Fisherman's Blues

Ireland has a long-standing reputation as a welcoming home-from-home for overseas musicians who come to the country to write, record, explore the vast treasury of Irish music, and interact with Irish musicians. The visitors’ book includes such illustrious names as The Rolling Stones, Kate Bush, Donovan, Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Elvis Costello, Def Leppard, Carole King, Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, John Martyn, Hazel O’Connor, Steve Martin, Nanci Griffith, REM, David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, David Gray, PJ Harvey, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Tori Amos, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Ed Sheeran (among many, many more) – all of whom have spent time and recorded here. Phew!

In 1985, The Waterboys – with Mike Scott from Edinburgh in Scotland to the fore – came to do all of that, and then some. They stayed much longer than planned, working and reworking their material for their fourth studio album, which would come to be named Fisherman's Blues. It was finally released in 1988. Irish audiences took to the album to such an extent that it was to be given honorary Irish citizenship and voted for in local polls as an Irish album. The band have effectively become a “Scottish-Irish” band, not least because of the prominence of fiddle player Steve Wickham, from Marino in Dublin – among many Irish musicians – on the album. Steve remained an integral part of The Waterboys’ line-up till 2022. Mike Scott, meanwhile, has lived for much of the intervening period in Ireland. The eponymous title track drips with the influences of Irish folk and traditional music, and has become an Irish busking staple.

The Story Behind The Song

The Waterboys made their breakthrough with the single ‘The Whole of the Moon’, a powerful example of the band’s trademark ‘big music’, which charted in Australia (No.12), New Zealand, the UK (where it ultimately went platinum), Netherlands and Canada, among other territories. It was the biggest single from their third album, released in September 1985. On the back of the single’s success, This Is The Sea became a hit record, climbing as high as No.4 in Netherlands, and breaching the Top 40 in the UK.

The gestation of what was to become their fourth studio album began towards the back end of 1985 with the band’s main-man Mike Scott starting to sketch out the title song on a flight from New York to London after an eventful band tour of the USA – during which he had more-or-less called it a day on his relationship with the band’s manager of the time. He later explained that some of the lyrics of the song were inspired by WH Auden’s poem ‘The Night Mail’, perhaps a foretaste of the way in which the spirit of Ireland’s Nobel Prize-winning poet WB Yeats was to impact on Scott and the album.

A relatively new addition to the band’s official line-up was fiddle player Steve Wickham, who had previously made a name for himself through his work with U2 and In Tua Nua – and whose cameo on ‘The Pan Within’ on This Is The Sea had impressed Scott. Mike Scott made a fateful decision to move to Ireland, where Wickham helped him to sample the riches of an Irish music scene on which the ability to play music spontaneously was – to folk musicians in particular – as important as recording or even touring. Mike Scott bought into the concept in a big way.

Photo by by Conor Heavey

The band were booked into Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin from the end of January 1986 until March. Putting a shape on the new song that would become ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ was part of the first recording period. Scott later recalled writing the third verse during that first session. He already had some sense of the chord sequence for the song, but was musically inspired by Wickham's fiddle accompaniment, and thus the song emerged as a Mike Scott/Steve Wickham co-write. In its completed version, the ensemble-playing evokes thoughts of a boat cutting optimistically across the foam, while some of the lyrics use the act of fishing as a metaphor for the pursuit of sex and love – and, in a different take, spirituality. On the final recording, Scott’s voice is laden with emotion and Wickham’s fiddle-playing is simply sublime. It is a very beautiful record.

It turned out that a deep and enduring love affair was in the making. Scott had decided to leave the band’s original sound behind: he had, he felt, exhausted his adventures in ‘the big music’. He and the band became increasingly captivated by Irish folk and traditional music, helping to give impetus to the first stirrings of the burgeoning raggle-taggle movement that mixed Irish folk and traditional music with elements of country and rock. Thus did the band’s sound, and Scott’s musical vision, point in a new direction. The album release date was put back time and time again, but The Waterboys remained impervious. Mike Scott is not one for compromising his artistic vision…

A youthful Mike Scott of The Waterboys

Further recording took place from March to August 1987. Becoming increasingly intoxicated with the thriving music scene in Galway, Scott moved to the city on the Wild Atlantic Way. The band spent a year rehearsing and recording at Spiddal House (which dates from around 1810) and where Scott had taken up residence. In all, they eventually amassed recordings of about 100 songs. During that time, a veritable who’s who of Irish music joined the party, guesting on a variety of tracks, including Liam Ó Maonlaí of Hothouse Flowers on piano and Noel Bridgeman from Mary Black’s band on drums.

