'As musicians, we grow old but we never grow up.'... Rock legend Brush turns 80
Louise Walsh
Rock legend Brush Shiels turns 80 on Friday and he plans to mark the milestone year by training to be the fastest double hip replacement sprinter in the world!
The man who taught Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott and Eurovision winner Johnny Logan how to play guitar showed he is still very much young at heart by quipping; "as a musician, we grow old but we never grow up.'
Brendan 'Brush' Shiels is known as much for loving the craic as he is for his talent but he admitted that, losing ten of his friends and musicians over the years proved lonely.
The Dublin man now lives in Dunboyne, Co. Meath with his wife Margaret and near his best friend of 40 years, former Meath GAA manager Sean Boylan.
Indeed, the former player and lifelong fan of Bohemian Football Club admits that the chorus on his anthem The Fields of Athenry is sung by some of the Meath team a few days after they won the 1987 All-Ireland final.
The Octogenarian who was the frontman of guitarist Gary Moore's first rock band Skid Row continues to have the glint in the eye but a sadness on reflection of the friends he has lost.
"You can say it is only a number or that your days are numbered. You have to make up your mind if you want to keep going," he said.
"I still enjoy the craic as much as the playing but I've lost ten good friends, including Phil Lynott, Gary Moore, Noel Bridgeman, Paul Chapman and Joe Staunton. When you still feel you're only 18, you wonder where the boys are gone.
"Philo and Gary would always say I was the leader of the band and I was delighted to see the boys doing great but I was disappointed that I wasn't bigger than the two of them," he laughed.
Brush grew up at 198 Phibsboro Road in Dublin with his three brothers Freddie, Mo and Paul who sadly died last year.
He married his childhood sweetheart Margaret Reilly 56 years ago and, penniless, the first night of their honeymoon was spent sleeping on the floor in the bar of the Clifton Grange hotel that Phil Lynott's mother Philomena then owned in Manchester.
"We had nothing so Philo rang his mother and said she would help us out for our honeymoon. When we got there, there were no beds until the next day so we slept on the floor of the bar.
"The next morning Philomena gave us an Irish breakfast and told me I had a gig twice a night because one of the band members was sick and that was that."
The dad of two now adult sons Matthew and Jude, experienced his own health problems down the years and had a cardioverter defibrillator fitted after a virus led to heart failure in 2012.
In 2015, he just missed out on running the 100m in 13 seconds and a second attempt after a double hip replacement saw him sprint 100m in 18 seconds.. Now in the coming years, he aims to be the fastest over 80s sprinter in the world.
"I think I'm the only double hip replacement sprinter in Ireland and at 80, I want to be the fastest double hip replacement sprinter in the world."
Brush runs every day and uses various techniques of stretching as well as his daily 50 press ups and sit ups..
"I can still play with anyone and play as well as anyone. Everytime music changes, there's less music in it. I think the days of the great musicians are nearly gone. Our style is long gone.
"Getting to 80 is a particular frame of mind. At one stage, I was friends of the elderly and now I'm elderly with friends.
"My triumph now is being able to put on my socks standing up," he laughed.