U2’S Adam Clayton’s ‘BALLROOM BOOM’ Film Screening and Q&A

Feature documentary about the birth of popular Irish music, coming to the ICC straight from it’s European premiere at the 36th Galway Film Festival. This Screening will be followed by a Q&A with the Director Billy McGrath.

Ballroom Boom has already celebrated sold-out screenings in New York, Chicago, Austin, Singapore, Toronto, and Galway. Now its London’s turn!

Sideline Productions international hit ‘Ballroom Boom with U2’s Adam Clayton explores what the Irish music scene was like before U2 started. Central to the story was the Irish showband, which dominated Ireland’s music scene in the 1960s. With contributions from Eileen Reid, Dickie Rock, Bob Geldof, Aonghus McAnally, Paddy Cole, Ronan Collins, Phil Coulter, Brendan Bowyer, Ultan Conlon, Linda Martin plus historians and journalists, these seven/eight-piece groups, including future legends Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher, performed an eclectic mix of waltzes, Irish music, jazz and pop hits in ballrooms across the country.

It is estimated there were around 700 Irish showbands at the height of the ‘ballroom boom’ — and their popularity wasn’t confined to Ireland. Some 60 years before U2’s residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Irish showbands were packing out ballrooms in Sin City, New York, Boston and Chicago, managed by the colourful Irish-born promoter Bill Fuller who once owned over twenty venues world-wide – including The Fillmore West in San Francisco, Teach Furbo in Galway and The Electric Ballroom in London, which