As they prepare for their photoshoot at a swanky London hotel, with “make-up
and hair” in attendance plus an entourage from Sony, the three men in dog
collars seem slightly out of their depth. A cynic might easily conclude that
these three singing priests are just the latest gimmick for a recession-hit
music industry, desperate for some seasonal payola.
After all, these particular fathers come ready-packaged with twinkling eyes
and great voices. The sincerity in their Ave Maria vibrato is almost
palpable. And what do you know? More than 29,000 copies of their debut CD
shifted last week in its first day of release, making it a likely contender
for a Christmas No 1 in the UK album charts. The bosses at Sony, who have
given this mini-God squad a recording deal worth £1.4m, will be opening
their Advent calendars tomorrow morning with joy in their hearts.
Yet for all the high-level packaging, The Priests really are the genuine
article, who deliver the classic church music they have always sung, from
Ave Maria to O Holy Night, in perfect harmony. And this is no group hastily
cobbled together by some slick marketeer. Eugene, 49, and Martin O’Hagan, 45
– they are brothers – grew up in a village just outside Londonderry in a
large family for whom music and singing were natural pursuits. “Our mother,
who died four years ago, nurtured music in us,” says Father Eugene. “When we
were younger, we would always be called in to practise around the piano with
her.”
Eugene was 18 when he decided to go into the priesthood. “It wasn’t like a
Damascene conversion – it was more curiosity than anything else – and I
didn’t have to fully commit before I was 27. It’s a bit like marriage:
before you cross that threshold, there are no strings. Then the challenge is
to live to that commitment.”
What about his singing talents, though? “Oh, some people said I should have
gone on the stage,” says Father Eugene, (whose performance as Ko-Ko in an
amateur production of The Mikado at the Buxton Festival last year won him
best comic actor). “I’ve been tempted to think like that; but whenever I’m
tempted, I also realise how lucky I am because I can incorporate singing
into my work as a priest.”
What about Martin? “He felt called – not because I was his elder brother, but
I think it helped having me to talk to.”
Meanwhile, their childhood friend David Delargy – now the 45-year-old baritone
in the ensemble – was taking much the same route. One of six children, he
too had been brought up in a family who enjoyed singsongs around the piano –
in their case, in Ballymeena. “My dad loved to sing – Summertime from Porgy
and Bess, or Some Enchanted Evening. It was just a hobby, really,” Father
David tells me.
What about religion? “I grew up in a family where faith was practised and
promoted. Our mother prayed with us each morning and night. Faith was passed
on to us; it was part of the atmosphere we breathed.” He was 14 when he
decided to become a priest.
And so when David and Martin met as boys in the same class at boarding school
in Antrim, it was perhaps inevitable that they should end up singing
together, along with big brother Eugene. Later, they all pitched up at the
same Roman Catholic seminary, where the threesome was promptly dubbed “Holy,
Holy, Holy”. Even after all three became priests, they carried on getting
together to sing. At one point, while studying at the Gregorian University
in Rome, they even sang a liturgy before Pope John Paul II.
They would have happily continued as a part-time local act. But then someone
from Sony came across a demo tape from the trio, while searching for
individual male voices for a Latin mass album. And almost immediately, the
words “potentially one of the world’s biggest musical acts” started being
muttered at executive levels.
Did being “discovered” bring on tears of grateful joy? Not exactly. The
Priests are jolly chuffed with their album, and have clearly enjoyed meeting
the likes of David Bailey (who apparently showed them a vaguely blasphemous
artwork by Damien Hirst). They have no complaints about being made to take
planes or stay in smart hotels, and they are looking forward to shovelling
their end of the profits towards various charities. But they sing from a
different hymn sheet to that of most pop stars.
Father Martin, a softly spoken man with amazingly big eyes and long lashes,
hopes that their music will actually change us. “It might even enable people
to put the brakes on, to stop and think: what is Christmas all about? They
might even say: let’s forget the commerce and get back to what Christmas
should be about. The collateral gain for us, as priests, is that the music
might touch people’s hearts and make a difference to the way they look at
the world. These are pieces that speak to the heart and the soul.”
