FIRST PERSON: Big Mac's Wholly Band lead singer Mike McNamara talks music and alcohol addiction

“I was born in Larne in Northern Ireland, in 1955, and then we moved over to Newport when I was eight in 1963.

My father was originally from Newport but he was living in Northern Ireland and met my mother over there and then they got married. They decided to move back to Newport for work basically, and with the situation over there at that time as well. My father was a protestant and my mother was a catholic, so we came back to where my father was born.

We lived in Pill for a very short period of time and then we moved to Corporation Road and then moved up to Morden Road. That’s where we were when I joined the army at about 17 and a half.

I was into all the music and everything just before that, at like 14, 15, you know, the mod scene and all that, which was the first time round really. I loved all of the music around at that time. I liked all the 50s stuff, even when I was young. It wasn’t my era but I loved all that rock and roll. Little Richard and Fats Domino you know. In about 1969 everybody was into things like Black Sabbath and god knows what. I was never like that, I liked the early stuff. My favourite band in the 60s was The Kinks.

It was so important in those days, music was so important, whereas now it’s just so widespread. In those days everything was in the same chart, you’d have Jimi Hendrix and Engelbert Humperdinck, The Beatles, Rolling Stones… I listened to all of them religiously, especially every Thursday watching Top of the Pops. In those days everyone listened to the same things.

But then of course I joined the army and went to Colchester and that was that really. That was in 1973 I think. My superior officers and I differed on my role in the hierarchy and I ended up in military prison in 1976 for nine months.

I got married in Newport in 1974 as well, we met here and are both from here, my wife and I. I was 18 when we married, and nearly a year later my son was born. Nine months and nine days after the wedding.

After that we were living in Colchester, then after coming out of the army we got a house in Newport and I got myself a job as a scaffolder and lorry driver.

That’s when I started writing, I was always into writing, since I came over from Northern Ireland. I always had a natural ability for it.

When you get to that age where you’re 13 and 14 and questioning the meaning of life and why you’re here and all that, you do start to write. It’s been a source of great solace to me, writing has. I’ve kept a diary since I was about ten. I mean I don’t keep a diary now but I was constantly writing between the years of 14 to 40 odd. Just little things about what was happening then. It’s interesting to look back and see what you thought when you were a 14-year-old in 1969.

I published my first poetry book in 1997, first off I started writing songs for my mates’ band. Then I started sending poetry to different magazines, small press magazines, nothing that you got paid for, but they got published. It was always a hobby if you like. I did work elsewhere, I was driving lorries, working in factories, working as a labourer, working as a scaffolder, just to get by really. I’m still writing all the time actually, I publish a poem every day on my Facebook page.

I got sober in 1996. It [drinking] started from an early age, along with drugs. I’ve always had an addictive personality. When I came out of the army in 1976, with the jobs that I was doing, drinking was always a part of it. It took me 20 years to realise it was a problem, I just thought I was bohemian, a poet, you know?

I had come home from a gig on a Sunday night and I had bought various substances as well as alcohol, and, well, that was the moment of clarity what they talk about in AA.

It’s the moment I realised it was insanity. I didn’t drink on the Monday, I didn’t drink Tuesday and went to an AA meeting on the Wednesday afternoon and I’ve never had a drink since and I’ve never wanted a drink since, which is great.

I’ve heard people sitting round the room [in the AA meetings] saying how desperate they are for a drink, but I’ve never had that. I had all that before when I tried to pack it in myself, but I went there and heard people talking about alcoholism, the disease of alcoholism, I realised it was nothing to do with creativity, it was nothing to do with being writing.

It was to do with the fact I had an addiction to alcohol, as simple as that. As I say, that became an important part of my life then, I was going to meetings quite often.

I was in the band [Big Mac’s Wholly Soul Band] then, it was a big culture shock getting on stage sober and things like that because I’m not a natural extrovert.

It was just necessity to get over it, you just had to learn to do it you know? I mean the first band I was in when I was 30, called The Flints, I was with them for about three years and I never did a gig where I opened my eyes, couldn’t look at the audience.

I was absolutely terrified, always. You have to put on an act when you go out. It was always anxious.

But I just got used to it, getting on stage sober, and just, the music became more important then I think. We’ve toured all over the world; Cairo, Germany, Dublin. But we’ve also played weddings and small gigs in Newport. I love the small gigs.

I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of people in this day and age can hide as an alcoholic, no one knows you have a problem.

I’d like to make it a message, something like that. If you have a problem, you have to know that you have a problem. I wouldn’t like to say to people, you know like some people tend to do, oh you have to take acid or you have to heroin to have a good time, because you don’t. There’s more to life than that, and I’m glad I realised that.”