Later this month, legendary founders of Celtic Rock Horslips are releasing a brand new collection of rare and previously unreleased recordings which has spanned the length of their career. Horslips - At The BBC is a 5 disc (4 CD’s and 1 DVD) features live performances, documentary footage, and rare archival material from the band’s numerous appearances on the BBC, spanning from 1973 to 2019. Recordings of iconic BBC radio programmes The Old Grey Whistle Test and The John Peel Show are also included, all presented in a deluxe hardback book package with rare photographs and extensive liner notes by band biographer Mark Cunningham, legendary BBC producer Jeff Griffin and curator Colin Harper.
Horslips first rose to prominence in 1972, following the release of their first album Happy To Meet - Sad to Part in December of that year. The band, which was first formed as part of an ad for Harps Lager, then went on to release 11 albums over the following nine years, before calling it a day in 1982. The band returned in 2009, before playing their final shows in The National Concert Hall in 2019.
Ahead of the release of the new collection, former flautist and keyboard player Jim Lockhart discusses the bands legacy, the process to bringing the boxset to life, listening back over past recordings, and one of the band’s favourite live performances, in Belfast with the Ulster Orchestra in 2011.
Q: How have the last few years been for you?
“The last few years have been pretty good. We’ve had a patchy experience since we got back together. In a nutshell, we were a band from 1970 to 1980, then did nothing for almost thirty years before getting back together in 2009. There’s been various odds and ends happening since then, we were together the second time longer than we were the first, and only really knocked it on the head a few years ago. Unfortunately Johnny died, which was a tragedy because he was such an amazing presence and an amazing guitar player. We had a big box set out about 4 years ago with like 32 CD’s and a couple of books, and now this one; Horslips - At The BBC, is 3 CD’s and a DVD and there’s a vinyl version so there’s always things going one; we’re still at it."
Q: Could you talk me through how this new box set came together?
"It all started with our friend in Belfast, Colin Harper, who’s an amazingly industrious guy. One of things Colin does, almost as a hobby, is curate collections. He did the original Sweeney’s Men one and is currently doing a Roy Harper one. Colin’s been a fan of Horslips since he was a kid and he came to us some years ago and said we should do a box set and he’s just kept at it. Because he does this on a regular basis, he’s in touch with various labels who specialise in these kinds of stuff, and he put together a proposal and we thought it looked great, and he went to Madfish with it and they went with it, so he’s the prime mover in the whole project. He has collections of Melody Makers and NME going back decades, I can only imagine what his attic must be like, and he has access to BBC archives and information and what’s stored there. He saw what they had, said we should do something with it, put together the proposal and here we are. It’s BBC stuff from 1973 to as recently as 2019, including a transmission we did with the Ulster Orchestra, which was wonderful. There also includes a documentary we shot with them in the countryside in 1974, which was great fun, so it’s got a bit of everything."
Q: How was it listening back to everything you include in the Box set?
"Colin organised it all. He organised the whole remastering process, working with Cormac O’Kane in Red Box studio in Belfast, and he’s got a remastering engineer in Germany working on it too so he’s kind of been a one-stop-shop. He’s got a great listening ear, he’s a fan, and he’s got great sensitivity for music so he’s got it all. We delegated to him to decide what we should include and what didn’t make the cut, he sends a list to us, we have a look, but by and large, because he’s so good, whatever is good with him is good with us; so he deserves the credit, or the blame, depending on how you look at things. When Colin came up with the idea of putting out the big box a few years ago, I was talking to a friend asking if anyone actually buys these things. Turns out the friend had the full collection of the Beatles on Mono, and I was shocked, thinking surely he’s doesn’t go home of an evening and stick them on, and he said that it was on cellophane on the shelf and will stay there, but vinyl is different; it’s always good to get vinyl on the player and it gives vinyl junkies the extra level of junkiness."
You’ve mentioned it already, but a concert you did with the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast which the BBC recorded is included in this collection, could you tell me a bit about how that came together?
"Barry [Devlin] was in Belfast for a year or two before that, and somebody or other was doing a concert with the Ulster Orchestra which the BBC had initiated. He was talking to the producer and between them the idea cropped up that it would be good to try Horslips with an orchestra. It was something we’d tossed around a few times but it never got very far, but the producer ran with it and got hold of Brian Burn from Meath and is a film composer and lives mainly in LA, and he was acquainted with the band, he used to play a cover version of ‘Trouble’ with his Dad when he was in a wedding band back in the day, and he really liked the idea, so Brian and I talked through the arrangements and what we liked; the kind of strings and stuff we were partially to and what we thought would work best for the tracks. Our stuff is kind of complex in a way, in the sense that the way we used traditional Irish music varied from track to track. On some we’d take a traditional theme and tune and turn it into a riff, taking away its centrality and putting a whole other song counterpointed against it. There’s a song called ‘The Blind Can’t Lead The Blind’, but we used a gaelic song ‘Fear a' bhàta’sung by a choir in Irish so the Irish and the gaelic counterpoint each other, and the songs counterpoint each other, so doing orchestration for that was a unique challenge or ripe with possibility, depending on how you look at it. Brian was brilliant, an incredible player, so he did these beautiful dots for the orchestra, which is about 66 players big. The day rolled around, we had an afternoon rehearsal with them, then a soundcheck and that was it. To stand beside these superb musicians was quite amazing. Hearing your keyboard parts or your guitar parts transposed into strings just gives you such a lift, it’s hard to describe. We then used Brian’s arrangements, with his permission, when we played two nights at the National Concert Hall with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, which was conducted by David Brophy, which were great nights too."
Horslips – At The BBC will be released on Madfish on 30th May 2025. Pre-order here.