Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  In November 1974, another friend of mine, Ivan Clayton – who was originally from McClure Street – was cruelly and nonsensically murdered. Ivan was a great guy, an honest, hard-working man who loved the occasional pint. He worked for the gas company as the person who would call at people’s homes to empty their gas meters. People loved to see him coming because he always gave them a few quid back. He had briefly stayed with me when I lived in Camden Street in 1972 and we stayed in touch. We would meet up in Lavery’s for a few pints every now and again.

  On 4 November 1974, he agreed to do the door on the Club Bar on University Road, and that night a member of a loyalist group walked up and shot him dead. He was only forty-eight years old, and was just one of countless people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I heard later that the man who was supposed to work that night, and who was a member of the UDR, had cried off. It seems that he was the one who was to have been shot but, tragically, Ivan took the bullet for him.

  There was no denying that the Troubles had well and truly begun and our social lives now consisted of visits to other people’s houses, where we would gather to listen to music and smoke a bit of pot. I remember, at one such party, my good friend Geoff Morris told me a story about a girl he knew, Ruth Dowdie, who had once spent a night hidden in a dustbin. I can’t remember exactly how or why this story first came up, but I do remember thinking that she sounded like my kind of girl! Little did I know that I was soon going to find that out for myself.

  Geoff and another friend of mine, Louis Boyle, worked with the Community Relations Commission and we were all involved in a number of community-based campaigns at the time, one of which was opposing the construction of a bypass – now known as the Westlink – which was going to be pushed through a number of housing areas. Just shows how forward thinking I was! The city would be a nightmare without the Westlink. Anyway, I was invited to a party at Geoff’s house on University Avenue in the autumn of 1973 and it was there that I met Ruth.

  I knew straight away that I liked her and so I asked her to come with me to see a band who were playing as part of the Queen’s Festival. I was actually in a relationship at the time but I knew that Ruth was something special. To be honest, I think she was more interested in the band that were playing than me, but God loves a trier and, in time, we started seeing each other. It wasn’t long before we were engaged.

  My mum and dad loved her, and I got on great with her parents too. Her dad, Tom, worked in the shipyard and was a lovely man, if a little dour. I recall telling him that you hadn’t lived unless you had spent the night in bed with a long-legged woman, listening to Barry White. I don’t think he ever thought the same way about me after that!

  At this time I had managed to land myself a great job with Kodak, working during the day in their processing department in Corporation Street. I really enjoyed my time there, and things were going well for a while, but my politics soon got in the way. The Kodak Group was very anti-trade union, but I felt it was important that the rights of the workers be safeguarded, so I set up a union under the auspices of the Transport and General Workers’ Union – 98 per cent of employees joined.

  This was the kind of politics I enjoyed, fighting for the rights of the working class. I had no interest in the civil unrest unfolding outside my door, however I would soon find that the two were no longer mutually exclusive. In May 1974, a month before Ruth and I were due to get married, pro-British loyalist groups under the banner of the Ulster Workers’ Council, staged a general workers’ strike in protest at the Sunningdale Agreement – an attempt to end the Troubles by establishing a power-sharing government between nationalists and unionists.

  Electricity, food supplies and postal services were all affected and in some areas it was impossible even to get milk and bread. People were suffering real hardships, while the loyalist paramilitaries manning the barricades made sure the pubs stayed open so they could enjoy a few pints while making their stand. Their women soon put a stop to that by demanding that they stop knocking back pints – if they couldn’t get milk and bread, then the lads could definitely do without beer!

  I continued to go to work right through the strike, which was very difficult. There were barricades everywhere, and masked men stopped everyone who passed to ask questions. Things were even worse for me, however, as the loyalists knew who I was, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they tried something. I was getting all sorts of threats from them – the fact I was seen as a socialist was nearly as bad as being a Catholic for those guys – and my peace movement activities, and my support for workers’ rights didn’t seem to sit easily with them!

  But I wasn’t about to let those scumbags scare me so, on the seventh day of the strike (21 May 1974), when the Trade Unions Congress announced a ‘Back to Work’ rally, I made sure I was in attendance. There were over two hundred of us who marched that day, and it brought me into direct conflict with some more loyalists who lined the route shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you Hooley, you bastard.’

  It was very scary, and the fact that only two hundred people took part was an indication to me of just how many people had been intimidated into not coming. TUC General Secretary Len Murray had travelled to Northern Ireland for the march and I think he too was shocked that so few turned out. I don’t think he could understand how terrorist groups could exert such control on a major city in the United Kingdom.

  Ruth and my family were worried about me – the abuse I had received on the march seemed to set me up as a ‘marked man’ – and their worst fears were confirmed when, two days after the march, an RUC Special Branch officer visited Kodak and warned me that I was in danger. It seemed that not only had the loyalists objected to my presence at the ‘Back to Work’ rally, but they were also unhappy about some of the work I was doing at Kodak. We used to get sent rolls of film from prisoners at the Maze prison, which I would process and return, like I would for any other customer, but I guess they weren’t too happy with me for that.

