My dear friend Frank Shields and I at Pinktober,
The Savoy Hotel, 2013

FOREWORD

AT MY FIRST Hard Rock Global Meeting in 2004 a petite redhead bounced over and introduced herself to me. To say she was a fireball of enthusiasm would be an understatement—I had just met the famous Rita Gilligan, Hard Rock’s longest serving and dearly loved waitress and global brand ambassador.

I have known Rita for 12 years now. Her lust for life, people and passion for the Hard Rock brand remain infectious.

She is the epitome of our famous brand slogan “Love All, Serve All.” In her 45-year career at Hard Rock she has rubbed shoulders with some of the most iconic names in rock history and treats them as well as our customers and most junior servers with the same unaffected kindness.

With her disarming Irish sense of humor and genuine love for people, she lives the truth that there are no strangers, just friends we haven’t yet met.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present Rita Gilligan, MBE, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Waitress.

—Hamish Dodds, President and CEO,

Hard Rock International

1

ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD

WHEN I WALKED through the door of what was to become the first ever Hard Rock Cafe back in 1971, I had no idea that I was about to enter a world of magic. I was starting a lifetime journey that would take me around the world and see me mix with some of the biggest stars on the planet. I was just an ordinary waitress trying to scrape together a few pounds in London to help raise my young family – and boy, that could be hard enough in itself at times!

In my earlier years I’d been a pretty mean dancer when it came to rock ‘n’ roll, but I didn’t know much about the music business. I came from a sleepy part of Ireland where the closest we normally got to wild behavior was sneaking out a carrot from the farmer’s field. But there was one thing that I did know about and that was people. I can talk the hind legs off a donkey and my language can be pretty colorful! Somehow this seems to bring the best out in people and I’m good at making customers smile. My parents always taught me that if you treat somebody with respect then you’ll be rewarded by the way they treat you in return. It’s a philosophy that’s always served me well, whether I’m training a novice dishwasher or greeting a global superstar.

When I began my journey, the Hard Rock Cafe wasn’t much more than a crazy idea by a pair of bright American hippies who thought they’d try their luck at selling burgers to posh Englishmen. Nobody thought they’d succeed. London was a very different place back then to what it is today. Fast food and loud music? It sounded nuts to me. You simply didn’t do that sort of thing in a restaurant back then. The idea of opening a fast food cafe off Park Lane in the shadow of Buckingham Palace seemed like madness.

There were plenty of people in the restaurant industry who thought that the founders of Hard Rock, Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton, were crazy. I assume that their bank manager thought they were crazy. If I’m honest, even I thought they were a little bit crazy – and I was one of the first people they hired to help chase their dreams. I expected it would last a few short months, but what the hell – they were nice boys and I needed a job!

In fact, they turned out to be a pair of geniuses. In fairness to Peter and Isaac, London was getting dull and it needed a kick up the backside. The arrival of the Hard Rock Cafe turned out to be the shock that the city needed – and it brought a bit of American culture to the grateful customers in the UK.

* * * * *

NOW OVER 40 years later there are Hard Rocks in over 192 locations around the world, including restaurants, hotels, casinos and live music venues. We started with just 46 staff. Today we have almost 40,000 employees and each and every one of them is like a member of my own family. Isaac and Peter are no longer directly involved with the Hard Rock, but their pioneering spirit is still with us. It’s been an amazing ride and I can honestly say that when I put on my coat in the morning it’s never felt like I am going to work.

To me, life at the Hard Rock has been one long never-ending party with wonderful friends and colleagues. How else would I have been lucky enough to see rock ‘n’ roll history being made over the years right in front of my eyes? I can still remember the raw excitement of the first-ever live gig at the Hard Rock, when Sir Paul McCartney performed with his lovely first wife Linda and Wings (and believe me, even though he was brilliant some of it seemed very raw and loud to my ears!). There was the thrill of meeting my idols from the big screen, like Paul Newman and Tony Curtis (who loved a secret swig of the fiery homemade Irish spirit that I used to sneak to him disguised as Holy Water). Then there was the magic moment when Eric Clapton asked Isaac to hang his guitar above his favorite place at the bar, which drove Pete Townshend insanely jealous.

