Before he was Scarecrow and Oppenheimer and Tommy Shelby, Cillian Murphy was just a lad from Cork playing rhythm guitar in an acid jazz band. They were called The Sons of Mr. Green Genes, named after a Frank Zappa track off of Hot Rats. Murphy and his friends were into funk, soul, and long instrumentals, and played a mean live show.
“I played in bands in my teens and then when I was about 18 or 19, we were offered a deal and it didn’t work out,” Murphy said in 2020, speaking with Steve Lamacq of BBC Radio 6 Music. He added, “So that was the end of the dream.”
He spoke of the band’s influences, citing acid jazz specifically. Although, he admitted that “we were probably a bit late to the party with that sound.”
“But you remember bands like the James Taylor Quartet, Corduroy and Galliano?” he continued. “We were kind of into those bands and combining that with Zappa and a lot of funk and soul and that kind of stuff. So that’s what we were listening to and that really influenced the sound: there was a lot of instrumental music and a lot of excessively long guitar solos and stuff like that.”
Cillian murphy’s teenage acid jazz band apparently made for a great live show
Cillian Murphy’s band was apparently pretty good live, he said. However, he acknowledged that “we weren’t great whenever we tried to put the sound down, you know?”
Still, he admitted that he’s glad he went with acting over music. This enabled him to keep the friendships with his bandmates strong.
“All the lads that I was in the band with we’re [still] such good friends now, and I don’t know if that would have actually stayed the case if we’d have been put through the jaws of the music industry as youngsters. I don’t know if we’d have stayed friends,” he said. “I know lots of lads that went through that and it was pretty traumatic for them if they didn’t make it.”
In a video that resurfaced around 2024, 19-year-old Cillian Murphy shared his love of live music and acid jazz . With The Sons of Mr. Green Genes gathered close, Murphy passionately extolled the nuances of the genre.
“It came from the whole spirit of jazz, which is the freedom to express yourself on your instrument, which has been lost,” he said. “This is the freedom to go a bit further. Obviously It has its roots in jazz and ’70s music but it’s moving on and becoming popular now … I think it’s great because people of our age are beginning to appreciate musicianship as opposed to a catchy tune. They begin to appreciate live music.”
Photo by JC Olivera/Getty Images
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