The Brendan Graham story offers hope to all who ever dreamed of a full-time writing career. The now best-selling songwriter and author, once destined for the priesthood and a one-time Irish international basketball player, did what he could to make a living whilst playing in bands in the evenings – even working as a pig boner for Walls sausages. Then followed a 30-year career in industrial management. All this might well have prepared this softly-spoken Irishman for his role of today; he has become a musical and literary life coach with a tremendous capacity for drawing life, through his characters and songs, as a map for the rest of us to follow.
Brendan’s turning point came when he was made redundant at 48. ‘You have to accept that life will throw things like that at you. You can’t control it, so it’s all about how you deal with it.’ He turned to full time songwriting, discovering new freedoms and new forms of expression that had eluded him until now. ‘I’d always dabbled with songwriting,’ he says, ‘but I was too busy working to think about the career I might make out of it. Having free space to reflect and to express yourself is, in my view, what enables the creator to be creative. If all of life is a fumbling for the light… then at least writers and artists have the chance to fumble.’
So is the ability to create a special gift, or is it in us all? ‘I believe it’s within all of us but, like everything, if we don’t nourish it, it can wither and die. We are so much more than mere economic units or intellectual iPods; we are spiritual beings striving for the higher ground. We dream, seek beauty, hunger for the divine. The times when we as writers can give that glimpse to others is when we are most fulfilled. And that doesn’t necessarily rule out commercial success, as with a song like You Raise Me Up.’ If life is a fumbling for the light… at least us writers have the chance to fumble
Brendan’s first musical success came quickly when the song he’d written as the Irish Eurovision entry in 1994 (Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids) went on to win the contest. He did the same, astonishingly, two years later. ‘Eurovision gave me the break in 1994 and again in 1996.’ (Eimear Quinn’s haunting performance of Brendan’s The Voice – a study song in the UK’s GCSE music syllabus in 2003).
In 2001, Brendan teamed up with Rolf Lovland of Secret Garden. The result was the phenomenally successful You Raise Me Up, a song which has since taken on a life of its own.
It has been covered more than 120 times worldwide; most recently by Westlife (number one in the UK) and Il Divo, whose Spanish translation, Por Ti Seré, appears on the best selling album, Ancora.
It even has its own TV show – an RTE documentary that follows the song’s progress from its humble beginnings to its now legendary anthem status, particularly in the US. It is performed at sports events, during ceremonial worship - Brian Kennedy sang it at George Best’s funeral - and at every other conceivable public gathering. And that’s before you count its broadcast success or the Grammy Award nomination that US singer Josh Groban received for his recording of the song (number one for six weeks on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart), the UK Record of the Year title in 2005, the number one on Billboard’s Christian chart for the group Selah, and a Song of The Year shortlisting at the 2005 Gospel Music Awards.
Brendan and I meet opposite PRS’s offices in London’s Berners Street. He’s rejoined PRS for the UK. (‘I associate only good things with Berners Street. When my songs started taking off I used to get these cheques from Berners Street from this organisation called PRS. Didn’t then understand the where and the why of it but they were very welcome.’) He’s been co-writing on the day we meet. Does he prefer any particular way of writing? ‘I normally prefer my own space; time to think things over. I often just write on my own but I am also prepared to be surprised, or challenged, by a new situation. It worked well today and yesterday. The first day my writing partner had a beautiful melodic idea that prompted an unusual lyrical idea. We worked to a stage where I felt I wanted to take it away with me back to my lake and mountain in Ireland and the other person trusted me enough to be happy with that. We both know we have something special. The second day we started with some ideas I’d scribbled down the night I arrived in London. My writing partner had had some ideas about them, so with the help of a great vocalist and writer who joined us today, we finished that song to demo stage. I’ll be very surprised if I don’t hear it on a record within the year. It was a good partnership, very productive, and well worth coming to London for. And it was enjoyable.’
He makes it all sound so easy. Is that how it happened with You Raise Me Up? ‘No, that happened very differently. Rolf (Lovland) had read my first book (The Whitest Flower, published in 1998) and something in it made him feel that I might be able to write a lyric for some music he’d written. He and Fionnuala Sherry of Secret Garden contacted me in May 2001. They had this melody they wanted me to hear, an instrumental piece called Silent Story. Rolf had the notion it needed words. I took it away and by midnight I had the title, the chorus and the first verse. I called Rolf and Fionnuala and they came round - and I gave them the first vocal performance of You Raise Me Up.
‘The way Rolf and I work is that he sends me a finished melody, or a whole batch of them at album time. Often he will leave it up to me to decide to which ones I will put a lyric. Then, when I send a lyric back, I never tell him which melody it is for. He has to figure that out on the basis that if it’s the right fit, he’ll instantly know it.
