Aodogán Ronan O'Rahilly (21 May 1940 – 20 April 2020) was an Irish businessman best known for the creation of the offshore radio station,

Radio Caroline Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. ...

and the band

Sheep On Drugs Sheep on Drugs are a British techno/industrial music group, formed by Duncan X ( King Duncan) (vocals) and Lee Fraser (a.k.a. Dead Lee) (guitar/keyboards), and currently composed of Fraser and Johnny Borden (vocals/keyboards). Biography Dunca ...

. He also became manager of

George Lazenby George Robert Lazenby (; born 5 September 1939) is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service' ...

, who played

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

in one film.

Biography

Background

O'Rahilly was born in Dublin, the third of five children. His parents owned the private port at

Greenore Greenore () is a village, townland and deep water port on Carlingford Lough in County Louth, Ireland. History A lighthouse was built on Greenore Point in 1830. Several decades later, the Dundalk and Greenore Railway Act of 1863 authorised th ...

County Louth County Louth ( ; ga, An Lú) is a coastal county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. Louth is bordered by the counties of Meath to the south, Monaghan to the west, Armagh to the north and Down to the ...

, on

Carlingford Lough Carlingford Lough (, Ulster Scots: ''Carlinford Loch'') is a glacial fjord or sea inlet in northeastern Ireland, forming part of the border between Northern Ireland to the north and the Republic of Ireland to the south. On its northern shore i ...

. His grandfather Michael O'Rahilly ( The O'Rahilly) was an important figure in the quest for the independence of

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

, a leader in the

Easter Rising The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...

, who died in the fighting in Dublin in April 1916. O'Rahilly described himself as a rebel who had been expelled from school seven times. He started living in London at the age of 17. "'The station revolutionised radio for a generation': Ronan O'Rahilly, founder of Radio Caroline, dies aged 79", ''The Journal'', 21 April 2020
Retrieved 21 April 2020

London club scene

Before he founded Radio Caroline, O'Rahilly started training in

method acting Method acting, informally known as The Method, is a range of training and rehearsal techniques, as formulated by a number of different theatre practitioners, that seeks to encourage sincere and expressive performances through identifying with, u ...

in London, frequented nightclubs and became acquainted with such entertainment industry figures as

Giorgio Gomelsky Giorgio Sergio Alessando Gomelsky (28 February 1934 – 13 January 2016) was a filmmaker, impresario, music manager, songwriter (as Oscar Rasputin) and record producer. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Switzerland, and later lived in the Unit ...

and

Simon Dee Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd (28 July 1935 – 29 August 2009), better known by his stage name Simon Dee, was a British television interviewer and radio disc jockey who hosted a twice-weekly BBC TV chat show, ''Dee Time'', in the late 1960s. Af ...

. He then ran a night club, the Scene, off

Great Windmill Street Great Windmill Street is a thoroughfare running north–south in Soho, London, crossed by Shaftesbury Avenue. The street has had a long association with music and entertainment, most notably the Windmill Theatre, and is now home to the Ripley' ...

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

, London, where in 1963

the Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for six decades, they are one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era. In the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones pioneered the gritty, rhythmically d ...

played, amongst others including

Zoot Money George Bruno Money (born 17 July 1942) is an English vocalist, keyboardist and bandleader. He is best known for his playing of the Hammond organ and association with his Big Roll Band. Inspired by Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles, he was draw ...

and

Chris Farlowe Chris Farlowe (born John Henry Deighton, 13 October 1940) is an English rock, blues and soul singer. He is best known for his hit single " Out of Time" written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, which rose to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart in 19 ...

. He became the manager of musicians, such as

Alexis Korner Alexis Andrew Nicholas Koerner (19 April 1928 – 1 January 1984), known professionally as Alexis Korner, was a British blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a founding father of British blues". A major in ...

and

Georgie Fame Georgie Fame (born Clive Powell; 26 June 1943) is an English R&B and jazz musician. Fame, who had a string of 1960s hits, is still performing, often working with contemporaries such as Alan Price, Van Morrison and Bill Wyman. Fame is the on ...

