The story of the Stardust tragedy has, since that fateful night on the north side of Dublin in 1981, been long told. The forty-three-year search for justice undertaken by the families of those lost in the fire has been covered at length on radio, television, in print and online and has been the subject of numerous documentaries, current affairs reports and even a television drama series.
The events at The Stardust and the subsequent fall-out from the fire have also been dealt with by one of Ireland's most popular singer/songwriters, Christy Moore. One of his compositions, 'They Never Came Home,’ has a complicated and colourful history, as Colm O'Callaghan explains.
Christy Moore, the Newbridge-born folk singer and balladeer, has been a serious commercial draw throughout a career that spans over six decades. His 1994 album, ‘Christy Moore: Live at The Point’, is a fourteen-song long-player assembled from recordings made during twelve one-man shows he performed at what is now the 3 Arena, Ireland’s biggest indoor venue. Reviewing those shows, the writer Jim Carroll summed up events in Dublin’s docklands with a line for the ages: ‘one man, one guitar, one storm.’ Alongside U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree,’ David Gray’s ‘White Ladder’ and a record commemorating Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979, ‘Christy Moore; Live at The Point’ is among the biggest-selling Irish LPs of all time.
Moore has constantly presented himself as a regular, unpretentious, and engaging everyman with as keen an ear for a tune as for an impromptu yarn from a passer-by. But his extraordinary career runs counter to the innate ordinariness he has long projected: in the great traditions of Thalia and Melpomene, he is as complex and vulnerable as any of those in the canon of great Irish entertainers.
Whether it is in the delivery of his own material or his interpretation of the songs of others – and most of Moore’s best-known songs have been written by others – he has always been a formidable live draw. For many years, a popular caricature had him doused in sweat, eyes closed, head craned back, alone on stage and lost in song. ‘I’m an ordinary man, nothing special, nothing grand,’ he sings on one of his best-known numbers, Peter Hames’s ‘An Ordinary Man,’ in what must be one of the most self-deprecating lines ever delivered by a high-profile Irish performer.
'I wanted to write about the Stardust because, I suppose, I felt there was a class thing involved as well.'
Like many of his primary folk influences – Woody Guthrie, Ewan MacColl, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger – Moore has also long rattled the bodhrán of social justice and, as well as the wry one-liners and colloquial couplets that pickle many of his best-known songs, much of his material is determined by a campaigner’s bent. ‘I don’t think anybody could talk about protest songs in Ireland without looking at Christy Moore,’ Dr. Aileen Dillane, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Limerick told The Irish Examiner in December 2018. ‘For all his apparent localisms, he really has international reach. He connects with that Anglo-American tradition in a way that few do.’ Nowhere is Dr Dillane’s point better illustrated than on Moore’s 1985 single, ‘Delirium Tremens’ – a cleverly disguised iron fist of a song, one of several of his that deal with the effects of alcohol – and its B-side, ‘They Never Came Home’.
‘They Never Came Home’ is a Moore original about the Stardust fire that killed forty-eight young people at a disco in Artane on Valentine’s night, 1981, and was originally included as the second last cut on his ‘An Ordinary Man’ album, released in July 1985. ‘I wrote it because I try to write songs about things that affect me,’ he claimed in his 2000 autobiography, ‘One Voice’. ‘I wanted to write about the Stardust because, I suppose, I felt there was a class thing involved as well.’
Like much of Christy’s material, it is a simple enough song: a mid-paced, linear ballad whose real impact is in its lyrical gut where it references ‘the mothers and fathers forever to mourn, the 48 children who never came home’. It is two lines elsewhere on ‘They Never Came Home,’ however, that landed Moore, his record company and producer in front of The High Court in July 1985, necessitating the recall of thousands of copies of ‘An Ordinary Man’.
‘How the fire started, sure no one can tell,’ Moore proclaims. Before later singing that ‘hundreds of children are injured and maimed and all just because the fire exits were chained.’
Two years previously, a claim for malicious damages was successfully taken against Dublin Corporation by Scott’s Foods Limited, owners of the Stardust. After Mister Justice Seán O’Hanrahan concluded at the Dublin Circuit Court in June 1983, that he was satisfied the Stardust fire was started maliciously, a compensation figure of £581,496 was eventually awarded to the Butterlys, who ran the venue in Artane.
At the time of the release of both ‘An Ordinary Man’ and the ‘Delirium Tremens’ single, almost 240 compensation claims resulting from the Stardust fire were awaiting adjudication through the courts. With those claims still active, and following the 1983 Circuit Court decision, solicitors for the Butterly family, Scott’s Foods Ltd and Silver Swan Ltd, who had leased the entertainment complex, claimed that the two lyrical references in ‘They Never Came Home’ cited above were in contempt of court.
With the first of the compensation cases imminent, it was claimed that the sentiments expressed in the song could prejudice the fairness of those hearings. An action for criminal contempt was taken by Eamonn Butterly, Silver Swan Ltd and Scott’s Foods Ltd. against Moore, his record company, WEA Records [Ireland] Ltd – through its managing director, Clive Hudson – Aigle Studios, where the record was produced, through its owner, Nicky Ryan, and the album’s producer, Donal Lunny.
That claim was upheld by Mr Justice Frank Murphy when the action was heard in The High Court in Dublin on August 9th, 1985. He also concluded that the song was not written with the intention of obstructing or interfering with the process of justice and determined it was not necessary to impose punishment or sanction. Christy Moore was defended in court by Sean MacBride, S.C., a son of Maud Gonne and the founder of Clann na Poblachta, a former government minister, Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army and, latterly a Nobel Prize Winner.
At the time of the hearing, ‘An Ordinary Man’ was the best-selling album in the country and ‘Delirium Tremens’ was a Top Ten single: an estimated 12,000 copies of the album had been distributed to various outlets around Ireland. Following Judge Murphy’s ruling, the song could no longer be promoted, sold, or dispensed in Irish record shops. Nor could the song be played on radio. ‘They Never Came Home’ had been banned.
Although by his own admission Christy Moore was ‘scared’ about the High Court action, his primary concern was for the families of the victims of the Stardust fire and for the many survivors. On the day of the hearing the courtroom was packed, with several of those families fetching up in support of the singer. After Mister Judge Murphy’s ruling, thousands of copies of ‘An Ordinary Man’ and ‘Delirium Tremens’ were recalled and destroyed by WEA. ‘They Never Came Home’ was eventually replaced on the album by a fresh cut, ‘Another Song is Born,’ written by Moore and recorded by Nicky Ryan in his home studio in Artane, in the shadow of the Stardust complex. In their excellent book about the Stardust tragedy, also called ‘They Never Came Home,’ authors Neil Fetherstonhaugh and Tony McCullagh claim that ‘the whole episode cost Christy Moore, his then manager, Mattie Fox, and his record company in the region of £100,000’.
Four Dublin record shops were back in front of Justice Murphy the following month when it was claimed that, despite assurances given by WEA, original copies of ‘An Ordinary Man,’ featuring ‘They Never Came Home,’ were still available on the racks. The shops were ordered to remove them. ‘They Never Came Home’ had become a cause célèbre and, for several years afterwards, the original version of ‘An Ordinary Man’ was a rarity.
A version of this piece first appeared on The Blackpool Sentinel music and culture blog.
The Blackpool Sentinel – 'An infrequent conversation between fans of music, some of it long-lost’
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