Cathal Coughlan

Cathal Coughlan, frontman with acclaimed indie bands Fatima Mansions and Microdisney, has died aged 61. His family announced the news, saying he “slipped ...

This year, he released an album as Telefís, a duo he formed with producer Jacknife Lee. In 2018, Microdisney briefly re-formed for a pair of concerts. The experience of having been in a band that was doing OK and tumbling out of it was pretty unsettling and I was existing on a hovercraft of alcohol and caffeine.” The band supported U2 for a leg of 1992’s Zoo TV tour, and had an unlikely Top 10 hit that year with an eerie trip-hop cover of Bryan Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do It for You (on a double A-side single with Manic Street Preachers’ cover of the theme from MASH). Born in Cork, Coughlan first formed Microdisney with guitarist Sean O’Hagan in 1980, relocating to London in 1983.

Originally hailing from Glounthaune in East Cork, the much loved musician has made a lasting impression on the Irish music scene with his solo ...

The duo quickly became a five-piece after moving to London, and the band released five albums, to much critical acclaim. They entered the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart in 1992 with a reworked version of Bryan Adams' song "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", and opened the European leg of U2’s Zoo TV Tour in the same year. In 1985, their album The Clock Comes Down The Stairs reached number one in the UK Indie Chart, and their 1987 single "Town to Town" reached the Irish top 40, and number 55 in the UK charts.

Irish songwriter Cathal Coughlan has died. The Cork artist built an incredible catalogue across a multitude of projects, fuelled by his imposing baritone ...

He was 61.’ pic.twitter.com/N4CsZwa8nH May 23, 2022 Cathal Coughlan was certainly one of those. BREAKING: The death has been announced of Cathal Coughlan, the Cork music legend who fronted such acts as Microdisney and Fatima Mansions... more to follow— Irish Examiner Arts & Culture (@IEArtsCulture) pic.twitter.com/ktq2Udl36x May 23, 2022 You’re a genius, you’re a giant pic.twitter.com/Jg5NV6wjYh May 23, 2022 Play them loud and remember him— Tim Burgess (@Tim_Burgess) pic.twitter.com/lV0egPDlD5 May 23, 2022 Just sadness and anger really.— Luke Haines Rock N Roll (@LukeHaines_News)— Luke Haines Rock N Roll (@LukeHaines_News) May 23, 2022

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Cathal Coughlan has died aged 61. His death was announced via Coughlan's family, who commented that the Cork-born artist had ...

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The former lead singer of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions passed away in the UK.

Difficult to pigeon-hole, the band’s unique combination of Coughlan’s often-acerbic lyrics and O’Hagan’s sunny guitar licks meant they didn’t quite fit with the wider trends of the times. Broadcaster and singer Tom Dunne was among those paying tribute to Coughlan after the announcement of his death. “He slipped away peacefully in hospital after a long illness.”

Known for his ambitious, sometimes abrasive work with Microdisney and Fatima Mansions.

“But obviously I’ve had a pretty chequered relationship with commercial success, so I’ve been in and out of doing other things for a living. So we just fell into that, and music became a way of life for a time. His highly individual and fiercely idiosyncratic lyrics were packed with striking imagery and mordant social and political comment.

Coughlan was a member of critically acclaimed bands The Fatima Mansions and Microdisney.

Artistically, it’s a real shot in the arm.” He will always be remembered as a unique talent who has left a great legacy, one that will be cherished and lauded for decades to come.” The Cork musician had been living in the UK for some years.

Coughlan first came to prominence with the highly influential post-punk Cork band, Microdisney, which he formed in 1980 with Sean O'Hagan. The duo relocated to ...

“But obviously I’ve had a pretty chequered relationship with commercial success, so I’ve been in and out of doing other things for a living. So we just fell into that, and music became a way of life for a time. His highly individual and fiercely idiosyncratic lyrics were packed with striking imagery and mordant social and political comment.

The Cork singer with Microdisney and Fatima Mansions was a unique force in Irish music.

