{"id":142073,"date":"2025-08-13T09:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T09:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/142073\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T09:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T09:53:11","slug":"the-remarkable-life-of-gregarious-and-charismatic-songwriter-fergus-ofarrell-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/142073\/","title":{"rendered":"The remarkable life of gregarious and charismatic songwriter Fergus O\u2019Farrell \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The late songwriter Fergus O\u2019Farrell<\/a> wrote music of heartbreaking beauty and of breathtaking tempestuousness. <\/p>\n

So it is apt that his story should be brought wrenchingly to the screen by director Michael McCormack with the documentary Breaking Out (RT\u00c9 One, Wednesday, 10.35pm).<\/p>\n

It is a feature-length sobathon filmed over 10 years and forged grippingly from the stuff of life itself: hope, struggle, death and the redemptive power of a great tune. <\/p>\n

But there is humour too \u2013 and a surreal cameo from movie star Jeremy Irons<\/a>, a neighbour of O\u2019Farrell\u2019s in west Cork<\/a> who we see appearing to the singer in a dream, after he suffers an accident and wonders if he has the will to carry on. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrell passed away in 2016 during the shooting of the documentary, shortly after he had finished the album he had set out to make with his band Interference \u2013 and with the help of his friend Glen Hansard<\/a>, of The Frames. <\/p>\n

Diagnosed in childhood with muscular dystrophy, the Schull, Co Cork, artist was forced to stop touring just as his career was taking off. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn Irish Jeff Buckley\u201d is how he was described by Steve Wall<\/a> of The Stunning, a contemporary of O\u2019Farrell\u2019s in late 1980s Dublin, when every new Irish band was heralded as potentially the next U2.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0North Circular review: \u2018You\u2019d have robbed cars flying around … It used to be chaos, but good fun\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As a kid, O\u2019Farrell was always less athletic than his siblings. When he was eight, the postman told his parents there was \u201csomething wrong\u201d with their son, and they took him to Cork city for tests. His mother recalls how the doctor ignored Fergus and told her that her son would be in a wheelchair by 12. \u201cAnd at 18 \u2026 he snapped his fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Fergus made it past 18 and, having moved to Dublin, found healing in music. Gregarious and charismatic, O\u2019Farrell was a lodestar to other artists. He came from comparative wealth (he was educated by the Jesuits in elite Clongowes Wood College) and his father had been able to lease for him an old shoe factory in Dublin that served as both digs and rehearsal space. <\/p>\n

\"ActorActor Jeremy Irons was a neighbour of O’Farrell’s in west Cork. Photograph: Joaquin Corchero\/Europa Press via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a constant shuffle of sleeping bags,\u201d recalls singer and actor Maria Doyle Kennedy<\/a>. \u201cIt seemed to be a home for the bewildered.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Farrell was an artist\u2019s artist \u2013 an inspiration to a young Glen Hansard and countless others. \u201cYou could see this frail being \u2013 this huge ego of a soul trapped in a very limited physical body,\u201d recalls Hansard, who describes O\u2019Farrell\u2019s singing as the sound of \u201cpure freedom\u201d. <\/p>\n

Hansard felt he owed a creative debt to O\u2019Farrell, and he repaid it by having Interference\u2019s song Gold feature in the soundtrack to his movie Once. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Lucy Letby: Who to Believe review – Baffling exploration of convicted neonatal nurse\u2019s caseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The track took on a life of its own \u2013 it was performed at the 2012 Tony Awards and, in one of Breaking Out\u2019s most moving sequences, we accompany O\u2019Farrell to New York where, alongside Hansard, he plays it at the famed Radio City Music Hall. <\/p>\n

But it is O\u2019Farrell\u2019s final years in Schull that yank at the heartstrings. McCormack doesn\u2019t soft soap the impact of O\u2019Farrell\u2019s declining health, nor the pressure it places on both O\u2019Farrell and his wife, Li. In the end, Breaking Out is really about their relationship as much as it is about Interference or their fans. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe is my controlled nuclear explosion, she is my happiness,\u201d says O\u2019Farrell, recalling how they met when he was in hospital in Cyprus and she was the nurse assigned to care for him. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s one more emotionally devastating scene in a film packed with them. <\/p>\n

Breaking Out can be viewed on RT\u00c9 One at 10.35pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The late songwriter Fergus O\u2019Farrell wrote music of heartbreaking beauty and of breathtaking tempestuousness. So it is apt…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":142074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,84534,84533,53,84532,84535,67,132,68,84531],"class_list":{"0":"post-142073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-glen-hansard","10":"tag-jeremy-irons","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-rte","13":"tag-steve-wall","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-west-cork"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115020851028158573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}