Pretty soon, serving the rich and famous alongside regular customers became almost an everyday occurrence as word began to spread about the food and the fun at Hard Rock Cafe. It didn’t matter if you were a superstar or the ordinary man in the street: we treated everybody with the same respect.

By the time the ‘80s arrived we were ready to conquer the world. Isaac and our original general manager, Prab Nallamilli, asked me to fly to New York to train staff for the first Hard Rock to open its doors in the Big Apple. Restaurants soon followed in big cities like Dallas and Boston. By using that same great recipe for success that we discovered in London, the business began to mushroom until it seemed like there was a Hard Rock in every major city. We never let it go to our heads and we always made sure we put something back into the community by launching charitable programs to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

On the eve of our 25^th anniversary in 1996, I was asked to become a cultural ambassador for the Hard Rock. It meant that I gave up my role as a waitress, although I’m still never happier than when I’m chatting with happy customers on a restaurant floor. Two years after taking on my new job, Buckingham Palace announced that I was to receive an honorary MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to the UK tourism industry). It made me very proud, because in my mind it was the Royal seal of approval for everything that we’ve worked so hard to achieve at the Hard Rock.

Nowadays, I still travel all over the world to visit our venues in places as far flung as Africa, the Middle East and Australia.

My memories are priceless.

I’ve met Royalty and I’ve rubbed shoulders with the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I’ve also had the pleasure of welcoming great American musicians onstage, such as Bruce Springsteen when he performed at Hard Rock Calling in London. But believe it or not, for me it’s never just been about the stars: it’s about doing a job that makes people happy. Hospitality is personality. Like most journeys there have been highs and lows – but I’ll let you into a secret: I’m still just an ordinary waitress at heart.

My name is Rita Gilligan and this is my story …

2

SONGS AND SANDALS: MY EARLY LIFE IN IRELAND

WHEN I THINK back to my childhood it seems like a million miles from the craziness of life at the Hard Rock. I often wonder what people would have thought back then if they could see me today when I celebrate opening a new restaurant by smashing a guitar with a famous musician. My job at Hard Rock Cafe has given me the privilege of travelling across continents, but my story begins in another world.

The pace of life was very different when I was a child. I grew up in Galway, a beautiful little city on the west coast of Ireland, bordered by endless green farmland to the east. The city nestles at the toe of Lough Corrib beyond which stretch the lands of Connemara to the north, where the country folk live. In those parts they still drink delicious cool water from open wells to this day. Our summers were warm and glorious and they seemed to go on for forever, but in the winter an icy wind would blow in from the Atlantic, bringing a blanket of snow. Thankfully we always had a big open fire at home to keep us warm. We’d use it to cook too, sticking a fork into the flames with a potato on the end or a piece of bread to toast. There were occasionally days when there wasn’t much to eat and the food was simple and basic – but to us those home cooked treats seemed like a banquet. My sisters and I would snuggle up in front of the fire and it seemed like we didn’t have a worry in the world, although like everybody else we occasionally faced times that were tough.

The rules that we lived by were very strict and the Catholic Church dominated our lives. The Bishop had ordered that no dancing was allowed on a Saturday night in case we failed to attend mass on a Sunday. I went to a convent school where the nuns ruled with a rod of iron (which I’ll tell you more about later). Rock ‘n’ Roll wasn’t something that would have been welcomed with open arms by the Church in Galway.

I was born on June 8^th 1941 with bright red hair. My father was a kind man called Martin, affectionately known as ‘Banjo.’ I don’t know where the nickname came from. He didn’t play the banjo although he did sing, so perhaps it was because he was always entertaining everybody by bursting into song. My mother’s name was Cecelia and together they were wonderful parents. I was the second youngest of five children and I enjoyed a delightful childhood. My older siblings were my brother Michael (who’s sadly passed away now) and my sisters Maureen and Ann. My younger sister, Martina, arrived a few years later than the rest of us and I can still recall when she was born. In those days babies were delivered at home and I can picture the midwife, who was called Nurse O’Flynn, coming to our house. I was excited because we’d been told a baby was on the way, but we didn’t have a clue how it would arrive!

