1869, Ep. 104 with Larry Kirwan, author of Rockaway Blue
4:41PM Mar 8, +0000
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rockaway
new york
new york city
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story
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Welcome to 1869, the Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. This episode we speak with Larry Kirwan, author of the new book Rockaway Blue, A Novel. Larry Kirwan was the leader of the New York based Irish political rock band Black 47 for twenty-five years. He is the author of five previous books, including Liverpool Fantasy, Rockin' the Bronx, and Green Suede Shoes, as well as sixteen plays and musicals, including Hard Times and Rebel in the Soul. Kirwan also hosts Celtic Crush, a popular radio show on Sirius XM. We spoke to Larry about his own personal experiences during 9/11, and how they informed his new novel, how his book tells the story of regular people who were impacted by the tragedy, and how New York City has been transformed in the twenty years since the towers fell. Hello, Larry, welcome to the podcast.
Hey, Jonathan. It's good to be there. Yeah, yeah.
Glad to have you on and talking about your new novel, Rockaway Blue. It's out now and It's under our Three Hills imprint. And it's got a lot going on. It's a novel about New York, terrorism, the New York Police Department, the inner life of Irish America. And it's also about American history from Vietnam through the Iraq invasion. Tell us before we jump into the book, tell us about your experiences in New York City during 9/11. This is a 9/11 era book during 9/11. and its aftermath and how that informed your writing.
Well, I live just above Canal Street in lower Manhattan. So I was kind of almost on the scene of the crime as it were, I actually heard the plane coming. And I was a big Mets follower at the time. And I was following the Mets results I actually put my head down on the table, it seemed like it was just going to crash into my own building. So I ran up onto the roof. And there was it was just the most stunning scene. And then of course, the other one came. So then I went down, because I just went down Broadway, I figured let me go as far down as I can to see it. Because at that point, the police neverending hadn't really barricaded anything after the army hadn't arrived. So I went down, and I got down quite far. And then the smoke, it just felt really unhealthy. And with so many people running up, so I turned around and went back. And, you know, it struck everybody in different ways at that time, but I was a member of Black 47, and we were the house band in New York City. So I knew straightaway that quite a number of friends would be dead during this. But then it was necessary to get people back into the center of the city.
It's something that's forgotten about now, because people just didn't go out at that point and people left town. So we had a regular gig in a place called Connolly's up on 47th Street. And we started doing it again the following Saturday. And it was the only place in town that there was music, and a lot of the first responders knew we were there. So the place was packed and the gigs every Saturday night were just so intense. Partly because nobody knew who is dead and who was alive. So we were always kind of watching the door. And then someone would come through the door and we do this. Yeah, he's alive. She's alive was that feeling with us because we didn't know the names of our fans or anything. But it was the same thing. And the crowd was like they were rushed over and hug the person because nobody knew. So then we played so much around that time and played around the country and people would bring pictures of their family who had been fans of the band and asked us to sing their particular song, and you'd look at the picture and think, Oh, my God, I don't know this person or I do know them. And I wasn't sure which was worse sometimes.
So it was a searing kind of experience. And I didn't actually write anything for quite a while for that year, and I always wrote and then I set out to write an album called New York Town about the city before it and the city right after it —What had changed in the city. And I think it was that album that set off the whole idea of Rockaway Blue. It had a different name, it had a name from a Yeats poem, first—a Raving A utumn. And I wrote it about 10 years ago. And then I just didn't want to go out and promote it. It just felt too raw. And I lost some close friends. And it just seemed wrong to be promoting it. And then, about two years ago, I have a show on Sirius XM called Celtic Crush. And I guess it was around September, and I started telling the story of the book. And I got an email from a listener to the show. His name is Dean Smith. And she was the head of Cornell University publishing at the time. And I think we'd known each other slightly. And he said, that books sounds interesting. Do you have a copy? Just send it to me. And yeah, so yeah, sure, read it as I'm not reading it. And he wrote back and said, I really like it, would you like to have us publish it. And that was it—it was just one of those strange occurrences in your life.
Well, we're happy that Dean sent that email that were published in your book. That's fantastic. Now, you had mentioned, many, many friends that were lost. And you didn't know when you were playing. If some of your fans were coming in, if they were or were not coming in. There is a, you mentioned, a close friend, Mychal Judge, who did pass away in the tragedy. And tell us a little bit about his story and how he inspired your novel.
