Sunday Mirror

Nov 7, 1999  

by : MAEVE QUIGLEY


VELVET-VOICED FINBAR STILL HITTING THE WRIGHT NOTES; Ireland's Finbar Wright

Finbar Wright's velvet voice has made him one of Ireland's most popular singers. His handsome good looks have also won him legions of female fans. 

He spends his time touring and recording best-selling records which is a far cry from the days when he was a priest. 

Finbar embarked on his religious vocation with the Catholic Church when he was 16. But he realised more than a decade later that he couldn't continue. 

His stunning talent was recognised when, as a young deacon, he performed in front of Pope John Paul II at the famous mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park in 1979. 

But in 1987, Finbar's world was turned upside down when his brother Hugh died. 

The death of his beloved elder brother on New Year's Day was one of the catalysts that made Finbar finally decide to hang up his priest's vestments. 

And while he was in the process of leaving the priesthood, undergoing one of the biggest challenges in his life, his father Robert passed away. 

"That year is one that I'd rather forget," Finbar said. 

"Leaving the priesthood was very difficult in some ways. My parents in particular were very proud of the fact that I was a priest. 

"I was well known in the whole community as a priest, I had a lot of friends in the priesthood and it was very hard to turn around and say: 'Look, I'm sorry but I'm leaving.' 

"But there comes a point when your back is up against the wall. If I let it go on for any longer I would probably just have sunk into it. 

"For your own sanity it is important to be honest with yourself and then be brave and take action. In some ways it was an easy decision because I just had to do it at the end of the day." 

Now the celebrated tenor feels he made the right decision. He is a married man with two children he adores and a wife he loves dearly. 

His spectacular voice has taken him all over the world to sing with international superstars such as Monserat Caballe. 

And last week the Cork man achieved yet another of his ambitions when he sang in London's Royal Albert Hall - all thanks to Daniel O'Donnell. 

Daniel asked the tenor to support him for four nights at the legendary venue and now Finbar is vying to be Dean Martin to Daniel's Frank Sinatra. 

"I'm delighted that Daniel invited me along," Finbar said. "I've sung in all the other famous halls like Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall - all these supposed famous venues. 

"But before last week I'd never even been in the Albert Hall. I performed for four nights with Daniel and it has been fantastic. 

"I've decided that Danieland I are going to be like the new Irish rat pack. So if you hear of television sets being thrown out of hotel windows, you'll know it was the two of us." 

Finbar has just released a new album, Another Season, his sixth to date, but his first with his new record label Ritz. 

"A year ago I got a new manager Mattie Fox who is famous in the music business," he said. "He has a very personal approach - he's very hands on and very organised which has made things considerably easier for me in my career."

"And now Ritz have come on board it's like a magical package. Ritz are one of the most successful new record labels in Ireland and the UK with stars like Daniel and Charlie Lansborough. They certainly have their act together." 

In spite of his success, Finbar's lilting Cork accent is a tell- tale sign that his roots are still firmly planted in Co Cork where he grew up. 

He ives there with his wife Angela and two children Fergus, seven, and Ileanna, five. 

"I live just west of Cork City in a place called Farran which is in the country," he said. "But I was born in Kinsale and my mother, Julia, who is 86, still lives there.

"My paternal grandfather was actually a Northern Irish Presbyterian, but he moved to Kinsale and married my grandmother and that's where the Wright lineage began. 

"My eldest brother Hugh died in 1987 but there was originally eight children, five boys and three girls - a fine Catholic family by all accounts. 

"My grandfather ran a hackney business which some of my relatives are still working at today. My father started off in that business before he switched to farming later on. 

"It was in the 1940s when people didn't have cars and so my grandfather had some of the first on the road. So the hackney business was particularly lucrative - if people wanted to go to a wedding or a funeral they'd call and ask my father or grandfather to take them. 

