Backstage Pass A life in Show Business

Pat Egan is a pioneering music and concert promoter, the first to stage an arena concert in Ireland (Queen’s 1979 RDS show) and also the man behind Ireland’s first major outdoor festival – Bob Marley at Dalymount Park, 1980. From growing up fatherless and penniless on the inner-city streets of Dublin in the 1950s, to managing internationally famous Irish stars such as Brenan O’Carroll, Colm Wilkinson, Rebecca Storm and Phil Coulter, Pat Egan has had a life like no other. Backstage Pass will bring you on a journey from pirate station Radio Caroline via opening the Sound Cellar, Ireland’s first progressive music store, to working with Billy Connolly, Freddie Starr, Van Morrison, Phil Lynott, Rory Gallagher, Mary Black, Status Quo, Paul McGrath, Gay Byrne, U2, Eric Clapton, Pattie Boyd, Mario Lanza, Marianne Faithfull, Al Martino, the Irish Tenors, Sir George Martin, Dame Shirley Bassey, the Celtic Tenors, Sonny Knowles, Lou Reed, the Olympia Panto, and more.

Along the way, we learn how drink, romance and rock-and-roll tore his personal life apart, but the loan of £500 helped him turn it all around, and how he stayed alive in the nightclub business of the 1980s and 1990s with a shotgun three inches from his face. Backstage Pass gives a first-ever behind-the-scenes insight into the inner workings of the Irish concert business, including an eye-opening look at where your ticket money goes. It also explores the poor treatment of young Irish acts by the commercial radio sector and the disappearance of opportunity in the music business of today. Illustrated with rare photos, this is the first backstage book of its kind on the Irish music and concert business and should be essential reading for all those with an interest in the music and concert scene in Ireland today. The authors Royalties will go to St Audoen's National School, Dublin