In the red-walled library of Gavin Friday’s home in downtown Dublin, a sacred heart hangs from the white ceiling. The glass totem was a housewarming gift when Friday returned to the city’s centre about two years ago; it presides there like a reminder of his past and a lure yet toward his future.
Friday, now 64, began to question Catholicism more than a half-century ago, when he wondered why the teachers in his strict Catholic school, so-called servants of God, would beat him and his classmates. This was just before he witnessed the rise of glam and punk, before he saw Joy Division for the first time or snuck across the Irish Sea to catch David Bowie in London.
This, too, was just before he started Virgin Prunes, his canonically transgressive post-punk band that scrambled perceptions of genre and gender. And this was just before the acts of rebellion and interrogation that have crafted his singular career as a singer, composer, visual artist, and actor merged into an astonishingly creative life. But there are some symbols and some histories you can’t outrun—or really don’t want to.
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