Paul Noonan of Bell X1: ‘I love living in Ireland but how we lean in to booze culture pisses me off’

I had a very content, safe, well-provided-for childhood. I was very lucky. My father was a primary school headmaster and my mother was a homemaker when we were young, so we had long summer holidays. They both came from rural Limerick, from farms, so we spent a lot of time on farms in the summer, wandering the fields. There are corners of fields and mushroom-picking areas and hedgerows that I remember from my childhood, that I can conjure up viscerally.
I did always read in school – I went from Enid Blyton to Steinbeck pretty quickly. I read Flann O’Brien, the Irish writers. I have definitely mined my Leaving Cert poetry for songs all my songwriting career – I think because they were the ones I knew. The poem The Lost Heifer by Austin Clarke stayed with me, and that gentle scene-setting in a rural Irish context: later I fell in love with John McGahern’s writing.
Was I smart in school? I knew where the academic levers were. I knew how to do exams. My sisters called me golden balls because I was an absolute mammy’s boy. Still am. My mother used to make my lunches through to college. She’d peel my oranges, put them in a napkin in my lunch box when I was in fourth year in college. I’m paying for it with my own children: they’re 15 and 13, and I’m the lunch guy.
There was a wonderful woman called Eithne Donnelly in Lucan who started the Lucan concert band. I played recorder from nine and I was second flautist in the band. I remember the day they introduced a drummer. We used to rehearse in this cacophonous gym hall. This drummer came in and started playing. I couldn’t play the flute because I was so excited by the sound of the drum kit.
I got a drum kit at home. It was in the shed. The neighbours didn’t have a great time. I remember one Sunday afternoon playing and coming out of the shed and hearing a neighbour in an adjoining garden shout, “Please, Paul, not on a Sunday!’ In 1991 we did our first gig as Juniper [the band Noonan and his Bell X1 bandmates were in before Bell X1], and we would all swap instruments.
I think how we [as Irish people] use the English language, there’s a playfulness and a nuance and subtext that’s valuable. You might write something and find it clicking with an audience. There’s a song of ours called Next to You, which has a line that talks about the “holy souvenirs from Knock, that came all the way from China”. That line is always bellowed back.
When I had kids, I had severe provider anxiety: it knocked me sideways, because it’s not something I’d thought about before. For years I had no idea really how much money I made or needed or spent.
[ HousePlants: Paul Noonan and Daithí bring two disparate worlds togetherOpens in new window ]
It’s very hard [for] an Irish band to sustain itself because it’s a small island. You have to look for other ways. Working in schools [as a music therapist] has given me the height of admiration for teachers. People talk about them having a short day, but Jesus, you’re wiped after that. The school work I do is in inner-city Dublin. What’s heartening is that there are so many initiatives in those areas to improve the quality of life for people and improve social mobility.
Kids would be referred to me for various reasons. They might have autism. The work might be around language development or emotional regulation, and then I see children who would have had adverse childhood experiences. It’s about offering them a safe space. It’s wonderful to see [their advancement]. I’m also in a nursing home one day a week working with people with dementia. Kids and adults have no sense that I’m a musician who has made records.
I was 50 in May. It’s given me pause. I’m healthy. As you hit this kind of age, friends get ill. You see more of that.
I don’t have unfulfilled hopes and dreams. The collaborations, the projects I have, I feel really satisfied with. With Daithí [Noonan’s collaborator in HousePlants], the record is out, and there are the shows with Lisa Hannigan and Gemma Hayes as a trio, and Bell X1 will continue to make records. We’re very reluctant to become a heritage act.
I love living in Ireland. We lived in Amsterdam for a while – my wife is Dutch – but it never felt like home. I find the newfound pride in the Irish language and in Irish culture generally, really interesting and positive. What does piss me off is how we lean in to booze culture. It’s sometimes used as our number one selling point, even sort of subliminally, Guinness is held as this national emblem: it’s a booze brand owned by a multinational.
We’re still a very young country. People don’t necessarily see government as something they’re invested in, that government is something we all put in place, to ensure the best quality of life for people. People feel like it’s imposed on us. In the birth of the State in 1922, it was an intense time for lots of reasons: it felt at that time people were invested. Creating all the departments and deciding who did what. I’d imagine some of that was extremely exciting. We seem to have drifted from that completely.
I feel sort of intimidated by that question, ‘What’s the craic?’ It’s like a challenge [laughs]. I don’t know!
In conversation with Nadine O’Regan. This interview, part of a series, was edited for length and clarity. Houseplants’ new album Half Known Things is out now, for tour dates, see www.houseplants.band/live