In Memory
Paddy Neary (14/05/1948 - 23/09/2020) Ardee, County Louth
B&F February 2022
Paddy – Star of the Borders
by Jimmy Clinkscale in 1981
Paddy Neary has just finished another concert – an exhibition in the Scottish Borders – and the huddled audience of just over 200 are delighted.
“Incredible” says one man. “Did you see his fingers move?” says another, “They were just a blur!”
That’s the sort of reaction one of Ireland’s best known accordionists has known for most of his life now – and how he enjoys playing well!
“I hate giving a bad performance” says Paddy in that beautifully rounded Irish drawl. “It really depresses me. It’s like the whole world has collapsed around me. The fella who said you’re only as good as your last performance got it right. I feel sick when it happens and can’t wait for the next opportunity to do it all over again.
“It’s because I respect the music so much.”
Music and marriage are Paddy’s two great loves. He tied the knot with his wife June four years ago and feels his music has improved by leaps and bounds because of it.
“I only wish I’d married earlier” he says. He now has two young boys but would not like them to follow their father into a musical career.
“I’d like to see them enjoy music but not take it up professionally” he says.
It’s music that holds him together and his love, nay passion, for it emanates from every fibre of his body.
The man thinks, sleeps, eats and breathes the stuff, a love born out of his parents’ encouragement and his own innate ability. Without it the 33-year-old Irishman is like the shark that must always move in the water les it stagnates and dies.
Paddy was born into a musical background in Ardee, County Louth. His father, Mickey, was a farm labourer whose family had tilled the soil on the same estate for well over 100 years.
His mother loved the classics and Beethoven in particular and it was in this ground that the tended shoots of the young Neary’s budding musical career would take root and flourish. Paddy started plonking away on the piano before he was four, converting the sounds in his head into an elementary musical shape.
As he grew through childhood and listened to, and sometimes even joined in music sessions in the house, his education developed until, at the age of 11, he took up the accordion – a Christmas present from his dad.
He began playing in a three-piece band around the local hotels and also started composing his own tunes.
A capable pianist, even at that tender age, he swept the board with three composed Irish airs at the Newry Music Festival, beating a nearby piano teacher.
Even then he preferred slower, emotional pieces – songs like ‘The Dark Island’ or ‘Londonderry Air.’ “My favourite though is the slow movement from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathetique Symphony’”.
“I never play it though because I can hear the orchestra in the background and know what it should be sounding like. Mine is an awful little sound by comparison.”
It was only when Paddy moved to Scotland and purchased an electronic accordion that he began to enjoy playing it.
“It had strings you see, and I love strings. I really detested the accordion before that – it had no feeling or timbre like the piano.”
That was not the major turning point in his career however. Following a three year period in his late teens when he toured America and Germany with a showband, Paddy returned to Ireland and took the All-Ireland Accordion Championship.
He then went to University College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music – both at the same time. It was at the latter that he studied under DR A. J. Potter, a man who was to reveal to him what Paddy now recognises as one of the greatest gifts of music. The ability to approach music from within yourself.
“Before then I had always played a piece from the outside in,” he says “and any emotion which came in the tune was purely accidental. Dr Potter reshaped my whole musical education.”
Like many players, that realization has led him to continually strive to better his own musicianship but it inevitably prompts the question ‘are you ever satisfied with you own ability?’
“Well my only real ambition is to improve my playing. I have always deeply admired the Norwegian player Toralf Tollefson who, in an age when there were no sophisticated accordions, could produce superb music which I have yet to hear bettered.
Paddy says that the only performance of his own that he would describe as definitive, a piece that he is entirely satisfied with, is ‘The Blue Danube’ by Strauss.
It was only when he moved to Scotland, however, that Paddy finally realised just how much enjoyment his music gave to people.
He came over in 1977 at the invitation of Alex MacArthur from Biggar who met Paddy while judging the All-Ireland Championships that same year. The initial visit consisted of a brief 10-day tour around some of the A&F Clubs, but Paddy was flabbergasted by the response.