The book is, is dedicated to Myhcal, Father Mychal, and to Richard Muldowneny. He was a New York Fire Department man. And yeah, I missed the two of them still, it's it's strange. And that's one of the other reasons why I wrote the book is there's so much pain still around the city, and around in particular and the tri-state area, about this event, you know, the it stopped being reported about and everything now, but the people who lost people, particularly family members, and they're still hurting, and I'm wanting to tell their story, rather than the general story about it, or the academic story, or the historical or political side of it, just what it was like to be a person who lost someone. Now father, Michael, Mann, he was just a very unusual person. When you were talking to him, you were his sole object, he had no side vision, it was like he was totally locked into. And in many ways, he was a guy, I think, who had suffered a lot in his own life and was interested to see if if there was some way he could help you. And he helped so many people, including me, he was just a calm presence. And he was in during live then, on top of everything else, he was totally coiffed. And even though he was wearing the suit town, and the cowl and everything was almost like he was on a male model when he was there with you. So you couldn't take your eyes off, like this guy is, is just one of the most unusual people I've met, and one of the most humane, and, and when you were talking to him, I was all about you. And that's a strange thing in a barn, particularly because he's come see black 47. And I'm sure he liked the music, but he liked the buzz that was around he like to get the center of things and, and to decipher what's going on that's at the center of this scene. And then he liked being there amongst people. Just an unusual character, and oftentimes, and I'm not. I'm not very religious at this point in my life, but if things go wrong, I often think of Michael, he has, whether it's a mystical thing, or just he's a calming presence to remember. And when you do that, things start to go right in your life again, you think about it. So I hear the same stories about him from other people, and I think I was blessed in a way to have him As a friend and to known
Wow, well thanks for sharing that. Here's a short excerpt of black 47 song about Mychal Judge entitled Mychal
New York City I made my home, I love the streets, the very stones. Cared for my comrades, cherished my friends. Loved all beginnings, had no time for ends. A city's streets are full of woe, I saw suffering where'er I'd go, I did y best to console and heal. Treat each human with full dignity. I never saw reason to, Hate someon who thinks different than you, Each one has their annointed place, In the love reflected in their God's face.
Within the novel you have three central characters, Detective Sergeant Jimmy Murphy, Yusef Ibrahim, and the city of New York itself is a character. Tell us more about their roles and your novel?
Well, from being a playwright, I go with the Greeks, the ancient Greeks from character comes story. And I'm always surprised, because I read a lot and in fact I'm reading Shuggie Bane right now. And that glorious, little depressing Scottish novel, but the characters he builds are so incredibly real. And that's one of the things I set out to do, no matter what I'm doing is, before I write anything, I write, write, write about the character, everything I can think about. That character has to be real to me, so I can see them and I can feel them. And they're always flawed characters, because we're all flawed. So Detective Sergeant Jimmy Murphy is one of my favorite characters I've ever created. He went to Vietnam at 19, regular kind of a guy and when he was over there, he realized you can't believe anyone Can't believe anything that's coming from authority. And he gets an incident over there and he kills someone and she can't get over it comes back to Rockaway joins the NYPD and is kind of a lone gun. He's trusted, but he doesn't play the game as it were. And he doesn't want to his Vietnam experiences got him that way. And she marries his childhood sweetheart. I have two sons and his eldest son Brian is an overachiever and goes to Regis High School, which is the top Catholic High School in New York, and goes to Georgetown and can write his Ticket Anywhere. He likes his his top of the class, but he joins the NYPD and they kind of give him a hard time in there. But he's pretty brilliant, works his way up and passes his father in rank. So by the age of 30, he's he's a lieutenant. And that kind of rankles between them. They've always had a kind of a difficult situation and he gets killed in 9/11. And that sets the whole story off. Yes, Youssef. Ibrahim is a friend of Jimmy's. And he's an Egyptian American really well educated and runs for falafel partners, and has a family too. And she becomes involved in the plot in a way I want to tell you because we give away the story. So It's just interesting having an Irish Catholic from Rockaway, and a fairly orthodox Muslim person from Bay Ridge and Brooklyn, and their interaction in these affairs that are going on in the in the plot. And the third character is New York City and New York City has always been a character in my songs, and often in plays. And in novels since I came here. It's just a really interesting city. It's a city that's always flowing, new immigrants coming in, settled immigrants move into the suburbs. So it's always different than you can find anything you want in New York City. So from the minute I got here, I went to live on the Lower East Side, I ended up on East Third Street and Avenue B, which was the center of heroin dealing in New York City. So you're right into all this drama straightaway. And being a dramatist. I just like to bring it on into myself. And then being in black 47, you get a view of New York, because we played in every neighborhood, and then we're on Leno, Letterman, and O'Brien, so we're really well known. And then we're taking the brand of New York across the country, as kind of representative. So yeah, New York has always been a character in what I do. And it's a big character in Rockaway blue. And Rockaway itself is a huge character. Because,
you know, when I got here from Ireland, I was living on the Lower East Side, and someone said, if you take the a train, go to the end of it out in Queens, there's a beach out there. So this is in the 70s, mid 70s, I started to head up the a train on Sunday afternoons. And there were these Irish saloons. And there were people playing accordions and fiddles, that they weren't Irish people, they were Irish Americans who had settled there a long time ago, and I became close to that community. And then when Black 47 became a hit, Rockaway was kind of Black 47 country. So I wanted to set it there because I've never really heard of a story been set there. And yet, it's one of the most unique places in New York. Those are the characters.