Thirteen songs were selected for the 1988 release of the Fisherman’s Blues album, and it entered the UK charts straight off. The Wickham-Scott composition that gave the album its name was selected as the lead single and it breached the UK charts in early 1989. It also charted in New Zealand, Norway and Sweden. It gave the band their first Top 100 hit in the USA, also reaching No.3 in the Billboard Modern Rock Chart – especially appropriate since it was on a plane trip from that country that Scott had first conceived the kernel of the song. Its popularity on radio helped most fans get over the shock of the band’s change in direction and the album became The Waterboys’ biggest selling album ever, going gold in the UK – a source of influence and encouragement to the raggle taggle movement across the globe.

The single was selected for several movie soundtracks too, including Waking Ned Devine and Dream with the Fishes, while the movie Dom Hemingway features a fine version by Emilia Clarke. Other artists who covered the song include The Wonder Stuff (2000) and Sweet Harriet (2016), while it has been translated into Norwegian and Spanish. It was also on The Best of The Waterboys 81-90, which was an Irish No.1 and a UK No.2, as well as adding Portugal (where it peaked at No.6) to the band’s successful European haunts.

The success of ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ brought further attention to the backstory of the album, including Scott’s increasing infatuation with Yeats’ poetry, which would eventually lead to The Waterboys recording an entire album of song adaptations of Yeats’ poems, on An Appointment with Mr. Yeats (2011). But for now, eager appetites had to be content with a reading of ‘The Stolen Child’ by Irish singer Tomas Mac Eoin. The Waterboys’ version of the Van Morrison classic ‘Sweet Thing’ was also warmly greeted.

Mike Scott, photographed for Hot Press, by David Stanley

When ‘And a Bang on the Ear’ emerged as the second single, it came with a full-blooded live version of ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsy’ (best known as a Planxty tune) as the B-side, further evidence of the band’s immersion in Celtic folk music. Another album track was ‘Dunford’s Fancy’, a Wickham composition written for Steve Dunford, brother of the band’s sound engineer and sometimes producer, John Dunford; and the magical fiddler also earned co-writer credits on ‘Jimmy Hickey’s Waltz’ and ‘And a Bang on the Ear’.

Over the years, more of the tracks from those mammoth Irish sessions emerged on disc, revealing the breadth of Scott’s new Celtic vision, most notably via a 7-CD boxed CD set in 2013 that included nearly 90 previously unreleased tracks.

Guitar-slinger Mike Scott, shot by David Green

It also offered overwhelming evidence as to how deeply Scott’s work had become steeped in Irish music. ‘Carolan’s Welcome’ – composed by the blind Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738) – had invaluable input from Wickham as well as such noted Irish trad musicians as Charlie Lennon, Alec Finn and bassist Trevor Hutchinson. The playful atmosphere that pervaded the sessions can also be gauged by the inclusion of Wickham’s composition ‘The Good Ship Sirius’. It lasts less than a minute but the foot-tapping energy of the playing is enough in itself to carry the day. There’s also ‘Let Us Be Drinking and Kissing the Women (Sonny Brogan’s Jig)’, ‘When I First Said I Loved Only You, Maggie’, ‘On My Way to Tara’, ‘Incident at Puck Fair’, ‘Spring Comes To Spiddal’ and more.

That the marketplace had room for such a weighty collection confirmed the impact the original pioneering album had made, becoming a major subject for conversation in Ireland, the UK and beyond. But it all began with that song, which quickly became a buskers’ favourite. Walk up Grafton Street in Dublin – or catch a busker almost anywhere in Ireland – and there’s a good chance you’ll hear another fine version of a song that Ireland ultimately fell head-over-heels in love with: ‘Fisherman’s Blues’.

Mike Scott of The Waterboys, onstage in June 1989, by Colm Henry