1959 – 1985 Gavin Friday was born in Dublin on October 8, 1959. He survived a Christian Brothers education to become a singer, composer and painter. Ireland’s most avant-garde chanteur founded the legendary Virgin Prunes in 1977. The band’s uncompromising body of work ensured a dedicated fan base in Ireland, the U.K. and mainland Europe in particular.
1986 – 1991 In 1986 Gavin briefly abandoned music to paint, which culminated in the 1988 exhibition entitled ‘I didn’t come up the Liffey in a bubble’ at Dublin’s Hendriks Gallery. The previous year, itchy to perform again, he had returned to the stage, acting as master of ceremonies in his own weekly cabaret, ‘Blue Jaysus’. Friday’s own unique interpretations of classic burlesque songs featured alongside comedy and drag acts, as well as appearances by special guests from Dublin’s always fertile music scene.
From 1987 to 2005 he composed and performed with pianist Maurice Roycroft (The Man Seezer). Fresh from The Blue Jaysus, they played their first gig together in October 1987 at an AIDS benefit in Dublin. A demo tape of original material attracted attention of Island Records and they signed to the label in 1988.
‘Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves’ (1989), their compelling moody debut produced by Hal Willner, explored the world of Brel (whose song ‘Next’ is covered on the album), Piaf, Brecht and Weill with a healthy punk ethos. Recorded in New York, Friday claimed it articulates everything he wasn’t able to say in the Virgin Prunes. Themes of love, death and sex permeate the subject matter of the album, which has a strong musical cast including Michael Blair, Marc Ribot, Fernando Saunders and Bill Frisell.
1992 – 1994 The follow up, 1992’s ‘Adam ‘N’ Eve’ is an eclectic work by an artist who refused to be pigeonholed. Influenced by Gavin’s adolescent pop past, the album contains shades of T-Rex, Roxy Music, Satie and Bacharach and is lighter and more humorous than its predecessor. The first single, ‘I Want to Live’, was a chart hit in Holland and Belgium where Friday’s debut album had been especially well received.
1995 – 1998 In 1995 Gavin Friday released ‘Shag Tobacco’. Produced by Bomb the Bass’ Tim Simenon, the sultry, cinematic album uniquely blends 90’s dance rhythms with more traditional European pop set in a world not quite in the future, or in the past. ‘It’s a very sexual album,’ said Friday, ‘if there is a location for this album, it is a place where love is most definitely the drug and everyone is a junkie.’ The Shag Tobacco tours lasted well into 1996, ending triumphantly with a show at the Olympia Theatre in Friday’s home town, Dublin.
1999 – 2003 In Summer 1999, Gavin travelled to Kosovo on behalf of the charity Concern, to film a documentary highlighting to plight of Kosovan refugees. ‘Artists for Kosovo’, a slide-show of work by renowned Irish artists set to Friday/Seezer music opened in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Later that year the video documentary ‘Three Wishes For Kosovo’ was completed and Gavin’s children’s charity project for Kosovo, ‘Muc the flying piggy bank’ was launched. The project encouraged kids in schools around Ireland to set up their own collections for the charity.
Gavin Friday is a prolific vocalist, artist and composer, whose film work includes the songs written with Bono for the popular 1993 film ‘In the Name of the Father’. They recorded the title track as well as the Sinead O’Connor sung hit ‘You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart’. In 1996 Friday and Seezer contributed the song ‘Angel’ to the ‘Romeo + Juliet’ soundtrack and wrote their first piece of score for the Australian film ‘Angel Baby’. His subsequent film scores have included ‘The Boxer’ (1998), ‘Disco Pigs’ (2001) and ‘In America’ (2002). In late 2005, Friday and Seezer teamed up with legendary producer Quincy Jones to score the Jim Sheridan directed 50 Cent biopic ‘Get Rich or Die Trying.’
A consummate live performer, Friday mesmerises his audiences, slipping into the many different characters that inhabit his songs. In 2001 he created ‘Ich Liebe Dich’, a twisted and seductive musical theatre tribute to the German composer Kurt Weill. Performed with the Friday-Seezer Ensemble at the Dublin Theatre Festival, the sold out six-show run brought the best of 1920s/30s Berlin and 40s Broadway into the 21st century.
In 2002 Friday and Seezer tackled Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’, recording their own arrangement of the children’s classic with their ensemble. A luxury box set, with artwork by U2’s Bono, raised money and awareness for the Irish Hospice Foundation.
2004 – 2008 The next year Gavin performed the surreal and personal one man show ‘I Didn’t Come up the Liffey in a Bubble’ at the Dublin Fringe Festival. The acclaimed director Neil Jordan cast Gavin as the sexually ambiguous rocker Billy Hatchet in the 2005 movie “Breakfast on Pluto”. Starring alongside Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson, Friday held his own and received much praise for his debut screen appearance.
Summer 2006 saw him return to the stage with his tribute to German culture, ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, and again collaborating with producer Hal Willner on the boisterous collection of pirate ballads, sea songs and chanteys, entitled ‘Rogue’s Gallery’. Later that year, Gavin narrates The Fortune Teller, a marionette play by Erik Sanko. It premieres in New York to great acclaim.
Taking time out from work on his fourth solo album with new writing partner Herb Macken, Gavin participated in the Shakespeare Sonnet Project, jointly commissioned by Opera North Projects and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The project, curated by the English composer Gavin Bryars, premiered in Stratford-Upon-Avon in February and around the U.K. through March 2007. Gavin performed his take on ‘Sonnet 40′ live and narrated the eight sonnets that make up Bryars’ 40-minute composition ‘Nothing Like the Sun’.
In Summer 2007 Gavin Friday and Herb Macken composed the music and main theme ‘Dreamland’ for Patrick McCabe’s play ‘The Revenant’, which opened at the Galway Arts Festival in July. Gavin also takes part in Hal Willner’s Disney tribute ‘Stay Awake’ at the Royal Festival Hall in London and records the classic ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ for Lemon magazine. He teams up with members of Ireland’s Crash Ensemble to narrate composer Ian Wilson’s ‘Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ in Dublin and Brighton. While in New York in for a Spring 2008 repeat performance of the Disney tribute, Hal Willner and Gavin find time to record music for Abel Ferrera’s movie ‘Chelsea on the Rocks’.
When Hal Willner takes the ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ album to the stage for a UK/Ireland tour, Gavin joins him again, performing the pirate songs alongside an eclectic troupe of musicians including Shane McGowan, Martha Wainwright, Rachel Unthank, Lou Reed and actor Tim Robbins.
Gavin Friday is currently working on his fourth solo album with writing partner Herb Macken,