Nice, nice. Yeah, I want to go visit Rockaway after after reading the book. It's it sounds like an amazing place. And your novel tells the story of you know, regular people who were impacted by 9/11, particularly the folks in the Rockaway neighborhood. What lessons do you hope your book will bring to readers in Rockaway as well as New York City in general and beyond?
Well, one thing I got away from in being a songwriter is to be careful about giving lessons to anyone, that's no deal with the characters, get your set of characters in there and put them in a situation. And that's what readers really react to because you identify with the characters. Even sometimes, you might not even like them. But that's what a good character is. So I really wanted to explore in a way, what it was like to lose someone close. I mean, I lost father, Michael lost, Richie Muldowney, and many, many fans of black for the seven. But I didn't have that. That blood connection, but I knew a lot of people who did and how I used to just watch them and think how do you get over something like this. And the other thing that oddly enough, and my wife just brought up yesterday when she was explained the book to someone, because I told her about her, but I'd forgotten after 9/11 if you remember, the New York Times would do little bios of maybe about 30 people each day, who had died during it. And of course, we used to scour those because then you would find the face and you get the name Finally, because when you're in a band or popular band, you know faces are coming at you all the time. You remember the faces but it's really hard to forget the names. And you know, it was just strange reading about people I knew, and and I don't mean this in a can dismissive way, but the bios all change. To be the same, this guy was great family man, he was the coach of the baseball team. He did this, he did that. And you'd have a different picture. This is a guy I used to hang out with at the bar. And he was the life of the party. Our he was, he had a vicious sense of humor, you would put people down. And it was like, whoa. So they have a nice picture. And I have a totally different worry. And that kind of inspired me to because these people were more than the bios, they were full of life. You know, there was that feeling in New York before 9/11. Anything is possible. Now the stock market was doing well. There was more money around. wages were going up and everything. And it was just this feeling I used to call the people and not in a political way, Clinton's children, you know, there was this optimism about America at the time. And then wow, it got destroyed. In that minute, a lot of people moved down in New York, but I used to think, you know, roughly 2700 died in the towers and around that area. And I used to think their spirits left and was definitely avoid for quite a while. And then of course, Europe is repressible new people came in, and a new form of New York happened, which was a good form. But it wasn't what it was. Because the optimism had gone. The instance had gone. There was that awareness. You know, we've been attacked for the first time on our home ground. And that destroyed something. And I was trying to capture all that feeling. Because that, that wasn't captured in books or newspapers. I'm sure that people writing felt it. But I didn't feel that that was ever really explore what happened to the city on that one day. And then there was the whole thing about because watching, watching the planes, common everything.
There was this feeling about the attackers, how did they do it, you know, and then the more I studied it, the more I realized, these guys had a perfect storm, everything went right for them. And many times they were actually found out is that weren't great plotters running, but nobody expected anything like this. They were particularly caught a lot when they were learning how to fly planes, you get 27, I think it was 27 guys from Saudi Arabia traveling around the US learning how to fly, and then got away with it. Because nobody really expected and being like this. And that's part of the plot too.
Wow, this is so refreshing. You know, you've this book is coming out at the most opportune time 20 years after 9/11's 20th anniversary. And from what you've been telling me as your experience and your experience of friends, is that New York has been in a state of PTSD, that that the the trauma was so intense that people just couldn't deal with it. I remember myself there was a movie, I can't remember the name of it, but it came out three years after 911 I'm not going to go see that it's too raw. It's too raw. And if there was a story, it may have been maybe a little too cliched and the heroes that are that have no faults. Here you are representing and presenting New York in New Yorkers in its truest form, with some rough edges. And that's just the way we are. We're all flawed characters. But it's perfect that you're bringing this out and the 20th anniversary. I think we're all now ready to experience what it real what really happened and heal from it as well.
Yeah, I feel the same way. And if the book does anything, you know, I think it would be if it helps in some way. Some of the families to read it and to be able to summon up their memories and to bring bring some peace and bring a little bit of peace. That's that would be that's my that was always my objective with the book. Apart from you know, telling a good story about it, you know, I come from a story background, you know, where I grew up in Ireland, everyone told stories, you went into a bar. And there were storytellers. And you would actually stand next to people on, because they had a great sense of humor already had a great sense of depth. And that's what I was trying to bring to this to just a sense of story. And a sense of this flawed man, Jimmy Murphy, going about his business trying to come to terms with Why don't happen to his son, and why was he down there 30 minutes beforehand. And his superiors saying, don't worry about it. It's a matter of national security, but because of his experience, and now, it's like, don't believe anyone, like, there's this there's some Something happened with my son. And the deeper he gets into it, the more it seems that his son is very flawed, too. And is he taking a risk about destroying his family by finding out the full story? But can he leave the leave without knowing what the full story is? And if word leaks out about some of the things is discovering about his son, will that make a son seem worse than people's eyes? Or is it better to find out the full truth of what happened? And then take the good and the bad with it? And that's what the story's about, too, is, if you lay everything there, then there you are. you've discovered something about life in all its flawed majesty.