  In the end, we hit upon the idea that I should go to England for the duration of the strike for my own safety. My boss at Kodak was so worried for me that he agreed and we dressed it up to appear as part of the job. That was easy enough to believe. The workers at the electric power plant were off on strike, so the electricity supply was frequently down and, of course, we couldn’t process film with no power, so a backlog soon built up. I was given a huge batch of film and sent to Kodak’s plant outside Blackpool to process it. I said goodbye to Ruth and caught the boat to Liverpool.

  As it turned out, I was only in England for a few days before the strike ended on 28 May. Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner had resigned after Secretary of State Merlyn Rees refused to meet those behind the strike, marking the end of the Northern Ireland Executive. The UWC had gotten their way.

  With things now relatively calm, and with our wedding just a few weeks away, I was keen to come back to Ruth and see the folks back home. I went out on the piss in Blackpool and, slightly hungover, caught the train to Liverpool the next morning. I was just about to board the ferry when the police pulled me aside – it was Special Branch.

  I had bought a load of sweets in Blackpool – things like sweetie mice and gobstoppers – and the cops opened all the bags. One of them took out a sweetie mouse, held it by its string tail and asked, ‘What’s this?’ I told him it was a fuse: you just light it and throw it at the army! I don’t think they saw the joke. They rang their pals in Northern Ireland who told them that Terri Hooley was known to Special Branch in Belfast, but to let him travel.

  I got home and even though I was still a bit worried about my safety I went back to work as normal, and everything seemed to just drop back into place. Ruth and I could now look forward to getting married. Though I must admit to being surprised that, after weeks of drama and uncertainty, Ruth still wanted to get hitched to me! She must have known what she was getting into, but love, as they say, is blind.

  I’m sure that most people wo
uld assume our wedding day would have been one of the parties of the year with lots of drink, drugs and music, and probably lasting over three days! In truth it was one of the quietest and most civilised weddings I have ever been to.

  When I woke on 22 June 1974, it was a beautiful sunny day. I got dressed in my brown corduroy suit, knotted my tie and combed what was an impressively long head of hair. Jimmy Scott was my best man – an Englishman with whom I had become friendly during countless drinking sessions and conversations about revolution – and once I had checked he was up, sober and ready, we headed with Mum and Dad to Belfast City Hall and the Registry Office where a simple ceremony was held. Ruth looked lovely and I felt I was a very lucky man.

  Pictures were taken in Botanic Gardens in the south of the city, and somebody recorded the day on 8mm film which, like most married couples, we watched once then put away.

  The reception itself wasn’t very rock ’n’ roll. We invited some friends and family back to Ruth’s parents’ home in Agincourt Avenue for some sandwiches, sausages rolls and, of course, wedding cake. It was a quiet affair, but we were happy.

  I remember standing outside to have a smoke when my old artist friend, Mercy Hunter, walked past on her way back from the off-licence. I don’t know if she was a bit tipsy, or just feeling overly generous, but she gave me some money to spend on honeymoon.

  Not that our honeymoon was to be in the most glamorous of locations. We, like most newlyweds, were pretty skint so we agreed to stay with my old friend Harry Orr, as he was living in a cottage in Kilkenny in south-east Ireland. Harry was actually growing marijuana in the porch of his cottage, and judging by the six-foot plants on show, it was thriving. In fact, a neighbouring farmer called at the door to ask Harry what the plants were, as he was looking for something fast-growing to thicken the hedges on his land. I suppose the cows would have been very happy at any rate!

  Ruth and I stayed for a week with Harry. We went for a lot of walks and went to the local pub – it was a nice relaxing time. We then headed for an overnight stay in Dublin – during which time we visited the Guinness brewery – and then home to our new house in Jerusalem Street, in the Holy Lands area of south Belfast.

  Good Vibrations

  One day, one of the boys at Kodak was reading a copy of Exchange and Mart and, knowing my passion for music, he showed me an advert – one thousand singles for £40. Too good a bargain to pass up. Of course I didn’t have the money, but thankfully Ruth did. The collection contained some real gems. It wasn’t long before I learned there’s a huge market out there for that sort of stuff – if you have an Elvis record that got to number one, you can be sure there will be a million other copies out there. It’s the records that weren’t a success that are harder to find and therefore more valuable. I touched lucky and found a lot of non-hits in that thousand and knew I could make a bit of money. That was the start of it – it was 1976 and I quit Kodak.

  It was round about that time that I heard that The Ronettes were playing London. I was madly in love with the lead singer, Ronnie Spector – the then wife of Phil Spector, of whom I was also a huge fan, even though it was said that he used to lock her up and not let her out – and I knew I had to go and watch them perform. I went through my new records and decided to take one hundred or so with me, to see if I could sell them to some of the London stores. I thought that if I got at least £1 each for them that it would pay for my trip.

  I walked into a collectors’ store in London and showed the owner the records. He picked out eleven singles and said, ‘I’ll give you £110 for those,’ pointing at the ones he had set aside, before adding that he simply couldn’t afford the rest. I couldn’t believe it, those records had only cost me 4p each!

  My love for music was finally starting to pay off. The shop owner offered to let me swap the rest of the records I had for stuff in his shop, so I walked away with a live album by Chuck Berry with the Steve Miller Band, and a rare Ronnie Spector import. It was a good lesson in just how much people were willing to pay for some of this stuff.

