Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  I think part of the problem at the outset of their career was how awful the band sounded when performing live. The equipment they had at the time was really old, so that of course made the band sound terrible. There was one particular gig at The Harp, that thankfully I was not at, where the sound quality was just dreadful apparently. It was so bad that they were getting stick from the crowd, and you had to be pretty terrible to get a bad time from an audience in The Harp! This was a great pity for a band that had built a following based on its live performances and so I decided to buy them a new PA. It’s on-stage performance that makes any band, and I knew that they had to sound better or they wouldn’t sell any records.

  And these guys just loved to get out and play – even if I used to introduce them on-stage as ‘the band we love to hate’! The band consisted of Blair Hamilton, Colin ‘Getty’ Getwood and brothers Martin, Colin and Greg Cowan – they were all totally mad.

  Colin Cowan, for example, had developed a ‘burst on-stage routine’, which involved him sneaking backstage at gigs in the Ulster Hall or wherever, running on-stage, grabbing the mic and shouting, ‘Outcasts!’ before diving into the crowd. He managed this guerrilla advertising at Graham Parker and the Rumour, Boomtown Rats and Elvis Costello gigs, making the band very unpopular with the bouncers. I’m convinced that’s why, after The Clash gig in October 1978 – a gig in which they were the support act – the bouncers gave them a severe beating.

  But they were great guys at heart, and they actually recorded the first album Good Vibrations ever put out, Self Conscious Over You. We didn’t exactly sell thousands of copies, but we were very proud of it nonetheless. I remember coming down to the shop on Boxing Day 1979 just to make sure everything was all right, and we ended up selling thirty-five copies of the album to all these kids who had been given Christmas money!

  Unfortunately, not long after the album release, I began to receive a lot of complaints from venues about the behaviour of one of The Outcasts’ fans, a nasty piece of work who was handy with his fists and who was continually causing havoc and picking fights with doormen. I didn’t want Good Vibrations to be associated with a character like that so I told The Outcasts that as long as he was around I couldn’t manage them anymore. Thankfully, the guys realised that this had been a difficult decision for me to make, so they accepted my position and I resigned as their manager, though I remain close to the boys to this day.

  In 1980 the band began recording with French indie label, New Rose, and decided to form their own label, GBH, which later became Outcasts Only, but I always regarded them as our band, and we were all mates – Getty even worked for Good Vibrations for a bit.

  Tragically, on 13 May 1982, Colin Cowan was killed in a car accident and I don’t think the lads ever really recovered – this loss marked the beginning of the end for the band. They released a few more singles and played a few more gigs, but in 1985 the band decided to break up.

  In a way, they became the label’s most famous band. They were offered deals by Rak Records and Polydor, and were a really significant act across Europe, becoming especially huge in France, but they always knew their place was in Northern Ireland. They played music for the love of it, and I know they had a ball in the process. As Greg Cowan said, ‘It was a magical time to be young when with three chords and a killer haircut you could be a rock star.’

  Of course, the biggest problem we had then was trying to find a venue. Up until 1978 most gigs took place in bars and youth clubs, but because of the security situation it was virtually impossible for fans from outside Belfast to travel. Thrown into the mix was the fact that many bar owners wouldn’t touch a punk gig with a barge pole, and so we often had to get creative.

  We would book hotels or function rooms in bars under false pretences, telling them it was for a birthday party or something, and then, on the night have a band turn up. Sometimes the hotels would try to kick us out, and we were also barred from a few pubs as a result, but on the whole, most places were just happy to have people spending money there. Back then a booking for any kind of function was a bonus and, as long as people behaved themselves, they were happy.

  But it was getting more and more difficult to organise anything as people grew wise to our tactics, and it became blindingly obvious that if punk was to survive, it needed a venue of its own.

  Enter The Harp Bar. It was located on Hill Street – a stone’s throw from St Anne’s Cathedral on the north edge of Belfast city centre – and seen from the outside with its metal security grills and blacked-out windows, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a condemned building. It had not escaped the Troubles unscathed and even as early as the mid-seventies had been targeted in a number of terrorist attacks.