“I couldn’t believe the appreciation for what I did”, he says “and made up my mind that I wanted to move to Scotland where there were so many marvellous people who wanted to hear my music.”
With an almost childlike innocence of the gifts he possessed, Paddy continued to impress Scots audiences settling down eventually in Auchterarder.
He says he’s a little bit disappointed with the way the scene has changed in his home country during that time, particularly on the East Coast.
“Most of the venues have become infiltrated with heavy pop music. Most of the time badly performed.
“As in most types of music there is good and bad, but a lot of it seems to be noise for noise’s sake.” He admits, however, to a healthy respect for Stevie Wonder. “He makes lovely music” adds Paddy.
Talking of the charts reminds Paddy that he does, after all, harbour an ambition. “I want to be the first accordionist to take the instrument – solo – to number one in the Hit Parade.”
“I have the tune but I am not going to tell you what it is!”
“What I would really love is to do for the accordion what James Galway has done for the flute. I’ve never met him but I wish I had his fingers” laughs Paddy.
Try telling that to the man in the Scottish Borders!
Box & Fiddle Dec 1981
Year 05 No 05
In Memory
Paddy Neary (14/05/1948 - 23/09/2020) Ardee, County Louth
Paddy was born in Ardee, County Louth in Leinster where he began playing the piano at the age of four. His father Mickey, a farm labourer, introduced him to traditional music and from his mother, Josie, Paddy inherited his love of classical music. He received an accordion as a Christmas present from his dad when he was aged 11 and one of his earliest and greatest inspirations was the Norwegian accordionist Toralf L. Tollefson (1914 – 1994). He soon began playing at local hotels with a three-piece band and also participating in local competitions.
Paddy studied music at University College, Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and not only was he a talented musician, but he also won several awards for step-dancing. His first big break came in the sixties, at the time when Dermot O’Brien (also from Ardee) and his Clubmen’s recording of The Merry Ploughboy was reaching dizzying heights in the Irish charts. While still in his teens he toured America for six weeks playing in places like The Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas and the many Irish ballrooms in New York. After this he toured Germany with the Nevada Showband. Three years later he was the proud possessor of The Hohner Cup, and made his first broadcast with the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra.
In Ireland he won the competitions on both piano and accordion, and in the late 70s he won the All-Ireland Championship. The adjudicator was Alex MacArthur, a well-known Scottish bandleader, who arranged for Paddy to undertake a ten-date tour of Scottish Box & Fiddle Clubs, after which Paddy decided to move to Scotland.
He moved to Auchterarder where he instantly became much in demand as a guest artiste in clubs and concerts, and also worked for Clinkscales as a demonstrator. He was also one year the chief guest for the evening concert during the All-Scotland Championship held in Perth.
During the day, Paddy kept busy teaching music. Apart from teaching children, he was both surprised and delighted to teach adults as well. He also regularly entertained tourists from all over the world in the Highlander Hotel in Newtonmore.
While in Scotland he switched to playing electronic accordions. In the late 1970s and 1980s Paddy made several albums using electronic accordions. Paddy declared that his favourite piece of music was the slow movement from Tchaikovski’s Pathetique Symphony. However, it was not until he started playing the electronic accordion that he enjoyed playing this piece of music. He claimed that until then the sound that he produced was too little as he could not produce the proper string sound and he hated giving bad performances.
Paddy Nery and his family returned to Ardee in 1990 after he suffered a stroke and his performing career ended. They had by then lived in Scotland for 20 years.
What was this connection to Scotland? Accordionist Brain Forrest sent in the following as a tribute to Paddy.
