LESS than one hundred metres from Richard Harris’s former home in Kilkee, over a thousand people gathered at the weekend to pay homage to the late actor.
At a site adjacent to the Diamond Rock cafe, overlooking the Pollock Holes, the crowd were treated to a song from Hollywood star, Russell Crowe, dedicated to his late friend.
The trailer of an articulated truck was one of the more unusual stages that the Oscar-winning actor had performed on.
Gene Hackman may have sent his regards and Clint Eastwood and Pamela Anderson were sorry that they weren’t able to come to the unveiling of a bronze statue of Harris, but all of that didn’t matter to the people as they heard Crowe recall his first meeting with Harris on the set of Gladiator.
Taking a break from filming in New York to be at Saturday’s event, the New Zealand-born actor said, “Richard told me ‘there is a good night out in you, I think I am going to like you’”.
The two shared a passion for rugby and had agreed, while Harris was ill in hospital, that they would both attend the Ireland vs Australia match in 2002. However, Harris died weeks before the match.
After Harris died, Crowe said that he travelled to Ireland “to pay homage to a friend” by visiting many of Harris’s old haunts.
Explaining how he came to write a song dedicated to Harris, Crowe told the crowd how, when Ireland beat Australia for the first time in 37 years, he believed that Harris was there with the Irish on the day.
Crowe said that, after the match, he was by himself, drinking a pint of Guinness and wrote the verse in memory of his friend. He told the crowd, “It was written on the back of a beer coaster, so it’s very short”.
Backed by local singers, a guitarist and an uileann piper, Crowe sang the “requiem in the idiom of a football song”, with the crowd clapping along to the tune.
Later, Crowe joined with members of the Harris family to unveil the lifesize statue by local sculptor, Seamus Connolly, which depicts Harris playing racquet ball. The Limerick man won a racquet ball competition four times in a row in the west Clare resort where he used to spend much of his summer holidays.
Alluding to an appeal by a local resident against planning permission to erect the status at Wellington Square, event organiser, Manuel di Lucia said, “It is a slight problem, a minor detail.”
Earlier, Jared, one of Richard Harris’s three sons present, told the crowd that they were a living memorial to his father. He said, “When my father died, I was told that life goes on, but I asked ‘why? I want it all to stop, to stop and mark the passing of this great man’ and days like this allow us to make sense of it all.”
Jared said that his father had “a deep, deep affection for Kilkee”. He said, “He loved Kilkee. There was something in his heart for Kilkee. He fell in love with movies in Kilkee by going to the old cinema here.”
Another son, Damien, told the crowd, “My father wasn’t a sentimental man, but he was sentimental about Kilkee”.
Richard’s brother, Billy, said that links between Kilkee and the Harris family went back to 1850 and the resort allowed Richard to express his wild personality to the full.
He added that Richard was the first person to swim unaccompanied across the bay at Kilkee. Billy said, “He adored Kilkee and, during the last five years of his life, we reminisced over Kilkee and the huge part it played in his childhood.”