After my boy died from meningitis in 1992, one of the things I wanted to do was compile and release a CD of WB Yeats poems performed by musicians and artists in his memory. Bereavement causes peculiar reactions such as that. That is why I and my friend and co-producer Frank Dunne found ourselves in the lobby of the Savoy waiting to meet Richard Harris. He had agreed to recite a couple of poems for the project.
We told the receptionist we had been invited to go to Harris’s suite. After a few whispered exchanges on the phone we were informed that Mr Harris had changed his mind and therefore could we wait in the bar until someone came to see us? Frank and I sat down in the Art Deco American Bar, unsure what the news meant, but certain it was not good. We were going to get blown out. A flunkey was on the way down to give us the news.
Then we saw an odd-looking gent peering in at us from the threshold. Whatever the bar dress code was, this man was breaking it. He wore shapeless grey jogging pants, a green rugby jersey, a white bathrobe tied at the waist and flipflops. It was Richard Harris and he was coming towards us.
“Are you the Yeats boys?” he asked in a deep growling rasp. We said we were. “My voice has gone. I can’t do it.” He was a man you could describe as hoarse. But instead of turning on his heels, he pulled up a chair and sat down. He had, he explained, been up all night shouting at rugby on the telly from Australia. That was why his voice was shot.
I like to think he sensed our disappointment and wanted to make amends, or maybe he had a couple of hours to kill. Whatever, he called over the waiter. “Three bellinis,” Harris croaked. “I don’t drink any more but these are good here – better than in Venice.” Who were we to disagree?
He spoke in a stage whisper, but he also had this habit of leaning in close and beckoning us to do the same, as if we were to be privy to the most extraordinary secrets. Three more bellinis. He talked of his own days playing rugby in Limerick, he talked of the remote parts of Donegal, he talked of his own poetry, and of sparring with Muhammad Ali at Ali’s training camp in the hills. He called Brando “Marlon”. And on and on it went. It was dazzling storytelling. It was part performance, undoubtedly, with rehearsed punchlines, but he just loved words, what they could do, and he enjoyed his talent for using them well. Of the recording, he said nothing.
After four or five rounds of bellinis, he announced he couldn’t stay longer. “Come back tomorrow, boys – we’ll get it done then.” The waiter said there was no bill. We stumbled out. Through the fug of my first – and so far only – pre-lunch bellini binge, I was unsure if I remembered the new arrangements correctly. Would it really happen?
The next day we were shown straight to his suite. He was a man transformed, serious and engaged; at work. His own Yeats paperback was already out and annotated. We ran through the poems a couple of times. The room fell silent. Frank pressed “record”. Harris nailed it.
