Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  Needless to say, it was clear that Sire wanted to sign up The Undertones, and so the boys asked me to become their manager, but I wasn’t particularly interested. I didn’t want to leave Belfast and I believed that there would be other bands like The Undertones who might need me.

  The band went into talks with Sire the next day and, although I wasn’t their manager, I was there while the talks were going on. With me was Ian Birch, Deputy Editor of Melody Maker. He was in Northern Ireland to do a piece on the punk scene here and had come with us to Derry to see The Undertones. As luck would have it, he just happened to be there on the most important day of The Undertones’ lives.

  Sire offered them a contract and I told them not to take it because it was shit, and Ian agreed with me. I always say that artists shouldn’t be afraid to refuse the first offer, because if they know they are worth more, there will be other, better, deals. But I think The Undertones were afraid they would miss out altogether and so they took the contract.

  But this was not before CBS and EMI got back in touch – now they wanted to do something with the band. Peely had been playing the song every night and that must have made them realise just what they had missed out on when they had turned me down several weeks before. They were too late, of course, so CBS asked if I had any other bands. I took great pleasure in telling them, ‘Plenty, but I wouldn’t let them sign for you bastards.’

  Unbelievably, Good Vibrations never made a penny out of The Undertones or ‘Teenage Kicks’. I know I could have held on to the rights, or sold them for a bundle – I was once offered £5,000 for the song by Solomon and Peres, the Belfast-based record producers and distributors; and CBS offered me more than £22,000 – but I turned these and all other offers down, and I think that probably spoiled my relationship with The Undertones a little bit. When I signed the rights over to Sire, all I asked for was £500, an autographed picture of the Shangri-Las and a few albums. I remember a Hell’s Angels friend of mine, Captain Pugwash, telling me, ‘You’re giving it away,’ and I told him that was exactly what I wanted to do.

  I really only wanted the money to buy a van for the bands to help them haul their equipment to gigs, but it was such a small amount of money that Sire never paid me. That is, until I forced their hand. During a trip to London a few weeks after ‘Kicks’ was released I went to visit an old friend of mine, David McCullough, who had once worked for Alternative Ulster. David now worked for Sounds, a magazine that ran the ‘Fair Deal’ column, and I asked him to introduce me to the girl that wrote that particular feature. ‘Fair Deal’ usually dealt with people who hadn’t received goods they had ordered by post – shirts, records, tickets and so on – so mine was the biggest story she had covered. When Sire found out, they went into a panic and offered me a bundle to kill the story, but in the end I settled for £1,000, which I used to buy the van. Though I never did get my photos or my albums!

  The truth is I didn’t want to stand in the The Undertones’ way, I’m not a businessman, and never really have been. All I wanted was to put Northern Ireland onto the music map of the world. Bands from Northern Ireland didn’t often get the chance to sign to a national label and I knew it was a delicate process, so I was concerned that if I drove a harder bargain, I would blow the whole deal. We had done our bit by giving the band a platform to get to where they deserved to be, and I loved them so much that I just wanted them to do well.

  Within a month of the Casbah gig, Sire had re-released ‘Teenage Kicks’ and the song managed to make it to number thirty-one in the UK singles charts. It was a high enough ranking that it led to the boys performing on Top of the Pops in October 1978.

  They followed their debut single with ‘Get Over You’, which charted in January 1979, proving they were no one-hit wonder. Over the years they would release classics such as ‘Jimmy Jimmy’, ‘Here Comes The Summer’, ‘My Perfect Cousin’ and ‘Wednesday Week’, which just showed we knew what we were doing when we signed them up. But by that stage, I was merely an interested spectator sitting on the sidelines in Belfast.

  In June 1983, the band decided to split up. Feargal went on to have some success with The Assembly, and as a solo artist, getting to number one in the charts in 1985 with ‘A Good Heart’, before becoming one of those dreaded record company A&R (Artists and Repertoire) men! Damian and John O’Neill went on to form That Petrol Emotion, and put out a couple of critically acclaimed albums – Rolling Stone described them as ‘The Clash crossed with Creedence’ – but sadly their critical success was not matched commercially, and they eventually split up in 1994.

