Riverdance exploded across the stage at Dublin's Point Theatre one
spring evening in 1994 during a seven-minute interval of the
Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Ireland. It was a watershed
moment in the cultural history of a country embracing the future, a
confident leap into world music grounded in the footfall of the
choreographed kick-line. It was a moment forty-five years in the
making for its composer. In this tenderly unfurled memoir Bill
Whelan rehearses a lifetime of unconscious preparation as step by
step he revisits his past, from with his Barrington Street home in
1950s Limerick, to the forcing ground of University College Dublin
and the Law Library during the 1960s, to his attic studio in
Ranelagh. Along the way the reader is introduced to people and
places in the immersive world of fellow musicians, artists and
producers, friends and collaborators, embracing the spectrum of
Irish music as it broke boundaries, entering the global slipstream
of the 1980s and 1990s. As art and commerce fused, dramas and
contending personalities come to view behind the arras of stage,
screen and recording desk. Whelan pays tribute to a parade of those
who formed his world. He describes the warmth and sustenance of his
Limerick childhood, his parents and Denise Quinn, won through
assiduous courtship; the McCourts and Jesuit fathers of his early
days, the breakthrough with a tempestuous Richard Harris who
summoned him to London; Danny Doyle, Shay Healy, Dickie Rock,
Planxty, The Dubliners and Stockton's Wing, Noel Pearson, Sean O
Riada; working with Jimmy Webb, Leon Uris, The Corrs, Paul
McGuinness, Moya Doherty, John McColgan, Jean Butler and Michael
Flatley. Written with wry, inimitable Irish humour and insight,
Bill Whelan's self deprecation allows us to to see the players in
all their glory, vulnerability and idiosyncracy. This fascinating
work reveals the nuts, bolts, sheer effort and serendipities that
formed the road to Riverdance in his reinvention of the Irish
tradition for a modern age. As the show went on to perform to
millions worldwide, Whelan was honoured with a 1997 Grammy Award
when Riverdance was named the 'Best Musical Show Album.' Richly
detailed and illustrated, The Road to Riverdance forms an enduring
repository of memory for all concerned with the performing arts.
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