It was a bitterly cold November night outside, but in the body-heated warmth of a heaving “The Alley” niteclub, the first seeds of a rock supergroup were planted. The year was 1995 and the group was Finnegan, Feeney and Cullen.
The Alley, the scene of some of the biggest scandals to hit the music establishment, was thriving like never before in 1995.
Celebrity bouncer Chuck Norris oversaw the arrival of A-list stars almost every night. It was a regular haunt for Prince, (or as he was known at the time, Prince), David Bowie (the mens bathroom was called Ground Control in his honour) and George Michael (who rarely left said bathroom).
During the summer of 1993, the club had been rocked when well known cult actor River Phoenix died outside of the Viper Room in Hollywood.
The actor had been a regular at The Alley and had nearly died of a drugs overdose on two previous occasions. The Alley’s owner, Declan Roundovich, said his death in Hollywood was just a case of bad timing. “I wish he had died outside our club,” the owner told Hollywood Review at the time.
Two years on and Roundovich got his wish when a second cousin of pantomime star Twink died just around the corner. The club’s reputation as the ‘in’ place to go was cemented.
On that frosty November night, three very different factors had brought Sean Finnegan, Andrew Feeney (pictured right in the Priory Clinic in 2005) and Robert Cullen together.
Finnegan, recently split from Hawaiian supermodel Helena Watanassshehasa, was drowning his sorrows with childhood friend Andrew Feeney.
Feeney too was coming to terms with loss. His goatee beard, grown and cultured over many years of personal grooming, was removed for him to undergo corrective chin surgery. He felt its loss greatly and was rarely seen in public until it had grown back with the help of hair transplants.
Robert Cullen, a naïve 21 year old with a penchant for corny poetry and complex harmonies, came to The Alley to be seen.
He had travelled from his small home town seeking stardom and after being tipped off about the importance of this night-time hot-spot, he showed up, bluffed his way past Norris with his boyish good looks and entered a world of rock stars, actors and industry bigwigs.
As fate would have it the first guy he met in there was Andrew Feeney.
“This guy with wild hair came walking up, he wouldn’t take his hand away from his chin. I thought he was kind of weird at first, but he asked if I wanted to snort a line so I said yeah,” said Cullen.
Feeney’s account of the first meeting was a little bit different.
“I was walking round The Alley, man I was wasted, and this chubby guy with a goatee beard came up and asked me did I have any coke.
“I told him to go fuck himself, but he just wouldn’t leave it alone and I couldn’t get over how good his beard looked, so in the end I said ‘Fine, follow me to the jax’. I was planning to beat him up and shave his goatee, but we ended up doing a line and that was that.”
Feeney introduced the newcomer to his clique, where he immediately caught the attention of record producer Derek “Coke” Lee for all the wrong reasons.
“I just saw Andy lead this guy back to the table and I knew straight away he was trouble. I wasn’t wrong. He fucked my half-sister Lisa Scott-Lee shortly afterwards, the same night in fact.”
However a bond had been formed between Andrew and Rob which would lead to great things for both men.
Check back for more from this unofficial biography....
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