Paddy – Star of the Borders
by Jimmy Clinkscale
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 promptsthe 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 and Fiddle
January 1982
“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 promptsthe 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 and Fiddle
January 1982