... One of my favourite memories ever is standing on the upstairs terrace of a bar in Church Street Station in Orlando after Holland had knocked Ireland out of the World Cup , the DJ on the street below put on Dancing in the Moonlight and the whole street Irish and Dutch sang it as one - magic. ...
I was in Bordeaux in the middle of a street festival in torrential rain watching that match outdoors. There was a number of tented setups surrounding us and from one behind us "The Boys Are Back in Town" blasted out just as the match kicked off. Some of the Dutch fans nearby thought we (the gang of Irish fans with local French and British colleagues) had set it up but it was pure coincidence.
I had the privilege of knowing Phillo and a band I played with debuted one of Phillo's early original compositions in Club Arthur many moons ago. Our drummer and our flute-player (yeah I know very Jethro Tull
) had a flat opposite Baggot Street Hospital which we used for rehearsals sometimes. Phillo was passing one day, rang the doorbell and asked if he could sit in. Before he left he recorded "On Grafton Street" (not the Nanci Griffith song that mentions "Bewley's Store") on a Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder and asked us to use it at our next gig.
We met fairly often after that and some members of Skid Row (pre Thin Lizzie days), ourselves, a couple of other bands and friends / fans featured on the cover of New Spotlight magazine. The picture was taken at a recording of the RTE show Like Now out at the Top Hat ballroom in Dun Laoghaire.
We both wound up in London around the same time and met a few times, but after I came home we lost touch. I'll never forget the Saturday morning I heard the news of his death on the radio. My partner and I were just heading out shopping and it's the one and only time I can remember literally going weak at the knees. I just slid to the floor and she told me I went white as a sheet.
One of nature's gentlemen, a true star, a total original and a trail-blazer, RIP Phillo.
BTW, if you can get your hands on some of the old print-ads Phillo did for BASF tapes, you will see the look that the artist formerly known as Prince copied (the moustache, the dark curls over one eye, the little cynical half-smile, etc)