  Operating from the back bedroom in our house, I started trading and swapping records. I would always look in the music press for bargains and then write to record shops in London offering to sell records to them. As the word spread, more and more people would come round to our house to listen to music and to order records.

  The house soon started to feel like Piccadilly Circus – people were calling all day every day, and to be honest there was never a twenty-four hour period when we had the place to ourselves. There were very few places to go in those days so, more often than not, when people came round to buy records they would stay on, have a drink and before long we had a full-blown party! Ruth had the patience of a saint but I knew this wasn’t fair to her. Quite often she would come home to find Ricky Flanagan – a biochemist at Queen’s University who used the lab up there to make the best poteen in Belfast – opening another bottle of the stuff in her kitchen and she would understandably get a bit annoyed. I can’t say I blamed her.

  But business was booming and I found that I had a real talent for knowing what my customers would want. I ordered stuff like Van Morrison American imports, and I remember going to Dublin on one occasion, where I bought a load of New York Dolls albums for £1 each, selling them on for £2.99. One time I bought seven hundred copies of an album from Hot Wax Records in Edinburgh – Boogie Bands and One Night Stands by Kathy Dalton backed by Little Feat and Van Dyke Parks – and I sold every copy, all from my back bedroom. It wasn’t long before I started to do the markets.

  All the while I was getting a fair idea that there might be enough interest to sustain a business and I began to consider the possibility of opening my own store. It had always been in the back of my head to open a shop and the more involved I became in the music scene, the bigger the idea got until it became an almost unbearable yearning. I suppose I was just waiting on a sign.

  It was therefore in keeping with the slightly hectic, drug-influenced life I was leading at the time that the opportunity to fulfill my dream came in the oddest of ways – with an anonymous letter inviting me to meet ‘the Man in Black’ at the Queen’s Arcade bar in the centre of Belfast.

  I was dubious and decided not to go – I mean this was Belfast and you just didn’t know what you would be walking into if you answered an anonymous invitation, so I ignored it – but shortly afterwards a bloke called Dave Hyndman turned up at my door, announced that he was the mysterious Man in Black and told me that he had wanted to talk to me about getting involved in a sort of cooperative he was planning to set up, a sort of ‘Belfast Arts Lab’.

  This cooperative would include a record store, a health food shop called Sassafraz, and his own arts group, which would print poetry magazines and such – he had been working at Northern Whig Printers in Belfast at the time and needed to find a vehicle to do the stuff he wanted to.

  To this day I don’t really know why he approached me in such an unusual way, but his thinking was very similar to mine, and the idea of a cooperative appealed to me as much as it did to him. I loved the idea of having me, the health food store and the print works all working together. It was exactly the sort of message of unity and camaraderie we wanted to convey. I was in.

  Initially, we tried to source funding through ‘proper channels’ – with grant aid and a properly constituted management committee – but in the end we couldn’t deal with all the bureaucracy that goes with getting grants, so we abandoned the cooperative project and agreed to just open all three businesses in the same building.

  Dave found premises at 102 Great Victoria Street, a street which, in the 1970s, was probably the most bombed piece of real estate in the world. All the windows were boarded up and the landlord was so desperate to have somebody use it, we got the first six months rent free.

  For a while the only lights on in that street were ours and the taxi company next door. But I loved the premises. I remembered the building from the sixties, when it was sandwiched between an
antique shop with a big old cannon sitting outside on the pavement, and a shop which sold Lambeg drums.

  Of course we had no money, but with the help of a small army of friends we pilfered enough wood from builders’ skips and sites to build racks for the records and a counter. One of the very first things I did was fix up the toilet. Dave couldn’t believe it, ‘The toilets are fine,’ he said, ‘why the fuck are you painting them?’ I told him, ‘Dave, we’re having a party and I’m not having girls I know coming in here to use the toilets as they are.’ So I painted the toilet seat red and we were ready to go – well you can’t have an opening party without a decent loo!

  Now all we needed was a name. I struggled to come up with one for a while, until I read that one of my favourite bands, The Troggs, were releasing a version of the Beach Boys classic, ‘Good Vibrations’. I thought, ‘That’s it, that’s what it’s all about.’ We were having such good vibrations; all the people who had helped me get the shop together were after a good time.

  We soon decided that we needed something to attract the attention of passers-by so we came up with the now-famous Elvis sign which pointed the way up to the first floor, where the shop was based. Making a pilgrimage to that sign later became a rite of passage for bands visiting Belfast and our Elvis ended up in rock magazines all over the world. He became an iconic symbol of what we were trying to achieve with Good Vibrations. But he had a difficult time. Poor old Elvis was kidnapped three times, and on one occasion we had to pay students at Queen’s University a ransom to get him back!

  Our doors opened in late 1976, and business soon took off. I never thought for a second that the shop would become as popular as it did but the whole idea seemed to strike a chord with people in Belfast and further afield. It felt as though we were providing something people had been waiting for for a very long time. It was a happy marriage, with Dave printing fanzines and all our posters. We felt self-sufficient.