Patrick Martin Cusack (born 2 July 1954), known by the stage name Pete Briquette, is an Irish bassist, record producer and composer. He is a member of the Boomtown Rats and has also played in Bob Geldof's band.

Boomtown Rats

He was born in

Ballyjamesduff Ballyjamesduff () is a town in County Cavan, Ireland. A former market town, it was the winner of the 1966 and 1967 Irish Tidy Towns Competition. History The first mention of Ballyjamesduff is found in The Registry of Deeds, Kings Inns, Henrie ...

, County Cavan, Ireland. His stage name refers to his upbringing in Ireland where

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficient ...

briquette A briquette (; also spelled briquet) is a compressed block of coal dust or other combustible biomass material (e.g. charcoal, sawdust, wood chips, peat, or paper) used for fuel and kindling to start a fire. The term derives from the French word ' ...

s were burned for heat instead of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

. He is the

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

ist,

backing vocalist A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...

, occasional songwriter, and sometime

keyboardist A keyboardist or keyboard player is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical inst ...

for

The Boomtown Rats The Boomtown Rats are an Irish rock music, rock band originally formed in Dublin in 1975. Between 1977 and 1985, they had a series of Irish and UK hit record, hits including "Like Clockwork", "Rat Trap", "I Don't Like Mondays" and "Banana Repub ...

, a

band Band or BAND may refer to: Places *Bánd, a village in Hungary *Band, Iran, a village in Urmia County, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Band, Mureș, a commune in Romania *Band-e Majid Khan, a village in Bukan County, West Azerbaijan Province, I ...

that reached worldwide popularity in the late 1970s. His bass lines are evident on such Boomtown Rats

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetit ...

s as "

Rat Trap A rat trap is a trap designed to catch rats. Designs are often larger variations on mousetraps. Types of traps Spring traps for large rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are character ...

", "

Banana Republic In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring c ...

" and " Like Clockwork", the last two of which he co-wrote with Bob Geldof. Briquette was the only Rats member who frequently collaborated with Geldof as a solo artist, playing on some of his biggest hits such as "Great Song of Indifference" and "Love or Something".

Record producer

Briquette also works as a

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

and produced the French singer

Renaud Renaud Pierre Manuel Séchan (), known as Renaud (), born 11 May 1952, is a French singer, songwriter and actor. His characteristically 'broken' voice makes for a very distinctive vocal style. Several of his songs are popular classics in F ...

's 2009 album of Irish ballads ''Molly Malone - Balade Irlandaise'' which includes contributions from

Terry Woods Terence Woods (born 4 December 1947 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish folk musician, songwriter/singer and multi-instrumentalist. He is known for his membership in such folk and folk- rock groups as The Pogues, Steeleye Span, Sweeney's Men, ...

(

The Pogues The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in Kings Cross, London in 1982, as "Pogue Mahone" – the anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic ''póg mo thóin'', meaning "kiss my arse" ...

), Barney McKenna (

The Dubliners The Dubliners were an Irish folk band founded in Dublin in 1962 as The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group, named after its founding member; they subsequently renamed themselves The Dubliners. The line-up saw many changes in personnel over their fifty-ye ...

) and

Glen Hansard Glen Hansard (born 21 April 1970) is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician and actor. Since 1990, he has been the frontman of the Irish rock band The Frames, with whom he has released six studio albums, four of which have charted in the top te ...

.
Though criticised for the quality of Renaud's voice, the album was commercially successful reaching number one on the French chart.

Personal life

Briquette is a first

cousin Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

of Johnnie Fingers, the main keyboardist in the Boomtown Rats, as their mothers, Margaret "Peggy" (Bowles) Cusack and Cecilia "Sheila" (Bowles) Moylett, were sisters. They are nephews of Irish conductor and composer

Michael Bowles Michael Andrew Bowles n Gaelic: Micheál Ó Baoighill(30 November 1909 – 6 April 1998) was an Irish conductor and composer, who was also active in New Zealand, the US, and England. Life Bowles was born in Riverstown, County Sligo, and grew u ...

. He currently lives in

Acton, London Acton () is a town and area in west London, England, within the London Borough of Ealing. It is west of Charing Cross. At the 2011 census, its four wards, East Acton, Acton Central, South Acton and Southfield, had a population of 62,480, a ...

, England.

References

External links

A list of some of Briquette's recent projects
* * Irish bass guitarists Irish male songwriters Musicians from County Cavan The Boomtown Rats members Irish new wave musicians Living people People from Ballyjamesduff 1954 births {{bass-guitarist-stub