show will be on Legend but we’ll go back in and play some of our favourites at the end.”
Legend Extended – 40th Anniversary Edition is out on CD and LP on Friday 25 October.
Clannad play their final ever show at Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 30 October.
For more information, click here.
