From cutting hair to cutting records

The tonsorial arts have played quite an important part in the stylistic development of rock music. Just think of the Presley quiff, Little Richard's pompadour, the Fab Four fringes, Johnny Rotten's spikes, Mari Wilson's beehive, Bjork's antennae and Sinead O'Connor's pate. Each, in its own crucial way, has been a statement on some cataclysmic Zeitgeist or other. And let us not forget Hair, Talking Heads and, er, Chris Barber's Jazz Band.

Thirty-year-old Peter Quinn has been a barber (not a stylist, he insists) for 16 years. Although this article has no connection whatsoever with his own quite tasty hair style, it's important to note that, if it wasn't for his involvement with other people's hair, you probably wouldn't be reading about him. Through his work, he met a well-known record producer who decided that it was Peter's turn for a style makeover. From cutting hair to cutting records, so to speak.

Peter is a talkative bloke, as most if not all experienced hairdressers are. His conversational trick whilst working is to determine a client's favourite subject. From aerobics to zoology, across the spectrum of the arts and up and down the hairy back of civilisation as we know it, Peter assures The Irish Times he is fully aware of what to talk about. If the topic happens to coincide with his own obsessions of music, surrealist art and Internet technology, then all the better. But first: what is the difference between a barber and a hairstylist? A barber is a male thing, maintains Peter.

"Men are quite fussy about their hair," he says in a coffee shop around the corner from his place of work, Grafton Barbers, on Dublin's Grafton Street. "With blokes it's good conversation, a stress-free experience. I cut hair and everyone is happy with what you do. Satisfaction really is the name of the game. In ladies hairdressing, you have to sell the work." Why? "Because women are never really convinced that they're happy with it themselves." Aah, a veil has been lifted, a mist cleared away. Now I understand.

Peter left school "without an education. I didn't even complete mock exams. My career guidance teacher actually told me I shouldn't stay in school - he told me I was too creative and that school was stifling me. I played my guitar in class, and drew pictures in my exams. I got B-plus in art but failed everything else dismally. I had no interest in a lot of the stuff being forced down my throat."

He went straight into hairdressing, initially training as a ladies hairdresser. Dublin in the mid-1980s, however, was open to change. What with style-bible magazines such as Arena, ID and The Face setting the cultural and social agenda, Peter found himself at the cut and thrust of men's ever changing fashions. He ended up with a large customer base of what he terms "educated" people. "I would meet these guys and they would recommend books for me to read. I got very interested in English literature and read loads - not that you'd know from my lyrics - but there is a bit of a dark edge to the words I write. Literature just took me somewhere else. Then I read a book on Salvador Dali. Why didn't anyone tell me about him when I was at school? Then I got into absolutely everything."

Between cutting hair, Peter constantly thinks of lyrics . "I have some very serious stuff that I can't find a place for at the moment. A lot of it is spiritual journeying. In all the music I listen to, I listen to artists who write and oversee their own material, people who are artists but who are perhaps more controversial than skilful who became famous for their style more than their substance."

Enter producer/engineer Bobby Boughton. Englishman Boughton had been in Dublin for some time, working with soul/pop star Lisa Stansfield - he has previously worked with soul heavyweight Barry White and has subsequently worked with The Corrs. Using Peter's workplace as a regular sounding-off board - which in turn was skilfully used by the barber to expound his own theories on life, the universe and the whole darned enchilada - Boughton eventually capitulated. Regular hair cutting for a long time quickly followed.

"You talk to someone for five minutes," says Peter of their initial meetings, "and you find conversation drifting in a certain direction. We got onto music and, through chat, he found that I wrote my own material. He invited me up to his place in Merrion Village, in which he had a studio. We did three songs. I initially thought he just wanted to do a single, but he said why don't we do an album."

The results of a furious songwriting pace and long nights simmering in front of a hot mixing desk are in the recently released Streams of Passion. Going under the name Furry Waters (don't ask; oh, all right then, it's got deep and meaningful sexual connotations - figure it out yourself), Quinn's brand of music might be as cutting edge as an overripe tomato, but it's consummately constructed.

Sounding uncannily like David Bowie on good form on several tracks, there is also a strong pop/soul commercial touch, which is probably as much to do with the presence of an experienced producer as with the ambitious barber.

"I used to work all day and come home and stay up all night, 24 hours a day, for I don't know how long," says Peter, who certainly isn't backward in coming forward. "I'd sleep at the weekends. The odd night I'd crash out."

As for impending fame and fortune, despite his commercial aspirations (an e-commerce website, furrywaters.com, is in situ) Peter is surprisingly rooted: "I don't have a plan. I've been offered a lot of stuff, all of which could be pie in the sky. When I was working on the album, I had to get loans from here, there and everywhere. I lacked confidence. That said, it was wonderful working on the record. I'll never forget the experience."