In partnership with lyricist Bill Martin, Phil Coulter has composed a number of global hits, including Puppet on a String (for Sandie Shaw),
Congratulations (Cliff Richard), Shang-A-Lang (Bay City Rollers), and My Boy (Elvis Presley) earning innumerable accolades. In Ireland he is much loved for songs like 'The Town I Loved So Well' with its stirring, emotional lyrics inspired by growing up in the troubled city of Derry, Northern Ireland. In Bruised, Never Broken Coulter tracks right back to the beginning and his emergence from this war torn place which seemed to offer little opportunity for a young Catholic boy in pursuit of artistic excellence, recalling how, in the face of extraordinary personal and political upheaval, he went on to become one of the greatest musicians of his generation.
Poignantly, it is also a hymn to the place that made him, a city as complex and troubled throughout Ireland’s middle decades as any on Earth, yet a source of constant inspiration and consolation.
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Phil Coulter is a native of Co. Derry. A producer, composer and arranger, over the course of a five-decade career as a creator and solo recording artist, his work has been widely recognised, earning an impressive list of awards, including 23 platinum discs, 39 gold discs, 52 silver discs, and a Grammy nomination. He lives in Bray, Co. Wicklow.
At 9.58 a.m. on 19 February 1942, 242 Japanese bombers arrived over Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory, and delivered 681 bombs, weighing 251,000 pounds. Meanwhile, at 10.37 a.m. in the maternity wing of the City and County Hospital in Derry, Northern Ireland, Nurse Margaret Keyes arrived and delivered a male child, weighing 6 pounds 7 ounces. That was me.
While the former event grabbed international headlines, my arrival, although modestly celebrated by my parents, went largely unnoticed by the outside world. That was my cue to start making noise and trying to get attention. And I suppose, in one way or another, I have been doing that ever since.’
Cover design by www.grahamthew.com
Cover photography by Myles Shelly - Available as eBook €22.99