"That meant it brought in cash at a time when there was little around. So we had a comfortable upbringing." Finbar went to national school in Ballinspiddal, before attending Farranferris Diocesan College in Cork City. 

When he was only 16, he decided to join the priesthood and his first step was attending a seminary in Spain. 

"I was sent to the north of Spain for two years - that was the beginning of it," he said. 

"The Bishop of Cork at the time was an unusual man. He had a mind of his own and sent a lot of the students 'out foreign' for the first couple of years to study.

"I went back to Maynooth then and I was eventually ordained when I was 22. Looking back, it's hard to know why I wanted to become a priest. 

"I always think I had a vocation to be a social worker or something like that. 

"I liked this notion of helping people in their difficulties which was probably the wrong motivation to become a priest. 

"Priesthood very definitely has to do with the teaching of faith and the spreading of the gospel and I think where I went wrong was that I entered into it when I was too young. 

"I was only 16 when I joined, then six years later, after I was ordained, I was sent back to Farranferris to teach Spanish and Latin to Leaving Cert level. I was there for seven years. 
 

"Along the way I lost track of the priesthood thing. Maybe if I had been in a parish or had been dealing directly with the things that priests normally do, I might have seen something different in it. But being a teacher in the school felt unusual for a priest. I eventually left in 1987." 

As well as the trauma of leaving the priesthood, Finbar also suffered the heartbreak of losing his brother Hugh and his father Robert the same year, a period which left the singer devastated. 

"Hugh died when he was only 40 years old on January 1 1987," he said. "Then I decided to leave the priesthood and in July my father died." 

He admits the death of his big brother did have something to do with his decision. 

"It did in a backhanded way," he said. "Hugh was only 40 when he died and he had a very young family of five. So it motivated me to see a man who was physically very strong and healthy and happy in himself - and a great musician - who suddenly had this brain tumour. And within a year and a half it was all over. 

"His death was very sobering and it did teach me a very forcible lesson - that life is short and you have to make the best of it. That has to include happiness. 

"If you are to have any kind of a fruitful life, it isn't wealth and success that matter - happiness is the important thing." 

Finbar had been involved in music while in the priesthood so when he decided to leave, he felt there was only one career path to follow. "I always liked music and when I went to Spain I began studying it at the seminary. I joined the university choir and did some solo singing. 

"Then when I came back to Maynooth, I was appointed senior cantor which is the guy in charge of all the liturgical music for the big ceremonies in the college. 

"Because of that I was invited to sing at the Pope's mass in Phoenix Park in 1979. I acted as deacon to the Pope for that mass and I actually read the gospel and sang some of the chants. 

"Even when I went back to Farranferris as a teacher, I stayed interested in singing and in 1984 I took proper classes in voice training at the Cork School of Music. 

"I was still a priest when I got my first big break because as part of my training I had sung at the Feis Ceoil in Dublin and won four of the major awards. 

 "So I got invited on to the Late Late Show to sing and that was the first time I was launched on to the public. 

"The next day I got a call from Maurice Cassidy who went on to become my manager for seven years. He'd seen me on the show and wanted to sign me up. 

"But funnily enough, he was bitterly disappointed when I left the priesthood because that was his great hook - a singing priest. 

"So a singing career seemed like the obvious route to take. Music was so different to anything I did before. It was a very different lifestyle but it was very enjoyable and something I knew a lot about anyway. 


"It started slowly with small concerts and then picked up. Sony records in Ireland were interested right from the start although it took them a wee while to decide they wanted me. And in the end I did five albums with them." 

A year after he left the priesthood, Finbar stumbled on a romance which was to end in marriage in 1990. 

"I met my wife Angela when I was still a priest," he explained. "She had the singing lesson after mine and she used to sit there, looking pretty when my lesson was finishing. I just knew her to say hello to. 

"But by the time I left the priesthood I hadn't seen her for a few years. Then in 1988 I met her by chance and we met every day for a month and we haven't been apart since. We've been married now for nine years. She's 29 and I'm 41 so I'm a good bit older than she is."

