A family affair
Five members of the Quigley family, Pat, Fran, Liam, Gerry and Peter have made notable contributions to the Irish music industry.
Jackie Hayden, 08 Jun 2011
The recent death of their mother Kathleen Quigley (Ma Quigley) has prompted many in the Irish music industry to reflect on how five members of the same family made such an impact on the music industry despite, or perhaps because of, coming from a modest home in Synnott Place in Dublin.
Shortly before she died, Kathleen was visited by Philomena Lynott, and they had a great time reminiscing about Dublin back in the day. Which was appropriate, in that three of the Quigley boys worked closely with Philip Lynott at various stages in his career.
The oldest of the five, and the first to enter the music industry, was Pat Quigley. He was to carve out a fine reputation as bass guitarist in the mid ‘60s – ‘70s, and was a member of such prominent local bands as The Movement, as well as being in Orphanage with Phil Lynott. It was his stint working with Philo that saw Pat play a significant role in rock history.
“Back then, I was playing bass in the band with Philo, Brian Downey and Joe Staunton on guitar,” Pat recalls. “We used to hang around with very strange blokes from a band called Dr. Strangely Strange at the time too, and there was Brush Shiels and Skid Row and lots of others. That was the kind of weird scene we had in Dublin at the time. But after a while it became clear that Philo and Brian wanted to move on to something harder and were looking for a guitarist who had a different style to Joe. I suggested Eric Bell who had been playing with The Dreams. I remember warning Philo that Eric was often on another planet, but that he was a really great guitar player. That’s how Eric came to join the band that was soon to be known as Thin Lizzy.”
It was Pat who was also influential in his next-in-line, brother Fran, following him into the music business. Pat remembers his mother Kathleen asking him if he could help Fran get a job with his band, and the younger Fran recalls that at first he simply went along to gigs with them and helped out with anything he was asked to do, like humping gear in and out of venues. As Fran now recalls, “It started as a casual thing, going off with the lads. Back then there was no real rock music industry in Ireland. We didn’t think of a rock industry or having a career in those days. I just went along with Pat and helped out. As a young lad from inner-city Dublin, it was a great treat travelling down the country at weekends and hanging out with musicians. That was a really cool thing to do. It felt like we were doing something special. Before long he started giving me a few quid for what I was doing, but things really began to look up when Phil Lynott asked me to be the roadie with Thin Lizzy when he was putting the band together.”
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