‘The lyric for You Raise Me Up actually has a kind of greeting card banality to it,’ says Brendan, who is now one of peermusic’s writer stable. ‘An inherent ambiguity in the lyric saves it. The “you” in the title can be anybody - child, parent, husband, wife, lover, teacher…country…or the divine.’ With well over a hundred different interpretations of the song, does Brendan feel he’s lost his baby? ‘Not at all. I’ve never been precious about that. I know what my job is; it’s to write the song, to get it to a certain stage in its existence. Then it’s up to individual performers to bring their life experiences to the work. I am most happy when that happens – when someone speaks of “Brian Kennedy’s song”, or “Josh Groban’s song”, or “the Westlife song.”’ ‘The lyric to You Raise Me Up actually has a greeting card, banality to it’
And Brendan’s other songs equally cross the genres. There’s a Graham composition in Gaelic on Karen Matheson’s new solo album, Downriver, another being sung by New York Metropolitan Opera’s Young-ok Shin. There are lyrics to a big choral piece on Secret Garden’s Earthsongs album, and the haunting Fair-haired Boy on Spirit from Irish trad supergroup Dervish. Does he approach these differently?
‘Well, you know, songwriting is quite formulaic. Every song has a verse, a chorus, a bridge, or some cake-bake of that mixture. Once you’ve learned those techniques it’s then all about the idea, the feeling. And I don’t know where those ideas come from. It’s an organic thing for me; a discovery. And you know – I don’t want to know what the mystery is. It is just that. Somehow, in the creative process you go “somewhere else” – “idir eathartha” we say in Irish… “between worlds” and things start to come and form themselves. When you’re there you know it… and when you’re not you know it too. It’s a kind of Nirvana – a “being blessed” feeling. I never expect it but when it does come I always give thanks.’
Brendan’s ability to ‘go somewhere else’ in his writing is evidenced in his novels where he has discovered a talent for writing from a female perspective; the heroine of his three books is Ellen O’Malley whom we first meet at the time of the Irish famine and whose fortunes we follow as she emigrates to the US and gets caught up in the American Civil War. This talent has brought him critical acclaim, commercial success, and a place on courses at Boston’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the College of Charleston in Carolina and this year’s Leaving Certificate History course in Ireland.
How does writing a book compare with writing a song? ‘A song is a butterfly. You capture the chrysalis moment…release it and it flies. A book is a monkey on your back, clawing at your gut, until you write it free.’
His first book deal has become a legendary tale in book publishing circles. ‘I’d been doing some work with Warner Chappell about a concept I had for a series of songs. They thought it could be a book project and arranged a meeting for me with Harper Collins. So I turned up in the boardroom and told a roomful of editors and executives this story that was forming in my head. I had no title, no agent, nothing but a few songs and an idea. When I finished there was silence and then the MD of Harper Collins said “That is a stunning story”. And that was that. I had no idea what to expect, so I phoned an author friend of mine and said “how much should I be looking for?” He gave me a figure and said “If they offer you that, you’ll be doing well.” They offered me double but it was all so surreal that I said, “No, I can earn more money writing songs”. Then they came back a week later and doubled the offer again. I forgot about the songs then. Now I was an author!
'A song is a butterfly… a book is a monkey on your back'
‘You get tremendous satisfaction when you get letters from people telling you how they were inspired to sponsor an orphaned child, were helped recover from serious illness, or given courage from reading your book. I don’t have the answers - like everyone else, I’m working it out as I go along - and the writing is at the core of that for me.’
The third novel in his trilogy, The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night, just out, includes a scene based on You Raise Me Up.
‘Everything’s connected. The song began life after Rolf had read The Whitest Flower and the circle had to be completed. And I felt that there was more to tell about the song. So, in a central scene in the final book of the Ellen trilogy, we find a young Confederate soldier singing it to an Irish nun; many of whom played big roles tending the wounded on the Civil War battlefields.’
Brendan has always been a strong advocate of creator rights. In the early nineties, he and a group of fellow Irish songwriters persuaded the Confederation of Irish Industry that songwriting was an industry – a business – and therefore should be part of the CII remit. It gave them status, a recognisable business alignment and Irish songwriters were on the road to being taken more seriously by their Government. Later Brendan chaired the Irish rights organisation IMRO.
In the 13 years that followed that redundancy crisis moment, Brendan Graham has packed in more than most of us do in a lifetime. At 60, he has the energy and capacity of a man half his age. Story teller, life mentor, observer of the human condition, Brendan Graham is working it out for all of us and passing on what he finds out. And you can’t help but feel that we’re all in a better place for that.
This article originally appeared in M19, published March 2006.