One dreich Monday in late 1979, I received a phone call in my office from my musical friend and legend, Alex MacArthur, who asked if I’d be going to Bobby Colgan’s A&F Club that night in the Woodside Hotel, Musselburgh. I said I’d though about it, but wasn’t absolutely sure if I’d make it, as I had an appointment with a client to pick up his new accordion at 6pm, and if he was late, I wouldn’t have time. Alex’s response was, “Cancel the client – you’ll thank me for it later!”
As it happened, the client phoned me just after that to rearrange collection and I was able to get along to the Club in good time, where Alex introduced me to the reason for his enthusiasm. And so began a collaboration and friendship which I cherished, and which changed the appreciation of the accordion in Scotland. A pretty sweeping statement, I know, but when I tell you that the guest artiste whom Alex that night introduced me to, and whom he introduced to Scotland, was a young man called Paddy Neary, I hope I may be forgiven. Alex had been across in Ireland adjudicating at the All-Ireland Championships and had heard Paddy play. In his own words, he was “blown away” by Paddy’s complete mastery of the accordion, and the depth of his repertoire, and immediately on his return he set to work fixing up a tour of Scotland, this being the first night.
When Paddy went of stage for his first spot that night, nobody in the hall could have known the impact this gentle, quietly spoken Irishman would make on the scene. He wowed us with hornpipes, reels, jigs and transatlantic medleys, interspersed with accordion novelty showpieces such as Nola, Dantesque and Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca. All this was played on a battered old black Hohner Atlantic IV held together with Elastoplast, insulating tape and goodness knows what else……the compression was shot, as I later discovered. How he could even wring a tune out of it at all was a miracle!
During the half-time interval, another friend of mine, Davy Gibson, set up his Elkavox 77 electronic accordion, which he had bought from me in my capacity, at the time, as Sales Manager of Clinkscale of Melrose, arguably the biggest importers, wholesalers and retailers of accordions in the UK, if not Europe.When Paddy heard the string section on the treble and the piano/bass side, his eyes lit up and his jaw dropped. He had never actually played an electronic accordion before, and the 77 was fairly tasty for that stage in production. When I saw his reaction, I asked him if he’d like to try it later (meaning after the Club finished) and he was like a kid in a sweetie shop. Amazingly, and very bravely, he wondered if the owner would really let him, and if so, could he maybe try it for his second spot? I approached Davie, who of course readily agreed. And so it was that Paddy absolutely hypnotised the audience with classics such as The Blue Danube (his favourite piece) and Elizabethan Serenade, making full use of the beautiful strings and piano sounds – with myself crouching at his feet changing the sound registers and balance as he went! I later discovered that Paddy had arranged the Elizabethan Serenade for a string quartet as part of his PhD Music dissertation, classical piano being his first instrument.
I arranged with Alex to bring Paddy down to Melrose the next day, where I set up a loan of a Clinkscale Crucianelli F45 for the rest of his tour (as I recall, he was guest at my local Club a few days later, where I also spent a fair bit of time changing sounds, of which the F45 had a good few). He soon got the hand of it, likewise the Accoder A45, and then the Elkavox 83, which he made completely his own. We worked together for a number of years, in concerts and roadshows, and he stayed with us a few times, always bringing wee gifts for our daughter Fiona from ‘Uncle Paddy’. I was honoured and privileged to call him friend.
Paddy Neary sadly passed away at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda in September 2020. His music and his family were the two driving forces in his life, and he always made a point of going home to June and the boys, David and Philip, after every gig if at all possible. Latterly, he taught piano, and he was choirmaster and resident musician in his local church in Ardee, where his funeral was held, and where his two granddaughters Sophia and Louise were confirmed. He played for the elder while she sang at her confirmation service, and despite his grave illness was determined to do the same for the younger one. Although his wife, June, pleaded with him that he wasn’t strong enough to play the piano, his reply was, “Just get me to the piano – it will play me”.
It's a measure of the man that he did exactly that, playing in the church on the Saturday and returning to the hospice, where he passed away on the Wednesday.
R.I.P. Paddy. Thank you for sharing your friendship and your music.
