Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  Although I wanted nothing more than for them to be successful, RUDI broke my heart when, a matter of months after the single was released, they announced they were heading to London. I thought that they were making a mistake by leaving, but they felt this was their chance.

  On 9 August 1978, the boys packed a white van with all their gear and caught the ferry to Scotland. They were so skint they had to siphon petrol from parked cars to keep the van going, but they finally hit London and set themselves up in a squat in Clapham. They turned to Bernie Rhodes, manager of The Clash, and to the late Malcolm McLaren for guidance, but RUDI found it difficult, and despite gigging with the likes of The Nips, Bitch and Stiff Little Fingers, things just didn’t work out. And so, in December 1978, when Ronnie and Grimmy spent a week in jail following a spurious driving offence, they decided to pack up and come home. They were back in Belfast just in time to contribute to a documentary on punk, Shellshock Rock, which was being produced that year by local filmmaker, John T. Davis. In January 1979, the band provided interviews for the piece and were filmed playing ‘Big Time’ at the Glenmachan.

  It was around this time that they came to the notice of Polydor Records who offered to sign them, but only on the condition that they dropped their drummer, Grimmy. To their credit the lads refused, knowing that it wouldn’t have been right for them.

  In August 1979, Cherry Red, the London-based independent record label, asked if they could feature ‘Big Time’ as the lead track on Labels Unlimited, a forthcoming compilation LP. It turned out to be a mixed blessing: in allowing Cherry Red to use the song, we had unwittingly signed away the publishing rights for it, but the album generated such interest that Mike Read, the Radio One DJ took to regularly playing the song on his hugely popular evening show. On top of that, the clip of their Glenmachan gig from Shellshock was shown on Nationwide, a hugely popular TV news and current affairs magazine programme. It was fantastic exposure.

  Never one to miss an opportunity, Good Vibes reissued ‘Big Time’ in October 1979 with a brand-new sleeve, which I’m sorry to say, the band hated. On the back of the new sleeve we had added this note, ‘RUDI / Good Vibrations decided to re-press and re-activate this single in the hope that they now get the recognition they justly deserve. RUDI are one of Ireland’s best bands and so far have managed to elude a contract with any of the major labels. Any interested parties can get in touch.’

  RUDI continued to release material on Good Vibrations and, through the great contacts they had made in England, they gigged all over the UK. In 1981 they were signed to Jamming! Records in London – the brainchild of long-time RUDI fan, Tony Fletcher, and Paul Weller of The Jam.

  They put out a couple of records, but despite a huge fan base it just didn’t happen for them the way it should have, and when The Jam split in 1982, the Jamming! label also ceased operation, leaving RUDI high and dry. It was then that they decided to call it a day, though Brian Young, who is still a great friend, continues to gig with a band called The Sabrejets. I tried to talk RUDI into playing together again, but I think they were just worn out. The disappointment was too much for them. They were one of the most popular bands Northern Ireland has ever had and, to be honest, they were the ones we all thought would make it. They had everything.

  ‘The Pound’ – Brian Young

  First time I set foot in The Pound I absolutely hated it! And no wonder! It woulda been sometime early in 1976, and aged just sweet sixteen I’d ventured down to one of the regular Saturday afternoon gigs with several of my mates. Starry-eyed after getting to meet Marc Bolan the previous year, I’d recently got together a band of sorts – which would eventually become RUDI, Belfast’s very first (and, for a very long time, only!) punk combo – and we reckoned it was about time we checked out the competition!

  In all honesty, our curiosity was probably piqued more by the rumours that, within this very venue, every illicit substance your heart could desire – along with acres of willing female flesh – was readily available. A heady and irresistible mix to impressionable, dumb, horny teenagers like us!

