Eddie Rowley: Christy Dignam was a fighter who had ‘amazing life’ despite dark times

Sadly, the world class songwriter and singer died this afternoon. But he considered himself lucky to have survived so long.

Christy, who grew up in Dublin’s Finglas, had a high-profile battle with heroin going back to the 1980s. It ultimately led to the band splitting up just as they had hit the big time.

Then, in 2013 the legendary entertainer was diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer that has now taken his life at the age of 63.

“Between the drugs and the cancer there’s no way I should have got to this age,” Christy told me in 2020, adding: “In a small way, the cancer is probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

“When I got it, I had to clean up my act and live healthily, so it’s had a positive effect on my life in that way.”

The music icon said that his passion for song-writing and performing with Aslan, who formed in 1982, got him through many dark days in his life.

As a child, Christy was sexually abused by a neighbour and he struggled to come to terms with it through his adult life.

“If I didn’t have that (song-writing and singing) I don’t know where I’d be today,” Christy said.

“I was in hospital for about eight months at one stage with the cancer (amyloidosis), and when I came out, I was in a wheelchair for about a year.

“I remember sitting in the house one day watching the news and seeing that two little Syrian children had drowned in the Mediterranean as they and their families were trying to reach Europe.

“I started thinking about my life and how I had wasted it. Then I got into a really dark place.

“It was only when I started gigging again that it lifted, and I don’t see it like that now. If I’m not gigging the demons start growling inside me and I start getting into a bad place, so I’m very lucky that I have that outlet.

“When I’m on stage, I exorcise all the demons and when I’m not doing it, my head just starts getting melted.

“People say to me, ‘oh, you’re very unlucky with the cancer.’ I consider myself a very, very lucky man; first of all to be surviving this cancer, but also for the life I’ve had.

“I’ve had an amazing life. I’ve been doing something that I absolutely love all my life.

“When I first started work it was in the Player Mills cigarette factory on a conveyor belt. Later, I worked on the St Patrick from Rosslare to Le Havre, cleaning up after people who had got sick on the boat.

“Now I just can’t believe my luck to have a place in the history of Irish music.

“I remember doing an interview with Tommy Tiernan, and he said, ‘You know that This Is and Crazy World (two of his best-known classics) are in the Irish DNA at this stage?’…and I never looked at it like that.

“The Irish people have been amazing to us. Because of some of the things I did in my life, they had every reason to reject me as a waster, and they didn’t. They stuck by me.”

I first got to know Christy in the late 1980s when Aslan rose to superstar status and looked like they were going to conquer the world. Back then, I watched them play one of their biggest shows in Ireland at Slane Castle when they supported David Bowie in 1987.

Christy told me that he was on the brink of emigrating to Australia before Aslan had a smash hit with This Is.

He had been on holiday in Sydney with his then partner, Kathryn, who later became his wife. The young couple fell in love with the country.

“I was 21 when myself and Kathryn made our first trip to Australia,” he said.

“I had a sister living in Sydney, so we went over for a holiday. We were there for a month or two and we loved it down there.

“I said, ‘What we’ll do is, we’ll go back to Ireland and I’ll give Aslan a year. Then we’ll get married and we’ll go back to Australia, have our kids and rear our family there.’ That was the plan.”

Christy and Katherine’s only child, their daughter Kiera, is also a singer and songwriter.

In his final interview, Christy told Ryan Tubridy that it’s his wish for Kiera to carry on his legacy by singing his songs.

Kiera told the Sunday World last week that Christy encouraged her to pursue singing as a child, telling her: “’You’re really good at what you do. You have to do this.’”

She added: “Now to carry on the legacy of my dad is a privilege to do it.”