Box & Fiddle Feb 2022
Year 45 No 2
by Jimmy Clinkscale in 1981
Paddy Neary has just finished another concert – an exhibition in the Scottish Borders – and the huddled audience of just over 200 are delighted.
“Incredible” says one man. “Did you see his fingers move?” says another, “They were just a blur!”
That’s the sort of reaction one of Ireland’s best known accordionists has known for most of his life now – and how he enjoys playing well!
“I hate giving a bad performance” says Paddy in that beautifully rounded Irish drawl. “It really depresses me. It’s like the whole world has collapsed around me. The fella who said you’re only as good as your last performance got it right. I feel sick when it happens and can’t wait for the next opportunity to do it all over again.
“It’s because I respect the music so much.”
Music and marriage are Paddy’s two great loves. He tied the knot with his wife June four years ago and feels his music has improved by leaps and bounds because of it.
“I only wish I’d married earlier” he says. He now has two young boys but would not like them to follow their father into a musical career.
“I’d like to see them enjoy music but not take it up professionally” he says.
It’s music that holds him together and his love, nay passion, for it emanates from every fibre of his body.
The man thinks, sleeps, eats and breathes the stuff, a love born out of his parents’ encouragement and his own innate ability. Without it the 33-year-old Irishman is like the shark that must always move in the water les it stagnates and dies.
Paddy was born into a musical background in Ardee, County Louth. His father, Mickey, was a farm labourer whose family had tilled the soil on the same estate for well over 100 years.
His mother loved the classics and Beethoven in particular and it was in this ground that the tended shoots of the young Neary’s budding musical career would take root and flourish. Paddy started plonking away on the piano before he was four, converting the sounds in his head into an elementary musical shape.
As he grew through childhood and listened to, and sometimes even joined in music sessions in the house, his education developed until, at the age of 11, he took up the accordion – a Christmas present from his dad.
He began playing in a three-piece band around the local hotels and also started composing his own tunes.
A capable pianist, even at that tender age, he swept the board with three composed Irish airs at the Newry Music Festival, beating a nearby piano teacher.
Even then he preferred slower, emotional pieces – songs like ‘The Dark Island’ or ‘Londonderry Air.’ “My favourite though is the slow movement from Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathetique Symphony’”.
“I never play it though because I can hear the orchestra in the background and know what it should be sounding like. Mine is an awful little sound by comparison.”
It was only when Paddy moved to Scotland and purchased an electronic accordion that he began to enjoy playing it.
“It had strings you see, and I love strings. I really detested the accordion before that – it had no feeling or timbre like the piano.”
That was not the major turning point in his career however. Following a three year period in his late teens when he toured America and Germany with a showband, Paddy returned to Ireland and took the All-Ireland Accordion Championship.
He then went to University College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music – both at the same time. It was at the latter that he studied under DR A. J. Potter, a man who was to reveal to him what Paddy now recognises as one of the greatest gifts of music. The ability to approach music from within yourself.
“Before then I had always played a piece from the outside in,” he says “and any emotion which came in the tune was purely accidental. Dr Potter reshaped my whole musical education.”
Like many players, that realization has led him to continually strive to better his own musicianship but it inevitably prompts the question ‘are you ever satisfied with you own ability?’
“Well my only real ambition is to improve my playing. I have always deeply admired the Norwegian player Toralf Tollefson who, in an age when there were no sophisticated accordions, could produce superb music which I have yet to hear bettered.
Paddy says that the only performance of his own that he would describe as definitive, a piece that he is entirely satisfied with, is ‘The Blue Danube’ by Strauss.
It was only when he moved to Scotland, however, that Paddy finally realised just how much enjoyment his music gave to people.
He came over in 1977 at the invitation of Alex MacArthur from Biggar who met Paddy while judging the All-Ireland Championships that same year. The initial visit consisted of a brief 10-day tour around some of the A&F Clubs, but Paddy was flabbergasted by the response.