, Alexis Petridis, "Ronan O'Rahilly, Radio Caroline founder who inspired UK pop and pirate radio, dies aged 79", ''The Guardian'', 21 April 2020
Retrieved 22 April 2020 and helped to persuade

the Animals The Animals (also billed as Eric Burdon and the Animals) are an English rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s. The band moved to London upon finding fame in 1964. The Animals were known for their gritty, bluesy sound and ...

to move to London. Alan Price said of O'Rahilly: "Ronan knew how things were done; he was very hip, he really fancied himself, but he had a lot of 'get up and go' and verve. He helped to launch the Animals". He tried to persuade radio stations to play a promotional acetate record by Georgie Fame, a practice that was almost unheard of at the time. He took the record to the BBC to try to get it played, and discovered that the record industry was dominated by

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British Transnational corporation, transnational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in March 1 ...

and

Decca Decca may refer to: Music * Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label * Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group * Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label * Decca Studios, a recording facility in W ...

. He then tried to get it played on

Radio Luxembourg Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg). The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...

and again found that the shows were "owned" by

major label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produc ...

s EMI, Decca, Pye and

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

. They were essentially "

payola Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment. Under US law, a radio station must disclose songs they were paid to play on the air as spons ...

" shows, featuring only music from labels willing and able to pay for them to be played.

Radio Caroline

He then set about creating the

pirate radio Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially w ...

station

, which began broadcasting in 1964 from a ship, the MV ''Caroline,'' anchored in

international waters The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed regiona ...

off the coast of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, eastern England. The idea for the station was based partly on a plan by Australian music publisher Allan Crawford (who had spent almost two years planning the launch of

Radio Atlanta Radio Atlanta was an offshore commercial station that operated briefly from 12 May 1964 to 2 July 1964 from a ship anchored in the North Sea, three and a half miles off Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, England. The radio broadcasting vessel was owned, at that ...

) and also on

Radio Veronica Radio Veronica was an offshore radio station that began broadcasting in 1960, and broadcast offshore for over fourteen years. It was set up by independent radio, TV and household electrical retailers in the Netherlands to stimulate the sales ...

, which had been broadcasting off the Netherlands since 1960. Radio Caroline was largely funded by financier John Sheffield (great uncle of

Samantha Cameron Samantha Gwendoline Cameron (; born 18 April 1971) is an English businesswoman. Until 13 May 2010, she was the creative director of Smythson of Bond Street. Her husband, David Cameron, was the British prime minister from 2010 to 2016. She took ...

) and Carl Ross (creator of the Ross fishery frozen food business and grandfather of David Ross, the co-founder of

Carphone Warehouse The Carphone Warehouse Limited was a mobile phone retailer based in London, United Kingdom. In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc (previously named "Dixons Carphone"), which was formed by the merger of its former parent Ca ...

) and publisher

Jocelyn Stevens Sir Jocelyn Edward Greville Stevens, (14 February 1932 – 9 October 2014) was the publisher of ''Queen'' magazine and a London newspaper executive. Education and career Stevens attended Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, and Sandhurs ...

. In 1965, the Caroline and Atlanta companies merged under the Radio Caroline name, their two ships giving greater coverage of the United Kingdom. Broadcasts ceased in 1968, the ships' operations having been hampered by UK legislation in the previous year, which also saw new competition from the BBC's

Radio 1 Radio 1 or Radio One most commonly refers to: *BBC Radio 1, a music radio station from the BBC ** BBC Radio 1Xtra, a digital radio station broadcasting black music *CBC Radio One, a talk radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporatio ...

. O'Rahilly was involved in the reappearance of Radio Caroline in several forms during the 1970s and 1980s.

Other initiatives

In 1966, O'Rahilly gave businessman Phil Solomon a share in Radio Caroline, and with him set up

Major Minor Records Major Minor Records was a Northern Irish record label started by Phil Solomon in 1966. It had a distribution deal with Decca Records. Artists on the label included the Dubliners and Johnny Nash. Phil Solomon was also co-director of Radio Caroli ...

