"growing
up in a small town about 14 miles outside of Dublin, in a
bohemian household that didn't pay much attention to radio
("My brother would listen to [BBC] Radio 4 all the time, but
I don't think he could even make out the words") and, even
more surprisingly, didn't gather around the phonograph.
"There wasn't
a record player in the house for a long time," Regan said.
"I can remember there was Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush"
and "Sgt. Pepper's" -- sleeves, but no records, and no record
player. I can remember my mother reading the lyrics to 'Lucy
in the Sky with Diamonds' when I was going to sleep. And my
dad would play the songs -- the ones that he knew anyway.
I'd point at something [on the LP jackets], and he'd play
his own version of one of the songs. They were like jukebox
placards. Those are my first memories, and then a little bit
later on there was record player, but it was a good bit later
on."
...Regan's father
was a self-taught guitarist who wrote "glacial-type instrumental
compositions" and taught himself to read music. But the younger
Regan relied mainly on his instincts and has a hard time identifying
the influences on his playing. "I know that some people are
quite chronological about their journey getting somewhere,"
he said, "but I think, really, it's only now at this point
that I actually can afford to buy records. Everything else
was just a compilation tape from somebody -- it's like a big
collage, I suppose, but I always find it very hard to pinpoint,
which is frustrating, but there you go.
...And so it goes
as well for Regan (whose first name is pronounced, roughly,
"Fee-own"). "It's like a slideshow," he said. "Every time
I play the songs, the slideshow changes from night to night,
and I feel different ways about different things, and it reminds
me of different characters. I get the feeling that the people
who listen to the record and are coming out to see me, they
kind of have their own slideshow of images, and they feel
a certain way about the songs, and that's really all it is.
They're just documents of triumphs and struggles and conversations
and situations along the road, really" -- a road leading inexorably
to fame and whatever else that brings."
Fionne Regan, 2007 in his video for the single
"Be Good or Be Gone"
