All Shook Up

Waterboys on Sirius in Dublin photo: Frank Miller

In October 1989 an earthquake hit San Francisco. It was a massive one and sadly scores of people lost their lives. 

The Waterboys arrived in town for a concert a few weeks later and we witnessed the upturned sidewalks, cracked roads and broken flyovers left behind by a woken dragon.

I was asleep in a nice hotel uptown when an aftershock hit. I jumped up suddenly, the bed was tap dancing on the floor with me in it. I couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. My first thought was that there was a ghost in the room violently shaking the bed. I ran to the window to escape. We were a few floors up but that was not going to stop me trying to get away from an angry unseen spirit. When I got to the window, I could see people on the street outside running for cover and it dawned on me that we were in the middle of an earthquake. I had an overwhelming sense of relief! 

Later that same day we planned to meet up with Anthony’s friend.  Pia worked for Greenpeace in San Francisco. We had played a gig on board the Greenpeace ship ‘Sirus’ when she was docked in Dublin a couple of years earlier and some of us had kept in touch with the campaigners and sailors. 

 After breakfast, Pia arrived and brought us over to meet the Greenpeace crew berthed in the Bay. The weather was beautifully warm and sunny. I had read ‘The Greenpeace Chronicles’ by Bob Hunter, a wonderful account of the nascent environmental movement. It is a compelling story about the effort to save the whale population from extinction. Their actions were ultimately successful and eventually led to a global ban on whaling. The crews onboard the Greenpeace vessels are brave and intrepid and often sacrifice their own safety by putting their lives on the line. I was in awe.  

For a couple of hours before the show, Joel, Daniel, Desiree and Pia took us out on the bay in a sleek silver yacht. We whizzed around Alcatraz and around the bay away from the world, while at the same time deeply in it.