But it did kind of mean that nobody really knew what to do with them or make of them,” the journalist Andrew Mueller told the Examiner in 2020. There was a sense of humour and a pattern of behaviour that was very much part of that remote existence. That same wry ferocity was on display during the Fatima Mansions’ notorious double-hander of U2 support slots in Milan in May 1992. On the second night, we decided to wipe them [the audience] out.” Coughlan’s next project was Fatima Mansions. Where Microdisney had kept a lid on his rage, his new project became an outlet for it. Often he would do so over the course of a single song – Fatima Mansions’ 1990 masterpiece, Blues forCeausescu, for instance, was a vitriolic deconstruction of despotism and right-wing politics hits as forcefully today as when he wrote it. It was not the most smoothly run show of the tour. Yet, with Rough Trade focused on The Smiths, and critical acclaim for Microdisney failing to build into substantial sales, Coughlan and O’Hagan eventually went their separate ways. Booed on the first night, The Fatima Mansions took their revenge the following evening. He was, however, among the most important Irish artists of his era. “Cathal was writing such interesting lyrics. They were also a quintessential Cork band.

Coughlan was one of the pillars of a post-punk community that converged on the Arcadia Ballroom in the early eighties.

After a lengthy illness Cathal Coughlan died on the 18th of May. He was one of the best songwriters Ireland produced. Speaking to this paper in January about co-writing the Telefís song ‘Picadors’, he said: “It just made me think about my dad's generation really… He was also one of the kindest, most compassionate, caring, and gentlest people I’ve met. It was in the release earlier this year of ‘a hAon’, the first album of new project Telefís, alongside producer and fellow Jacknife Lee, that saw an older and wiser Coughlan reach a state of reflection on the Ireland of his childhood and adolescence. One of the pillars of a post-punk community that converged on the Arcadia Ballroom in the early eighties, Coughlan first came to attention as the co-founder of Microdisney, one of four bands recorded in live action on the legendary ‘Kaught at the Kampus’ EP, albeit in an early incarnation. LEESIDE music was yesterday mourning the loss of a musical innovator and keen social and political intellect, after the announcement of the passing of Microdisney and Fatima Mansions frontman Cathal Coughlan, at the age of 61.

Further tributes have been paid, following news of the death of Irish singer-songwriter Cathal Coughlan – with his Telefís collaborator Jacknife Lee and the ...

Odd to say that maybe, but the truth." After a lengthy illness Cathal Coughlan died on the 18th of May. He was one of the best songwriters Ireland produced. "He will always be remembered as a unique talent who has left a great legacy, one that will be cherished and lauded for decades to come." "Cathal last performed on the National Concert Hall stage in 2019 when he joined Ute Lemper, Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld, post-modern diva Meow Meow, and Irish singer and actress Camille O’Sullivan and Gavin Friday for a concert of Bertolt Brecht songs and poems for 2019." "We wish to extend our condolences to his family and friends at this difficult time. He was also one of the kindest, most compassionate, caring, and gentlest people I’ve met.

Cathal Coughlan, 61, from Cork was best known as the frontman for bands Microdisney and Fatima Mansions.

In another wrote a heartbreaking tribute, a friend wrote: "I'm so sorry to say that my dear friend Cathal Coughlan has passed away. Tim Burgess, the frontman for the Charlatans, wrote: "Cathal Coughlan, music genius, has left this realm. People took to social media to pay tribute as one person wrote: "Shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Cathal Coughlan. One of Ireland's greatest frontmen and songwriters has left us.

She saw in him a talented singer and musician who, by making his way with his group, Microdisney, during the dank, repressed years in the 1980s, was flying the ...

Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Cathal Coughlan’s contribution to popular culture in Cork and beyond from the years immediately after the outbreak of punk rock, is enormous. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. An early-iteration of Microdisney contributed a noisy, angular cut, National Anthem to that elpee, which also featured Mean Features, an unsophisticated four-piece fronted by Mick Lynch, and Nun Attax, led by Finbarr Donnelly. Kaught at the Kampus was conceived in the full-on, can-do spirit of punk rock and sounds far better in theory than in practice: it’s shambling, raw and poorly-recorded. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. My mother died four years ago this week and, days after we cremated her, I reluctantly headed off to see Cathal lead Microdisney one more time as the band performed The Clock Comes Down The Stairs elpee at The National Concert Hall in Dublin. It was a night most of us who fetched up felt we’d never see: Microdisney had been put into cold storage almost twenty years previously after a critically-acclaimed and commercially-doomed career and a series of terrific albums, of which The Clock is generally believed to be their best.