I was aged about 10 and I was getting ready for school when Nurse O’Flynn knocked at the door. She was carrying a little brown leather case and when my father let her into our council house she went straight upstairs to see my mother.

“Is the new baby in the case?” I asked my father excitedly, as Nurse O’Flynn walked by.

My father looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and nodded: ‘Yes.’

He was a wonderful gentleman and he wanted to protect our innocence. I grew up believing that babies were dropped off at the house in a case!

My father worked on the roads for the local council. He used to drive a big steamroller that would flatten the road surface and it must have been hard, heavy work.

“Rita, when you are older never stay in a job too long,” he used to say to me, but he drove that steamroller for nearly 50 years!

He used to cycle over 50 miles on a rickety old bike to work in Clifden. It took him so long that during the week he would stay overnight in a caravan, so we mainly saw him at weekends. He wasn’t a big drinker but he enjoyed the odd pint of Guinness when he’d sing folk songs for us. My brother Michael was wonderful at playing the trumpet and my mother could play the accordion. I never took up a musical instrument, but as I grew older I loved to dance and sing. Today, I’ll happily stay up till the early hours belting out some good Irish songs in the pub! I’m a real night owl and even as a youngster I always wanted to play outside until it was late. We didn’t have television in those days but we had a radio in the house. It would be a real novelty if we ever got to hear the music show Top of The Pops – because my father would usually tune into another station to hear a bit of news and sport. One of my father’s biggest passions in life was following the hurling (an Irish game that’s a bit like a cross between hockey and baseball). When he wasn’t singing he was quiet and thoughtful and he was an old-fashioned supporter of the Irish republican movement.

When you walked into our house the atmosphere was warm and friendly. We had a big table in the front room with a big stove and a giant beige couch for us to sit on. My mother was very reserved and would rarely invite guests into the home. She was a discreet person and would never join in if somebody were to gossip about others. She hated bad language. If she were alive today I’d be hung, drawn and quartered for turning the air blue, like I sometimes do at the Hard Rock!

My mother wouldn’t allow a deck of cards into the house (the Church wouldn’t have approved). If ever any of us said anything disrespectful she would get her religious statues down from the shelf and pray for forgiveness.

My mother was very caring and she knew all the old remedies and medicines that had been passed down through the generations. My two older sisters and I shared a bed together and we slept in the same room as my mother and father. We had a big horsehair mattress and I always seemed to get the bit that had a hole in it, which would make me itch! My brother Michael, who had a special place in the family as the only son, slept in the box room.

I was born during the Second World War, which meant that food was sometimes in short supply. My mother would get maybe half a pound of butter to last us all week and a good deal of it would go to my brother. He was the apple of my mother’s eye and that was very much how it was in Ireland in those days. The eldest son was the future head of the family so he would be given special treatment. We didn’t mind – there was plenty more love to go round!

My parents taught me the value of good manners and that was important to me. Manners can carry you a long way in life and they have always served me well, especially when working at the Hard Rock. A lot of my job today involves meeting and greeting CEOs or famous people, but I treat everybody with the same respect, regardless of their station in life. If somebody is rude to me I’ll happily give them a tongue-lashing to put them in their place, but generally I like to get along with people. When I was a child, if I saw the milkman or the coalman coming to the house I was always extremely polite.

“Good morning, Sir!” I would say.

Another thing that my parents encouraged me to do was to speak up for myself.

“Rita – if there’s something that you don’t understand then you should always ask a question,” my father told me.