  By day it was a strip club, and a less glamorous strip joint you will never find. I never actually saw a stripper there but, after hearing reports from those who did, I’m very relieved! The ground floor had two rooms – one with a bar, a pool table and a jukebox, while the back room had a small stage – but upstairs was where the action took place. It was also where the afternoon strippers did their business, or so I’m told.

  The room upstairs could hold about 350 people, and had a small stage and a dance floor – which was known as ‘murder alley’ – over which hung one of those classy ballroom mirrorballs. The bathrooms had to be seen to be believed and, with everybody packed in, the floor was treacherous with spilt drink, sweat and damp. It was a classy joint! The only bother ever came when bands tried to set up their gear in the afternoon with a stripper doing her routine a few yards away. The punters were none too impressed! But by night The Harp came alive and the atmosphere was electric, it was an exciting place, always packed, and it wasn’t long before the reputation of The Harp began to grow. At a time when the religious divide in Northern Ireland was most pronounced, we had kids from both sides of the community coming together in the name of music and there was rarely any trouble.

  Around that time, some friends and I had set up the Punk Workshop, with the goal of coordinating and booking gigs for the bands on our label, and we saw The Harp as the perfect venue for our 1978 May Day Punk Festival. It was a pretty chaotic affair with only one band, Pretty Boy Floyd & The Gems, turning up to play – some bands were notoriously unreliable and often wouldn’t turn up, while others just didn’t have access to transport for their gear – but thankfully a few lads in the audience had just formed a band called The Basics and they agreed to do a quick set. Despite the initial hiccups however, we decided to book The Harp on a more regular basis, for the Workshop to put on a band every week. Soon this evolved into a proper club, with paying members and a committee – of which yours truly was a member! – to oversee things. Thursday nights became punk disco nights, and Friday and Saturday were given over to live gigs.

  Not that we can take the credit for bringing punk to The Harp. April of that year had already seen The Harp’s first-ever punk gig thanks to Victim and a band called The Androids. In time, just about every punk band in Northern Ireland would come to play there, bands like The Undertones, RUDI, Ruefrex, Protex, The Tearjerkers, The Moondogs and The Idiots, to name but a few.

  Soon visiting bands would also take the time to visit The Harp, such was its notoriety. The Clash made a pilgrimage to have their picture taken outside it, and in May 1979 John Peel even made a point of paying it a visit, though I don’t think he had ever seen anything like it. In later years, I would bring over bands like The Fall and The Nips – Shane MacGowan’s first band – to play at the venue.

  It might have been an absolute dump but The Harp kept punk alive, and indeed punk kept it alive. However, The Pound was the bigger venue of the two and it was generally accepted that once bands outgrew The Harp they moved there instead. So, over time, the bands started to move away, more venues began to open up, and The Harp became a country and western club, before eventually closing its doors for good.

  The building itself is long gone and the area has now become the very trendy Cathedral Qua
rter, packed with bars, restaurants and newer music venues. It’s sad but the vast majority of people who throng the cobbled streets in that area now have no idea that it was once the location of one of the only clubs putting on live music in Belfast in the seventies and eighties.

  I think they should put a special plaque up on the wall to mark the spot where the building once stood – ‘Famous Strip Joint and Punk Venue, The Harp Stood Here’ – but I don’t think the suits on Belfast City Council would wear it!

  ‘The Dublin Weekend’ – Greg Cowan

  We had released our first single ‘You’re a Disease’ on IT records in 1978 to universal apathy, and had to jealously watch as both Stiff Little Fingers and RUDI got loads of attention for their first singles. We knew the Stiffs had official management, but RUDI were on local label Good Vibes, so we decided to approach them with a view to releasing our next single. After many high-powered meetings – which actually just meant us asking Terri if he was interested, him coming to see us play and then saying he hated what he heard – we released our second single ‘Justa Nother Teenage Rebel’, and Terri became our manager.

