By Andy Spearman
The legend that is John Leonard celebrated his 80th Birthday yesterday so, I thought, what better day to have a chat with the man who was synonymous with music and entertainment in Drogheda for over sixty years?
John was born in Newfoundwell and as a boy lived in one of several thatched cottages opposite The Well pub. “Everybody had big gardens back then, you’d never be hungry with plenty of vegetables being grown and people keeping pigs and chickens and others hunting rabbits” he remembers..
He has been living in Brookville for 50 years and remembers well how difficult it was to buy your first home even back then: “I was working in Irish Cement as a fitter being paid eleven pounds a week and the mortgage was three pounds” he remembers. “It’s a bit like today except the numbers are much bigger!”
John has kept up his interest in gardening and still grows vegetables in his back garden but there’s no pigs or chickens these days.
John is famous the country over for his sixty years in the music business during which he played with some of the country’s top bands. He sat down with me yesterday to go through old photos and other memorabilia and several times during our conversation he broke into song. He just can’t help it, the music is in him and he must let it out!
For more than six decades of his involvement in music John kept up many different “day jobs”. He started his working life at the age of 16 as an apprentice fitter mechanic at Stanley’s Garage in Narrow West Street where he won the Henry Ford Award of Merit which was a big national award at the time and it catapulted him into the job in Irish Cement.
He worked in Irish Cement for 15 years or so but left to go and see the world and during his travels he somehow found himself working for three years as part of a team maintaining surveillance equipment for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Perhaps taking a lesson from his formative years when everyone did what they could to pay the bills and keep food on the table, John was always busy. “I tried lots of things in my life. I always had two or three jobs on the go and was always doing something” he said.
He managed the Rugby Club for ten gloriously happy years and ran a little corner shop called The Kiosk beside the old Garda Barracks in Narrow West Street where he sold fruit and vegetables.
“I loved to try new things, some of them worked, some of them didn’t” he said. “I was the first person in Drogheda to have a Slush machine in my shop. It was a great novelty and the kids would be queueing up along the street to get one!”
John Leonard (third from left) with The Eldorado Showband with whom he toured the country when he was just 17 years old. The other band members were (from left): Patsy Floody, Patsy Dowd RIP, Gene Brady RIP, Joe Fagan, Jimmy Smith and Tom Sullivan RIP.
But it was with music that John really made his mark and there were times when he was really busy playing with bands around the country three or four nights a week, travelling home after the gig and then going straight out to work when he got home.
He remembers the early days when the Beatles were hitting the big time, showbands were moving over to pop and everybody wanted to be a Beatle with tribute bands popping up all over the place.
He and five friends formed a band called the BV5 which comprised of John on drums and vocals, Eamonn Campbell who gave guitar lessons at the Sound Shop and went on to play with the Dubliners, Johnny Ledingham who died recently but found great fame in the UK, especially on the Old Grey Whistle Test, John Donnelly, and the Late Gerry Saurin from Tullyallen on bass.
John Leonard with old friends and bandmates John Donnelly, Eamonn Campbell, Imelda Woods and Kenny Doyle pictured in the dHotel on St. Patrick’s Day in 2009 when Eamonn was the Grand Marshall for the parade.
Barney Anderson, the owner of Anderson’s of West Street, where Dunnes Stores is now, was the band manager and he bought all the equipment and special yellow suits which proved to be a great hit around the country, especially with young women around Ireland.
Talking of the yellow suits reminded John of playing a gig in Swinford in County Mayo in a hall that had no electricity but had to rely on a generator. He got talking with a local girl and walked her home across the bog after the gig.
Havig left the girl to her door John turned to head back to the hall and join the rest of the band for the drive back to Drogheda. In the meantime though, the generator had been switched off and the whole scene was in darkness.
Drogheda based showband The Delta Boys (from left): Terry Smith, John Donnelly, John Leonard, Pa McDonnell, Eamonn Campbell, Sid Kierans and Louis Smith.
Undaunted, John headed in what he thought was the right direction and a while later he came across a local man walking towards him. He approached this man to ask directions but he took one look at John and ran off screaming across the bog.
John had forgotten he was still wearing his yellow suit. “He must have thought I was an alien!” he said.
In a lifetime of music, which included a ten year spell as compere at the Drake Inn in Finglas where he introduced all of the musical greats of the time, John never stopped working until about four or five years ago when he played his last gig in the Market Bar in Drogheda with his long-time partner Imelda Woods who has sadly passed away since.
John will celebrate his milestone birthday on Saturday night with his family – son Billy and his wife Andrea and their children Finn and Anik are coming over from Germany, his other son Niall is coming over from Georgian Close with his wife Melanie and their four children Megan, Zach, Alice and Tom. Others in attendance will be his sister Irene and her family.
It could be quite a party with music, laughter and of course John has a myriad stories to tell, far more than we can attempt to cover in one article. Happy Birthday John!
