Blame it on the Stones.
For those in the aromatic multitude who looked like they'd still be wearing flowers in their hair if they'd still been wearing hair, Micko's magic bash at Slane was a juddering joy-ride back to the dear, dead days when they really believed Route 66 was the Ammerican Road To Socialism. And us kids enjoyed it, too. So that's all right.
Rock'n Roll star Mick Jagger appeared at Slane Castle in an innovatively presented Greek-style drama, "The Eighties Meet the Rolling Stones". In an intriguing twist on the traditional spare format of the drama, the chorus alone took the stage, and the main action in this allegory about accepting the passage of time was presented by a very large cast on a grassy hillside before the chorus. Unfortunately , the size of the production left little room for the audience, only ten or fifteen in number, who had to observe from atop the castle itself.
"It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father."
"You've told me that story six times since the dawn of day."
"It's a queer thing you wouldn't want to be hearing it and them girls after walking four miles to be listening to me now."
Last month I personally, myself, exclusively, broke the dramatic news that the Stones gig at Slane would be formally announced in Dublin's Gresham Hotel at half eight in the morning of June 10 - Magill publication day.
The Canadian looked straight into the eye of the camera, put his smuggest I'm-going-to-tell-you-all-about-it look on his face and said, "All the events in Ulysses take place on one day, July sixt ... "
James Joyce was fond of remarking that if Dublin were somehow destroyed it could be rebuilt completely from the account of it given in his' novel, Ulysses. The hundreds of scholars and students that come here for the summer of his centenary year will be walking through a city they already know in their imagination. As they pass under Merchant's Arch they will be aware of the book barrow from which Leopold Bloom purchased The Sweets of Sin, as they pass by Tom Moore's 'roguish finger' they will recall a typical Joycean joke about 'the meeting of the waters'.
The announcement that the Rolling Stones are indeed going to play Slane next month comes at half past eight this morning (June 10) at a press conference in Dublin's Gresham Hotel. Tickets go on sale ninety minutes later - just enough time for the pirate radios to flash the news to a thrilled city and for the evening papers to send photographers round to picture the queues and maybe chaos outside ticket outlets.
Gene Kerrigan reviews Maeve Binchy's latest book, DUBLIN4.
Dublin 4, by Maeve Binchy, is pubblished by Ward River Press at £2.50.
Maeve Binchy's new book of short stories, Dublin 4, used to cost £2,87 1/2p - until Ray McSharry turned nice guy and took V A T off books - and now it costs £2.50. With four stories, this works out at 62 1/2p a shot - not a bad deal. Perrsonally, I'd go up a quid each for two of the stories, the other two would then work out at 25p a piece, which is about right.
A Doll's House, Ibsen's play about the liberation of one middle class housewife, is now playing at the Abbey
Yank comes into O'Donoghue's at lunchtime. "A Paddy and a Carlssberg Special." Stands about two feet back from the bar. "Eh, make that a cold Carlsberg Special, huh?" Ike jacket, check shirt, levis, moustache, thinning blonde hair. A big man, hard, mid-thirties, face like a map of Saigon. By Gene Kerrigan