The Commitments at 30: the chaotic creation of Ireland’s strangest band
I can’t talk to Jimmy Rabbitte, manager of The Commitments – AKA musician and actor Robert Arkins – and not tell him about my long-held musical dream: to front a knockoff Commitments-slash-Blues Brothers band. “Really?” he says. “Because there’s plenty of them out there. There are millions. Another one won’t go amiss…”
Arkins is right. Since The Commitments first took to the stage 30 years ago, there’s been no shortage of portly white blokes murdering Otis Redding classics at weddings, pubs, and holiday parks. Even The Commitments themselves (at least, some of them) became their own tribute band. Various line-ups have played together – a point of irritation for The Commitments’ creator and original novelist, Roddy Doyle. “I didn’t – and don’t – like the idea,” said Doyle, quite grumpily, in a 2016 interview. “The Commitments were fictional and are better left that way, I think.”
Back in 1991, The Commitments were a beat ahead of themselves. They addressed the inherent daftness of white-appropriated soul: “Say it once, say it loud, ‘I’m black and I’m proud,’” Jimmy tells the band – cue a roomful of rightly befuddled faces. But looked back on and listened to now, the heart and, of course, soul of The Commitments is undeniable, belting out working-class grit as much as music.
Roddy Doyle conceived of the original novel while working as a schoolteacher in Kilbarrack, a suburb of Dublin's Northside. “I wanted an excuse to bring a large group of young characters together,” he said. “I was a high school teacher at the time, and I think listening to my students all talking at the same time, all trying to be heard, had a big influence on me.” The book, published in 1987, is told largely through dialogue, the story of out-of-work youngsters who form a “Dublin Soul” band – but crash out before hitting the big time. “It seemed that every kid in Dublin is or was or will be or wants to be in a band,” Roddy Doyle said in 1991.
Alan Parker discovered the same phenomenon when he began auditioning. Intent on casting musicians rather than regular actors, they saw 3,000 hopefuls – including 64 bands – in a process that Parker dubbed “Deaf Aid” for the general racket. “It was pointed out to me that there were as many as 1,200 bands playing in Dublin, which is extraordinary in a city of just over a million people,” Parker wrote on his website. “There was a little Irish blarney attached to this, however, as I discovered that many of the young musicians often play in three or four bands at a time and ‘The Boneshakers’ this week can inexplicably be called ‘Hep Cat Huey’ the next.”
In the film, Jimmy Rabbitte puts an ad for musicians in the local paper, which brings all and sundry to his family’s doorstep, armed with instruments and a dearth of talent (Jimmy’s family includes his sister, a 16-year-old Andrea Corr, and his Teddy Boy father, played by Colm Meaney. “Elvis,” says Mr Rabbitte, “is God.”)
Accounts of the real auditions sound similarly ragtag: in pubs, a town hall, and a nightclub – with script readings held in the club’s cramped, greasy kitchen. “On every street corner there seemed to be a busker who was dutifully dragged in to audition,” wrote Parker. He added: “The truth is, of course, if you ask absolutely anyone to sing in Ireland they’ll gladly oblige – often quite beautifully and sometimes even without a glass of Guinness in their hand.”
Robert Arkins recalls “a big vibe going around town about the casting”. He was among the many musicians drafted in for auditions, though he had no interest in acting or soul music at the time. “Acting wasn’t my thing,” he says. “When it was proposed to me, I took it with a pinch of salt. I had no notion in my mind that I was actually going to nab this role. I was just thinking, ‘Sure, I don’t mind hopping on a train and meeting this really famous, brilliant director – that’s just great.’ They had me come in with my band but only chose me.”
Parker whittled down three potentials for each member of the 10-piece band. Arkins at one point was singing the songs himself. “Well, I’m a singer, I play bass, I play trumpet, and I’m a songwriter,” he says. “My focus was purely music. When they brought me in, they didn’t tell me what they were looking for from me. I don’t think Alan knew either. I think right up to the last minute, he was moving pictures around on the floor trying to figure out who goes where.”
The Commitments’ singer, Deco – an obnoxious pig of a frontman who’s one handsy remark away from a Me Too outing – was ultimately played by Andrew Strong, discovered at the last minute because his father, the musician Rob Strong, was working with the rehearsal band. “His voice was exactly as Roddy had described it in the book,” wrote Parker about discovering Andrew Strong. “‘A real deep growl that scraped against the tongue and throat on the way out’... “It was obvious that he was closer to Otis than he was De Niro, but it seemed that I had found the Deco for our film.” Incredibly, Andrew was just 16 years old when Parker cast him.
As Jimmy Rabbitte, Robert Arkins became The Commitments’ only non-musical member – a shrewd, wheeler-dealer so convinced of his own gumption and gall that he practices TV interviews with Terry Wogan. Jimmy Rabbitte is, I suggest, the soul of the band. “Ah no, the music is the soul,” he laughs. “Just being a Dubliner was the soul of the thing.”
The novel is set in the fictional Barrytown – the first in a series of books by Doyle set in Barrytown (The Snapper and The Van were also made into films). Parker made the film version more broadly Northside. He looked for various locations around Dublin, but kept in-tune with the spirit of Doyle’s rough-and-ready setting. “Not for the first time, I found myself climbing walls, avoiding guard dogs and knocking on doors that the occupants seemed chary about opening,” said Parker. There is a raggedy urban charm to The Commitments: all scallies, concrete, and burned-out motors; images set – somehow fittingly – to throaty blasts of soul covers.
