About Warren Fahey
Family History
The Faheys’ came to Australia from Ireland starting with my father’s father’s father sometime in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Dad (George Patrick) was the eldest son of eighteen children to Maria (Mary) and John Patrick Fahey. Maria was born in Dalton, NSW, near Gunning, where her father was a schoolteacher. They were Catholic and obviously didn’t believe in birth control or (obviously) self-control. Both of my grandparents lived to a very ripe age in their late nineties and Mary went to Mass most days of her long life. A visit to their Balmain Street, Leichhardt, cottage always resulted in a new set of rosary beads or a couple of holy pictures.
I never worked out how so many people could live in one house let alone how the old man managed to feed them. John Patrick was a working-class man, a socialist thinker and a good drinker. He ruled the roost and was to be avoided if he came home rolling drunk and singing. My mother was born in London to a background of Dutch and English Jews with a bit of gypsy thrown in. Sid Phillips, a slight man with a shiny dome, married Polly Solomon and my mother, Deborah, was the eldest daughter of nine children. Sid served in WW1, and, from my perspective, Polly never worked in her life despite the fact the family never had sixpence to rub together. When my mother and father married, they wisely only had two children (Zandra Miriam Stanton is my elder sister).
Considering both my parents headed very large families neither had any money and ‘homemade’ entertainment was a fact of life. As a young boy I was fascinated with my family, especially my grandparents, who seemed exotic and idiosyncratic. I now realise much of what I believed was based in family folklore.
Sid & Polly Phillips
Dad always told me that the Fahey’s came from Tipperary and that we once owned most of the piggeries in Ireland. It appears we were given the land by the great Brian Barou when Ireland was being settled. Apparently the expedition boats were rowing towards the green Isle when Barou declared “The first man to touch the shore will be given the West of Ireland.” My great, great, great, great, grandfather immediately grabbed an axe, chopped off his left hand and threw it to the shore declaring he had won the wager. Sadly, my father would say, the blasted English stole the lot.
On my mother’s side the stories were just as preposterous and closely linked with the family’s Jewishness although none of the Phillips seemed particularly religious.
Sid had one of the earliest sidewalk stationery supply carts in Sydney, parked out the front of Mark Foys Department store in Liverpool Street. Later he relocated the cart and business to the original Paddy’s Market in the Haymarket where he conducted his business until he retired in his early seventies. The regime was a very early (3.30am) set off, work until noon and then, after lunch, a journey to the races, dogs or trots to have a flutter. He then came home and slept on the coach until Polly would shake and wake him so she could play polka and rummy. Before she woke him she would find his roll of notes, peel off a few, give me one, and then put the kettle on for tea. I always suspected Sid knew this routine as well.
Sid had been a cook in the army in WW1 and every Friday night he would take over the kitchen. He made the best fried fish, Jewish style, I have ever eaten and then he would make very thin pancakes for me and Polly which we ate with lemon juice and sprinkled sugar. He also pickled his own herrings, rollmops and cucumbers and I can still savour the wonderful tastes.
Polly, on the other hand, lived the life of ‘Mrs Reilly’, or so it appeared to me. She knitted and crocheted all her life. If it had a shape she would knit a cover for it. She was very fast and very good. I loved going round after school and talk to her as she spun those needles. She also sang a lot of old songs including a stack of ditties from the Music Halls. She was a terrific honky tonk piano player and the songs would roll off her tongue.
My mother played piano and I can’t remember our house ever not having a piano. Most family parties ended up at our place. We lived in Eastlakes then Willoughby where we had ‘Fahey’s Lucky Lottery and Tobacco Shop. It was a gift store with a barber in the back. After that, I was a youngster still, we moved to Ramsgate and stayed there for most of my teenage years.
Dad started work at Albert G Simms, the scrap metal dealers that became Simsmetal, where he stayed until he had to retire because of medical problems associated with his war service.
“ Sarah, Sarah, sitting in the fried fish shop,
The more she sits the more she knits,
The more she knits the more she sits,
Sarah, sitting in the fried fish shop.
Then she would sing:
She sells seashells down by the seaside
Down by the seaside she sells shells.“
There are lots of stories from my youth but suffice to say my family background was a healthy and happy one.