“I couldn’t believe the appreciation for what I did”, he says “and made up my mind that I wanted to move to Scotland where there were so many marvellous people who wanted to hear my music.”
With an almost childlike innocence of the gifts he possessed, Paddy continued to impress Scots audiences settling down eventually in Auchterarder.
He says he’s a little bit disappointed with the way the scene has changed in his home country during that time, particularly on the East Coast.
“Most of the venues have become infiltrated with heavy pop music. Most of the time badly performed.
“As in most types of music there is good and bad, but a lot of it seems to be noise for noise’s sake.” He admits, however, to a healthy respect for Stevie Wonder. “He makes lovely music” adds Paddy.
Talking of the charts reminds Paddy that he does, after all, harbour an ambition. “I want to be the first accordionist to take the instrument – solo – to number one in the Hit Parade.”
“I have the tune but I am not going to tell you what it is!”
“What I would really love is to do for the accordion what James Galway has done for the flute. I’ve never met him but I wish I had his fingers” laughs Paddy.
Try telling that to the man in the Scottish Borders!
Box & Fiddle Dec 1981
Year 05 No 05
In Memory
Paddy Neary (14/05/1948 - 23/09/2020) Ardee, County Louth
Paddy was born in Ardee, County Louth in Leinster where he began playing the piano at the age of four. His father Mickey, a farm labourer, introduced him to traditional music and from his mother, Josie, Paddy inherited his love of classical music. He received an accordion as a Christmas present from his dad when he was aged 11 and one of his earliest and greatest inspirations was the Norwegian accordionist Toralf L. Tollefson (1914 – 1994). He soon began playing at local hotels with a three-piece band and also participating in local competitions.
Paddy studied music at University College, Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and not only was he a talented musician, but he also won several awards for step-dancing. His first big break came in the sixties, at the time when Dermot O’Brien (also from Ardee) and his Clubmen’s recording of The Merry Ploughboy was reaching dizzying heights in the Irish charts. While still in his teens he toured America for six weeks playing in places like The Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas and the many Irish ballrooms in New York. After this he toured Germany with the Nevada Showband. Three years later he was the proud possessor of The Hohner Cup, and made his first broadcast with the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra.
In Ireland he won the competitions on both piano and accordion, and in the late 70s he won the All-Ireland Championship. The adjudicator was Alex MacArthur, a well-known Scottish bandleader, who arranged for Paddy to undertake a ten-date tour of Scottish Box & Fiddle Clubs, after which Paddy decided to move to Scotland.
He moved to Auchterarder where he instantly became much in demand as a guest artiste in clubs and concerts, and also worked for Clinkscales as a demonstrator. He was also one year the chief guest for the evening concert during the All-Scotland Championship held in Perth.
During the day, Paddy kept busy teaching music. Apart from teaching children, he was both surprised and delighted to teach adults as well. He also regularly entertained tourists from all over the world in the Highlander Hotel in Newtonmore.
While in Scotland he switched to playing electronic accordions. In the late 1970s and 1980s Paddy made several albums using electronic accordions. Paddy declared that his favourite piece of music was the slow movement from Tchaikovski’s Pathetique Symphony. However, it was not until he started playing the electronic accordion that he enjoyed playing this piece of music. He claimed that until then the sound that he produced was too little as he could not produce the proper string sound and he hated giving bad performances.
Paddy Nery and his family returned to Ardee in 1990 after he suffered a stroke and his performing career ended. They had by then lived in Scotland for 20 years.
What was this connection to Scotland? Accordionist Brain Forrest sent in the following as a tribute to Paddy.
One dreich Monday in late 1979, I received a phone call in my office from my musical friend and legend, Alex MacArthur, who asked if I’d be going to Bobby Colgan’s A&F Club that night in the Woodside Hotel, Musselburgh. I said I’d though about it, but wasn’t absolutely sure if I’d make it, as I had an appointment with a client to pick up his new accordion at 6pm, and if he was late, I wouldn’t have time. Alex’s response was, “Cancel the client – you’ll thank me for it later!”