  We were offered our first gig in Dublin at McGonagle’s bar that same year and Terri decided to use this as an opportunity for a PR assault on the Republic. With a more conventional record company this would have meant a series of meetings, co-ordination of press and radio coverage, culminating with the gig itself, but not Good Vibes. Instead, we loaded the van with whatever equipment we owned, a selection of Good Vibes releases and posters, as many friends as we could squeeze in, and our leader Terri.

  Early on a Saturday morning we headed off to Dublin, confident we would be household names by teatime. But things quickly unravelled: the gig itself was pulled as the authorities decided they were having enough trouble with local punks without importing wild men from the north.

  This left only the PR push, which consisted of us turning up at the nearest record shop we could find – Golden Discs on Grafton Street – and, while Terri occupied the manager by discussing the possibility of stocking the Good Vibes back catalogue, we spread out, putting up Outcasts posters and menacing as many locals as possible until security escorted us from the building.

  Later that night, tails firmly between legs, we retired to our luxurious accommodation to work out phase two – bunking up with Dublin all-girl punk band, The Girl Scouts, who only let us stay because they thought we were RUDI and two of them fancied Ronnie from the band. The girls, taking pity on us, told us there was a two-day festival currently running at Phoenix Park, so the next day, we decided to chance our arm there.

  Sunday morning arrived with torrential rain and we drove through the downpour, expecting to fight our way through thousands of festival-goers. Instead we found a waterlogged stage and a handful of organisers who were bemoaning the fact that the festival would have to be cancelled as all the equipment had been soaked – this being Sunday in Catholic Ireland, there was no danger of getting any replacements! Step forward Terri, the man of the moment. I swear the sun decided to suddenly split the sky as he went into a huddle with the organisers, casually mentioning that not only did we have a complete backline but also a PA!

  Terri had actually bought our band this PA because he thought it would help our sound and we were very proud to be the only punk band in Belfast to own one, even if Baird Hire had sold it cheaply to prevent any more gear being returned with blood stains and, in one case, teeth embedded in it. It was a Baird two hundred watt, barely enough to fill a phone box and, even in the late seventies, a small festival would expect to have a two to three thousand watt PA, but it would have to do - the show must go on!

  The organisers agreed and, just like that, the Phoenix Park festival became the Good Vibrations festival. As such, Terri decided we would not only open the festival but also play anytime we felt like it throughout the day. It’s hard to remember just how many people turned up – though years later I was still happily telling people twenty thousand – but the sun stayed out and the sloping hills around the stage quickly filled with expectant music lovers. God help them!

  As we had never played Dublin before we decided that we needed a big opening. The plan was to have Terri introduce us, while Blair – our first singer but by now strictly a roadie – would throw cider bottles, which he himself had emptied, over the stage, smashing them on a space in front of the crowd and hopefully causing maximum impact. Sadly this did not all run according to plan, and instead we ended up causing several incidents of grievous bodily harm …

  As we stood on-stage, waiting to begin our first set, Terri appeared unexpectedly in an old-man rubber mask and launched into the first (of many) readings of his autobiographical poem, ‘Be My Friend’. Blair, confused as to who this interloper was and believing him to be some chancer from the crowd, decided to launch his first three missiles directly into the audience as a deterrent to others who might follow Terri’s example. Of course nobody really had any intention of storming the stage but, even if they did, Blair’s bottle missiles soon put the notion out of their heads.

  And so, there we were at our first gig in Dublin, with our manager in a rubber mask happily reciting verse sixty-three of his epic and members of St John’s Ambulance leading away the wounded – and all before we had even played our first song! Many years later we would still have people claiming to have been at our first Dublin gig where their first cousin twice removed had had their eye put out!

