“I LOVE the way Pierce Turner sings. He walks on the table tops and dances between the ashtrays and the glasses. As the women peek up the leg of his trousers he lets on not to notice.”
So says Christy Moore in his poem ‘The Way Pierce Turner Sings’, his surreal celebration of one of Ireland’s finest and most imaginative songwriters. It is true. In concert, Pierce will strut around the room - across tables, over them, and between them - singing, smiling, and engaging with and entertaining the audience.
It adds a theatrical and personal touch to his shows and Galway can expect to see Pierce singing and walking “between the ashtrays and the glasses” in the Róisín Dubh on Tuesday August 11 at 9pm.
So when did Pierce first start these ‘adventures’ beyond the confines of the stage?
“It began with parties in my apartment in New York,” Pierce tells me over the phone from his native Wexford. “I would get up on the table and conduct people to sing along with Sex Pistols records. I think I got it from my dad, he didn’t get up on tables, but he used to conduct people for sing-songs.”
Such flamboyance was also a way to combat stage fright and fear of audiences.
“I was sick at being cut off from the audience by the stage. I wanted to break down that wall and make them part of the show,” he says. “Nervousness in performance comes from a fear of the audience. I got tired of thinking ‘How am I going to impress this audience?’ and I had a revelation that I didn’t have to think that way. The audience are here to enjoy the show. They are not coming with negative attitudes so you think ‘I’m not in this gig alone, I am with these people. We’re all here together.’ I may be the captain but I can’t do it without the crew.”
Today, all of this is an integral part of Pierce’s live shows, and it is an approach which has rubbed off on other performers.
“I was on tour with a US band called The Smithereens,” he says. “Nobody knew me but I would walk out into the crowd in a ‘How’s it going?’ sort of way and it really worked. By the time we got to LA, the Smithereens’ lead singer was doing it as well!”
Pierce recently released his new single ‘Julie London’. The song - inspired by the US actress, singer, and noted beauty form the 1940s and 1950s - is dominated by a riff played on violins and a chorus with a strong 1950s/1960s feel.
“I saw a documentary about her and I was blown away by her story,” says Pierce. “You can see footage of her on YouTube. She had an amazing voice and had America in the palm of her hand in the 1950s, during that era when people could drink cocktails at home and listen to albums.
“Julie London was a massive star. She was a movie star, a singer, and talented. She made 40 albums and then suddenly stopped and never sang again. The thing that took my interest was that she was married with two children to this guy Jack Webb and he never came home. This woman was incredibly sincere and non-egotistical. She knew there was something more to life but he didn’t.”
Pierce’s music career began in the 1980s when he played gigs in Wexford and Dublin, before realising that the Ireland of that time - economically destitute and suffering from a post-colonial inferiority complex - was somewhere he needed to escape from, at least for a while. Moving to New York proved to be a revelation.
“I had an education there I couldn’t have had here in Ireland, “ he says. “I was in Manhattan and my girlfriend was a modern dancer. I was in a new wave band and writing music for modern dance. I was in that art world and that would have been beyond me had I stayed here, so I got an art education in Manhattan. I performed in front of that world so coming back to perform on RTÉ for the first time was pretty easy after that.”
Pierce’s music commands high respect from his fellow artists - his 1986 debut album, It’s Only A Long Way Across, was produced by Philip Glass, one of the greatest living modern classical composers - and he has a devoted cult following, but the wider success his talents merit has proven elusive.
“It’s tough,” he admits. “I can’t get onto the Galway Arts Festival but the reality is I have a low profile in Ireland. I divide my time between Wexford and New York and I don’t go anywhere else. I don’t socialise enough. I don’t think about notoriety enough. I don’t have that business sense. I have a new album ready to go but I don’t want to throw it out to the world to be ignored.”
Yet Philip Glass remains a champion of Pierce’s music. In March, the composer presented shows by his favourite artists, such as Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega, and Pierce Turner, in New York’s The City Winery venue.
“He is a great supporter of mine,” says Pierce proudly. “I got a call from his manager saying he was doing these evenings in a club in Manhattan where he would present artists he believed in. Philip Glass is a very busy man. He has scored 40 movies besides composing operas and doing live performances. For him to take his time to play and rehearse with me was fantastic. We did two songs and had five rehearsals, and he came up with a part for one of the songs that was extraordinary. It was a great experience to perform in front of 400 elite New Yorkers and it went down an absolute storm. It was one of these things I need in these times of my life.”
There is also the story that Brad Pitt is a fan?
“He was at a gig in Whelan’s but I didn’t even meet him,” laughs Pierce. “After the gig the manager told me Brad Pitt was upstairs with 25 bodyguards around him taking up the whole space but he did say Brad Pitt really enjoyed the show.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
