AMERICA made the Clancy Brothers. But it made Liam Clancy a star, an icon and latterly, an Irish national treasure.

Liam was the "baby brother" in a family of 11 in Carrick-on-Suir. Two of his older brothers, Paddy and Tom, had gone to England during the Second World War and joined the RAF. Afterwards, they went to Canada and then to the United States.

In 1955, when Liam Clancy was a strapping young lad of 20, an American woman calling herself Diane Hamilton called to the Clancy family home. She explained that she was travelling around the country collecting Irish folk songs. She took Liam on as her assistant and when she returned to America, he went with her. She promised that she would get him a chance to study film in New York but when they got there he discovered she lived on an isolated farm in Connecticut. He had, as he said later, exchanged one rural prison for another.

He soon discovered that Diane, who was actually a member of the wealthy Guggenheim family (her father founded the famed Guggenheim Museum in New York), had as much interest in the handsome young Irishman as she had in Irish music.

He described her as "disturbed and complex", and it was only after he violently rejected her (literally kicking her out of his bed) that he escaped to New York and got a job in a small film company, which she promptly bought to be near him.

Joining up with Paddy and Tom, he discovered Greenwich Village and the boisterous nightlife of drinking and singing into the early hours in the White Horse Tavern and the Lion's Head.

Liam did not easily take to the drink -- he hated it and it made him ill -- but peer pressure, especially from Tom who would later have to seek help for his own alcoholism, eventually wore him down.

Plus, Liam found that drink was a help with stage fright -- at first. Later on in life, drink was necessary to calm the nerves caused by the hangovers. Years later it caught up with him too, though he did say the amount he would drink was only about a quarter of what his older brothers would often consume.

Following bouts of depression and panic attacks, his wife Kim persuaded him to get professional counselling and he quit.

Liam tried his hand at acting, and even shared a stage with the young Robert Redford and Walter Matthau. Paddy and Tom were also struggling in this direction.

The two older men, along with another brother, Bobby, were also a singing group part of the time to try to supplement their meagre acting income. Liam, meanwhile, started his own solo singing career. But when Bobby went home to take over the family insurance business, Liam joined his brothers and also brought in his young friend, Tommy Makem from Keady in Co Armagh, a non-drinker.

Tom sang in a bellowing voice. Paddy sang softly and played harmonica. Liam played guitar and concertina and sang beautifully, Tommy Makem played tin whistle and was learning the banjo, as well as singing the wealth of songs he had learned from his mother, Sarah Makem. Liam said later that Tommy and himself brought music to the group.

In the Village they met and mixed with some of the best-known folkies -- Josh White, Odetta, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger and a youngster called Bob Dylan with whom Liam shared digs and dated the same girls (including the Rotolo sisters, Suze and Karla -- that's Suze on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan). Dylan would later say he never heard a better singer of a ballad than Liam.

But they were still small-time, the Irish rebel and traditional songs were not going down all that well with America -- or that small part of it that heard them. It was during this period that their mother, Johanna, heard they were going to be spending a while in Chicago, and knowing what a cold place that was, she knitted them white sweaters, plus an extra one for Tommy Makem.

Their manager, Marty Erlichman, immediately declared that this should be their distinctive branding image. It was on this trip too that a promoter billed them for the first time as The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, after they failed to come up with their own name for the group. Around this time they recorded their first album, The Rising of the Moon, a spare rendering of traditional ballads and rebel songs laid down in a friend's apartment. It had the quality of the early Sun sessions, but Liam always spoke disparagingly of it in later life as being "a bit rough."

Everything changed in 1961 when they moved to perform at the Blue Angel on New York's East 55th Street, where they were spotted by a talent scout for the Ed Sullivan TV show -- the biggest show in America, which had a nightly audience that varied between 50m and 80m. Overnight they were an enormous success.

