{"id":622229,"date":"2026-09-12T07:44:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T07:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622229\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T07:44:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T07:44:25","slug":"phil-coulter-the-song-congratulations-has-fed-clothed-and-educated-my-children-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622229\/","title":{"rendered":"Phil Coulter: \u2018The song Congratulations has fed, clothed and educated my children\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his very large office in a nondescript industrial estate, Phil Coulter<\/a> is playing an electric baby grand piano. He is surrounded by the gold and platinum records he has earned for songs like Puppet on a String (for Sandie Shaw), Shang-a-Lang (for Bay City Rollers) his instrumental Tranquillity albums and much more. \u201cYou don\u2019t buy these in Dunnes Stores,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of memorabilia. There\u2019s a framed letter from Margaret Thatcher\u2019s government offering him an OBE and then their response when he turned it down. \u201cThe hunger strike\u2026 The miners\u2019 strike, all of that Iron Lady shit just stuck in my throat. I didn\u2019t want anything to do with [Thatcher]. My ego\u2019s in good enough shape. I don\u2019t need an OBE after my name. Who am I going to impress? The postman?\u201d <\/p>\n

There is a copy of the Anglo-Irish Agreement<\/a> signed for Coulter by John Hume<\/a> and Garret FitzGerald<\/a> in 1985. Coulter and his friend James Galway performed at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony when Hume and David Trimble won it in 1998. Galway, a Protestant marching band flautist in his youth, said to Coulter [Coulter, who is from Derry, does an impression of Galway\u2019s Belfast accent here]: \u201cWe\u2019re sort of a musical version of Hume and Trimble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearby there\u2019s a stack of shelves filled with sheet music and papers all being archived. Legacy is on his mind thanks to the recent deaths of friends like Moya Brennan<\/a> and Gerry Kelly<\/a>. \u201cIt reminds you you\u2019re not bullet proof,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an annex with a rack of touring suits and a pile of suitcases. At 84 years old he still tours regularly, with 24 concert dates in November and December. \u201cWhen you get a couple of standing ovations\u2026 if you don\u2019t get energy from that you\u2019re in the wrong game.\u201d <\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t really \u201cpractise\u201d piano, he says, but he plays every day. \u201cI find it hard to walk past a piano without sitting down and seeing what it sounds like. But I don\u2019t sit down and do five-finger exercises.\u201d He plays a bit of a fast song, Appalachian Round-Up, from an album he did with Galway. <\/p>\n

He tells me about family sessions in Derry when he was a child with his fiddle-playing RUC dad (\u201cThere weren\u2019t too many Catholics in the force in those days\u201d) and his mother \u201cvamping along on the piano, often in a different key\u201d. <\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t hugely enthused by his classical music focused piano lessons initially. \u201cI wanted to learn\u2026\u201d He plays A Nation Once Again\u2026 \u201cThese were the tunes I\u2019d been taught at the Christian Brothers. I wanted a piece of that action.\u201d <\/p>\n

He started working things out by ear. \u201cThe first one I could pick out was a tune called Buttons and Bows.\u201d He plays it one handed. \u201cAll the black notes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"PhilPhil Coulter at his office surrounded by hit records. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Derry was in the throes of the showband boom when he was growing up. \u201cThere were breeze block dance halls in the middle of bogs and insatiable appetite for dance bands,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was a high level of unemployment in Derry. If you were looking for a job as a civil servant or whatever, the first question you\u2019d have been asked was: \u2018What school did you go to?\u2019 Which was the code for: \u2018Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?\u2019 But when you went for a job in a band, they just wanted you to play your instrument… It was a very nonsectarian world.\u201d <\/p>\n

He started a band when he went to study music in Queen\u2019s University. The music scene in Belfast was very stuffy and he was influenced by the explosion in rock\u2019n\u2019roll. \u201cThere was a change in power,\u201d he says. He plays a little Fats Domino. \u201cI found my freedom,\u201d he sings. <\/p>\n