To date, Finbar's finest moment has been singing with the famous soprano Monserat Caballe at Dublin's Point depot in 1996. 

"Monserat is a wonderful woman," he said. " I had followed her career for a good many years because she is considered a goddess in Spain. 

"She heard I sang some Spanish songs and invited me to be her guest. It was a fabulous concert and we both enjoyed it very much. She even danced with me on stage." 

Finbar also loves the great diva Maria Callas, but has an interest in all kinds of music. 

"Maria Callas was the greatest opera singer of this century. But I listen to everyone and enjoy most singers from Tina Turner and Whitney Houston to Ray Charles. 

"I love the different textures and the different voices. The great thing about singing is that every voice is just that little bit different. 

"And I listen to them all. I love Freddie Mercury's voice and I'm a big fan of Queen. Songs like Bohemian Rhapsody are wonderful pieces of music. So my tastes are fairly broad." 

These days, Finbar feels his sense of religion is broad as well. 

"I don't believe very much in too many rules or regulations. But I've a fairly simple philosophy which St John the Evangelist summed up by saying there's only two things: Love God and love your neighbour. 

"If you can do that, the whole Christian ethos is sewn up within it. I subscribe to that. I just try to do what is right." 

Finbar's new album is a testament to the wide range of music he loves. He has never stuck to traditional opera, preferring to widen his repertoire with Irish ballads and even popular music.

"I like so many different kinds of songs and I find that the audience enjoy them and as a singer in some ways you must take your cue from the audience," he said. 

"At the start of my career I did classical concerts but I'd throw in something at the end like South of the Border, that great Jimmy Kennedy song. 

"I found that the audience would suddenly come alive just hearing the trained tenor voice singing a song like that. And then little by little I increased the number of those songs. 

"My biggest hit in Ireland was 'Whatever You Believe' and it was a Christmas number one. The album that was on went to number one as well. 
 
"It is essentially a pop song, written by Mike Batt. Another of the songs on that album 'I Dine Alone' is a modern song too and yet they're among the two most requested songs I do. 

"Of course, I still do Italian and Spanish songs - the big pot- boilers like Nessun Dorma, O Sole Mio and that." 

On his new album, for the first time, there are two songs that Finbar has written himself, including Black Wind, his first composition. 

"That is a fairly recent phenomenon which started with the murder of Veronica Guerin. I had been dabbling in writing music and lyrics just for fun but when she was murdered I sat down and wrote that song for her. 

"On the day she was murdered I was driving out from Dublin along the Naas road and I heard a journalist had been shot. 

"We came on the scene minutes after that. It was chaotic and there were hold-ups in the traffic but we ended up right next to where her car was, uncovered. 

"It was shocking for the nation but it was particularly shocking for me and others driving on the road. I didn't know it was Veronica until a few hours later. 

"She did so much. Even listening to the news, her name comes up nearly every day and she certainly kick-started a whole kind of new approach to the problem of drug lords. 

"It was an issue that I felt strongly about so I followed what she had been writing. 

"The setting up of the Criminal Assets Bureau was the first way of dealing with them because it hurt them where it counted - in their pockets. 

"Now the UK is looking to set up the same kind of thing. Veronica Guerin has been responsible for quite a lot." 

Although only one more of his own songs - Freedom - appears on the new album, Finbar has written in total about 14 and would like to pursue his songwriting. 

"I would love at some stage to have an album that was entirely mine," he said. "But only if the songs were good enough. Hopefully the day will come when I have album of 12 songs written by me." 

Even so, Finbar is very satisfied with his lot. 

"I'm exceptionally happy," he said. "I love music, I love performing and my family situation is very satisfying. One of the great drawbacks of priesthood is the loneliness factor. 

"You are very much on your own and now I have a family of my own and I'm very contented and I hope the luck will stay with me."

Copyright 1999 MGN LTD