Nice, nice. Wow. Well, the mystery deepens. This is a mystery that we don't want to give too much away to our listeners here. But we hope we've opened up the door. And we do hope that after listening to this interview that you take a look at, at Larry's new novel, Rockaway Blue. It's available now through our website, as well as any major retailer. It was a pleasure talking with you, Larry, thank you so much for sharing your experience and sharing your insights on your novel.
It's been a pleasure, and it's actually good to talk about it. I'm looking forward to talking about it a bit more because I feel lighter and a certain sense when I do because when you're writing a novel, it's like it's it's all inside you and as it's time to let it go. And that's a good way to go.
That's cool. It's It's like having a kid and letting them out into the world. Your characters are now out into the world.
Yeah. Jimmy Murphy.
He's out there now. That's great. That's great.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Larry. It was it was great talking with you. That was Larry Kerwin, author of a new book Rockaway Blue: A Novel. If you'd like to purchase Larry's new book, use the promo code 09 pod to save 30% on our website, which is Cornell press cornell.edu. If you live in Europe, use the discount code CS announce and visit the website combined academic.co.uk listen to Larry and his Sirius XM radio show Celtic Crush, as well as as many songs as lead singer of the rock band Black 47. We close this episode with another song from the Black 47 album New York Town entitled Orphan of the Storm.
Too much pain, too much sorrow Eyes bone dry, get on with our tomorrows I wake up in a pool of tears and sweat Cryin' for some friends I ain't never even met Then I hear the drone of a low-flyin' plane And oh my God, here we go again! Skyscrapers blowin' up inside my head Screamin' at a fireman whose radio is dead Flyin' in a chopper over the Towers Get out of there, my sisters and brothers I been tellin' everybody since 1993 These radios are gonna be the death of me Ain't no smoke without a fire The people want answers not patronizin' Somethin' goin' down, New York Town Somethin' goin' down Somethin' goin' down, New York Town Somethin' goin' down I been talkin' to a man from the cia Hey we got you covered, kid, everything is okay Then why the hell ain't we had an investigation It's just too complicated 'sides you just don't get the political implications And you sound like a commie from the United Nations. Too man friends, too many heroes Dust in the wind - Ground Zero Too many cowboys, too many martyrs Too many questions, not enough answers Was no one lookin' out for us, is that so simplistic Brothers and sisters all becomin' statistics Ain't no smoke. I dreamed I saw the White House - an oil well in the yard Was I just bein' paranoid? Suvs, sobs, gas guzzlers Didn't conservation go out with Jimmy Carter Is it just me and my imagination Or have we sold out the very spirit of this nation? The talkin' heads are chattering on television In between ads - the new religion I wish they'd leave me here just broken-hearted Right back where I started Then I hear the rumble of a low flyin' plane And, oh my God, this thing is happenin' again Ain't no smoke Orphan of the Storm Get off the plane at Kennedy Got a dream in your heart Though it's down in your boots Got a hundred quid in your pocket And a couple of addresses In Woodside and the Bronx And you fit in like a fist in a glove With the other hard chaws on the gang Some are runnin' from themselves Some are runnin' from God and man And you drink to dull the memory Of why you strayed from home To the concrete fields of New York City An orphan of the storm The gangerman looks at you Respect in his eyes He knows you'll work until you drop 'Cause there's a black rage eatin' away inside you You'd walk through walls, son Before you'd ever give up And at night you're like a phantom Nailin' every you one you can It's better than lyin' awake in the dark Thinkin' of her with another man But she'll never take your dreams away That's not why you've come To the canyoned streets of New York City An orphan of the storm You only went back once You just had to be sure Kindness in her eyes You saw only pity there So drink up your Jamesons whiskey Wash it down with pints Obliteration on the rocks Then out of here in the dawn's hungover light So you put her far behind you You hardly think of her anymore Well, maybe on a rainy Sunday night You're the gangerman yourself now Got a new job down the Trades And every little thing's gonna be alright Then they blew you to sweet Jesus On that grand September day Not a cloud on your horizon Your heart finally okay But they couldn't take your dreams away They were not for sale or loan On the shattered streets of New York City This orphan has finally come home