  Teenage Kicks

  Of course, it was the fourth single we released on Good Vibrations that everyone remembers, ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones. I wish I had a pound for every person who claimed they were with me when we signed the band to our label – it never ceases to amaze me what people will lay claim to. I guess the world is full of people ready to jump on the bandwagon, but let me tell you there wouldn’t have been enough room on the Titanic for all the people who say they were there at the time.

  Like any great rock ’n’ roll record, the story behind The Undertones coming to Good Vibrations is one of hardship, bad luck, good luck, and most importantly, humour. There are a lot of rumours circulating about my relationship with the band – apparently I didn’t like them, apparently Feargal didn’t like me – but it is all a load of bollocks!

  The story really started when, in 1978, I received a demo the band had recorded. I can’t remember exactly how I came by it – it was either given to me by Malcolm ‘Maniac Mal’ Stewart, a mad dancer down at The Pound who used to buy records from me, or the band may have just sent it in to Good Vibrations in the hope of getting signed. Either way, ‘Kicks’ was just one of the many songs the lads had recorded on what was, admittedly, a pretty rough demo. But there was something about the music that held my attention and kept me coming back.

  I remember sitting in one night, getting stoned and drinking poteen with a couple of mates – Ricky Flanagan and a guy called Jimmy Kirk who, in the sixties, had played in a band called The Set, a mod outfit like The Who. Anyway we were listening to some music and I decided to put on The Undertones’ demo. By this stage I’d been listening to them for a few weeks and a few of the tracks had begun to grow on me. Jimmy decided to leave because he didn’t like the sound of them but by 3.30 a.m., drunk on poteen,

  Ricky looked at me and said, ‘I think that band’s got something.’ I thought it was the poteen talking, and remained undecided, I guess I needed a little push to force me to make a decision.

  A few weeks later, as I was shutting up the shop, that push came in the form of Bernie McAnaney, a friend of mine from Derry who was studying at the Art College in Belfast. He knew The Undertones by way of several mutual friends and that Friday he came into the store to tell me that the band were on the verge of splitting up, and needed to know right away if I was going to sign them.

  I didn’t really know what to do, I had just been about to head up to Lavery’s to sign a band I’d had my eye on, and Good Vibrations just didn’t have enough money to sign both, though in an ideal
world that’s exactly what I would have done. But Bernie continued to hassle me as we walked up Great Victoria Street towards the pub and so, when we reached a set of traffic lights, I told him I would have an answer for him by the time we crossed the road. He kept his mouth closed for the amount of time it took for the lights to change colour and for us to walk across the road, before I eventually caved. ‘OK,’ I told him, ‘they’re on the label.’ And that’s how we got The Undertones.

  I went into Lavery’s feeling pretty sorry for the other band. They were well organised, had a manager, some good songs and, most importantly, a van – I had been genuinely keen to sign them up. But when I told them we couldn’t sign them, they weren’t too disheartened. They had set their sights on London and I guess my turning them down helped them make the decision to go there instead. We never heard from them again. And you know what? I couldn’t tell you who they were. It used to be that I deliberately kept it a secret, but now I simply can’t remember!

  The Undertones were vocalist Feargal Sharkey, bassist Michael Bradley, drummer Billy Doherty and brothers John and Damian O’Neill, both guitarists. Formed in Derry in 1975, the band spent countless hours practising and getting the odd gig in their home city. I think that’s why I liked the band so much, unlike many guys of their age in Derry at that time, they weren’t out rioting every night. These boys would rehearse whenever they could and that was one of the secrets of their success, they practised and practised and it ultimately paid off.

  What I didn’t know at the time of signing them was that The Undertones had already been turned down by three English record labels – Stiff, Radar and Chiswick – and that was the reason they were on the brink of splitting up. Good Vibrations was really their last roll of the dice – had we not offered them a deal they were out of options and if Bernie hadn’t told me they were splitting up I might not have signed them at all. Fuck me! Then the world wouldn’t have got ‘Teenage Kicks’. But thankfully The Undertones became part of the Good Vibrations family, and the rest is history.