Bill hits the right notes with Road to Riverdance

COMPOSER Bill Whelan is coming back to Limerick to talk about his new book.

The Road to Riverdance is a memoir of his life in Limerick and that explosive moment during the 1994 Eurovision interval when Riverdance was born, and still runs to this day.

Those life-changing seven minutes in front of millions of eyes worldwide is backed by 45 years of hard work, determination and a yearning for music.

Born and reared on Barrington Street in the city, Bill documents his life during the 1950s and 60s and a career at the forefront of the Irish music scene and evolution.

“The book deals with a long career since the 1970s working in music in Ireland and what it was like for me as a freelancer and how the industry changed over the years and how the arrival of Windmill Lane and U2, how that really changed the whole nature of the Irish industry and I was lucky enough to be there at that time and I was very much part of what was going on,” he told the Limerick Leader.

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A trip to London at the tender age of 19 resulted in working with the late Richard Harris.

“Harris was great, I wrote a couple of songs with him and I got to know him quite well and his brother Dermot, and I think he was proud that there was a Limerick person involved in writing the music for the film and when he was alive, kept his Limerick connection,” he explained.

As part of the Limerick Literary Festival, Bill Whelan will be in conversation with Dermot Whelan and joined by his friends, fiddler Zoë Conway and her guitarist husband, John McIntyre on Sunday February 26 in the Belltable at 3pm.

The Limerick Literary Festival in Honour of Kate O'Brien is taking place from February 24 - 26. Interestingly, Bill is living in a house in Connemara that was once the home of Kate O'Brien.