by Terri Hooley
Around this time Dave Hyndman – with whom I’d set up the building on Great Victoria Street – wanted to set up an anarchist bookshop called Just Books. He’d secured premises on Winetavern Street and we decided to put on a big punk gig in Belfast to raise some money for him. There were still very few punk gigs in Belfast, particularly any involving local talent – The Clash had visited, and Elvis Costello had played but we wanted to do a home grown thing. So we decided to bring The Undertones down from Derry and have them perform in a Battle of the Bands show alongside RUDI and The Outcasts. They would also be joined by several other local bands, The Idiots, Ruefrex (who were ‘Roofwrecks’ at the time), Rhesus Negative, and The Detonators. It was going to be incredible, and all we needed now was a venue.
So I got all dressed up, went to Queen’s University and told them that I was from the Belfast Music Society and wanted to book the McMordie Hall for a concert. ‘That will be £5, Mr Hooley,’ they said, and gave me a receipt. ‘Is that it?’ I asked. ‘Yes, it’s in the book. Wednesday 14 June 1978, it’s all yours.’
I knew it had been too easy, and sure enough it turned out they had thought I was from Queen’s Classical Society. When they found out I had hired the hall for a major punk gig they freaked out.
I always knew universities were seats of learning and I can tell you I learned a few dirty tricks over the next few days as Queen’s tried everything in their power to disrupt the gig. But this was too big an opportunity to allow them to succeed – the bands were determined to have their chance to stand on a stage and perform in front of a real audience on their own home ground – so the more the university fought it, the more determined I was that the gig should go ahead.
On the night of the event, Queen’s were still fighting us. They tried to stop us getting lights, PA and other equipment into the building, but they hadn’t counted on the ace up my sleeve – the Hell’s Angels! During my time as an activist in the seventies I had become great friends with the Chosen Few, a Hell’s Angels chapter in Belfast, and so I asked them to act as security for the night – the university didn’t stand a chance!
Hundreds and hundreds of kids turned up from all over the country that night, making it one of the best gigs of my life. All my old hippy friends, the bikers, the punks, they were all there – it was a mad mixture of mad people. But most surprising of all, we actually received a telegram from John Lennon and Yoko Ono wishing us luck in our brave new venture! To receive something like that was surprising to say the least, considering our last encounter had ended in a slight disagreement! I can’t honestly say what prompted it either, except that a few of my friends had stayed in touch with the loonies from London who surrounded Lennon at that party. But I read it out at the start of the evening, and it seemed to give the bands a real boost.
Seven bands in total played that night, so every act was permitted a twenty-five minute set, but Ruefrex figured they were never going to get a bigger audience than this so they tried to play on. No chance! I snapped my fingers and the Hell’s Angels came on and physically lifted them off the stage. The biggest cheer of the night was given to my heavy metal friends!
Apart from that, we had no real trouble inside the gig, but because the kids were so upset about the way Queen’s had treated me, they went outside and put stones through the windows of the Students’ Union. A few days later I got a letter from the university saying I had been barred from the Union for life. Well fuck ’em! Quite honestly, by that stage I just didn’t give a fuck. Our Battle of the Bands had been a huge success and I was proud of all the acts. The fans had enjoyed themselves and we had shown, especially to the stuffed shirts watching from the staffroom across the road, that young people could put on a great gig. It had also been the first time any of the Belfast bands had seen The Undertones and they were very, very good.
So it was time to make things with The Undertones official. On the morning after the Queen’s gig we took them into Belfast city centre to record their EP, which would feature four of their songs, ‘Teenage Kicks’, ‘Smarter Than You’, ‘True Confessions’ and ‘Emergency Cases’.
I had booked them into Wizard Studios, a small recording studio located behind the Duke of York pub, and set up by Davy Smyth and his wife Valerie. They were in a band themselves, and they had wanted somewhere to record. They’d even set up a record label called Okey Dokey, though probably nobody remembers it. Dave was a nice enough guy but I don’t think he had that much enthusiasm for punk in general, or for any of the local punk bands in particular. He often let mistakes go that should have been corrected, and so most of the Northern Ireland punk records – most of which were recorded in Wizard – can sound a little weedy and embarrassing today. Granted, a lot of the bands themselves were to blame for this as none of them really had a clue about recording, but that’s why an experienced and enthusiastic producer would have made the difference.
Anyway, my mate Ricky and I gathered up a few cans of beer, and a few bags of crisps and sandwiches, and headed down to the studio where The Undertones were already at work with producer, Davy Shannon. It was then that I truly realised what we were dealing with – this band was something special. The song had been so well-rehearsed that the lads basically went in and did it all in one take.
We pressed two thousand copies of the EP at EMI in Dublin, and I immediately put three hundred copies on the bus to Derry for The Undertones. The whole thing cost £200 plus VAT.
I remember speaking to Mrs Sharkey on the phone later, and telling her what a wonderful song it was. She said, with typical motherly indulgence, ‘Isn’t it great the boys have made a wee record.’ But I knew that this was more than just ‘a wee record’ – this was going to change everything.