The Phillips family were nearly all musical. Nana Polly was always singing little music hall ditties like:
Polly’s eldest son, Uncle Mossy (my mother’s brother), married a Brandon and grandpa Len Brandon was once a pianist in the London silent movies. He played loads of old tunes and songs from that era and also from the music hall. I wish I had tape-recorded some of those sessions. I did manage to tape a few sessions with Uncle Moss including one where he sang ‘The Tattooed Lady’ – a song I have been singing for years,
Dad and Moss were there when I had returned from a collecting trip up north and, as usual, I played them some of the tapes. One of the songs was a version of the ‘Les Darcy’ ballad, which is set to the tune of ‘My Home In Tennessee’. Both Dad and Moss immediately said – “We know that song but to different words”. Here’s what they sang:
“ I paid a franc to see, a fair tattooed lady,
And right across her jaw, were the words ‘Great Anzac Corp’
And on her chest was a possum, and a great big kangaroo
,And on her back was a Union Jack, painted red, white and blue.
A map of Germany was where I’d never been, and up and down her hips,
Was a line of battleships, and on her kidney, and on her kidney,
Was a bird’s eye view of Sydney, and ’round the corner, round the corner,
Was my home in Woolloomooloo.
This ditty, obviously from WW1, seems to be related to that other extraordinary tattooed lady that Groucho Marx sang about;
‘Lydia, Lydia, that encyclopedia, Lydia the tattooed lady ”.
Mossy played the ukulele and sang a whole repertoire of popular songs, mostly from the 1920s and 30s while his younger brother, Charlie, always saw himself as an Al Jolson impersonator. Brother Clive was an amazing self-taught boogie-woogie player who could play any tune he’d just heard recently. Fats Waller tunes were always a favourite and Polly liked to belt out the old Sophie Tucker vamp songs
My mother, the only daughter, had a lot of competition to get at the piano and when she did learn she eventually gained her diploma in classical studies. Mom would play the standard classical pieces but was more comfortable with 1940s tunes like ‘Ida, sweet as apple cider’ and ‘When the red. Red robin, comes bob, bob, bobbing along’. Parties at the Fahey household had the piano belting out all sorts of songs all night. I can still picture and hear those parties as we all, young and old, squeezed to get close to the piano as if it was a loud speaker. The singing was boisterous and often glorious.
Mary & Jack Fahey
I went to Marist Bros Kogarah for my intermediate and leaving certificate. I think I must have been a model student in as much as I never wagged school and really did enjoy my school years, especially the final years. I excelled in ancient and modern history, English and was pretty good at geography. I was simply woeful when it came to mathematics, even the most basic, and any of the science subjects. I think I must have missed out on some logic cog when they handed them out. To my utter surprise, after a ‘vocational guidance’ consultation, I was told by the consultant “I should consider going into a trade like motor mechanics or plumbing”. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I remain clumsy about fixing broken toasters; vacuum cleaners etc and I still can’t manage video or other remote controls. Boy did they get that one wrong!
At school I had been a member of the cadets and, in my final two years, I was promoted to company Sergeant Major. It was my responsibility to bring the school to attention every morning and after lunch break. “Attention!” I would shout as the school formed lines and marched to their various classrooms. It was a cushy job with loads of perks. For one I avoided having to look at the Headmaster, Brother Frederick, who I hated with a passion. He was also the maths teacher so it was a double hatred. On the plus side, as RSM, I had access to the cadet quartermaster store and we used it as a private clubroom. We also had another ‘club room’ used by some of my fellow ‘thespians’ including my mate John Hargraves, who became a very successful actor and, sadly, died far too young. There were a few other celebrities at school including Bob Windle the Olympic swimmer. In 2003 I attended the 40th anniversary of my class and reminded them of the terrible mischief I had instigated as a student.
I was a troublemaker. I was also a non-believer attending a serious Catholic school. I had already made my mind up that I was an atheist or something down that track. Religion simply didn’t add up and, besides, I had already started to expand my mind, with my father’s encouragement, by attending meetings of strange groups like the rationalist Association and my weekend visits to Speaker’s Corner in Sydney’s Domain. In the Domain I would listen to old Wobblies and nutters of every variety. I had also started to go to my first folk clubs and these were considered hot spots of free speech. I was damned.
