A different tune – Colm Keena on Joan Armatrading

On the evening of October 28th, 1976, I was working in the Autobahn Roadhouse pub near my family home in suburban Dublin, when Joan Armatrading came on Top of the Pops and rooted me to the spot. The TV was on a shelf in a windowless annex at one end of the bar where the tables were set up in lines, all the chairs facing the screen. I was 16 years old and worked in the bar a few nights a week, collecting glasses and delivering pints and chasers to the mostly male clientele. Suburban bars were busy places in those days, full of cigarette-smoke and banter, but I downed tools when Armatrading started singing and just stood there, mesmerized, focused, hearing nothing but her.

She was spectacularly beautiful, and I was a shy teenager, but there was more to it than that. She was singing her first hit, Love and Affection, and she stood alone, the lights shining on her against a black backdrop, and as she sang and played her guitar, you could see the flickering of different emotions on her young face (she is about 10 years older than me). One moment she smiled as if glad to be singing one of her own songs; then she looked like she was uneasy about being the focus of so much attention; then she looked as if she was detached, watching herself being watched, thinking how odd it was to be in the studio where they filmed Top of the Pops; and then she looked like she was inhabiting the song she was singing, remembering what it felt like when a friend had brought her dancing, and thinking how much better it would be if she could go dancing with a lover, so she could, as her song said, really dance, really dance, really move, really move. Her voice effortlessly conveyed emotion and she handled her acoustic guitar without giving it undue attention. She was already a master.

I was already familiar with artists like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, singer songwriters who wrote about their own feelings – or at least gave the impression of doing so. I felt I knew pretty much diddly-squat about life and so I found it interesting to hear these older men report back from the front line, so to speak, telling me what it was like, what I should prepare for, what, perhaps, I could aspire towards.

What was different about the singer-songwriter on the TV that night, of course, was that she was a woman. There she was, seemingly shy, but opening her heart and having the courage to say what it was she felt, what she dreamed about, bearing her soul – or at least giving a convincing impression of doing so – and doing it with such talent and skill. This was new for me and made a huge impression. That she was black was neither here nor there, and when I later learned that she was gay, that seemed neither here nor there either. It still doesn’t.

Liberal outlook — Brian Maye on Sheelagh Murnaghan, an indomitable presence in NI politics

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Change of tune – Alison Healy on not being a songbird

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‘Worst morning of my life’ – Alison Healy on tricky tourists

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Custer’s Last Tune – Frank McNally on the dubious history of the ballad Garryowen

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Armatrading is often cited as the first internationally successful black woman singer-songwriter to emerge from the British music scene, but I recall reading an interview some years ago where she corrected a journalist who said this and declared that she was the first woman, full stop. So maybe that appearance in October 1976 was a groundbreaking one generally. Anyway, it made an impression on me.

These days I live with my partner and adult children not too far from the Autobahn Roadhouse, and regularly go for a short jog in a local park, listening to lively music as I run to spur me on. Love and Affection is a slow, soulful number, but it’s on the playlist anyway. So too is Woman in Love, from Armatrading’s 2007 album, Into the Blues. On it she backs up her singing with electric guitar licks that make moving my legs feel less like a challenge and more like a pleasure to which the proper response is gratitude. The same is true of the other tracks, by other artists, that I have on the playlist. Rock, funk, punk, new wave, reggae, rap. Artistic expression lightens our load in all sorts of ways.