Barney Rushe

Barney Rushe

(1946 – 2014)

Barney (or Michael Bernard as he was christened) Rushe was from Sallynoggin near Blackrock in south Dublin. Born in 1946, his father, Patrick, came from near Tuam in County Galway and his mother was Ethel Eliot whose family still farm in Tonagh near the village of Glasson, just north of Athlone. His father loved music and liked to sing and play the accordion. Barney had a brother, Paddy, and two sisters, Eileen and Marie. He attended the Christian Brothers School at Eblana Avenue in Dun Laoghaire, known locally as the Eblana, a place he later recalled in a song, 'The Boy from Eblana'. His uncle owned The Druid's Chair pub on Killiney Hill Road in south County Dublin. Barney worked there occasionally in his teens and learned the bar trade, which he would later put to good use in Germany.

Barney Rushe was a shy and thoughtful teenager with a passion for sport and music. He became a lifelong Manchester United fan, having been inspired by the Busby Babes, and his heroes were George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. He was a keen rugby player and followed the fortunes of his local club, Seapoint Rugby Club, no matter where he roamed in the world.

As a teen, Barney listened to American rock 'n' roll and blues, and loved, the music of The Beatles and other emerging British pop bands of the early 1960s. Like many youngsters of his era, he bought a guitar, cut his fringe to look like Ringo Starr and formed a band. For a while they went by the name of Morlock and played the local hops and teen dances.

Later in that era, Barney became more and more drawn to traditional Irish music and to the folk and ballad scene that was beginning to flourish in Ireland at that time. Barney and his friends loved nothing better than to take off down the country with a tent to enjoy 'the craic' at events such as the Kilkenny Beer Festival and other raucous gatherings that attracted fiddle players and balladeers from far and wide. He soon began to appreciate folk and trad even more than the pop music of the day.

The English folk revival was also under way at the time and a Dublin man called Noel Fitzmaurice, who was a few years older than Barney and his friends, was keeping up to date with the songs then emerging on the English folk-dub circuit. He also had a keen interest in blues, jazz and other genres, and owned a vast collection of records. Noel was a good friend of the husband of Barney's elder sister Marie and he introduced Barney and his friends to a wide range of musical influences. He would lend Barney his records and talk to him constantly about various musical genres. This broadened Barney's musical horizons and had a big influence on the young songwriter.

In the early 1970s Barney moved from Jersey to Spain where he played the Irish bars on the Costa strip. He remained there for more than ten years before settling in Germany where he opened an Irish bar, the Goldner Mond, in Erlangen near Nuremburg. This move proved very successful and Barney eventually ended up with three bars in Germany. He continued to play music but his main focus for many years was on his bar businesses. As the years passed, he occasionally wrote new songs and in the 1990s he composed a number of songs from the point of view of an Irish exile recalling his native shore but they were overly sentimental and lack the magic of his two great early compositions, 'Nancy Spain' and 'The Craic Was Ninety in the Isle of Man'. He recorded an album of his songs around 2000, which contains his own version of 'Nancy Spain'.

In time, Barney decided to cash in his chips in Germany and get out of the bar business. He returned to Spain where he operated a restaurant for a time and then retired from business to play music full-time once again in the bars and clubs of the Spanish resorts. He took to returning home more often as he approached his sixtieth year and, had he lived, he might have settled down in his native Sallynoggin.

Barney Rushe, troubadour and composer of one of Ireland's best-loved songs, died suddenly on 27^th. September 2014 at the age of sixty-eight while on a trip home to Ireland. A celebration of his life took place in the Garden Chapel at Mount Jerome Crematorium in Harold's Cross, Dublin, followed by his cremation.

Biography courtesy Gill Publication entitled ON RAGLAN ROAD and Gerry Hanberry (Author).