Expand’s extraordinary debut, during the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, an observation by the journalist Fergal Keane still rings true. He suggested thatThe modest composer, arranger and performer cuts an unlikely figure as the engine that propelled Riverdance to global success.
“If you take the canon of trad music, that’s always recognisable,” he says. “What has changed about it is the culture, I think. When I did Riverdance initially, I was lucky enough to have worked with some of the top people, like Davy Spillane and Máirtín O’Connor. I had the pick of the cream of trad musicians, but it didn’t seem to me that, once I got through that level of players‚ behind them was another layer of musicians.
Whelan spent years as a musician and producer. He switched his attention to working as a composer, arranger and orchestrator after hearing Richard Harris’s performance of MacArthur Park. He was floored, he says, by the orchestrations underpinning the song, which was written by Jimmy Webb; the bridge bears minimal relationship to the verse and chorus, yet the whole seven minutes works beautifully.
“I suppose, as Woody Allen said, ‘I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ I mean, I think that I’m more at peace with the idea now that this particular outing for me is in its leisure stages. I’m still writing. I still love work. I don’t know anything about retirement. But that’s different. There’s always that big question about eternity: of seeing things going on and on and on. That’s something we all have to think about.