{"id":216163,"date":"2025-12-29T10:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216163\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T10:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:48:09","slug":"tommy-sands-we-were-awoken-by-the-person-we-were-staying-with-his-english-wasnt-very-good-but-then-he-just-said-your-brother-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/216163\/","title":{"rendered":"Tommy Sands: \u2018We were awoken by the person we were staying with. His English wasn\u2019t very good but then he just said: Your brother is dead\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nThe folk singers speaks about writing one of the most poignant songs on the Troubles, losing his brother in a car accident, and Ireland\u2019s Eurovision boycott\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Irish singer songwriter Tommy Sands performing in support of the Harland and Wolff workers calling for the shipyard to be renationalised, in 2019. Photo: Getty Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/SF Tommy Sands (2).jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Irish singer songwriter Tommy Sands performing in support of the Harland and Wolff workers calling for the shipyard to be renationalised, in 2019. Photo: Getty Images<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">In 1973 Tommy Sands was in rural France, far away from Northern Ireland, when the inspiration for one of the defining songs about the Troubles came to him. \u201cThere were roses growing outside the house where I stayed with my then girlfriend [Anne Sands], who later became my wife and they reminded me of home,\u201d the folk legend recalls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI remembered the roses planted by my father and pruned by my mother and how they would be used at weddings and funerals or maybe placed in a well-washed jam jar on the kitchen shelf. I thought of the rose\u2019s association with Britain and the way we are sometimes united in grief.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The folk singers speaks about writing one of the most poignant songs on the Troubles, losing his brother&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,898],"class_list":{"0":"post-216163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-latest-news-ticker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}