The Commitments

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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 decide to start a soul band. As with most of Roddy Doyle's other works, the characters are complex and evolve throughout the book.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jimmy Rabbite, a northsider with an Elvis fanatic for a father (Colm Meaney), accepts an offer to manage a band containing two friends Derek Scully and 'Outspan' Foster. He witnesses a young man singing drunkenly into a microphone at a friend's wedding 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.

Tensions run high between the band members, not helped by the jealously and animosity Joey receives from other male members due to the attention he receives from the female backing singers. The band slowly become more and more musically competent and draw bigger and more enthusiastic audiences, until Joey promises the band that Wilson Pickett, who he claims is an old friend, will join them at a gig and jam with them. When Pickett doesn't show, animosity between various band members boils over and they break up.

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Film adaptation

The book was made into a film of the same name in 1991, directed by Alan Parker. It starred Robert Arkins as Jimmy Rabbitte, Johnny Murphy as Joey "The Lips" Fagan, and Colm Meaney as Jimmy Rabbitte Sr. The members of the band were played by Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Dave Finnegan, Bronagh Gallagher, Félim Gormley, Glen Hansard, Dick Massey, Kenneth McCluskey, and Andrew Strong as Deco (who was only 16 years old during filming). The cast were mostly all unknown before The Commitments, and were mainly chosen on the strength of their musical, rather than acting, ability.

Some of the band members from the movie (including the bassist and the original drummer) have since formed a group that tours under The Commitments name.

The film was important in that it introduced a new generation to rhythm and blues much as The Blues Brothers had in the 1980s.

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