More so than any other performer associated even tangentially with the lineage of goth, Fionán Martin Hanvey, a.k.a.Gavin Friday, has evolved aesthetically to a level far beyond the white-face-and-candles shtick of his contemporaries. An uncompromising, occasionally androgynous Irishman inspired by David Bowie and a deep love of the absurd, Friday’s angst found boisterous expression as the driving force behind Dublin weirdos the Virgin Prunes in 1978. Marking his ascent into sexagenarianism, this is his story.
Part art-heavy improv, part noise, all provocation, the proto-punk Virgin Prunes were one of Ireland’s most ambitious, challenging, and (often) difficult bands, one of whom, original guitarist Dik Evans, is the Edge’s brother, and the other, fellow vocalist Guggi, Bono’s oldest childhood chum. The Prunes released two albums — …If I Die, I Die (1982) and The Moon Looked Down And Laughed (1986) — that made the UK indie charts and remain very much of their time, though the latter effort, produced by Soft Cell’s Dave Ball, allowed Friday to explore his predilection for the theatrical and the conceptual.
After leaving the band, he abandoned the music business to paint for a bit, returning to the fray after teaming up with pianist Maurice Roycroft (whom he renamed the Man Seezer). The duo’s 1989 debut, Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, found him making unexpected moves into a modern-day cabaret style, albeit with all the Brechtian Bowie-isms of his vocal delivery intact.
Not quite as well received, 1992’s Adam ’N’ Eve was a less compelling follow-up which found Gavin addressing his sharp-tongued ruined romanticisms with less avant-garde and more standard-issue modern rock sounds.
Your man Friday returned to a more cabaret-ish mode on 1995’s Shag Tobacco, a dance-influenced Tim Simenon team-up of which he remains especially proud. A distillation of all the elements of music that had informed him up to that time, it features a bona-fide classic single, Angel, which he later contributed to the Romeo And Juliet soundtrack, and The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing, which also closed out Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat biopic, featuring Bowie’s star turn as Andy Warhol.
Gavin’s done plenty of other film work, too — much of it in collaboration with Seezer. Credits include In America and Breakfast On Pluto. He’s also collaborated with his longtime pal Bono — who some feel lifted his more theatrical trappings from Friday — contributing three tracks for 1993’s Daniel Day-Lewis movie In The Name Of The Father, the title track bagging an Oscar nomination. This diversification culminated in 1997 with a full score for the film The Boxer.
Ballygall-raised Friday explored his strongly republican Christian Brothers upbringing on his most recent studio album, 2011’s catholic. Even though it’s a nod to the culture and mindset that played a major role in his personal and artistic development, the lower case ‘c’, the rebel Friday said, was a deliberate reclamation of the word’s Greek origins from the Roman Catholic church, to emphasise its original meaning: universal, for every man, with wide sympathies.
There hasn’t been a great deal of work since then, save for the Scott Walkerish Atonalism, an obscure industrial jazz album he made in 2017 with French duo Atonalist.
Though he says he is in the final throes of completing an as-yet-untitled project with former collaborator, Dave Ball.
To paraphrase one of his greatest lyrics, he is the visionary art in Ball’s pop party.
Steve Pafford