  The other boys returned to Derry. Mickey Bradley worked as a producer with BBC Radio Foyle and Billy Doherty played in several local bands. In 1999, The Undertones got back together – minus Feargal, and with new lead singer, Paul McLoone – and have recorded two albums of new material since. They are still playing gigs across Europe and further afield, including sets at Glastonbury in 2005 and the Electric Picnic Festival in County Laois in 2007.

  But ‘Teenage Kicks’ will always be the signature tune for the band, and for Good Vibrations. It has been a continuous seller over the years, having been covered by the likes of Green Day, The Raconteurs, The Coral, Razorlight, Snow Patrol and others too numerous to mention. I even read about a Europe-wide poll taken recently in which radio stations listed their top one hundred most-requested songs, and ‘Teenage Kicks’ had come in at number ten.

  I’m immensely proud of what we did back then. ‘Kicks’ was the most important record to come out of Northern Ireland since ‘Gloria’ – which brought Them, my favourite band in the world, to the world stage – and it proved what I have always believed, that for such a small population, we have more talent per head of poets, painters and performers than anywhere else in Europe.

  It’s always been very difficult for artists here, there is an edge about the music, because of our in-between status: we’re not English and we’re not Irish. Even Paul Brady – another of our great singer songwriters – once said to me that he felt that he never fitted in anywhere because he was from Northern Ireland.

  But the success of The Undertones gave people in Northern Ireland something to be proud of at a very difficult time in our history. It proved to every kid here that they could achieve something in their lives, and have a bloody good laugh doing it.

  Musicians may still have had to leave Northern Ireland to get a contract, but the Good Vibrations label allowed bands to have some success, hone their sound and get a sense of the industry before they went to England to make their mark, and of that I will always be very proud.

  I remember, not long after The Undertones got their deal with Sire, John Peel decided it was time he made the pilgrimage to the home of ‘Teenage Kicks’, and brought another Radio One DJ, David ‘Kid’ Jensen along with him. Peel couldn’t believe that our tiny operation, working from what he called ‘a Dinky Toy telephone booth’, could have produced such a polished product.

  We were in the tiny back room of the shop at the time, and Getty from The Outcasts was there too. Now, as anyone who knew him then can testify, Getty was a fairly scary looking individual, with spiked bleached hair and a studded leather jacket, but he was the one who offered to make the tea. However, it was only after Peel and Kid had left that Getty realised he had forgotten to boil the kettle! Both DJ’s were obviously so intimidated by him that they sat in silence, drinking cold tea, rather than say anything.

  John Peel and Good Vibes had a fantastic relationship. Many of our bands would travel to London, do sessions for his show and go on to better things. Thanks to him, Good Vibrations soon became a world name – and that’s not being arrogant or overstating the matter – because Peely was playing our records all the time. He once told me he reckoned twenty per cent of his mailbag was filled with letters from Northern Ireland. He also did a show for the BBC World Service, and this is why the label became popular outside of the UK and Ireland.

  When the label was in financial trouble a few years la
ter, we threw a big concert in the Ulster Hall and John flew over to be with us.

  He got a standing ovation that night. He stayed with my mother-in-law Beryl and brought her a bunch of flowers as thanks. Beryl was delighted to have him – he was a much quieter and more polite houseguest than me! If he heard I was coming over to England, he would invite me down to Peel Acres – his country home – or round to the show. A few times he even changed the show to include a new record I had just discovered.

  There weren’t really any wild times with Peely, he was simply a dedicated fan with three loves in his life: music, Liverpool Football Club and his lovely family. He always said that ‘Teenage Kicks’ reduced him to tears and indeed many of us shed a tear when he died of a heart attack in 2004 while on holiday in Peru. The ultimate and final tribute he made to his favourite song was to have the lyrics, ‘Teenage dreams, so hard to beat’ engraved on his headstone.

  John Peel was the only honest man I’ve ever met in the music industry and I have learnt nothing since that has altered that opinion.

  ‘The Undertones’ – John O’Neill

  Back in 1978 our only ambition was to make a record as some kind of tangible proof that we existed. We had been playing The Casbah and the Rock Club in Derry for at least a year, which is a long time when you’re seventeen or eighteen. We lacked opportunity from every direction, but we instinctively knew we were doing something right because there just wasn’t another band like us in Derry.