But, before that could happen, there was still work to be done. The band made a standard record sleeve out of a large sheet of paper which was designed to wrap around the record itself. This sleeve folded out to reveal a poster of the band, and on the outside we had a photograph of a door in a derelict house upon which someone had written, ‘The Undertones are shit’! The wee lad responsible for the graffiti actually turned up one day and apologised to the band for doing it. We enlisted the help of RUDI and The Outcasts, went to the store, and all got to work folding the sleeves.
I really believed in this record and so I decided that the best way to get it out there was to go straight to the lion’s den – to London, the world capital of music, the theatre of dreams. I thought that if I personally did the rounds at the major labels and distributors, that they would have to listen and they would see just how amazing this record was. And so, with a bag full of ‘Teenage Kicks’, I was off to London. How could anyone turn this record down?
I should have known better. The record business has never ceased to stun me with its double standards and sharp practice, so I have never really had any love for the industry. In fact, I still hate it and the bastards who run it. They can be ruthless and money-grabbing, and it’s the unknown bands and the small labels who suffer as a result. My one thought on that journey to London was, ‘Fuck, I’ve got six days of being nice to these dickheads.’
But I was determined, and when I arrived, I made Rough Trade Records my first port of call. Rough Trade was, at the time, the biggest independent record distributor in the country. It had just signed up Stiff Little Fingers, another great band from Belfast, so I was full of enthusiasm. SLF were really starting to make waves beyond Northern Ireland, and I always see them as the ones that got away. I know I have always said I never rated them, but that was probably jealousy on my part. I actually think they are a great band and deserve their success. When their first album, Inflammable Material, was due to be released, I knew it was going to be big so I went over to Rough Trade and asked them for five hundred advance copies to make sure I got it before anyone else in Ireland – we sold out in days.
Anyway, I had a meeting with Geoff Travis and Richard Scott who ran Rough Trade, and wasted no time in playing ‘Teenage Kicks’ for them. When
they told me it was a pile of shit and called it the worst record they had ever heard, I couldn’t believe my ears! They had been my big hope. I thought that they, above everybody else, would surely understand what we were trying to achieve. But it was not to be. Instead, they agreed to take five hundred copies – due to the fact that the record was on Good Vibrations, and our label sold records in England – but I came away thinking that they didn’t really understand what Good Vibrations or the Northern Ireland music scene was all about.
Despite the setback I took ‘Kicks’ to EMI and CBS, two of the giants of world music, and hoped that I would fare a little better with them. But after I played the record to the guys at EMI I was told that it was not the kind of music they wanted to put out. I begged them to play it again, which they did, but I was pissing in the wind. They had made up their minds after the first three chords – they were just so dismissive.
So off I went to CBS. Looking back, I suppose I went there with the intention of giving them a lesson on the world according to Terri Hooley and, to a large extent, I like to think I succeeded. I played the record to this guy who was sitting in an office with hundreds of singles stacked on his desk. I was in the middle of telling him that it cost only £200 to record and, without any attempt to soften the blow, he just said, ‘No.’
Was that it? ‘No’? He just pointed at the pile of records in front of him and said, ‘Look at all this wonderful music,’ so I picked up a record by Neil Diamond – who has never been one of my favourite artists, but who was discovered by one of my favourite songwriters, Ellie Greenwich – and asked him how much CBS had spent recording it. When he told me, I just lost it. I lifted the records off the desk and dumped them on the floor. ‘These records are crap,’ I spat at him, ‘compared to this.’ Seconds later I was physically removed from his offices.
After a few minutes of feeling triumphant, depression started to set in. I felt very alone standing on a London street with only my bag of records for comfort. I didn’t believe we could improve on ‘Teenage Kicks’ and if the record companies were turning it down, what chance did we have? As a last resort I decided to take the time to drop a few copies of the single in at the BBC Radio offices for John Peel.
I had first met John Peel in the early seventies when I was in London looking into ways to set up a Belfast branch of Release – a charity which had been set up in London to help people who had been busted on drugs charges to get legal representation. They had lists of lawyers who were very sympathetic to the plight of those who were on the wrong end of the draconian sentences that were handed out in those days. Anyway, I was standing in their offices when John Peel walked in with boxes full of records and promotional discs from record companies that he wouldn’t play on his show. He was donating them to the charity.
John had once been part of the pirate radio movement with a show on Radio London called The Perfumed Garden, and he played music that would have been very alternative for the day. While we obviously couldn’t pick up that show in Belfast, I was aware of him and what sort of music he was playing.
In 1967, in a bid to take on the pirate radio stations, the BBC set up Radio One and, in a radical change in policy, recruited many of the pirate radio DJs – people like Tony Blackburn, Johnny Walker and of course Peely. Nobody could have predicted then that Peel would be the one to outlast all the others. He was a survivor. Over the years numerous heads of programming wanted to get rid of him, but each time he survived the cull. His nightly show was essential listening for generations of young (and not so young!) people, turning them on to every type of music.