, whose acts including

The Dubliners The Dubliners were an Irish folk band founded in Dublin in 1962 as The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, named after its founding member; they subsequently renamed themselves The Dubliners. The line-up saw many changes in personnel over their fifty-ye ...

and David McWilliams were then promoted by the station. O'Rahilly also attempted, but failed, to set up a Caroline TV station. In 1968, he became involved in the production of a number of films, including as executive producer on the

Marianne Faithfull Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull (born 29 December 1946) is an English singer and actress. She achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her hit single " As Tears Go By" and became one of the lead female artists during the British I ...

film ''

The Girl on a Motorcycle ''The Girl on a Motorcycle'' (French: ''La motocyclette'') is a 1968 British-French erotic romantic drama film directed by Jack Cardiff, starring Alain Delon and Marianne Faithfull and featuring Roger Mutton, Marius Goring and Catherine Jourdan ...

'' and on ''

Two Virgins 2 (two) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 1 and preceding 3. It is the smallest and only even prime number. Because it forms the basis of a duality, it has religious and spiritual significance in many cultur ...

'' featuring

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

and

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

. O'Rahilly became manager of the Australian model-turned-actor

, who played James Bond in one film. During production of the 1969

film '' On Her Majesty's Secret Service'', O'Rahilly talked Lazenby into refusing a seven-film Bond contract on grounds that the James Bond character was out of touch with the times, and would not successfully continue into the 1970s. Of this advice,

Roger Moore Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 192723 May 2017) was an English actor. He was the third actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in seven feature films between 19 ...

said in his autobiography, ''My Word Is My Bond'', "George took some bad advice ... I knew George then and have met him many times since. He admits he made a mistake". O'Rahilly also appeared in Lazenby's film '' Universal Soldier'' where both men were credited as executive producers. O'Rahilly briefly managed the American rock band

The MC5 MC5, also commonly called The MC5, is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan, in 1963. The original line-up consisted of Rob Tyner (vocals) Wayne Kramer (guitar), Fred "Sonic" Smith (guitar), Michael Davis (bass), and Dennis ...

in the early 1970s. Later in the decade, claiming that people "found it easier to talk about hate than love", and influenced by spiritual leader

Ram Dass Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been d ...

, he developed the philosophy of "Loving Awareness", which was then heavily promoted on Caroline. In 1976 an album of songs based on the concept was recorded by the Loving Awareness Band, a group assembled by O'Rahilly for the purpose. Several members of the band went on to form

the Blockheads The Blockheads are an English rock band formed in London in 1977. Originally fronted by lead singer Ian Dury as Ian Dury and the Blockheads or Ian and the Blockheads, the band has continued to perform since Dury's death in 2000. Current member ...

Later life

In December 2007, O'Rahilly was inducted as a Fellow of the

Radio Academy The Radio Academy is a registered charity dedicated to "the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production". It was formed in 1983 and is run via a board of trustees, with a chair and a deputy chair ...

. O'Rahilly was inducted into the Hall Of Fame at the PPI Radio Awards, held at the Lyrath Hotel,

Kilkenny Kilkenny (). is a city in County Kilkenny, Ireland. It is located in the South-East Region and in the province of Leinster. It is built on both banks of the River Nore. The 2016 census gave the total population of Kilkenny as 26,512. Kilken ...

, Ireland, on 12 October 2012. In 2012, O'Rahilly was diagnosed with

vascular dementia Vascular dementia (VaD) is dementia caused by problems in the supply of blood to the brain, typically a series of minor strokes, leading to worsening cognitive abilities, the decline occurring piecemeal. The term refers to a syndrome consisti ...

and returned to live in

, Ireland, in sight of the port of

where Radio Caroline was "born" in the 1960s. He lived in a nursing home at Carlingford. He died on 20 April 2020, at the age of 79.

Personal life

O'Rahilly married Catherine Hamilton-Davies in 1993. After his dementia diagnosis, he lived in County Louth with Inês Rocha Trindade.

References

External links

How a radio ship and 7 men shook up Britain in 1964
Colin Morrison, March 2014 * * 'Loving Awareness' * 'The Radio Caroline Story 1964-1984' {{DEFAULTSORT:ORahilly, Ronan 1940 births 2020 deaths People from County Louth 20th-century Irish businesspeople Irish film producers Music promoters Offshore radio broadcasters Pirate radio personalities Deaths from dementia in the Republic of Ireland Deaths from vascular dementia