{"id":497563,"date":"2026-06-13T09:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497563\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T09:28:09","slug":"a-ghost-from-my-teenage-past-emailed-to-say-hello-im-so-glad-he-did-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/497563\/","title":{"rendered":"A ghost from my teenage past emailed to say hello. I\u2019m so glad he did \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What happened was this. Four years ago I wrote a column<\/a> about how much I admire and appreciate Bono<\/a> and then Andy, a ghost from my teenage past, emailed to say he liked it.<\/p>\n

Andy and I had a bit of a fling back in the late 1980s when the Coffee Inn on South Anne Street in Dublin<\/a> served the best chips with bolognese sauce, and Captain America\u2019s (RIP)<\/a> was in its heyday.<\/p>\n

I was a teenager and he was 10 years older. I wouldn\u2019t be happy if my daughters were making those choices now but I was thrilled back then. Andy was cool and kind and fun. But looking back, I cringe hard for my teenage self. We should not let these supposed embarrassments stop us reconnecting with our ghosts, but I did. I smiled when I saw Andy\u2019s email but I didn\u2019t reply. Not then. <\/p>\n

Then a few months ago I got back in touch. I\u2019d been doing a bit of research for a U2-related project and he kept coming into my mind. I knew he was from one of Dublin\u2019s most fascinating families, the Rowens of Cedarwood Road. I knew that his childhood friend from that same road, Bono, had written three songs about him including one of U2<\/a>\u2019s finest compositions, Bad. I knew Andy struggled with addiction. Now I found myself wondering how he was.<\/p>\n

I emailed to ask if he wanted to go for coffee. He was in the Eye and Ear Hospital at the time, getting treatment for the eye condition macular degeneration. He suggested we go somewhere fancy when he got out. I booked The Merrion for afternoon tea. <\/p>\n

We started texting. Andy, a diabetic with a sweet tooth, sent several cake emojis in anticipation. Then suddenly nothing. I thought I\u2019d been ghosted by my ghost when a message arrived from his daughter telling me Andy had suffered a stroke so he couldn\u2019t make our appointment.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been getting to know each other again in the stroke ward of a south Dublin hospital. I brought afternoon tea to him. Turns out Andy is a writer, a raconteur, a storyteller, a wine connoisseur, a Bible scholar, a character. He\u2019s one of the sharpest, funniest people I\u2019ve ever been reacquainted with. <\/p>\n

The Rowens are big on nicknames. Andy\u2019s brothers are known as Strongman and Guggi<\/a>. He was named Guck Pants as a small kid in nappies. Delaney was added because he could run fast like Ronnie. Given his years of heroin and crack cocaine use, it\u2019s a kind of miracle that Guck Pants Delaney is still alive and eating cake, never mind reciting from memory long Bible verses and his own many-versed poems.<\/p>\n

On one of my recent visits, as he wiped crumbs from his chin, Andy recited his stark poem about the day he and his father were caught up in the Dublin bombings on Parnell Street. U2 captured his experience in a song called Raised By Wolves. Andy witnessed horrific sights on May 17th, 1974, when 33 people were killed. He was 11. You might well join the dots from that terrible day to the night of Andy\u2019s 21st birthday when he nearly died from a methadone overdose. Bono wrote Bad about him around that time. \u201cIf you twist and turn away\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy spent the next few decades in addiction, ending up homeless approaching 50 and living in the doorway of a Dublin church. Fifteen years ago he was offered a lifeline, a rehab place called the Ed Keating Centre in Cleveland, Ohio. His brother Guggi bought him the plane ticket.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: Guggi: \u2018I know I\u2019ve allowed opportunities to pass\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He\u2019d never been to the United States. His contact at the rehab thought he should acclimatise first and so brought Andy to Cleveland\u2019s biggest tourist attraction, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The museum wasn\u2019t Andy\u2019s bag. Bored, he happened to peer into a glass case. Inside he saw a crumpled piece of paper. It was Bono\u2019s original handwritten lyrics to Bad, the song about Andy and his addiction. <\/p>\n

Andy was shocked. \u201cHow did that piece of paper get there?\u201d he wondered, trembling. A voice answered: \u201cHow did YOU get here? Who was looking after YOU all this time?\u201d This was, according to Andy, the voice of God who he believes brought him there and ultimately got him clean.<\/p>\n

Six months later, U2 were playing the final gig of their North American 360 tour in Pittsburgh. They invited Andy, who had just finished his stint at rehab, to the gig. <\/p>\n

That night, Bono told the audience about a special man in the audience who grew up on Cedarwood Road. \u201cWe wrote this song about him, and we sing it for him tonight \u2026 Andy Rowen \u2026 Guck Pants.\u201d On the YouTube video from 2011, you can see the emotion in Bono\u2019s performance as he sings and celebrates his friend\u2019s newfound freedom. \u201cTo let it go and so fade away \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy\u2019s life is a story of survival and surrender, trauma and redemption, faith and glory. Dislocation. Separation. Condemnation. Revelation. <\/p>\n

He is 15 years clean now. Listening to him, you can\u2019t help but think somebody should make a movie about his life. The Ballad Of Guck Pants Delaney. It turns out somebody has: Bad: The Song That Saved My Life is a documentary about Andy on RT\u00c9 One at 9.35pm on Monday night. I\u2019ll be watching it with a big slice of cake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happened was this. Four years ago I wrote a column about how much I admire and appreciate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26016,615,93,631,56469,61,60,709,45578,660,115],"class_list":["post-497563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bono","tag-dublin","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-guggi","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine","tag-roisin-ingle","tag-u2","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497563","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=497563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}