The Whole Of The Tune

There have been two exciting events for Waterboys fans this season. The first is the release of an album called 'In a Special Place', a series of demo recordings from 1985, when Mike Scott was revving his engines in preparation for the vast reaches of 'This Is The Sea'. He was months away from this startling creation but in those early takes he had already summoned up the rapture in his voice and the insistent piano lines that would propel everything else.

So you can already appreciate that 'The Whole Of The Moon' was making its intentions clear. It needed ambition, space and yes, a saxophone line roaring overhead like a flaming comet's tail. A few lines would need sharpened and the refrain "too high, too far, too soon" had yet to announce itself, but otherwise, a classic already.

Me, I've been digesting this rich document, sharing it with my radio audience and so I was primed for the Belfast appearance of the artist last Saturday. It was part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and the occasion was a chance to hear Mike read from his upcoming memoirs. Sean from the festival asked me to do a short introduction and so I talked a bit about the new release and reasoned that since Mike has been reasonably dignified in his media pursuits, there was a lot to reveal. In fact, he was virtually off record from 1986 until 1990, when the intrigue was probably more exciting than yet another facile magazine profile. As a Prince fan, Mike surely appreciated that the imagination can get feverish when there's nothing to reign it in, and so we could merely speculate about those goings-on around Spiddal House, overlooking Galway Bay.

Mike takes to the stage and mentions that when the memoirs are published next year, I might not be so fulsome in my appreciation. Apparently, I'm in there. Blimey. And then he starts to peel off these sheets of stories, from an early demo session and an encounter with Johnny Thunders, to the Greenpeace adventures in Dublin and the rebirth of his band as these cosmic, country-trad champions. The details are a proper revelation. There is colour and character sketches and a fierce moment during a Patrick Street session when he emphatically 'gets' Irish music.

The guy is a performer and thus he brings extra resonance to the readings. He pictured a rainbow, and then he delivered illumination.