The Commitments (novel)
First Edition
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| Author | Roddy Doyle |
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| Illustrator | Derek Spiers |
| Cover artist | Charlie O’Neill |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Barrytown Trilogy |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Publisher | King Farouk (Dublin) |
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Publication date
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1987 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 144 |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | The Snapper |
The Commitments (1987) (originally to be called The Partitions) is a novel by Irish writer Roddy Doyle, and is the first episode in The Barrytown Trilogy. It is a tale about a group of unemployed young people in the north side of Dublin, Ireland, who start a soul band.
Two friends — Derek Scully and "Outspan" Foster — get together to form a band, but soon realise that they don't know enough about the music business to get much further than their small neighbourhood in the Northside of Dublin. To solve this problem, they recruit a friend they'd had from school, Jimmy Rabbitte, to be their manager. He accepts graciously, but only if he can make fundamental changes to the group, the first being the sacking of the third, and mutually disliked, member — their synth player. After this, Rabbitte gets rid of their name, making them "The Commitments" (stating "All the good 60s bands started with a 'the'") and, most importantly, forming them from another synthpop group to the face of what he thinks will be the Dublin-Soul revolution. ("Yes, Lads. You'll be playing Dublin Soul!")
He witnesses a young man singing drunkenly into a microphone at a friend's wedding and is struck by the fact he is singing "something approximating music". Jimmy places an ad in the local paper reading "Have you got soul? Then Dublin's hardest working band is looking for you". Eventually, he gets together a mismatched group with seemingly no musical talent, led by mysterious stranger Joey "The Lips" Fagan, who claims to have played trumpet with Joe Tex and the Four Tops. They quickly start learning how to play their instruments and perform a number of local gigs.
With music fanatic Jimmy Rabbite as their manager, the Commitments seek to fulfil their goal of bringing soul to Dublin. In the beginning, Jimmy includes all of the country Ireland, but later realises that the culchies have everything whereas the Dubliners are the working-class and have nothing. Bringing soul music to Ireland is then reduced merely to the city.
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