It was good advice. We weren’t wealthy, but we were rich in happiness. Most of the clothes that we wore were handed down by previous generations, but every year my sisters and I would be given a special treat at Easter. Our parents would buy us a brand new pair of Clarks sandals. It was like winning the lottery! I can still feel the tingle of excitement when I stepped outside to wear them for the first time. I couldn’t wait to show them off. It felt as if the whole neighborhood was looking at my feet! We lived in a very close-knit community in a part of Galway called Bohermore (where I still have an apartment today). The houses were arranged in four terraces where 200 different families lived (I was born at No 35 St Finbarr’s Terrace). During the summer the children would go out early in the morning and play outside all day until dusk. It was very safe. Christmas was always a special time but it wasn’t the big commercial event that it is today and we’d mainly just be given an orange or an apple to celebrate, or maybe even a doll or a book. If somebody received a special gift then news of it would travel around the streets like wildfire. I remember one year, one of our neighbors was given a Rupert The Bear Annual, which caused great excitement and the book was later passed around the whole estate!

* * * * * *

WHEN I WAS about five or six years old I became very ill and it led to an experience that will cause me sadness for the rest of my life. Like all families, we would occasionally be unwell but usually it was nothing more than a few sniffles in winter.

Unfortunately this was far more serious.

It began when red blotches appeared on my skin that made me feel itchy and sore, as if I had sunburn. I can remember feeling hot and sweaty and at some point my mother moved me into her own bed instead of the one that I shared with my sisters. This was something she would only do if any of us were very unwell, so I knew that she was very concerned about me.

What happened next is a bit of a blur, but I can remember tossing and turning while I was burning up. I felt terrible and I was worried I was going to be violently sick. I was confused and disorientated. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in a fever and I began to have hallucinations. When I looked up I saw shapes of dark animals coming out of the walls. They were big, strange-looking creatures the size of elephants – and I was soon raving aloud in fear.

“Mum! Mum! There are animals in the room, please get them away,” I shouted to my mother.

“It’s okay, Rita. It is okay. There’s nothing there, you’re safe,” my mother told me. She did her best to soothe me, but she must have been filled with dread when she recognized the symptoms.

I had scarlet fever, which was often fatal in those days before antibiotics. I must have become extremely ill because I was taken away by ambulance to hospital, where I spent many months getting better. My mother hated the idea of me going in an ambulance because it would have been the talk of the neighborhood.

“Oh, did you see Mrs. Ryan’s daughter was taken to hospital?” the local gossips would say.

Illness was wrongly seen as something shameful and I felt as if I were being taken to a dungeon. The hospital was somewhere that you would be afraid to go as a child – not least because it meant that you might never come home. It wasn’t like today, when kindly doctors sit down and explain everything to you and your family. The nurses wore big veils and patients did as they were told. The doctor’s word was final.

I began to recover once I was there, but it was a slow journey made harder by the fact that my mother wasn’t allowed to visit me. Family members were forbidden. I was on a small ward with other children to keep me company, but I missed my mother terribly. Thankfully, she soon managed to find a way around the rules. There was a tiny window set high in the wall near my bed. I couldn’t see out of it, but it let in a bit of daylight and occasionally I could hear the birds singing outside. Then one day I heard a tapping on the glass, followed by a voice I recognized.

“Rita! Rita! I have brought you a treat!”

It was my mother and she had to stand on a rock outside in order to be able to peer inside through the high window, bless her.

“Take this,” she said, passing down a package to me.

It was a two-pound jar of fruit jam.

“Put a spoonful of this into your tea and it will sweeten it up,” she explained with a smile.

Those words were so comforting. The love and devotion that she showed me still makes me tearful when I think about it today. Sugar was very scarce so jam was the next best thing to sweeten tea. The jam gave me a boost, but all the tiny seeds floated to the top of the cup (which put me off adding anything to my tea in later life).

While I was in hospital I made friends with a dark-haired girl, who I’ll call ‘Josie’. She was a young girl about the same age as me and we would chat together and we became close. I was in a normal hospital bed but Josie was given an old-fashioned cot with metal bars on it. When I do charity work today with the Hard Rock I occasionally visit hospitals in poor parts of Africa – and sometimes I see cots that remind me of the one that Josie was in. She was a very troubled girl and she was always unhappy because she was so sick. I’d call out to comfort her, but she would sit opposite me in her cot and bang her head on the bars, moaning in pain. She had meningitis, which like scarlet fever is very contagious.

“You’ll be alright! You’ll be alright!” I used to say to her.

