the commitments

Please improve this article if you can. (July 2008) First edition

The Commitments (1987) is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, and is the first episode in The Barrytown Trilogy. It is a tale about a group of unemployed young people in the north side of Dublin, Ireland, who start a soul band.

Plot summary

Two friends - Derek Scully and "Outspan" Foster - get together to form a band, but soon realise that they don't know enough about the music business to get much farther than their small neighbourhood in the Northside of Dublin. To solve this problem, they recruit a friend they'd had from school, Jimmy Rabbite, to be their manager. He accepts graciously, but only if he can make fundamental changes to the group, the first being the sacking of the third, and mutually disliked, member - their synth player. After this, Rabbitte gets rid of their name, making them "The Commitments", ("All the good 60s bands started with a 'the'.") and, most importantly, forming them from another synth-pop group to the face of what he thinks will be the Dublin-Soul revolution. ("Yes, Lads. You'll be playing Dublin Soul!")

He witnesses a young man singing drunkenly into a microphone at a Christmas party and is struck by the fact he is singing "something approximating music". He decides the band should play soul music. Jimmy places an ad in the local paper reading "Have you got soul? Then Dublin's hardest working band is looking for you". Eventually, he gets together a mismatched group with seemingly no musical talent, led by mysterious stranger Joey "The Lips" Fagan, who claims to have played trumpet with Joe Tex and the Four Tops. They quickly start learning how to play their instruments and perform a number of local gigs.

With Jimmy Rabbite, a music-fanatic, as their manager the Commitments seek to fulfill their goal of bringing soul to Dublin. In the beginning, Jimmy includes all of the country Ireland, but later realised that the culchies have everything whereas the Dubliners were the working-class and had fuck all. Bringing soul music to Ireland was then reduced merely to the city. In attempt to make classic soul and R&B more "Dubliny", it is decided that some lyrics should be changed to make more sense of life in the Irish capital.

The lineup of the Commitments: Jimmy Rabbitte - Manager, James Clifford - Pianist, Imelda Quirke - Backup Vocalist, Natalie Murphy - Backup Vocalist, Mickah Wallace - Bouncer/ 2nd Drummer, Bernie McGloughin - Backup Vocalist, Dean Fay - Saxophonist, Liam "Outspan" Foster - Guitarist, Billy Mooney - 1st Drummer (quit because he couldn't stand Deco), Joey "The Lips" Fagan - Trumpet, Derek Scully - Bassist, Declan "Deco" Cuffe - Lead Vocalist.

Tensions run high between the band members, not helped by the jealousy and animosity Joey receives from other male members due to the attention