They got to play live on television for an unprecedented 16 minutes -- they had rehearsed two songs but played five -- and after that, everyone wanted them. The whirlwind began in earnest and they were swept up for the next few years, performing to packed auditoria throughout the land, and once were invited to entertain President John F Kennedy. In 1963 they made it to Carnegie Hall, then a recognition of superstardom. They even made it to the Playboy mansion.

That fame spread around the world, and eventually they were invited to come and perform in Ireland in Dublin's Olympia Theatre. There they were treated like visiting pop stars -- the old songs they had popularised in America became all the rage back home, having been spurned for a generation, and the folk revival that led to everything from the Furey Brothers and the Chieftains to Christy Moore and Planxty followed. Liam recalled that "Irish people in Ireland were surprised. They'd never heard these songs this way".

But it couldn't last. It took a physical and mental toll on all of them, but Liam was the first of the brothers to call a halt, though Makem had already departed. On the eve of a tour of Australia, Tom, "the Little Bull," decided to accept an offer to act in Hollywood for television.

Liam could not accept that he would walk out on a tour for which contracts were already signed but he announced that he was quitting at the end of the tour. He told them he was a man now and could no longer play the role of "little brother".

He went to Canada and resumed his solo career before linking up again with Tommy Makem as Makem and Clancy, an incarnation that re-created the earlier success.

But that too ran its course and Liam and Tommy became solo singers; and again they were each blessed with further success. There was one more outing for the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem when they came together in New York in 1984 for their final on-stage reunion.

After a life of hell-raising, with women and drink the dominant ingredients, Liam married Kim and settled down in New Hampshire to raise a family. Tommy Makem bought a pub in New York, but it did not prosper and he concentrated on songwriting and performing for the rest of his days, basing himself also in the States. He died in 2007.

Paddy and Tom carried on as the Clancy Brothers with brother Bobby, nephew Robbie O'Connell and the Furey Brothers joining them at different times, but they each eventually returned to Ireland. Tom died first, from stomach cancer in 1990 at the age of 66. Paddy also died from cancer in 1998, just shortly after he and Liam had been reconciled. Liam recalled they had fallen out "over a few dollars" but agreed "life was too short". After Tommy Makem's death Liam became, in his own words, "the last man standing".

Liam had eventually persuaded Kim and the children to come and live in Ireland by building a magnificent eco-friendly home in Ring, Co Waterford, for which he enlisted the help of celebrity architect Duncan Stewart.

He was still in demand as a performer and frequently toured at home and abroad. He wrote an autobiography that showed he had a wonderful facility for the written word. In his stage shows he was as happy reciting poetry as he was singing ballads, and with his deep musical voice, often reduced to a whisper, demonstrated that he was still an actor at heart.

He had a reputation for being sometimes difficult, but to meet he was kind and friendly and entertaining and generous. He loved performing, especially with others.

He took great joy from the success of the next generation of musical Clancys.

He built a studio beside his house which became a creative focus as other artists visited to record, including The Chieftains.

The Clancy Brothers were a unique outfit -- a hard-drinking band of brothers who fought like hell. Liam described it afterwards. Paddy was the alpha male and laid down the law for the group which was two distinct halves -- Paddy and Tom, the older generation who talked about the RAF and the war, and Liam and Tommy who were young and interested only in the music.

When he wrote his autobiography, Liam was candid about the highs and lows of the life he had led, even making public the details of the four children he sired before he and Kim had their own family of four.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Limerick.

One of his last public outings was to the launch of a film of his extraordinary life, The Yellow Bittern.

Over the last few years he had suffered in different degrees with his health, some of which he attributed to his years on the road, "especially all the flying".

But after a bout of pneumonia he died in hospital on Friday, aged 74, from scarring of the lungs, an ailment that had also taken his brother, Bobby.

Through his talent and his personality Liam Clancy became a much-loved performer. He and his brothers inspired a generation of singers and musicians in Ireland and beyond.

They took something old and made it new and fresh by infusing it with youthful energy and enthusiasm, and in doing so, won the hearts of all who saw and heard them.

Liam Clancy's funeral will take place in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, tomorrow at 12.30pm

- Willie Kealy

Originally published in