REM’s Radio Song was released in March 1991 and a young Malcolm Urquhart was given a guitar for the first time. That same year, Nirvana played a gig in Cork city just before the release of Smells Like Teen Spirit.
BY KATHRYN M CROWLEY
Malcolm the teenager became the man who now leads the band The Lost Gecko, a name he chose in 2006 rather than using his real name. He lives in West Cork with his wife, juggling his job in special needs support with music and writing children’s books.
His book is called Ms Lily and the Pterodactyl. ‘Ms Lily came from a story I heard on Newstalk,’ Malcolm explains.
‘A lady had moved to Africa with her husband as he got a new job. She was quite lonely in her new home. After a while, she made friends with a bird who visited her every day. The bird eventually began nesting in her hair. My first thought was, what if that was a Pterodactyl she made friends with! The story grew from there really.’
Malcom doesn’t write so much now. ‘Publishing is a lot of work and costly, and I got many rejections from publishers,’ he said. ‘However, my books are in all the Cork libraries, which is amazing. The challenge was doing all the work and the cost, but it is great too. I loved the process.
‘I’ve done a lot of primary school sub teaching, so I would let all of the teachers read my stories over the course of a year. The feedback was great and also from the young people, so I was encouraged to go and publish. I had great dreams of getting the books into all of the Irish primary schools!’
Like many indie authors, he enjoys having complete control over the whole writing process adding: ‘It’s really good. No outside influences, and also, I had a great artist who brought the stories to life. That makes a huge difference.’
Malcom met his wife Elaine at a music competition in the Clarion in Cork. ‘I needed a cellist for my songs that night,’ he recalled.
Elaine teaches cello and piano. He remembers that they sounded great together.
‘We didn’t win, but I met my wife! We’ve recorded loads and played in Finland, UK, and U.S together since. We’ve also done a bunch of gigs with her friends who are all cellists. They have been some of our best shows; in St Peters, Cork, and St Catherine’s in Kinsale.’
Malcolm has just embarked on a solo project, and his song Motorbikes and Memories has an interesting backstory.
‘Granda died on Achill Island beach in 1981. He was sixty-one. He was a fiddle player and boxer and worked for Telecom. He even worked on the GPO in Dublin. The week before he died, a sixteen-year-old slammed into the wall next to my family’s caravan on a motorbike.’
There is a tragic extra chapter to this tale. Everyone went to the teenager’s funeral, and the following week: ‘Granda had a heart attack on the beach, watched by my ninety-year-old Auntie from the caravan. The family of the sixteen-year-old went to my Granda’s funeral. The smell of pipe smoke is what reminds me of him.’
We’ve all heard of the adage ‘time heals’. The fact that death in the 1980s resulted in the birth of a new song this year is a reminder that there are no time limits in the world of creativity.
