Two self-confessed Donegal music fanatics are to feature on an RTE radio documentary about The Smiths.
The year was 1984 and the Manchester band fronted by the theatrical, daffodil-draped Stephen Morrissey were touring Ireland.
The Point Depot was still a disused warehouse and so the band played community centres and local halls up and down the country.
Letterkenny’s Community Centre was the chosen venue for Donegal.
Louder Than Bombs is the story of a tour like no other and David Coughlan’s programme is this week’s RTE Radio Documentary on One production.
Coughlan traveled to Letterkenny last February to pick the brains of two local music fans who remember the gig as if it was yesterday.
Music fans John McIvor and Malachy Hegarty.
Like U2’s fifty pence gigs at the Dandelion Market, many will claim they were at Letterkenny’s Community Centre for the gig.
One man who was definitely there was local reporter Paddy Walsh.
But two others who Coughlan hooked up with to discuss the gig — the seventh show of the November 1984 tour –
were John McIvor and Malachy Hegarty.
Documentary On One: Louder Than Bombs: The Smiths in Ireland, Nov ’84, RTÉ Radio 1 – Saturday 19 August, 2022 at 2pm – listen to more from Documentary On One
For the full story on the tour and the documentary see https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0818/1399362-how-the-smiths-irish-tour-turned-incendiary-documentary-on-one/
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