As it happened, the client phoned me just after that to rearrange collection and I was able to get along to the Club in good time, where Alex introduced me to the reason for his enthusiasm. And so began a collaboration and friendship which I cherished, and which changed the appreciation of the accordion in Scotland. A pretty sweeping statement, I know, but when I tell you that the guest artiste whom Alex that night introduced me to, and whom he introduced to Scotland, was a young man called Paddy Neary, I hope I may be forgiven. Alex had been across in Ireland adjudicating at the All-Ireland Championships and had heard Paddy play. In his own words, he was “blown away” by Paddy’s complete mastery of the accordion, and the depth of his repertoire, and immediately on his return he set to work fixing up a tour of Scotland, this being the first night.
When Paddy went of stage for his first spot that night, nobody in the hall could have known the impact this gentle, quietly spoken Irishman would make on the scene. He wowed us with hornpipes, reels, jigs and transatlantic medleys, interspersed with accordion novelty showpieces such as Nola, Dantesque and Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca. All this was played on a battered old black Hohner Atlantic IV held together with Elastoplast, insulating tape and goodness knows what else……the compression was shot, as I later discovered. How he could even wring a tune out of it at all was a miracle!
During the half-time interval, another friend of mine, Davy Gibson, set up his Elkavox 77 electronic accordion, which he had bought from me in my capacity, at the time, as Sales Manager of Clinkscale of Melrose, arguably the biggest importers, wholesalers and retailers of accordions in the UK, if not Europe.When Paddy heard the string section on the treble and the piano/bass side, his eyes lit up and his jaw dropped. He had never actually played an electronic accordion before, and the 77 was fairly tasty for that stage in production. When I saw his reaction, I asked him if he’d like to try it later (meaning after the Club finished) and he was like a kid in a sweetie shop. Amazingly, and very bravely, he wondered if the owner would really let him, and if so, could he maybe try it for his second spot? I approached Davie, who of course readily agreed. And so it was that Paddy absolutely hypnotised the audience with classics such as The Blue Danube (his favourite piece) and Elizabethan Serenade, making full use of the beautiful strings and piano sounds – with myself crouching at his feet changing the sound registers and balance as he went! I later discovered that Paddy had arranged the Elizabethan Serenade for a string quartet as part of his PhD Music dissertation, classical piano being his first instrument.
I arranged with Alex to bring Paddy down to Melrose the next day, where I set up a loan of a Clinkscale Crucianelli F45 for the rest of his tour (as I recall, he was guest at my local Club a few days later, where I also spent a fair bit of time changing sounds, of which the F45 had a good few). He soon got the hand of it, likewise the Accoder A45, and then the Elkavox 83, which he made completely his own. We worked together for a number of years, in concerts and roadshows, and he stayed with us a few times, always bringing wee gifts for our daughter Fiona from ‘Uncle Paddy’. I was honoured and privileged to call him friend.
Paddy Neary sadly passed away at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda in September 2020. His music and his family were the two driving forces in his life, and he always made a point of going home to June and the boys, David and Philip, after every gig if at all possible. Latterly, he taught piano, and he was choirmaster and resident musician in his local church in Ardee, where his funeral was held, and where his two granddaughters Sophia and Louise were confirmed. He played for the elder while she sang at her confirmation service, and despite his grave illness was determined to do the same for the younger one. Although his wife, June, pleaded with him that he wasn’t strong enough to play the piano, his reply was, “Just get me to the piano – it will play me”.
It's a measure of the man that he did exactly that, playing in the church on the Saturday and returning to the hospice, where he passed away on the Wednesday.
R.I.P. Paddy. Thank you for sharing your friendship and your music.
Box & Fiddle Feb 2022
Year 45 No 2