³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Ìý

Ìý

When Mike Scott came in to talk to me a few months back about his new show I was struck by how genuinely engaged he was with Yeats' poetry. This was a real love affair,Ìýnot egg heady or cerebral but passionate and rooted.

So when I went to see the showÌýin Belfast this week, I knew I was on to a good thing. Now, there were obvious diehard Waterboys fans there, waiting for the back catalogue, Ìýbut even those diehard fans will know of Scott's long time interest in Yeats.ÌýThe Stolen Child on the Fishernan's Blues album and later Love and Death. It started back in the 1970's when his mum took him to the Yeats Summer school in Sligo. You get the sense that if he was to meet a Yeats scholar he wouldÌýhold his own. He talked about reading biographical material, reading and re reading the poems and the plays.ÌýÌýOf Yeats' interest in the occult and the mystic, and the scholars who either laugh at it or brush it aside quickly,Ìý"If you haven't done it you don't know it, yee ken?" he said.

From the get go, the show was pure theatre, with dramatic light changes, video projections, even Venetian masks and Scott's dancing seemed like he was channelling a 1970'sÌýMick Jagger. Ìý

On stage, aÌýten piece band, including his long time Waterboys collaborator Steve Wickham, himself a bewitching,Ìýpied piper figure with hisÌýelectric violin. Stuart Baillie, who was sitting a few seats down from me, gave Steve a big whoop when Scott name checked him. Apparently he had forgotten to namecheck him in Dublin, "his hometown and all!".

So what would Yeats have made of it? According to our reviewer at the gig, Eamonn Hughes, he was tone deaf! You can listen to Eamonn's review on Arts Extra here.

There's a good discussion on our page at the moment, and a chance to see a video with one of the songs as the soundtrack. The song "Let the Earth Bear Witness" is two poems put together by Scott. They're both from Yeats' play Kathleen niÌýÌýHoulihan. Scott said that while he was piecing the work together and writing the music, he and his wife were watchingÌýthe news footage of last year's protests in Iran after the elections. It's probably one of Yeats' most political pieces, written in 1902 about Ireland's struggle for independence. Scott updates it to a political controversy over a century later. It is very moving and the words still resonate.

And yes, he did play "The Whole of the Moon". Men and women of a certain age were in the "mosh pit" at the front of the stage, the ghosts of their teenage selves propelling them out of the comfy Opera House seats to be close to Mike and the band. Scott dedicated it the song to the one person who couldn't makeÌýthe gig.ÌýWB Yeats himself.

There's talk of an album but no date.ÌýFor "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" as a blues number it will beÌýworth the money.

Ìý