For thousands of people in Northern Ireland – who had no choice but to remain indoors when the city shut down at 5.30 every evening – a social life was built around the John Peel show which aired between 10 p.m. and midnight. It was a nightly ritual and, without over-romanticising it, I like to think that Peely gave us all a two-hour break from the grim reality of life in Belfast. In fact, one of the big inspirations for me in establishing the Good Vibrations label was listening to John Peel and what was going on with the punk movement in the rest of the UK.
There were only three of us in the Release office when John dropped in with the records, so he and I exchanged hellos and talked about music for a while, but that was it. At that time he was a DJ for Radio One but he hadn’t yet moved to the late-night slot that was to make him a hero to dozens of aspiring bands. And so, it was for all these reasons, and due to my enormous affinity with John Peel, that I found myself crossing my fingers and leaving several copies of ‘Teenage Kicks’ in the pigeon hole at his office door. I had no idea then just how important he would become in the Good Vibrations story.
I spent the rest of my time in London in a haze, getting hammered and trying not to think too much about those bastards at the record companies. But reality is never too far away and it wasn’t long before I was back in Belfast, hung over, strung out and skint. I was devastated. Good Vibrations had become my life, and I had been so sure that ‘Kicks’ was going to put Belfast back in the headlines for the right reasons. I broke down in tears in front of Ruth. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘these people say they are in the music industry, but they don’t get it. I’m never going back to London to put myself through that again, never.’
What could she say? I was broken, and I knew that I had no answers for The Undertones, or the other bands on Good Vibrations. But Ruth wouldn’t let me give up, she said, ‘Maybe John Peel will play it tonight.’ We both knew it was a long shot. It was 12 September 1978.
We sat and listened to Peel’s show, and then it happened. One song finished, another began and I instantly recognised those first glorious notes – he was playing ‘Teenage Kicks’. And, as if that wasn’t incredible enough, no sooner had the song ended than he said, ‘Isn’t that the most wonderful record you’ve ever heard in the world? In fact, I’m going to play it again.’
It was the first time in the history of the BBC that a record had been played twice in a row. It felt so good, it wiped out all the disappointment I had been feeling since my trip to London, and all of a sudden I could feel my energy coming back. ‘We were right!’ I thought, and that meant that CBS, EMI, Rough Trade and the rest of them were wrong. And that’s when the phone started ringing …
It seemed as though everybody in Northern Ireland had been listening to the John Peel show! All the bands I worked with at Good Vibrations were on the phone offering their congratulations – they couldn’t have been happier if it had been their record that had just been played twice, back-to-back on national radio. I think that says a lot about the camaraderie that existed back then, and the wonderful people we worked with. From that moment on, my world, and that of the band, changed forever.
That night Seymour Stein, CEO of Sire Records was on his way to catch his flight back to New York when he heard ‘Teenage Kicks’ on the radio. He turned to his London chief Paul McNally and told him that he wanted to license the record for release in the United States. Sire had a big stable of American punk acts like Richard Hell & The Voidoids and the legendary Ramones, so it seemed like a great fit. We were now in with a real fighting chance!
Paul somehow managed to get my home phone number and told me they wanted the record. He asked me if I would do a deal. I told him that I didn’t have a contract with the band and that, if he wanted to sign them, he would have to come over. They were playing in a club called The Casbah in Derry that week, and he agreed to come and see them.
I must admit to getting quite excited at this point – not only were Sire chasing us, but all of a sudden my old friends at Rough Trade were on the phone, wanting the record. The music press were all over us, while I was being wined and dined and taken to gigs. The Good Vibrations label had finally struck a chord.
Paul McNally did, of course, come over and we all went to The Casbah for the gig, an experience I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten. If we thought The Harp was bad, it was nothing compared to this place. I think it was once a bar th
at had been bombed, and in its place were two temporary cabins nailed together to make a pub / rock venue.
I remember asking one of the kids where the toilets were and he took me outside onto the street and said, ‘You can piss on that wall, that wall or that wall.’ The windows were painted pink and blue, and the house rule was that you couldn’t pogo, because when you did all the bottles fell off the shelves! Unfortunately nobody told me this! I soon learned that the bar staff had a stack of wet towels that they used to hit anyone who dared to pogo, and after four damp clothes in the face I got the message.
McNally had an expense account with Sire so he looked after us that night, and he had a great time. I had all the best intentions of heading back to Belfast, but they soon went out the window and I ended up staying in the spare room at Feargal Sharkey’s mum’s house.
I went to bed that night feeling very merry, and very content, at least I was until I saw the 3D picture of the Last Supper which had pride of place on the wall – when you moved, it moved, it was pretty surreal! There were also a few pictures of Bishop Edward Daly, and one of Feargal as a boy soprano. I always wanted to blackmail him with that, but The Undertones went on to use it on the cover of ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ and that was another moneymaking scheme gone.
The next morning Feargal came up to the room with a big fry, which I could barely face due to a raging hangover, and I said to him, ‘I never thought I’d ever say this, but I’m proud to be a Prod.’ Feargal seemed taken aback and replied, ‘What are you talking about Terri? I’ve never heard you talk like that.’ ‘Take a look around,’ I said, ‘how could you have a wank in a room like this?’