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Heads
In 1972, Gerry Anderson was the bass guitarist with a band called 'Brown and O' Brien', a fairly dispirited bunch of musicians making a half-hearted stab at recapturing the glory and popularity previously enjoyed by showband singers Billy Brown and Mike O'Brien. That he and the other members of the band didn't much care one way or the other was indicative of a period when the decade-long wave of inexplicably popular showbands, which broke only in Ireland, was receding rapidly.
During the course of twenty-four hours spent with this odd collection of people, the author reflects on his general disillusionment with a certain degree of pride and a sense of accomplishment. He also reflects on his past life and the current downward trajectory of his career. He recalls incidents of which he is not proud, encounters with idiots, and offers solutions to important issues that need not have concerned him.
This memoir is not like the others.
During the course of twenty-four hours spent with this odd collection of people, the author reflects on his general disillusionment with a certain degree of pride and a sense of accomplishment. He also reflects on his past life and the current downward trajectory of his career. He recalls incidents of which he is not proud, encounters with idiots, and offers solutions to important issues that need not have concerned him.
This memoir is not like the others.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 21, 2023
A brutally honest account of life as a musician in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
March 21, 2015
Book Review
Heads – A Day in the Life by Gerry Anderson
Gill and MacMillan – ISBN 978-0-7171-4445-7
244 Pages
‘Heads – A day in the life’ tells the true life story of Gerry Anderson’s trials and tribulations playing Bass in the show-band ‘Brown and O’Brien’ in the days that sounded the death knell for the show-band tradition.
Anderson, now a well known broadcaster in Northern Ireland proves to be a genial host in a show business world, years before the X Factor and Simon Cowell’s high waistband started to dictate the course of popular culture.
The story looks at the mundanity of playing in tents with unsafe power, the young upstart bands who want no part of Anderson’s life, the increasingly smaller audiences, the egotistical singers, and the camaraderie that develops between musicians who are forced to share the same poor diets, cheap hotel rooms, and long hours of travelling in clapped out minibuses.
There is some glamour in the book. The episode where the band plays Canada, sees it as a big break, but they have only been hired to play Irish songs for a home-sick ex-pat audience, or the times when they are hired to play behind Ricky Valance, a one-hit wonder singer, with the ego to match. At the end of the novel though, Anderson finds himself in the position of being the bassist for Ronnie Hawkins, a singer famed for losing his band to Bob Dylan when the Song and Dance man decided to go electric.
Like another famous Irish author, James Joyce in Dubliners, Anderson relates the course of his storied career through the course of a day, with frequent flashbacks to his youth, his childhood in Ireland, learning guitar, and then bass, and the first ‘Heads’ (a term for Musicians) that he met through his older brother.
That Gerry Anderson did not take his musical adventure that seriously is apparent in the infectious sense of fun that runs through the course of much of this novel. Although there are some people in music that were there for the wrong reasons, this is very little cyncism on Anderson’s part, preferring instead to draw on the humanity within many of the people that he met throughout his time as a professional musician and player.
He talks of The Woodentops, the groupies that followed the Showbands around, or the fact that there were always competing bands in the same villages, and people went to the dances with the largest crowds, rather than the best music.
The fact that these bands played jukebox versions of popular songs, meant that there was little creativity in them, and that good musicians often worked with a large number of groups. Singers and musicians are seen to change allegiance with different line ups at regular times.
The economic situation is well drawn, and shows the dwindling popularity of the Showbands, a movement that only really found popularity within Ireland during the 1960’s, however, many musicians, notably the much missed Rory Gallagher played in showbands, so it was a valuable training ground for musicians who want to learn the ropes.
This is a good snapshot of life for the many thousands of musicians who play in pubs at weekends, rather than spending time in expensive recording studios releasing albums that will sell by the million.
Heads – A Day in the Life by Gerry Anderson
Gill and MacMillan – ISBN 978-0-7171-4445-7
244 Pages
‘Heads – A day in the life’ tells the true life story of Gerry Anderson’s trials and tribulations playing Bass in the show-band ‘Brown and O’Brien’ in the days that sounded the death knell for the show-band tradition.
Anderson, now a well known broadcaster in Northern Ireland proves to be a genial host in a show business world, years before the X Factor and Simon Cowell’s high waistband started to dictate the course of popular culture.
The story looks at the mundanity of playing in tents with unsafe power, the young upstart bands who want no part of Anderson’s life, the increasingly smaller audiences, the egotistical singers, and the camaraderie that develops between musicians who are forced to share the same poor diets, cheap hotel rooms, and long hours of travelling in clapped out minibuses.
There is some glamour in the book. The episode where the band plays Canada, sees it as a big break, but they have only been hired to play Irish songs for a home-sick ex-pat audience, or the times when they are hired to play behind Ricky Valance, a one-hit wonder singer, with the ego to match. At the end of the novel though, Anderson finds himself in the position of being the bassist for Ronnie Hawkins, a singer famed for losing his band to Bob Dylan when the Song and Dance man decided to go electric.
Like another famous Irish author, James Joyce in Dubliners, Anderson relates the course of his storied career through the course of a day, with frequent flashbacks to his youth, his childhood in Ireland, learning guitar, and then bass, and the first ‘Heads’ (a term for Musicians) that he met through his older brother.
That Gerry Anderson did not take his musical adventure that seriously is apparent in the infectious sense of fun that runs through the course of much of this novel. Although there are some people in music that were there for the wrong reasons, this is very little cyncism on Anderson’s part, preferring instead to draw on the humanity within many of the people that he met throughout his time as a professional musician and player.
He talks of The Woodentops, the groupies that followed the Showbands around, or the fact that there were always competing bands in the same villages, and people went to the dances with the largest crowds, rather than the best music.
The fact that these bands played jukebox versions of popular songs, meant that there was little creativity in them, and that good musicians often worked with a large number of groups. Singers and musicians are seen to change allegiance with different line ups at regular times.
The economic situation is well drawn, and shows the dwindling popularity of the Showbands, a movement that only really found popularity within Ireland during the 1960’s, however, many musicians, notably the much missed Rory Gallagher played in showbands, so it was a valuable training ground for musicians who want to learn the ropes.
This is a good snapshot of life for the many thousands of musicians who play in pubs at weekends, rather than spending time in expensive recording studios releasing albums that will sell by the million.
May 30, 2020
This is an incredibly well observed and no-holds-barred insight into the seedy, outwardly glamorous, but ultimately sordid and dreary world of a typical band of journeymen, plying their trade as a showband in 1972’s rural Ireland.
Not for the faint hearted, Gerry Anderson weaves our path from a countryside pharmacy where our heroes are in keen pursuit of Benzedrine to alleviate the boredom, to Toronto where a change of fortune may or may not be in store.
The late Gerry Anderson’s languid voice floats off each page and the reader can not fail to see the curling corners of the author’s mouth as he shocks and informs in equal measure. Gerry’s wit and unique world view lives on.
Highly recommended!
Not for the faint hearted, Gerry Anderson weaves our path from a countryside pharmacy where our heroes are in keen pursuit of Benzedrine to alleviate the boredom, to Toronto where a change of fortune may or may not be in store.
The late Gerry Anderson’s languid voice floats off each page and the reader can not fail to see the curling corners of the author’s mouth as he shocks and informs in equal measure. Gerry’s wit and unique world view lives on.
Highly recommended!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 23, 2012
Love it. Gerry Anderson is a man of wit, humour and experience.
June 12, 2013
Excellent read. Very entertaining. He tells it like it is.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews