Paddy Clancy column: Showband star Brendan Bowyer brought Elvis to Ireland

Shortly after Brendan Bowyer died, I watched a video of him and the Big 8 perform in 1988 at Clontarf Castle.

I had danced to his music with the Royal Showband way back in 1961, at a time when Bowyer and other showband heroes brought to tens of thousands, imitation performances of the rock’n’roll stars they would never see in Ireland.

The copycat shows were often so brilliant that it was difficult to tell the difference between the Irish performers and the stars they were mimicking.

One such performer was Bowyer!

His Elvis impersonations were so brilliant in packed dance-halls that, for seven and sixpence or 10 shillings in old money – around 63 cent today – fans were treated to dreams of watching what it might be like if the real Presley was there.

Elvis and many other international rock’n’rollers of the early sixties never made it to Ireland.

BRENDAN BOWYER AND THE BIG 8 SHOWBAND. (COLLINS/DUBLIN.)

Instead, something like 700 showbands brought to every village in Ireland their own version of stars like Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry.

Ireland was such a backwater in those days to international stars!

A string of other Irish international musicians followed in later years, like U2, The Corrs, Sinead O’Connor, the Cranberries and many others.

I remember once on an RTE radio show listening to younger members of the studio panel who were dismissive of the role showbands played.

One panellist in particular reckoned Irish audiences were starved of good rock’n’roll until Phil Lynott’s Thin Lizzy and Bob Geldof’s Boomtown rats made it big in the 70s.

Sitting beside me in the studio was one of the greatest of all, Paddy Cole. Paddy, Butch Moore, and other members of the Capitol Showband – great rivals to Brendan Bowyer and the Royal – were stunning performers.

I was so annoyed at the dismissive attitude of the younger panellist, that I launched into a kind of tirade and reminded him that Paddy Cole and others of the showband era were entertaining Irish audiences and bringing dreams to them for many years before he was born.

Part of Paddy’s career was when he joined Bowyer in the Big 8 and played in Las Vegas where he recalls Elvis making a personal approach to congratulate Brendan.

Bowyer lived most of his 62 years showbiz career in Las Vegas, returning to Ireland for performances in the Summer.

Eventually, all that changed, partly because overseas showbiz entrepeneurs discovered there was a massive audience screaming for their stars in Ireland, and partly because out of our own showbands emerged world-class performers like Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher. In a strange kind of way, it’s fitting that the man known as Ireland’s Elvis died in Las Vegas, the world home of showbiz stars.