RTÉ Documentaries

In a frank and revealing new documentary, Dublin filmmaker Sinead O'Brien explores the different facets of Luke Kelly. Here she talks to Paul Byrne about the man, the music and the mayhem. For many people, Luke Kelly was the quintessential Dubliner. And I mean that in both senses of the word. Having risen to fame if not exactly fortune in the early '60s alongside Ronnie Drew, Barney McKenna, Ciaran Burke and later John Sheehan, with his flaming red hair and a voice that could knock down a skyscraper, Luke Kelly epitomised what The Dubliners were all about. His passion for folk music, and his dogged determination to use music as a changing force (in a decade rampant with government policies that desperately needed changing), made Luke a hero not only to the woolly jumper brigade but also to political protestors the world over. Just how politically motivated Luke Kelly became in those early years is one of the many facets to the late great singer that Dublin filmmaker Sinead O'Brien was determined to highlight in her documentary, simply entitled Luke. "Luke Kelly was someone I was aware of growing up in the same way that I was aware of Phil Lynott and Rory Gallagher," offers O'Brien. "He was one of those iconic figures in Irish music that I only really knew through the odd hit they'd had here and there. I was always aware of the fact that he had lived life pretty hard, and that he had died young, but that was about all I really knew. So to go and search out his past, his childhood growing up in the slums of Dublin, his formative years, listening to rock'n'roll, to rhythm'n'blues, and then finally hearing The Old Triangle and turning to folk music, that was a fascinating story to follow." Besides talking to fellow Dubliners, Sinead spoke with both those who knew him well – including Phil Coulter, the Kelly family and Luke's latter-day girlfriend, Madeline Seiler – as well as those who clearly wish they had known him (such as Shane MacGowan and Bono). Th