I instigated some naughty pranks and especially during the daily session where the class recited the rosary, that dull invocation to the heavens. We had two very placid old brothers who led us in the rosary and each boy had a turn to recite a decade. I was never allowed to participate because I would inevitably start giggling. My classmates would only have to pull a face in my direction and I’d be ordered to stand outside until the session was over. Once I brought in two matchboxes of those tiny black and orange stink beetles found on citrus trees, as the rosary flowed the beetles started crawling out of their prison. By the time the rosary was over there were bugs crawling all over the place. On another occasion I actually pinned a thumbtack to the cord that hangs from the brother’s cassock. He slowly walked not realising he was anchored down. I got into trouble again. There was one classic adventure where a neighbouring lad, Warren de Maria, who is now a leader in social reform in Queensland, set fire to his desk. In those days we still had desks with inkwells however we had recently changed over to fountain pens. The inkwells were ideal little furnaces for those who were experiencing the cold or wanted to fry something like a jaffa skewered with a paperclip. We used kerosene as fuel because it was invisible. Unfortunately de Maria’s desk caught fire mid-lesson. Big trouble.
I mentioned Brother Frederick, or Fred as we called him. He was a nasty piece of work and much hated by all the students. He had a bad habit of prefacing just about everything he said with ‘Now look now” – I started to run a tally on his ‘now, look nows’ and every time he’d say it in class I would tick my statistical chart. Everyone knew I kept this tally and every time Fred uttered the phrase the entire class would look in my direction. It was bound to get ugly and it did. One day Fred ran down the aisle to my desk demanding to know what was so funny. His opening words were “Now look now Fahey’ – I couldn’t help but start laughing and was marched out of the class and nearly expelled. I never told him why I had laughed. On another occasion Fred was teaching us maths and one of the student’s parents came to the door and was obviously angry. As it eventuated Frederick had banned the man’s son from football because of some academic hiccup. The father wasn’t having anything of this. He started shouting to Fred to “Come out here” to which the not-so-good brother replied; “Now look now, I am teaching and you will have to wait.” These were fighting words and you can imagine our fascination as the irate parent responded with “If you don’t come out I’m coming in and I’ll throw you out that bloody window if I have too”. Such fun and games.
My sister, Zandra, worked in advertising and I decided I should work in advertising too. I had passed the leaving certificate with flying colours but, because of my poor maths result (failed the lowest level), I didn’t matriculate which meant I couldn’t attend university. In retrospect it was a godsend as I found advertising the perfect training ground for what I really wanted to be (not that I knew it at the time). Getting into advertising wasn’t easy. I was too old as most starters came from Intermediate rather than Leaving Certificate. I had to get a job so I started as a trainee teller at the Commonwealth Bank, Ramsgate. Yes, a banker who couldn’t pass basic maths at school. What were they thinking! I only lasted six months
My first ‘real’ job was as a despatch boy at Jackson Wain Advertising. In those days, the early sixties, advertising used matrices made from handset ‘hot type’. There were no electronic ways to send copy, collect printing parts etc so we were ‘shank’s ponies’. I knew every short cut through the city and I got to know old Sydney town before the bastard developers cut through in the seventies. Building after building, business after business closed – Anthony Hordens, Beard Watson, Nock & Kirby, Peapes, Mark Foys, Hoffnungs the list is far too depressing. Timber and stone facades fell to be replaced with steel, glass and aluminium. The grand hotels fell too including the Australia in Rowe Street.
When Harry started to fold down his tent I went out full time folklore collecting. On my return after thirteen month’s on the road I opened Folkways Music (with all the money I had in the world – $4000) and, as they say, the rest in history. Larrikin started a year later in 1974.
Truth is I never really wanted to be a businessman. It all happened organically, which, I am assured, is the best way. There is something about running in the business world that never quite satisfied me and that’s why I also had my performing life and book writing life and research life – on the side. I discovered that it was possible to do several things at once but the usual traps remained.
One important area of my early years – from 1963 to around 1980 – was my involvement in the Youth Hostel Association of NSW. I was an active bushwalker, possibly a legacy from y years as a cadet. I bushwalked every possible weekend staying either in a pup tent or, more often than not, at a YHA hostel. I became the Chairman of the Cumberland Region (Sydney) YHA and then a Director of the national body. We obtained old school houses, fire stations, churches etc and converted them to hostels. It was all very impressive and, later when I purchased my first motor scooter, I travelled further a-field. My YHA card, recently deposited along with my manuscript collection at the National Library of Australia, is a road map to where I stayed including hostels all over the east coast and inland. Bushwalking and hostelling also played an important role in my growing interest in folk song and lore. I could write a book about my early experiences as a hosteller and hiker.