They insisted that their recording contract contain a clause stating that
their parochial duties will and must continue – whatever the success of the
CD. Choosing a religious life is clearly no light commitment, wherever it is
made; but choosing to become a Roman Catholic priest in Northern Ireland, at
a time when religion often provided a trigger for appalling violence,
required a different measure of resolution.
The Troubles were simply part of life, as far as the priests were concerned.
In 1972, the village of Claudy, where Eugene and Martin grew up, was
devastated by a no-warning IRA bomb. That day, their father, a potato
inspector for the Ministry of Agriculture, had parked outside the Beaufort
House hotel, beside the car in which the bomb was secreted.
“Our father missed being blown up by about four minutes,” says Father Eugene.
“He was about a mile away when the bomb went up. Oh, we knew people who
died. Kathryn Eakin [aged eight, she was cleaning the windows of the family
grocery store], and a lady who served in the local shop.” In total, nine
lost their lives.
Did the slaughter of innocents make him doubt his religious call-ing? “It
wasn’t all about religion,” says Father Eugene. “There was a religious
element to it, but our leaders played their part in bringing about
resolution.” A canon lawyer, he has worked for years in marriage tribunals
and says the majority of church weddings at which he officiates are now
cross-denominational.
His brother Martin, he says, was called to administer the last rites to a
young man fatally wounded during sectarian violence in Belfast. “Talking to
me and fellow priests about it helped, but he was very upset,” Father Eugene
recalls.
Father David had no less devastating experiences: a hold-up in the bank, in
which he had to hit the floor; a gun pressed to his temple by some hoodlums
who were trying to steal his car; three arson attacks at three churches; and
worst of all, a murder close to home.
“I was teaching for about seven years at a diocesan grammar in Belfast,” he
says. “And I shared a house with another priest. We had a housekeeper who
would come in and make lunch for us – a lovely, warm person who loved to
sing. I remember she’d sing Love Changes Everything by Andrew Lloyd Webber,
and I would play it for her on the piano.
“She lived just outside Belfast in Dundonald. One Sunday night, I was at home,
and I got a call to say her husband had been shot and would I come to the
house. By the time I got there, she had been taken away by the police.”
Father David slowly relates the events of that terrible night. “Two men had
come up on a motorbike. The passenger had dismounted, knocked on the door,
and pushed past my housekeeper into her house. Our housekeeper’s husband was
sitting on the sofa, having his supper and watching TV. He hadn’t been
involved in anything. The gunman just shot him.
“By the time I got there, he was dead. I had to break the news to my
housekeeper and her teenage son.” He sighs. “They were the only Catholic
family in that street: that was the only reason.”
Did his ability to sing give him any solace? “Maybe you don’t think of music
as a salve at the time, but it is. It can be a distraction.”
With such a hinterland, where death and violence left few lives untouched, the
trio seem unlikely candidates for all the fuss and pantomime of press and
publicity, the hoopla of the hit parade, the Bailey-directed shots for the
album cover. Doesn’t it all seem like so much candyfloss?
“Showbiz life is only what you see through glossy magazines,” Father David
says gently. “I don’t think that it’s half as glitzy as presented. I guess
they have challenges to their lives that we don’t have – and those lives
don’t always bring happiness. I get the impression that people in the music
business work very, very hard. Sony is a place full of human beings with
mortgages, and with children to get up in the morning. It’s stressful and
pressurised and they eat at unusual times. Anyway, the only celebrities I
have ever seen were in hotel corridors.”
Has the process of making the album involved any temptations, I wonder?
“Sometimes, you do have a ‘grass is greener’ experience,” says Father David.
“But life isn’t a bed of roses, whatever path you take; and as life goes by,
you grow into your life. I have always been secure that this was what God
was calling me to do.”
Father Eugene, who seems more intrigued by the showbiz world, insists that he
is content with the path he chose at 18. “I listen to, and have read about,
the careers of many singers and actors. Like us, they incorporate their
gifts into the humdrum of life. At the end, none of us can live at the
height of the mountain all the time. Anyway, sometimes the humdrum is quite
pleasant.”
The opportunity to sing to a wider audience has come about by divine
providence, he believes. “We look at things through the prism of faith. An
opportunity comes your way – and it doesn’t occur for no reason. You take a
risk. Sometimes, the opportunity is worth it, because it is enriching.”
And I don’t think he’s referring to his royalties.
