Eurovision hopefuls Wild Youth revealed legend Johnny Logan told them “no one gave him a chance” when he first represented Ireland at the song contest.
The band are huge fans of the Hold Me Now singer – who won in 1980 and 1987 – and were stunned when he asked to meet them in his dressing room recently. But Conor O’Donohoe – who is hoping to match Johnny’s success with the tune We Are One – said Johnny revealed nobody backed him with his song What’s Another Year 43 years ago.
Conor told us: “We were in Tel Aviv with Johnny. He is unbelievably nice. We got there and we knew he was playing so we were fanning. He’s an icon.
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“We were like, ‘How will we try to sneak out the back’ and hopefully see him. But when we got there the organiser said Johnny asked that you go over to his dressing room.
“So we went over and we were with him for like 15 minutes and he spoke and then he went out and he performed and then he gave us a big shoutout when he was performing. We watched it all from the side of the stage, which was amazing.
“He said the first time he was going to Eurovision, he said no one really gave me a chance.
“No one really knows until you perform on the night so just try to ignore everything and focus on your performance because you never know what could happen so that was great.”
The group said Niamh Kavanagh – who won Eurovision for Ireland in 1993 – also gave them some advice the night of the EuroSong contest on RTE earlier this year.
Conor said: “She said enjoy every bit of it.” Wild Youth are hoping to dazzle fans on stage during the first semi-final on May 9 with a
pyrotechnic display.
Conor will also wear a sparkly gold flared catsuit on stage to add even more glamour.
It comes a week after Wild Youth became embroiled in controversy after they sacked their creative director Ian Banham over his comments on Ukraine winning the Eurovision Song Contest and transphobia.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling then waded in on the row and accused them of “preening, self-satisfied misogyny” for sacking Banham.
Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on the RTE Late Late Show on Friday, Conor said: “I don’t want to dwell on it too much but there’s a series of tweets that were brought to our attention went against a lot of stuff that we believe in as a band.
“So we just thought it was easier to part company and go to Liverpool by ourselves.”
Conor admitted the involvement of JK Rowling in the debate added another element of stress before they are due to perform on at the first semi-final.
He added: “It’s very stressful. I think as well because she kind of hyper focused on one thing and really highlighted one thing that we have never referenced or spoke about and focused on that being the main reason as to why we parted company, which isn’t necessarily the truth. It’s not the truth at all.
“I hope it’s in the past now and we
can just kind of look forward to doing Eurovision.
“We’re here, we’re very honoured to be representing Ireland, our country. We’re so excited to get to Liverpool and I think we just want that to be our focus.
“We want this to be such a positive experience.”
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