  Sadly, the reality was very different and, after managing to bluff our way in past the manager, Dermott Moffat, who didn’t seem to like the look of us, we found ourselves in a grimy, dank, whitewashed stable-like building, packed wall to wall with hordes of long-haired bedenimed and bearded hippies who didn’t exactly welcome us with open arms! To add insult to injury, it soon became apparent that not only was there precious little sign of any illicit substances but also that none of the ‘hippy chicks’ present seemed even remotely interested in talking to, never mind exchanging actual bodily fluids with, any of our party. Mebbe if I’d splashed out on a flea-bitten afghan coat and grown a beard I’d have had more luck? But I guess my spiffy ensemble of sawn-off skinners, Wrangler coat, and Crombie (with the red pocket lining pulled up!), all topped off with a particularly scrappy DIY Bowie spiky haircut, was somewhat out of place in those august environs.

  Still, there was always the music? So, after clambering up to the small upstairs balcony (where you could spit into the band’s drink if they weren’t looking!), we waited expectantly for the band to take to the stage – and at that point things went from bad to worse. Instead of the no-holds-barred rock ’n’ roll action I’d been expecting, we were treated to a series of lamentably predictable, soulless, American AOR cover versions – ‘album oriented rock’ to you and me – which consisted of long meandering tunes with no real structure, and which were mind-numbingly boring, especially when they were executed, somewhat perfunctorily, by some aging longhairs who apparently included several ex-members of the latter-day, post hit-making, line-up of Them. Back then AOR was the ultimate form of derision and to my way of thinking still is! Don’t get me wrong, they sure could play but frankly, to someone raised on Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop, they looked and sounded dull, boring and very, very old ... and after a while the interminable, self-indulgent guitar/drum/bass solos really started to get on my tits! If I never ever hear ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ again it’ll be much too soon. Natch, the hippies loved it and the place went nuts. Natch, I hated every minute of it, and left to get the early bus home, determined never to go back.

  But as fate would have it, not that long after, as punk started to rear its spiky lil’ head in earnest, The Pound confounded my expectations by staging gigs by acts like Little Bob Story and The Count Bishops. Though both pulled decent enough crowds, the bands still looked positively geriatric, having more in common with the fag end of pub rock than punk rock. Also, let’s face it, once you’d seen Dr Feelgood during their Wilko era, every other pub rock band was just pissing in the wind. The Feelgoods had already torn apart the Whitla Hall at Queen’s – an oft overlooked catalyst for nascent NI punk – in an event which was every bit as significant as the much lauded Clash visit in October 1977. But for The Pound it was a huge leap in the right direction.

  Sadly, once punk lost its underground and alternative status – mainly due to the Sex Pistols and their ‘Jubilee’ media blitz of 1977 – the scabrous tabloids went into overdrive, hyping up a frenzy of anti-punk sentiment at every opportunity. The Pistols, and indeed every punk band, became the enemy and, for those of us from Northern Ireland, the additional implied religious/political spin added a very real danger – as being seen as pro- or anti-monarchy could have a very real impact on your general well-being, depending on your location at the time!

  Now firmly identified in the public eye as one of those ‘nasty punk bands’, RUDI were kicked out of our regular practice hall on the Albertbridge Road and banned from our regular east Belfast haunts, the Glenmachan Hotel and Girton Lodge – and so we kept on pestering The Pound for the chance to play.

  Finally, they relented, agreeing to put on a RUDI /Outcasts double-header on 12 January 1978. They weren’t exactly taking a huge risk as this was a weeknight, when most bars would be virtually empty! Nevertheless, as fate would have it, this very night would turn out to be the infamous occasion when wee G
ordy finally dragged a certain Mr Hooley down to see RUDI in action, which Terri regularly cites as being the springboard for the whole Good Vibes label.

  All these years later, I can’t remember much about that night – apart from the fact that we’d had to hire amps from local company Bairds, which we lugged to and from the gig on the bus and which none of us could figure out how to use properly. We probably sounded more like Bert Weedon on a particularly bad day rather than the intended beefy raunch of the Pistols’ Steve Jones!

