October 1980 they played their final gig in the Ulster Hall. They made no public announcement. They simply gave an encore — the Rolling Stones' song "The Last Time" (this was a reference to the recording studio of their first album) and the final act was Charles O'Connor throwing his mangled fiddle into the audience. Ten years after they formed, they disbanded. Musical life after the break up Even before Horslips ended, Johnny Fean, Eamon Carr and two others founded the Zen Alligators in 1980. They played straight rock and soul on the Irish circuit, and they recorded several singles. Another spin-off group called Host contained Fean, O'Connor and Carr. They issued one album, Tryal, in 1984, and two singles. The final album that had a Fean/Carr collaboration in the 1980s was The Last Bandits in the World (1986). Barry Devlin issued a solo album called Breaking Star Codes in 1983 with some help from Jim Lockhart. The album had 12 songs, each based, loosely, on the signs of the zodiac. Further Lockhart/Devlin collaborations included the theme tune to the popular RTÉ drama series Glenroe. In 1986, Johnny Fean moved to England. An English indie band called Jacobites (1983 to 1986) consisted of Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Their 1986 album Ragged School had Johnny on guitar. He also played sporadically with a Horslips tribute band Spirit of Horslips and pub gigs with pick up three-piece The Treat, which sometimes featured former Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell instead of Fean. In 1990, the electric guitar intro to "Dearg Doom" was used for Put 'Em Under Pressure, Ireland's 1990 World Cup song, written by Larry Mullen and featuring the Republic of Ireland national football team and Moya Brennan. This use of the intro may be better known in Ireland than the original. Charles O'Connor released an instrumental album, Angel on the Mantelpiece, in collaboration with Paul Whittaker in 1997. Further activities Johnny Fean continued to play live music with Stephen Travers, formerly of The Miami Showband. After his retirement, Eamon Carr went on to become a producer of young rock talent in the mid-1980s, and also formed his own record label called Hotwire (which sponsored noted acts such as the punk rock group The Golden Horde). He also did a number of specialist DJ slots on radio before morphing into a music/sports journalist with the Evening Herald in Dublin. More recently