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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: GRÀINNE DUFFY

BiTS: Okay, let’s make a start. I know you come, Grainne, from a large family. Was there a lot of

music in the family when you were a kid?

GD: No, actually which some people find very amusing, there was not really
music in our family growing up as in my parents didn’t play music. My mother
did really enjoy the arts and all that sort of thing but no, she was not a
musician, and neither was my father. My sister thankfully started dating a

drummer who had long hair and his family were all musical, so we really
dived into his whole music collection and we
fell in love with The Rolling Stones, The Beatles.
We fell in love with all of that sort of stuff, the old
blues and that’s where myself and my two sisters
started the band.

BiTS: Oh, that’s wonderful. So that’s a nice introduction. What
were you listening to in those days then?

GD: Well, I have to say we were mostly listening to a lot of kind of
Fleetwood Mac. That was a big one for us because there were girls in the

band and we took a lot of influence from them, but we also were listening
to things like Irish bands. We were listening to Van Morrison and to Thin
Lizzy. We had a covers band and we would call ourselves the more rock
and roll Corrs, if you like because there were three of us girls in front
and we used to play a lot of rock and roll covers and Led Zeppelin and
all that sort of stuff.

BiTS: When did you start playing the guitar?

GD: I actually started playing it later. I didn’t start until I was about
15 or 16 and I started off on the acoustic and I eventually made my

way to the electric when I heard Peter Green.

BiTS: It was Fleetwood Mac that got you into electric music, was it?

GD: It 100¯ was. To be honest with you it really was Peter Green
who was really the person that I really connected with the most
as as a guitar player.

BiTS: And what other stuff were you listening to then?

GD: I was also listening to his early stuff that he did. All that material from around that period, the
early Fleetwood Mac, but I was also listening to let’s say early Thin Lizzy because I really liked the

guitar playing. I liked all the early guitar playing, Eric Bell’s playing and all of the original stuff and