Then one morning when I awoke it was very quiet. I looked over at Josie and I could see she was very still.

“Hiya Josie! How are you this morning,” I called out.

Silence.

“Josie, wake up! It’s me Rita,” I said, thinking that she was asleep.

She looked so still. Then somebody came into the room – I can’t remember if it was a doctor or a nurse – and they must have gently explained to me that Josie had passed away in the night. I found it hard to take in what they were saying. The strange thing was that they left her there in the cot for a long time afterwards before they took her body away. I guess they must have had more urgent things to attend to. It was very sad – I just sat there staring at her and feeling very sad and confused by what had just happened.

I was the lucky one: I got to go home, but I sometimes still say a little prayer for that poor girl today.

3

SERVICE WITH A SMILE

IF YOU’D TOLD me when I was a child that one day I would have the confidence to greet royalty I would never have believed you because I was very shy when I was growing up. I’m a lot wilder and bubblier today and it’s always a pleasure to welcome customers to the Hard Rock. When somebody visits one of our restaurants it’s like they’re stepping into my own home and I welcome them like an old friend. Sometimes I can even be a little cheeky with people, but that’s just my way. I was at a Hard Rock event a few years ago when somebody told me that Prince Harry was in the room. He’s got red hair like me and I was determined to say hello so I walked up and patted him on the shoulder. He was sat at a long table next to the singer Tom Jones, who I’ve met many times and he always gives me a great big hug. Prince Harry was charming and he didn’t mind in the least the fact that I waltzed up to introduce myself. We chatted for a few moments and I asked him if he was enjoying himself. He’s a lovely young man.

When I was a child, being a redhead meant that I was teased quite a bit by other children, who used to call me all sorts of names like ‘garnet top’ or ‘carrot head’. I suppose that today it would be called bullying, but back then we just took things like that in our stride. I didn’t let it bother me and I always had wonderful camaraderie with my school friends. When I was eight or nine I would walk across two big fields to get to school and my mother would give me bread and jam to take with me for my lunch. It was white bread from the shop, but a lot of my friends’ parents were country people and they would bake their own currant cake. My friends would be dying to taste the white bread so I’d swap it for some cake, which was equally delicious. The fields we walked through were full of carrots and parsnips. Sometimes if the farmer wasn’t around we’d pull up a carrot and wipe off the muck before eating it there and then, straight from the ground!

Unfortunately, my time inside the school itself was far from happy.

In fact, I hated it. I went to a convent school that was ruled by the nuns and they were terribly strict, you know. They could be very cruel. The school building is still there today but it looks like a big old church. I started going there after I recovered from scarlet fever and to begin with my mother would walk me there every morning. We’d pass a shop that sold four biscuits for a penny and sometimes my mother would buy me some for later. I would get a sick feeling in my stomach during the journey because I was so nervous. We had to cross into a narrow entrance and as we turned the corner the dreadful pains would just start. In school we had a break during the morning and I used to eat the biscuits to try and distract myself from the nervousness. Then at 12 o’clock every day the nuns would make us walk through a dark tunnel under the road to get to some gardens where we would say prayers. They would tell us stories in the tunnel about all the old sisters who had died in the nunnery over the years and I would be very frightened. We also lived in fear of a visit from the dental nurse. If you had a pain in your tooth she would come in and shove a great big needle in your mouth and pull it out. When I look back they were ruthless and horrible. If we misbehaved we’d be slapped across the palm of our hand with a cane – and given extra blows if we dared to move the hand away.

Every month the sisters would make a collection to send money to help poor babies in Africa. Every child was expected to give one penny and there would be hell to face if you didn’t have it. My mother would wait for my father’s paycheck to come in each week and sometimes on the day before it arrived we’d have nothing in the house apart from a bit of bread and some potatoes. The nuns’ collection was always on the last Thursday of the month, the day on which father’s paycheck would normally arrive. There was one week when it was late coming and as I walked to school I knew there would be trouble.

“Have you got the penny for the babies,” the nun said to me sternly.

“My mother doesn’t have it,” I pleaded, my voice full of fear and terror.

