Phil Cunningham: 10 Things That Changed My Life

I seemed to have an aptitude for it, although nobody knew at the time that it was going to change my life.

That same Christmas I was given a double-sided harmonica from my grandfather so I started playing both. A little later I was on a bus with my mother and was playing the harmonica when a man called Jimmy Ferguson heard me and asked my mother if I could be part of his wee concert party that played to pensioners and at miners’ welfare clubs. I think my first performance was in the Rubber Mill Club in Edinburgh. I was four years old.

I didn’t come from a particularly musical family although my mother played piano at the Mormon Church and there was always music in the house. Jimmy Shand was a big influence and I was given fiddle lessons from the age of five at my primary school which continued at Portobello High.

That was something that was very important in my development both as a musician and as a human being. Music and the arts in general opens the mind to many other things. It is a travesty that they are thinking of removing music lessons from schools. I am very glad to have benefited from them.

2. Planxty
I WAS learning classical accordion but in 1972 my brother Johnny gave me an album for Christmas that he wanted to hear. It was by Planxty, the most famous band in Ireland at the time.

It was the first time I had heard traditional music performed in that way: the first time I had heard Irish pipes and that kind of arrangement and it really opened my ears and my heart.

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I loved it and wanted to be a part of it so I joined the Triangle folk club in Edinburgh. I became immersed in Scottish and Irish music, particularly the latter as it was more accessible at the time. I developed a passion for it and it led to me leaving school early at the age of 16.

3. Joining Silly Wizard
I WAS learning classical accordion but in 1972 my brother Johnny gave me an album for Christmas that he wanted to hear. It was by Planxty, the most famous band in Ireland at the time.

It was the first time I had heard traditional music performed in that way: the first time I had heard Irish pipes and that kind of arrangement and it really opened my ears and my heart.

I loved it and wanted to be a part of it so I joined the Triangle folk club in Edinburgh. I became immersed in Scottish and Irish music, particularly the latter as it was more accessible at the time. I developed a passion for it and it led to me leaving school early at the age of 16.

4. My first album
THAT was Airs and Grace in 1983. I was living in Skye at the time and I borrowed £3000 from the Clydesdale Bank manager in Broadford. I paid the money back in the first three or four months out of the album sales. That bank manager used to write little notes for the auditors on the bottom of my accounts to tell them that what was in the account did not reflect my talent! He was basically telling the auditors to stick with me for a while.

The album was a result of other people having faith in me and making it was a big change as it meant stepping away from the Silly Wizard safety net a little in order to be a solo entity. Seeing the album turn out well gave me the faith to become more of a freelance musician and turn my hand to other things.

I started directing and producing and produced Wolfstone’s first four albums as well as Manran’s first two. I’m pretty proud of all those things especially as the people I have produced have turned into very mature musicians given they had a producer with such an immature outlook towards producing.

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Quincy Jones said that for every hour of music there should be two hours of laughter and I have lived with that all my production life. It is about getting the best out of people without them disappearing up their own bahookies.

5. A car crash
IN September 1984 I was in a car crash that killed my best friend Titch Richardson of Boys of the Lough. I was living in Skye at the time and he had come up to see me.

I had to go to the dentist in Dingwall and he came with me but a car travelling on the wrong side of the road forced us over the embankment. It killed him and messed me up. I don’t know that I ever got over it. It was very hard to deal with.

I could not play for a while because my hands were broken and later in the decade I suffered from PTSD although the condition had not been named at that point.

I started drinking too much and burning the candle at every end, as well as in the middle, and eventually burned myself out.

I became addicted to tranquilisers and getting off them was massive. I did it cold turkey but it took months. It took me until late 1988 to recover from it.

6. Meeting Aly Bain
I STARTED performing solo and was down in London in 1986 doing a concert when I met Aly Bain (right). His accompanist did not turn up and as he was stuck I said I could try.

I played piano for him and afterwards he said he was about to do a new TV series and he would like me to be involved. That was the beginning of us performing together and it has been 34 years so far. It was the start of something enormous and very enjoyable.

Aly had a triple heart bypass last year which has been a bit of an eye-opener as it reinforced the fact that life is finite.

We have a bit of catching up to do this year. We’re going on tour after the Transatlantic Sessions at Celtic Connections and we’re going to make another album.

7. The Ship
I WAS doing a solo tour in 1988 and did a gig at Ripley Wayfarers’ Folk Club where I met a lovely man called John Tams, who was very much involved in the folk scene. He also did the music for the TV series Sharp and was later responsible for the music in War Horse.

At the time he was working with Bill Brydon on a production called The Ship which was to be staged in 1990 during Glasgow’s Year of Culture at the old Harland and Wolff shipyard.

It was a massive production, one of the biggest Glasgow has ever seen, and he asked me to be musical director and co-composer. I had been producing records for a while but had never done anything like this and it catapulted my life forward by 10 years I was only 30 and had an idea that I would like to move into TV work when I was in my 40s but this brought everything forward.

8. The BBC 
AFTER The Ship, the Gaelic department of the BBC approached me and asked if would be the musical director for a series called Talla a’ Bhaile which means the village hall.

It ran for six years and after the first year I was asked to be musical director of the Hogmanay Show. I did that every year for 30 years until this year. When they changed the format. I also started having my music in films such as the Last of the Mohicans.

The TV work led to radio presentation which led to my first job as a presenter on a series called Scotland’s Music. That led in turn on to more multipart documentary series like the World Accordion to Phil, Phil’s Pipe Dreams and Grace Notes, about sacred music in Scotland.

9. My MBE
THAT was in 2002 and it was huge – not because it was an MBE but because traditional music was suddenly being given a nod. Somebody, somewhere had thought that what we were doing as musicians with our traditional music was worthy of getting a notice and it meant a lot to a lot of people, myself included.

The university doctorates I have been given have also been very life-affirming as it shows people appreciate an art form which at one point was quite heavily mocked.

Being made a professor at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow has been very important too. I was made an artistic director on a degree course there 10 years ago, although I took a step back when my mum died. I am looking forward to reconnecting with it. I’m in awe of the people I work alongside as I did not realise what was involved in trying to educate.

I hope to show the students there are many ways to skin a cat. My life has been about going through closed doors and finding different ways of getting to my goals. I firmly believe that where there is a will there is a way. I believe that applies to everyone that sets their mind to something. I’m becoming more philosophical as the years go by.

10. Family loss
I LOST my father, Jack, to cancer when he was in his sixties and my brother, Johnny, died of a heart attack in 2003 when he was 46. I had had two heart attacks, one in 1997 and one in 1998, and we pretty much knew what he had was genetic but he was living in America at the time and as health care is so expensive there he did not really pay any attention to the warnings he was given. It suddenly just nailed him one day without warning. That was a big loss.

After my own heart attacks I had tried to change everything including my diet and my alcohol intake but the “me” in me would not let me. I did manage to stop smoking although I stopped 11 days before my first heart attack when I was 37. That was a big thing for me.

When my brother died, I again tried to evaluate my life but through grief I did all the things that were wrong for me.

I lost my mum, Mary, in 2017 and that made me evaluate my life again but I have found it very hard to change. I am what I am and what I am kind of makes me but I did manage to stop drinking for five months solid. I then fell off the wagon but I’m back on it and I’ve lost two and a half stone so I’m feeling good. And these losses have brought me and my sister, Laura, closer together. We take care of each other.

It has also made me really appreciate those I’ve lost, although it’s not until you lose something that you appreciate the true value of it.

Phil Cunningham appears with John McCusker at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on Saturday, January 11 and his 60th birthday concert is at Celtic Connections on January 26, the day before his birthday