  Unfortunately too, we were still wearing our customised boilersuits, a look we’d come up with in our earliest days to try to give us an identity which would set us apart from all the other local bands who were uniformly visually dull and boring. It did work though, in fairness, we probably looked like a squad of painters on their way home from work! Thankfully the boilersuits’ days were soon to be numbered!

  Much more impressively, unlike any other contemporary Belfast band back then that I can think of, we had started writing and playing a lot of our own material too – alongside the old rock ’n’ roll/glam and sixties garage slop we’d started off with. In fact, if memory serves me right, this was the first time we ever publicly played a brand-new song we’d just written called ‘Big Time’ – we thought it was pretty good too! But we never did play The Who’s ‘My Generation’ as Terri insists – I never liked that song much and besides it was far too complicated!

  Anyway, for whatever reason, even though it was a weeknight, the place was packed and the young punky waver crowd went totally apeshit! In all the excitement a few lights got smashed and both RUDI and The Outcasts were promptly banned, forbidden to set foot on-stage in The Pound ever again! Little did they know …

  In fact, RUDI were due to return to The Pound the very next month to be filmed alongside Stiff Little Fingers for the UTV documentary on the local punk scene, It Makes You Want To Spit, but were replaced by Victim at the very last minute after some devious double-dealing behind the scenes. Thankfully, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the show turned out to be a hopelessly inept, and unintentionally hilarious, piece of televisual crap, organised by people who clearly had no idea what was going on and who merely viewed the bands as some sort of curiosity.

  Meanwhile, an alternative city centre venue was found shortly afterwards in the unlikely shape of The Harp Bar, which quickly became the epicentre of Belfast’s punk music explosion. Unwilling to get left behind, and anxious not to miss out on a whole new generation of paying punters, The Pound relented and began to bring in more ‘new wave’ acts such as The Doomed, Lurkers and Radio Stars in 1978 – though, for now at least, pride of place was still going to the various incestuous line-ups of Light, Sk’Boo and Bronco!

  RUDI returned to The Pound at Christmas ’78 for a lunchtime gig, with a special guest spot from our chums from London, The Raped. They played their last ever gigs under that unfortunate moniker before opting for the equally lame title of Cuddly Toys.

  Again, this event was not without incident, as Pound manager Dermott threw a hissy fit when he discovered that we had also arranged a gig with the same line-up the next evening at The Harp and he was insistent that RUDI would never be able to fill two venues so close together! Thankfully we proved him wrong, playing to jam-packed houses on both occasions! An NME review even noted that it was the biggest crowd at a gig in The Harp Bar ever! How times had changed!

  RUDI didn’t get back into The Pound until April 1979, but from then on we played there on a pretty regular basis, particularly when Chris Roddy took over the managerial reins. With its low ceiling rafters – which the more acrobatic singers would swing from – and a relatively big, but low, stage taking up almost one wall, there was plenty of room to jump about, and it was great fun to play. It was easy to get a good sound and the audience was literally right in your face! It was also relatively trouble free and whilst the ‘facilities’ mighta been rudimentary at best, and you hadda wade in and out of the toilets on occasion, we’d seen much worse.

  One consolation of that hazardous journey to the toilets was that you could often get a free pint or two, as it wasn’t unheard of for the occasional beer keg to be ‘liberated’ and upended over one of the stinking toilet bowls with free drink dispensed to all and sundry ... those were the days, huh?

  Truth is, many of the best gigs I ever played and ever saw were under that roof. You’ll just have to take my word for it though, as a proposed live album of Rudi at The Pound had to be scrapped when Davy Wiz – aka Davy Smyth, the owner of Wizard Studios in Belfast – screwed up the recording. Typical!

  Later on, as punk began to run out of steam and The Harp switched to hosting country and western nights (strange but true!) more and more local punk bands switched allegiance to The Pound and a notoriously lax door policy allowed a lot of younger punters to see what all the fuss was about first-hand.