“Well go and get it! Get out and don’t come back until you have it,” she roared.

The nun made me leave there and then. I was in tears by now and I didn’t know what to do because I knew there was no money at home. It was pouring with rain and I got soaked to the skin. While I was walking along I saw a kindly woman who knew my mother and she asked me why I was crying.

“The sister wants a penny but my mother hasn’t got it. I’ll have to go back there later and tell her again that we don’t have it,” I sobbed.

The woman took pity on me because she could see how upset I was.

“Here – take this,” she said, handing me a penny.

I trudged back to the school, hoping that everything would now be okay but when I handed the nun the penny it sent her into a fury.

“You see! You found it when you needed to,” she bellowed.

And with that she grabbed a broom and hit me across the back with such force that it broke the handle. At first I was too shocked to feel the pain – I couldn’t believe that she’d broken the brush on my back. I spent the rest of the day sobbing but I was too terrified to tell my mother what had happened. I was worried that if she went up to the school it would only make things worse. All the other children knew about the beating and word soon spread when they told their parents. A neighbor got to hear about it and she told my mother, who took me aside.

“Now Rita, did she hit you? Did she?” my mother asked.

At first I denied it but when I told the truth my mother went to see the nuns to complain. After that she tried to put me into a different school in Claddagh in the middle of Galway but they wouldn’t take me. They said it was because the school term had already started, but secretly I think it was because they didn’t want to upset the nuns. The Church was very powerful and they would have been going up against them if they took me in.

I had to go back to the convent school, which I continued to hate, but thankfully there were no more beatings and happier times lay ahead.

* * * * *

THERE WERE TWO factories in Galway: a china factory and a hat factory, and when you left school you were expected to work in one or the other. I sometimes thought about becoming a nurse, but waitressing wasn’t something that I considered at the time. I’d had small jobs while I was growing up that paid pocket money that I would give to my mother towards the home. When I was aged about 12, I used to walk across the fields to milk the cows in the morning for a few pennies. In those days we used to drink the milk while it was still hot from the cow. I would put the milk in a big churn. People would leave a can outside their house that I would fill from the churn using a scoop.

I left school a week before my 14^th birthday and I went to technical college for a year. I was meant to be studying ‘domestic science’ – that’s cooking to you and me! I didn’t learn a great deal, so I left and tried to get into the hat factory. That didn’t work out so I went to the china company, where I got a job decorating plates. Unfortunately the fumes from the paint made me feel sick in my stomach and I had to leave, so I ended up walking around the town and knocking on doors to ask for work. You had to get a job to survive; there was no welfare system to fall back on in those days. One of the places I decided to try was the Great Southern Hotel in the middle of Galway. It’s a very stern looking building made of pale stone and it’s still there today (it’s called Hotel Meyrick nowadays).

“Good morning. Any jobs?” I asked the bloke on the door.

“Where are you from?” he barked back.

“Bohermore,” I said.

“We’ve no work for you here.”

He clearly didn’t like the sound of my accent, but I was used to being knocked back and I was determined not to give up. I waited until he was distracted and I sneaked inside. I saw a kindly looking man in a bow tie who looked like he was the manager.

“Please,” I pleaded. “I will do anything, just give me a job?”

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Come back tomorrow morning at six o’clock,” he said.

The next day I was there bright and early.

“You’re in the dish room,” I was told.

I was shown into a big room with a huge sink, three or four times the size of a bath. There was an old lady there – Mrs. McGee – who was already scrubbing and cleaning. There was a big machine on one side of the room full of ball bearings that were used to shine the teapots, which came out battered and twisted but gleaming clean. It was a fine hotel and all the cutlery was made of solid silver, which needed to be hand-polished twice a week. Meanwhile, the plates would be piling up in high stacks also needing to be washed by hand. I didn’t mind the hard work one bit, but some of the staff looked down on me as if I was a skivvy. Looking back, the Irish way of doing things was very different from the American culture that I would later experience at the Hard Rock, where you are encouraged to voice your opinion. In Ireland, you had to know your place and you did as you were told.