<< Back To Press Irish Times, December 2005 To read the story online, please go here. Among the Irish acts you'd vote least likely to resurface would be Whipping Boy, who noisily broke up nearly a decade ago. Tony Clayton-Lea talks to two original members about the painful process of separation and reconciliation - and their determination to, this time, keep control of their destiny. The thought of yet another Irish rock band getting back together is enough to send you running for the hills. This year alone there have been Toasted Heretic, Sultans of Ping, The Fat Lady Sings, and Frank and Walters. And now Whipping Boy. Whipping Boy were the contrarians of the bunch, as anyone strolling around the Irish music scene from the late 1980s will tell you. (Ferghal: "I was just having the craic. Some people might not have known I was having the craic, but why would I want to tell them? I take that privilege as an entertainer.") Unlike most of the other also-rans from the late '80s/early '90s onwards, Whipping Boy refute the oft-pitched notion that the memories were stronger than the songs. The band's first release was a cassette-only album called Sweet Mangled Thing, and, if ever there was a statement of pure intent, then by God above that was one. And so, 10 years after the release of the band's best (and best loved?) album, Heartworm, The Ticket is sitting alongside original members Ferghal McKee and Paul Page. In a hell-has-indeed-frozen-over scenario, the pair are chatting about something neither thought would ever happen: rehearsing for shows later this month, and a tentative rekindling of creative work. "I spent the best part of four years telling anyone who would listen that there was no way I'd ever play as part of Whipping Boy again," says guitarist Page. "From the start of this year, however, I felt that just doing it one more time wouldn't be such a bad idea; and then fate intervened when we were asked - actively asked - by a promoter to do some shows." So, it's not a question, then, of getting back together for a quick jaunt down memory lane or topping up the funds for Christmas pressies? "I'd hate to think it was just about nostalgia," replies Page. "We're going to play these shows as if they're the last we'll ever play. One of the reasons why I didn't want to get involved for so long was I believe that bands have their moment, when they're valid, and they mean something. So many bands that I loved, who have reformed - without giving examples - have disappointed me. That's a spur in itself: to come back and do something that's still vital and alive, and not just a greatest hits or 'best of' package." Adds vocalist McKee: "We want to update the whole idea of Whipping Boy for the shows and to keep it as fresh as possible for the audience. How do we do that? We were always good at putting on a show; we were never a lazy band in that way, and we always enjoyed the performance, which was something that came naturally." Anyone who saw the band in their heyday will have a scorch- marked imprint of what Whipping Boy were like in a live setting. McKee is on the money when he says the band weren't lazy, and that they enjoyed performing. If Heartworm has become a bona fide lost Irish rock classic, then McKee is surely one of Irish rock's best frontmen, up there with Fatima Mansions' Cathal Coughlan as a risk taker, an iconoclast, a guy with a creative logic so twisted it had to be restrained (sometimes literally) by a straitjacket. Words like "surprise" and "danger" are thrown about with reckless abandon, but in Whipping Boy's case you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen before, during and after the songs. The band fell apart in the first instance, they say, for a number of reasons: listening to too many people (McKee: "Pop psychologists spent six months trying to find out what our market was"); being confined by industry dictates (Page: "We'd have meetings about fuckin' T-shirts"); hating each other (Page: "One of us would walk into a studio, and someone else would walk out"); and living through the commercial disappointment of Heartworm (McKee: "My reaction was that we were all shite"). The interim period was spent looking supposed failure in the face and feeling the burn marks of resentment and a degree of mutual dislike. The band members (who also included bass player Myles McDonnell and drummer Colm Hasset) spun off into different things. McKee became a chef for a while, then resurfaced as a member of God Is an Astronaut. Page withdrew into an IT job and zoned out of music. "I lost all will to play music from the time we drifted apart," says Page, who also lost the will to keep in touch with McKee. Until the regrouping earlier this year he had not met up with McKee once in their eight years as former band members. "When we split up," Page adds, "I wanted to distance myself from the music industry, everything. I'd see a band play live and it would actually make me green with envy. I stopped going to gigs just in case I witnessed a good band, because it would remind me too much of being in Whipping Boy. I hated people asking about the band, because it meant so much to me." "I just put Whipping Boy into a corner and forgot about them," admits McKee. "That was my way of dealing with it. Then you have friends you meet often, and they keep on playing the album to you, and saying things like, 'what are you doing? Why don't you get back together again?' These questions would slowly drill their way into you, and it took me about five years to listen to Heartworm again. Is it brilliant? I don't know, but it seems to have stretched across the generations." And so, sometimes good things really do happen to those who wait. Whatever happens next to Whipping Boy, however, is strictly TBC. "The blueprint for us at this stage in our lives," says Page, "is to be masters of our own destiny. One of the fundamental things for us not to get wrapped up in again is to surround ourselves with too many people with too many opinions. In the early days the only people we listened to were ourselves, whereas at the end, everyone's opinions started to sow the seeds of doubt." Has age tempered the noise you want to make? McKee: "We'll be even madder." And what will happen at the shows? Page: "It all depends on what we're like as a band, and whether the same values are shared. It'd be almost childish to make the same old noises. These shows open a door that could lead somewhere, or it could close off something for good. If nothing else, to be able to sign off where we all have mutual respect for each other and to rekindle some of the friendship we once had is brilliant. "There was a poison in the system that ate us up. I just hope we'll be objective enough about what may or may not happen. So far we've done it the right way. The bitterness has dissolved." "Getting back together is not wish fulfilment, that's for sure," concludes McKee. "We hope we sharpen people's ears, give them something to think about. Again." Whipping Boy play the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on December 18th; the Savoy, Cork, on December 19th; and the Forum, Waterford, on December 29th