  Though by now well outside the restrictive identipunk mainstream, RUDI could still pack The Pound and we were offered, and played, several long-running residencies which I recall with a very real fondness. In fact, we’d become such a regular fixture in the place that Chris even allowed us to rehearse in The Pound during the day. Mind you, The Pound in broad daylight was not a pretty sight, and many a time we were interrupted mid-song by the sight of live rats racing across the stage, probably trying to get away from our tuneless thrashings!

  Nevertheless, this invaluable on-stage rehearsal time really paid off handsomely when we signed to Tony Fletcher/Paul Weller’s Jamming! Label in 1981. It allowed us to hone our chops in preparation for our prestige support slot to The Jam on their massive Trans Global Unity Express UK tour in March and April of 1982 where we actually got encores night after night!

  Later that same month we set out on our first ever large-scale UK tour as headliners – which proved another great success! Who knows what mighta happened if The Jam hadn’t split and the label hadn’t had to fold! We called it a day shortly after – and, somewhat ironically, the last-ever RUDI gig took place in The Pound on 30 December 1982 – though we didn’t know that’s what it was at the time!

  Though it’s now long gone, on the right night, with the right band, The Pound was a great place to see live music, and despite my initial reservations I spent many a happy night there. It’s tragic that there’s nowhere in Belfast like it now. It’s also well worth remembering that The Pound was very much a neutral, safe venue at a time when those were very thin on the ground, and it most definitely deserves recognition for daring to put on live music in the centre of Belfast all through the very worst days of the Troubles – even if most of it wasn’t exactly to my particular taste!

  Working With Outcasts

  The label was up and running, and its existence changed my whole way of thinking. I could see that we now had a vehicle, a platform for all those bands in Belfast and beyond who were desperate for a chance to show what they could do. The reaction to the release of the RUDI record had underlined to me – as if I needed proof – that, to the record companies at least, Northern Ireland was a music backwater. Kids with real talent and a message to deliver were having to try and kick down a locked door. I was determined that Good Vibrations was to be the key they needed.

  It wasn’t long before my attention was captured by another vibrant Belfast band, Victim. Like so many who came after them the band was made up of a bunch of lads who hung out in the shop. I actually thought they were more of a mod band than a punk outfit as they were always pretty sharply dressed in suits and ties.

  When I saw them live I thought they were different and, in a way, I almost felt sorry for them because they didn’t seem to fit in with the whole punk ethos, but I liked them and so I signed them up anyway. They are credited with being the first band to play a punk gig at The Harp and I remember them playing the Windsor Hotel one night when someone ran on-stage and nicked lead singer Colin ‘Ziggy’ Campbell’s mic while he was still singing!

  We released their first single, ‘Strange Th
ing By Night’ on 1 June 1978. The whole record cost £90 to record and was the band’s only release with Good Vibrations. In July 1979, Victim were offered a record deal by Manchester-based label, TJM Records, and the band moved over to England, where they supported The Damned on their 1979 UK tour.

  In 1981, and only for a brief period, Mike Joyce – later of The Smiths – became their drummer, but by then I had lost touch with them. I know the band broke up around 1990 and that some of the members stayed in England, but I think they left the music scene altogether.

  The third band I signed at Good Vibrations was The Outcasts, and if anybody had told me when I had first seen them play that a year later I would be their record label boss and manager, I would have laughed my head off because at that stage I really hated them!

  I still maintain that in their early days they were truly awful – they were too aggressive and I’m convinced they were called The Outcasts even before they were a band because nobody would invite them to their parties. But in spite of this, in March 1978, they managed to arrange a one-release deal with IT Records in Portadown, and issued a single called ‘You’re a Disease’. I’m not exactly sure how well that did, but a few months later Greg Cowan from the band came to see me in the shop and we got to talking. Maybe it was because I was growing fond of the lads themselves, but I began to see a real humour in them and their songs and it was for this reason that I ended up offering them a chance to put out a record with Good Vibrations. So, in the summer of the same year, their song, ‘Justa Nother Teenage Rebel’ became the third single we released, with ‘Love is for Sops’ as a B-side.