“The craziest thing was they used to bus all these kids from the projects to whatever destination,” says Arkins. “In one of the scenes, we were out at this club on the Southside. That morning, two buses of extras arrived, followed by a load of cop cars. The cops checked everyone coming off both buses. After both buses were emptied, the cops decide to open up the sides – and there are the geezers they’re looking for! They’d just done some robbery the night before, and they were caught.”
One of the few proper actors to take a spot in the band was Johnny Murphy, playing Joey “The Lips” Fagan, a shabby, middle-aged trumpet player who lives with his mammy – and whose stories about playing with Wilson Pickett, The Beatles, and Elvis (“We don’t know if he’s bulls__or not,” says Arkins) are as far-fetched as him seducing all three of the Commitmentettes, played by Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, and Bronagh Gallagher. Murphy learned the trumpet but couldn’t get to grips with Joey’s trademark moped. “He could not ride that moped to save his life,” says Arkins. “There’s a scene where he comes to the back gate of the Rabbittes’ house. I was standing right beside Alan Parker. Joey comes down the lane and all of a sudden, ‘Boosh!’ Alan just went, ‘We’re keeping that – that’s staying in.’”
Parker recalled that the rest of the cast, as jobbing musicians, led “nomadic, rather dubious lifestyles” and were hard to keep tabs on. They had to be issued mobile phones. “Do you have an answering machine?” he’d ask. To which they replied: “Yeah, me grannie.”
Thirty years on, The Commitments remains immensely likeable: still hilarious (thanks to some grand swearing) and hooked on rousingly good gig scenes. The scenes were filmed with cranked-up backing music and live vocals – a cutting edge technique at the time. It's pure wish fulfilment for anyone with a modicum of going-nowhere musical ambition – from the shoddy rehearsals (“Roide, Sally, Roide!”) to local pub superstars.
Parker chose the Sixties soul tunes. He whittled them down from a selection of 300 – dependent on rights availability. “I’d have liked some James Brown songs but they weren’t available,” said Roddy Doyle. “Before filming started, Alan Parker sent me a cassette of all the songs he had to choose from. It was the best tape I ever had. I played it for months – until it snapped.” (James Brown later tried to bring a $3 million lawsuit against distributor 20th Century Fox for the use of live footage.)
The obvious, most overplayed Commitments song is Mustang Sally (which has become shorthand for naff, white-man soul: see Barry from EastEnders belting it out in Extras for laughs). There’s bigger energy in their cover of Otis Redding’s Mr Pitiful, but it’s the slower tracks – Try a Little Tenderness and The Dark End of the Street – that better channel The Commitments’ brand of soul: rare, raw, off-the-cuff.
The soundtrack was a hit in its own right, selling 16 million copies – rightly filed alongside The Blues Brothers in the category of albums from fictional bands that are actually worth listening to. Arkins played Joey the Lips’ trumpet parts on the album and sang Treat Her Right, originally made famous by Head and The Traits.
The film had an unremarkable release in the US (Parker put it down to an R-rating thanks to too much swearing), but was a cultural smash hit in Ireland – the country’s highest grossing film ever at the time. “I never met an Irish person who didn’t like it,” Parker said.
You could question its Irishness – a film funded by Americans and Brits, shot by a crew of East Londoners, and co-scripted by English comedy writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. “Because The Commitments was funded by the UK and the States, you can’t really call it an Irish film in Ireland, weirdly,” laughs Arkins. Still, it’s been voted the best Irish film of all time.
Johnny Murphy came face-to-face with its popularity, when he saw four armed robbers come charging out of a post office. As they were jumping in the getaway car, one stopped and shouted, “Look it’s Joey! It’s Joey the Lips from the Commitments!” As Alan Parker described: “The villain calmly walked back from the car, tucked the shotgun under his arm, and vigorously pumped Johnny’s hand saying ‘How’s it goin’ Joey? That was a f----g grand filum.’”
“Walking down the street, being yourself,” Robert Arkins told The Guardian in 2016. “It took that away from you overnight.” He admits that at one point he was “anti” Commitments because of the association. The experience of fame was tough. “I was 20,” Arkins says. "It’s not easy if you don’t know what to expect, if someone’s not holding your hand. And there wasn’t. Suddenly the whole world is on top of you, wanting to hear what you have to say.” At the Los Angeles premiere, he found himself among Wilson Pickett, Winona Ryder, Milli Vanilli, and even James Bond “Dalton,” he says. (“The poor f---r was standing on his own in a tuxedo at the bar at the after-party.”)
Even scarier was soon being cornered by Hollywood producers and told to choose – film or music? He landed a record deal which didn’t work out – though he stayed in London for a while and worked with songwriters and producer Guy Chambers.
“I got signed and I was tied up with lawyers for god knows how long,” he says. “It was a smokescreen right after the film – for me anyway.”
In 2013, a musical version – Roddy Doyle's The Commitments – hit the stage with well-trumpeted fanfare. Written by Doyle, it featured new songs and distanced itself from the film. “Publicity for the stage production leaves little doubt as to the possessive credit,” wrote Parker. “I never realised how, for 20 years, the phrase ‘Alan Parker’s The Commitments’ must have driven Roddy nuts.” The film remains the definitive version of The Commitments – still a hit 30 years on. “It’s not going to go away,” laughs Robert Arkins.
Watch The Commitments on Amazon Prime
