Musician’s books hit the right note

THERE’S no doubt that George Fitzgerald has stories to tell. From a humble upbringing in South Finglas he became an accomplished boxer and was once on the verge of musical stardom.

He’s now forging a career as an author and is happy to draw on his own personal life experiences to develop a good story. And there’s plenty of material there.

George was a member of soul-funk band D11 Runners who rose to fame around the time The Commitments movie became a global smash hit.

In fact, author Roddy Doyle who wrote the novel the film was based on is said to have been at several D11 gigs and there are definite similarities with the movie band.

Both came from working class backgrounds, they played similar styles and neither band got the success their talent deserved.

“The irony is that we sort of mirrored The Commitments in the end,

? says George.

“Each of them went their separate ways.

?

But it could have been a very different ending for D11 Runners. A five album deal from EMI France was scuppered because they couldn’t secure the rights to the band’s hit singles.

BMG – where Simon Cowell was A&R Consultant – were also interested and Louis Walsh was the band’s agent just before he created Boyzone.

“Louis Walsh was really just a cabaret artist manager before he started looking after us and basically we were the door opening for where he needed to go,

? George says.

D11 Runners were already making waves before The Commitments but things really took off when the Alan Parker movie became a hit.

“At one point – and I think it was Louis Walsh who organised it – we were going on to The Tube on Channel 4 and they were going to broadcast a live gig, I think it was in the Rock Garden, but Cyndi Lauper came in and took that spot instead.

“There’s many reasons we could have been huge but if we’d have got that Cyndi Lauper thing, we would have been big.

?

However, D11 Runners weren’t to live up to their early promise and disbanded, a decision George feels in hindsight, might have been a little hasty.

“In truth, we probably packed it in prematurely,

? he says.

“The Commitments didn’t do us any favours. What it did was, it got us great exposure.

“We were a Dublin band that started off from nowhere in Finglas and we ended up having three hit singles and we were being written about all over the world because of The Commitments.

“We had done all this by ourselves but the thing was because of our association with The Commitments, the wisdom of our manager was that we were doing tours all around the place playing Commitments type songs.

“In the end they converted us, subconsciously, into a cover band and that wasn’t us. We were a band that already had three hit singles. We didn’t need to do that. So the association with the Commitments, in a sense, wasn’t really good for us looking back on it all now.

?

These days George prefers to look forward and is focussing his energy into writing. He’s already a body of work behind him and is pushing towards the breakthrough that eluded D11 Runners.

“I always had an inkling to write for some reason,

? he says.

“I left school at 15 but all I really needed was to understand literature, understand how to tell a story.

“I had all the ingredients from growing up in Finglas and Ballymun, all the boxing stories, the band, the hit singles, the whole lot. So all the ingredients of a good cake was there and what I needed to do was to learn how to put it all together. And I did it myself.

?

George was commissioned by a pal to write his latest book, The Ticking Clock, now available as a free download from Amazon.

“Basically it’s a modern day version of Scrooge,

? he says.

“You can’t really find that in it but that’s roughly what it is.

?

“At one point it was at number 34 on the Amazon Best Selling charts out of around four million books. I think there’s been 20,000 downloaded in America alone.

?

Later in the summer George will be re-releasing his critically acclaimed first book, Somebody Up There Likes Me Too. The title is taken from a 1956 movie that tells the true story of champion boxer, Rocky Graziano.

“It’s about Rocky coming from the lowly side of New York and he becomes middleweight world champion,

? says George.

“He ends up saying somebody up there likes me so I said somebody up there likes me too.

?