Interview with Phil Coulter

Why is music so important to people?
Well I think music is important to mankind in general. But I think it's specifically important to the Irish. And I think that is part of the whole Celtic thing, it's part of the fibre of life, it's part of our makeup. There is no Celt that I know that can't be touched by music and moved by music and for whom music wouldn't be an essential part of life. Why that is? I have no idea, but that is just the way it's.

First musical memory?
I have said this many times - that my first smart move was being born in Derry because it was a city that was just full of music and there were many, many houses in Derry that didn't have smart furniture, didn't have a three-piece suite, but they had a piano and the piano was central to the whole kind of social life. And in Derry there would not only be choirs that were singing at mass on Sundays and a couple of musical festivals throughout the year, but music as a living, breathing thing was very much part of life in Derry.

And our family was exactly like that. My father played the fiddle and my mother played the piano. Neither of them was particularly good, in fact they were pretty awful most of the time. But it didn't really matter because they just enjoyed playing and it was a great joy of making music and that is what I grew up with. And I suppose from earliest days being born into that kind of environment, and then becoming a teenager just when rock 'n' roll happened and pop music, I think given those two circumstances it was probably inevitable

How did you think that you could make a career for yourself in music?
Yeah, well I think that the place was important, i.e. Derry. The timing was important, i.e. I was a teenager when rock 'n' roll happened. Before rock 'n' roll, pop music and pop songs were a different genre, you know. They were a bit sort of twee, songs like 'How Much Is That Doggy in the Window'? And then when Presley came along with 'Heartbreak Hotel' and 'Hound Dog' and all that sort of stuff, now this was a new game in town. And that was much more exciting and far more sexy. I know that a lot of my associates and friends in the music business would all point to that time and period as something that struck a cord and maybe propelled them into music. And I think that probably it happened with me.

How did you move on from there?
Well when I went to university for, example, within the first month I had started a band. Because it just seemed like the thing to do, that kind of arrogance that you have when you are eighteen. And once I had played with my little band for the first student dance we played for, I think from that moment on my fate was sealed. I think I was doomed to be unemployable, I was doomed to be in the music business. And at that stage I knew I wanted to be in pop music particularly. Much to the annoyance of the good tutors and professors in the music department who thought I was a bit demented. But I wanted to be in pop music and so when I left university there was only one place to be in - that was London and that was the start.

Read the full transcript of Phil Coulter's 'This Note's For You' interview here. 

Coming soon: Paul Brady, Damien Dempsey, Declan O'Rourke, Mike Hanrahan, Gemma Hayes, Mundy and Tim Wheeler.