The Hothouse Flower on the tragic inspiration for his band’s 1988 hit, ‘Don’t Go’
Hothouse Flowers, 1988, in Munich. Photo: Getty
Liam Ó Maonlaí’s phone was ringing out last Saturday morning. “We were scattering the ashes of Manchán Magan on the Hill of Uisneach in Co Westmeath,” he says when I finally get him. “That’s where I was.”
It is fitting, then, I was ringing him to discuss a song he wrote and sang with Hothouse Flowers almost four decades ago: about a friend, the artist Eamon Fitzgibbon, who was in a coma from a motorcycle accident.