I did the poetry competitions every year from the age of four and would end up with five or six first places each year. My mother would teach me the poems in the kitchen. I would always be in the prizes, and also started winning story telling competitions too. I was quite confident as a kid in that sense. But it was my mum who did it really – she put her all into it, and there’s no doubt about it, I wouldn’t be doing Westlife now if it wasn’t for my mother.
Most amazingly, she did it for all of us, not just me. Even though she had seven kids, she had the drive to get us out of bed every Saturday morning for speech and drama lessons, or out for piano lessons every Tuesday night, or guitar lessons on a Wednesday night or football on a Thursday. She still does it with my younger brother to this day. She’s done it with all seven of us.
Then one of my sisters started to do variety musicals at the community hall. Along with Mum, she’d put a show together with singing, acting, comedy, all sorts of stuff. I was the guitar player and the singer and the comedian and the guy who dressed up as a woman and all that type of stuff. My first cousin Gillian, who later married Shane, was also in that.
I loved all this because I was what I call an ‘out of school’ kid. That’s where I was happiest, not in class. The teachers absolutely hated me because I was too giddy in class; unless I liked the subject I was as giddy as shit.
I did the poetry competitions right up until I was 16, but by then I had discovered rock music and lost interest in reciting poetry, to be honest with you. One of my elder brothers had a rock band and I started listening to stuff like Metallica, Guns N’Roses, Bon Jovi, Green Day, Pearl Jam, rock and metal bands. Albums like Dookie I just played constantly and, like millions of other kids, I sat in my bedroom for hours trying to learn ‘Seek & Destroy’ and loads of other Metallica songs.
My dad had somehow managed to buy me an electric guitar by this stage. I’d badgered him for a year to get it, then one day my sister arrived back from college with a surprise package for me, a black guitar – an Aria Pro 2, NA20B. I recall the exact model number. It cost £300, which for a guitar was ludicrous. Of course, being a teenager, then I was after an amplifier: ‘You have to have an amp to go with it!’ I hounded Dad until he bought me a second-hand Orange amp, which is one of the most classic pieces of amplification you can buy. I didn’t know this at the time – I just knew if I plugged my guitar in, smacked the distortion pedal on to ten and switched it to maximum volume, it sounded amazing.
Inevitably, I started forming my own bands. During my school years, there were loads of different bands and line-ups, most famously Skrod, an Irish word for which the closest translation is a woman’s private parts. After that, we became Pyromania and began a fierce rivalry with my older brother’s rock band, Bert and the Cookie Monsters. Hardly Oasis versus Blur, but it mattered so much to us at the time! We would go around the school ripping down their posters and they would do the same to ours. They nearly always won any battle of the bands because they were older, but we thought we were the best.
At one memorable band night at Summerhill College, I brought out the best-looking teacher in front of a hall crammed with students, serenaded her with ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton and then gave her a peck on the cheek. I was the king for weeks off the back of that.
I was in and out of various line-ups; it all changed so many times. We’d practise in people’s living rooms, including two friends called Michael Walsh and Derek ‘Buff’ Gannon. The eldest brother of my cousin Gillian had a band called, rather fantastically, Repulse, a thrash metal outfit. One time they got on a Saturday morning TV show, God knows how, and we were all so excited we went along to support them. You can see me in the background with my long, dark hair, head banging to Repulse.
I’d started to get quite good at the guitar, but one day I completely scuppered my chances of being in the next Metallica. Our drummer at the time was out on his bike with me and we were at the top of a hill. He said, ‘Jump on, Kian, I’ll take you down the hill.’ So, being 15 and all that, I jumped onto his handlebars and we flew down this hill.
At the bottom of the hill there was a sharp right turn and a wall.
We were going way too fast.
He didn’t make the turn.
I slammed into the wall face first.
I’ve still got the scar to show for it, on my right cheek. Worse still, though, I’d broken my finger, in fact the bone was actually sticking out, completely dislocated. I was in agony and an ambulance was called. I had to have three operations and to cut a long story short – or rather to cut a long digit short – the finger stopped growing. So now it’s shorter than my other fingers and crooked.
Which isn’t the best news if you want to be the next James Hetfield.
More immediately, our most recent variety show had got through to the All Ireland finals and I was one of the guitar players. I only had two weeks to learn how to play my part with two fingers bandaged up. I could still play, but it had to be mostly bar chords. That accident pretty much finished any guitar prospects I might have had.
If you’d have been at school with me, you may well have thought I was a cocky little shit. Certainly the older boys did and it caused me a lot of grief. If I saw someone picking a fight with my brother Tom, for example, even though he could look after himself I’d run over and try to stand up for him. ‘Get off my brother!’ I’d shout, which always embarrassed him because, of course, I was his little brother.
Unfortunately, I got hit plenty. There were some rough times back then. At times it was ridiculous and, to be totally honest with you, I still carry a lot of anger about those years with me now. There were some dark days.
The thing was, I suppose I had a bit of a name for myself. I was well known and popular with the girls from all different parts of the town. It was just kids playing at relationships, but the guys from the same area as these girls didn’t like it at all. As a result, I got bullied quite a bit by the older, tougher guys. I’m a little reluctant to call it bullying, it was and it wasn’t. It started off with verbal abuse, but soon escalated to actual physical violence. I recall walking home from one carnival with a split lip and getting hit at a school disco. One time I was walking along the street when three boys came across to me and – BAM! BAM! BAM! – they all punched me for no reason.
I’ve had too many black eyes, although luckily I never got a broken nose, even though plenty tried to give me one. The west coast of Ireland is full of very tough people. I don’t mean bullies, I mean people who have had a hard, difficult life. So these sort of fights were commonplace and, to be honest, unless you were put in hospital, it wasn’t a big deal.
It got worse, though. One day I was at home and the doorbell rang. I got up, opened the door and BAM, this guy standing there just punched me in the face. My mum was horrified and called the police, but nothing came of it.
It eventually got to the stage where I couldn’t go into town, particularly on a weekend, because I knew there were a handful of guys – young men, really, by this stage – who were after me.
At this point, I never hit back. I thought that if I hit them back, I was going to have ten of them on my doorstep the next night. And I would have, no doubt about it.
It’s improved enormously now, but like many towns, Sligo was rough in many areas when I was growing up and I couldn’t go to most places without some bother. It affected me massively for some time and I begged my mum to send me to music boarding school, because I just wanted to get out of town so badly. My eldest brother Gavin had told me about these schools where they organized rock bands and all that, and they sounded great, but the main reason I wanted to go to boarding school was to get out of Sligo. Of course there was no way my parents could afford that, so I had to live with the situation on the streets. I started lifting weights and got quite good quite quickly – not to compete with these people, but just to give myself some confidence.
Then one day, when I’d reached 16, I hit back.
I