Why Cillian Murphy is glad his music career failed: “You could easily turn into a dickhead”
It may surprise some cinephiles that, despite being an Academy Award winner and one of the best actors of his generation, Cillian Murphy didn’t initially set out to become a thespian. Instead, he was a musician through and through and dreamed of making music his career.
As Murphy grew up in Cork with his brother Páidi, younger sisters Orla and Sile, and parents Jane and Brendan, the arts were always essential to family life. Both parents were teachers, and from a young age, they instilled a love of music in their children. From the age of ten, Murphy wrote and performed songs, and when he was 17, he and Páidi (then just 15) began playing in a succession of bands.
Their most successful outfit was a jazz-influenced act named The Sons of Mr Green Genes, a moniker inspired by the Frank Zappa song. An artsy soul whose influences included The Beatles and other older acts, instead of the mainstream pop/rock stars of the day, Murphy once joked that the band “specialised in wacky lyrics and endless guitar solos”.
The Sons of Mr Green Genes quickly developed a reputation in Cork, and video footage exists from the Irish TV channel RTE showing a pre-fame Murphy being interviewed after a rambling, oddball gig in a local pub. Still in his teens, the preternaturally composed young man described how he wanted the band to capture “the whole spirit of jazz, which is the freedom to express yourself on your instrument”. He believed that kind of appreciation for true musicianship had been lost in the 1980s and ’90s because too many bands played formulaic pop music that was “based on three chords, whereas this is the freedom to go a bit further.”
Amazingly, when he was only 18, Murphy found himself at a crossroads. Acid Jazz Records, a London-based record label, offered The Sons of Green Genes a record deal, and Murphy must have thought his future as a musician was there for the taking. However, some things about the contract didn’t sit right with him; namely, the fact that “the deal involved selling all our songs and signing up for five years.”
Displaying remarkable foresight and a keen business sense even at a young age, Murphy turned the contract down. Within two years, this decision was proven to be exceedingly savvy, as the label “went belly-up.” As he later told the Evening Herald, “It wasn’t the right time and I’m very glad in retrospect that we didn’t sign because you kind of sign away your life to a label and the whole of your music.”
In retrospect, though, Murphy realised that he didn’t just dodge a bullet by refusing to sign away the rights to his creations. As he got older and wiser and experienced success in acting, he became convinced, “If we had signed up that time, I think I might have turned into a bit of a dick.” He couldn’t help thinking that signing a record deal at 18 would have inflated his ego far too much, and he wouldn’t have been equipped to deal with the fame that might have come along with it when he wasn’t even “a fully formed adult in any way.”
Ultimately, Murphy believes his career turned out the way it should have, as he experienced success when he was capable of processing it, and has always been able to write music in his downtime purely for the joy of it. “You could easily turn into a dickhead,” he reiterated with a chuckle, thinking about that fateful record deal. “The way it turned out, I’m much happier being my own man and being autonomous.”