He wrote his first song, Foolin\u2019 Time, for a rag week charity record. \u201cWe strolled about campus the rest of the term, like rock stars.\u201d <\/p>\n

Were they treated like rock stars? He laughs. \u201cNobody got the memo except us.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the summers he played piano as a Butlin\u2019s Redcoat and in a hotel in Bundoran. One night a fan of his piano playing rang the hotel to tell them that members of The Capitol Showband were playing an impromptu session at a pub nearby. He hotfooted it up the road and sat in at the piano. \u201cI lost no time pressing a copy of my record into their hands whether they wanted it or not.\u201d <\/p>\n

One weekend after hitching home from Queen\u2019s, as he was eating his favourite home-cooked dinner (mince and onions) he got a call from The Capitol\u2019s leader, Des Kelly saying: \u201cWe love that song\u2026 Would it be okay with you if we recorded it as our first single?\u201d It was one of the most important calls in his life, he says. From then on \u201cI was unemployable\u201d. He points to his heart. \u201cI was a hit songwriter in here.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Script\u2019s Danny O\u2019Donoghue: \u2018I was in therapy, saying all the right things but drinking at weekends\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

His parents weren\u2019t enthusiastic. \u201cFor a Catholic to have availed of a university education\u2026 and then to throw it all away, in their estimation, was a flagrant abuse of trust and of the privilege you were given and of the talent that God gave you.\u201d His dad \u201csat me down and said, \u2018mark my words, boy, this\u2019ll all end in tears\u2019. My mother was saying rosaries, reciting novenas, lighting candles so that I wouldn\u2019t end up living in the streets.\u201d <\/p>\n

He snagged a job with The Capitol\u2019s London agent Phil Solomon as a general dogsbody and eventually, he and his friend Bill Martin were hired as a songwriting duo working for Jimmy Philips at Keith Prowse Music. \u201cI think we got 25 quid a week. We had a little office\u2026 It had a beat-up upright piano, a desk, two chairs and a sink. We used to say we were the cleanest songwriters in Denmark Street.\u201d <\/p>\n

Their cubbyhole was on the same corridor as Cook and Greenaway and an array of other songwriting duos. They could hear each other work. \u201cAny illusions you had about art in pop music, you were soon f**king disabused of all of that after a few months in Denmark Street with the publisher knocking on your door saying: \u2018Where is it?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

They learned about spotting gaps in the market. In 1970, for example, Coulter and Martin wrote one of the first World Cup songs, Back Home, which was recorded by the England squad. \u201cThe most important people in the studio, apart from myself, Bill Martin, and the players, were the press.\u201d <\/p>\n

Does he remember the first song he wrote on Denmark Street that he really liked? He launches into a song called Hi, Hi, Hazel recorded by Geno Washington. It sounds, weirdly, like a Lou Reed song, which isn\u2019t that surprising given that Reed too once slaved away at pop in the Brill Building in New York. <\/p>\n

\"CliffCliff Richard performing Congratulations in 1968. Photograph: Getty Images <\/p>\n

What was their first big hit? He plays me the opening motif of Puppet on a String which he and Martin wrote for Sandie Shaw and with which she won Eurovision in 1967. He knew that for the Eurovision they needed some sonic novelty. He wrote the intro and told Martin: \u201cI\u2019m going to use a bassoon.\u201d Martin said: \u201cWhat\u2019s a f**king bassoon?\u201d He laughs. Shortly after this they wrote Congratulations for Cliff Richard. \u201cCongratulations has fed, clothed and educated my children… When we started in Denmark Street we would dream of \u2018a pension song\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the 1970s he began getting more ambitious. He became a producer, inspired by Phil Spector (He plays Spector\u2019s Da Doo Ron Ron \u201cThree chords. Three notes. Genius\u201d). He produced for Irish trad acts like The Dubliners, Planxty and The Fureys. Luke Kelly inspired him to write \u201cgrown-up songs\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d already won the Eurovision and sold a few million records for the Bay City Rollers and The Dubliners were singularly unimpressed\u2026 They turned up two hours late and Ronnie [Drew] tells me: \u2018Don\u2019t get your knickers in a twist.\u2019\u201d He laughs. \u201cKelly\u2019s knowledge was encyclopedic\u2026 He\u2019d spent a couple of years in the UK hanging out with the likes of Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Ian Campbell\u2026 [He] introduced me to all of that but again encouraged me to go a little deeper.\u201d <\/p>\n

