From the archives: Louis Walsh set his goal on showbusiness as a teenager
By Tom Gillespie
LAST August Kiltimagh’s Louis Walsh turned 73 years of age.
The talent show judge, manager and TV personality has managed Johnny Logan, Boyzone, Jedward and Westlife, four of Ireland’s most successful pop acts in the 1990s and 2000s.
His innate talents as a showbiz impresario were first discovered by The Connaught Telegraph.
In a front page exclusive on April 23, 1970, he featured in an article headed ‘Schoolboy in a man’s world’ and it read as follows: Sixteen-year-old Louis Walsh is the envy of his school pals.
For every day after school, while they are playing games, Louis is rubbing shoulders with the stars of the Irish Showband world - or dictating business letters to his personal secretary.
For Louis is Ireland’s youngest Showband manager - and publicity manager for one of the country’s top bands as well.
But at the moment he’s trying to keep his work down to a minimum. For Louis, a fifth-year student at St. Patrick’s College, Swinford, sits his Leaving Certificate examination in June (1970).
Louis, who lives at Church Street, Kiltimagh, told the Connaught: “I’m trying to ensure that my work in showbusiness does not affect my studies. So I make sure I’ve all my studies completed before I did anything else.
‘Naturally I’m still only a part-timer and I’m not making fantastic money.
“But I intend to make showbusiness a full-time career when I leave school in a couple of months.”
How did Louis break into showbusiness?
Vincent Gill, manager of the top-drawing Royal Blues Showband, and Claremorris native, said: “Louis has been a great fan of the band for years. He used to write to me advising about discs he thought the band should record.
“One time I took his advice and recorded ‘Mountain of Love’, which proved a big hit for us.
“During last summer vacation he offered to give me a hand. Soon after that I appointed him the band’s publicity manager with his own private secretary.
“He’s proved a big success and now he has taken over management of his own band, The Time Machine.”
Louis’s mother, Mrs. Maureen Walsh, told The Connaught Telegraph: “Since he was about four years old, Louis has always had a great interest in music. Even then he would listen for hours to a band across the road during rehearsals."
After cutting his teeth on the showbands scene Louis went on to manage Johnny Logan, who scooped Eurovision on the double.
He later began a career as a talent judge on shows such as Popstars, You’re a Star, The X factor, Ireland’s Got Talent and Junk Kouture.
According to Wikipedia, Michael Louis Vincent Walsh was born in Kiltimagh on August 5, 1952, the son of Maureen and Frank Walsh. He has one older sibling and six younger siblings.
He moved to Dublin to start his music industry career in the 1970s. Walsh later decided to create an Irish version of Take That, which the papers picked up on when he advertised the open auditions.
The end result was Boyzone, whom he managed to international success with 16 top three singles, six of which were number ones, as well as four number one albums, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide.
When lead singer Ronan Keating announced he wanted to take a break from Boyzone, Walsh continued to manage his career.
Keating achieved a number one hit with ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ in 1999 and also ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’ in 2000, while his album sold 4.4 million copies. Keating and Walsh later agreed to part company as Keating's solo career reached an all-time high.
Walsh then went back to the boyband formula to create Westlife, which Keating co-managed with Walsh for the first couple of Westlife's number one singles and albums. They sold over 50 million records worldwide, a total that included studio albums, singles, video releases, and compilation albums. The group accumulated 14 number-one singles in the United Kingdom.
They achieved a total of 26 UK top ten singles over their 14-year career, and achieved the first number one on the UK Singles Downloads Chart with ‘Flying Without Wings’ in September 2004.
Ahead of their 25th anniversary tour next year, Westlife recently announced a residency at Dublin's 3Arena, with additional dates having to be added to extend it to 13 nights, which breaks their previous record run of 12 shows at the venue, the highest of any artist.
Louis Walsh's first television work was in 2001, in the Irish version of Popstars. The following year he appeared as a judge on the UK ITV show Popstars - The Rivals with Pete Waterman and Geri Halliwell. Walsh went head-to-head with Waterman on the show, with his girlband Girls Aloud battling it out with Waterman's boy band One True Voice. Girls Aloud's debut single ‘Sound of the Underground’ reached number one in the UK.
Walsh managed the band to achieve a million singles sales while their debut album went platinum.
Walsh has also appeared on various talent shows in RTÉ, including You’re a Star. He covered for Simon Cowell as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent during series four’s Birmingham auditions in February 2010, due to Cowell being ill. And he again filled in for David Hasselhoff at the London auditions in the following series when Hasselhoff was unavailable due to appearing in pantomime.
Walsh appeared from 2004 as a judge, along with Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne, on ITV talent show The X Factor. In 2004, Walsh found chart success with G4, who went on to have a chart topping album and completed two tours of the UK. In 2005, he managed the winner, Shayne Ward, whose debut single ‘That's My Goal’ spent four weeks as UK number one.
In November 2005, Walsh quit the show mid-series out of protest regarding his treatment on the show - the most explicit example being Osbourne drenching him with water during a live recording.
Walsh returned on the Saturday evening's live show, stating that he could not abandon his remaining competitor and eventual winner, Shayne Ward, who won the competition with over 10 million votes in the final.
Walsh then went on to win The X Factor: Battle of the Stars with actress Lucy Benjamin.