Why hadn\u2019t he tried that before? \u201cI was trying to sell records. You\u2019re a pop songwriter. You\u2019re not expressing your \u2018inner being\u2019. Get the record f**king recorded, get it in the charts. And we don\u2019t want personal. We want a hit. Anybody who\u2019s writing a pop song who tells you he\u2019s not interested in the charts is either a) a fool or b) a liar, because that\u2019s by definition why you write pop songs.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kelly changed Coulter\u2019s process. He began writing about real things. He wrote Free the People, an anti-internment ballad, and The Town I Loved so Well about his hometown. But Scorn Not his Simplicity, about his son Paul with his first wife Angela (he subsequently married Geraldine Brannigan), was \u201cthe most personal song\u201d. <\/p>\n

He sings a bit of it. What was it like to write that? \u201cIt was a therapy. I was only early 20s when all of a sudden the paediatrician tells me my newly born second child, my first son, has got Down syndrome\u2026 How do you process that? So, part of coming to terms with it would have been trying to write Scorn Not His Simplicity.\u201d It was an era when disabled children were hidden away, he says. \u201cI said: \u2018I\u2019m not going to hide this away. There\u2019s nothing to be ashamed of.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Did writing music become a way of processing things? \u201cYes,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd here\u2019s the curious thing. Of my canon of songs, when I look back on the track record, the songs that would be most important to me, and the songs which have probably endured best, would be The Town I Loved so Well and Scorn Not His Simplicity. Neither of which were written with an eye on the charts at all.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"PhilPhil Coulter is preparing to go on tour. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

Does he ever get emotional when playing? \u201cSometimes,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a lot of ghosts about the place. [My dad] was always in the middle of the front row of the balcony [in Derry]. So when I played a song like The Old Man there and I\u2019m thinking about him, that association became very real and I kind of choked up a bit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Derry is more stressful to play than \u201cCarnegie Hall\u201d, he says. \u201cBecause it\u2019s home. You\u2019ve to step up… Everybody\u2019s a singer in Derry, whether they can sing or not.\u201d <\/p>\n

What\u2019s fascinating about Coulter is that he somehow balances two very different parts of the music world. He embodies the part that\u2019s novelty-seeking and entrepreneurial. His hugely successful Tranquillity series, for example, was a product of him being unable to find unobtrusive dinner party music. <\/p>\n

And he also embodies the part that\u2019s about self-expression and authenticity. His most recent song, Wild Flowers, which he plays to us as an \u201cexclusive\u201d, came out of a lifelong love for Donegal. \u201cGrowing up in Derry, Donegal was our escape. When you\u2019re educated by the Christian Brothers the Free State was the promised land. And also, in the postwar era there was rationing in the North so people would come back with butter and eggs. Donegal was always in colour.\u201d <\/p>\n

Phil Coulter embarks on his annual 24-date nationwide tour this November which includes the National Concert Hall on December 2nd, Theatre Royal Waterford on December 8th and Wexford Opera House on December 12th. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his very large office in a nondescript industrial estate, Phil Coulter is playing an electric baby grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14234,105671,7726,17948,42,80901,114456,43,2443,254229,92832,91462,40,38,41,39,976],"class_list":["post-622229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-christian-brothers","tag-cliff-richard","tag-derry","tag-eurovision","tag-headlines","tag-james-galway","tag-luke-kelly","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-phil-coulter","tag-queens-university","tag-the-dubliners","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weekendreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622229","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=622229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}