  We were like a new car without the wheels – everything worked, we just couldn’t go anywhere. Also, there was definitely something in the air, a connection that started in New York and which eventually spread all around the world. Punk wasn’t simply a music trend, it was an attitude, it was getting the basics right first, and you either got it or you didn’t, it was that definitive, and it felt great to be a part of it.

  Anyway, it was Spring 1978 and we were ready to make a record. We demoed some songs and sent them off to various record companies in England, but they turned us down.

  However one of the tapes managed to find its way into the hands of a man called Bernie McAnaney – the brother of Sammy McAnaney, one of Feargal’s Radio Rentals workmates – who was at college in Belfast, and who knew Terri Hooley, owner of the Good Vibrations record shop.

  Terri had been making records with some Belfast punk bands and so Bernie gave him the tape, though I think Terri attributes this to a guy called Malcolm Stewart. Either way, the tape was understandably raw, so it was possibly the novelty of having a band from Derry on his label rather than the quality of the music that convinced Terri to let us make a record. Whatever the reason, he agreed and it was our chance.

  So, it’s 14 June 1978 and it has been arranged for us to play a Battle of the Bands show in the McMordie Hall in Belfast, then record the songs for our single in Wizard Studios the next day. I can’t remember how we took our gear up, possibly loaded it into Feargal’s Radio Rentals van, but we had small combo amps in those days which wouldn’t have taken up much space anyway, and some of us probably took the train up. We had played Dublin a couple of times but this was our first time playing in Belfast and we curious to hear, and compare ourselves to, the other bands playing that night.

  Up to this point we hadn’t met or talked to Terri, so we had arranged to call into the Good Vibrations shop to say hello that afternoon. It was a really cool shop, from the life-size 1955 Elvis effigy outside, to the great selection of music on sale inside. And then there was Terri! I remember feeling slightly intimidated by him at first. He was like Neal Cassady without the amphetamines – he had the energy of a speeding train about to go off the rails, and at first I found it quite overwhelming. However, as we discussed music, you could tell straight away he knew what he was talking about and how much passion he felt about it.

  The Battle of the Bands show that night was a great success. We were on near the end, just between Rudi and The Outcasts. Terri acted as compere, even reading out a telegram from John and Yoko wishing everybody the best, which was very impressive. Playing the night before recording was a good idea too. At the very least, we could see that we were as good as any band on the night and that gave us a nice confidence boost going into the studio.

  The recording itself was fairly straightforward. We had decided to copy The Buzzcocks’ idea of recording an EP and, with most of us being sixties aficionados, we were aware of the history of early classic EPs by the Rolling Stones and The Kinks and so on, so it seemed a good idea. Also it was better value for money. Davy Shannon, the engineer, was very accommodating and pretty much let us do what we wanted.

  We came back up to Belfast a couple of days later to do the mixing with Terri present. He had obviously been on the tear the night before because he was unusually subdued. I think he even fell asleep at some point during the mixing which, when you consider the volume it was being played at, is some feat in itself! I do remember him being sceptical about us doing handclaps in the middle parts of ‘Teenage Kicks’ but he let us have our way after a bit of persuasion.

  We then went back to Derry and, in the months that followed, proceeded to break up, then get back together again a couple of times. Despite our new relationship with Good Vibrations, the rejection by the English labels had taken its toll and, even then, the relationship between Feargal and the rest of the band was a little uneasy. But we managed to work through it in time for the now-famous playing of ‘Teenage Kicks’ on John Peel’s radio show.

  Amazingly, our drummer Billy Doherty had been in contact with John Peel a couple of times during that summer so, when Terri sent him a copy of the record, he had actually heard of us, though no one expected the reaction it got when he did play it. After that, it was fantasyland for us. As the years went by, we did meet Terri a few times and I always felt a bit guilty that I never properly thanked him. After all, he was the one who gave us a chance when no one else would. It’s not inconceivable to think that we never would have made a record at all; we were always in a constant state of flux.

  In my experience, the music industry is generally filled with two types of people, those that are in it for their own gratification at any expense, and those, like Terri, who have a genuine love and passion for music and see it as a relevant form of expression that has the potential to change the way we think and behave for the better. It was pleasure then.

  Hitting the Road

  With the success of The Undertones fresh in people’s minds, the Good Vibrations label became more popular than ever. We were fast becoming a production-line of bands.

  In late 1978, we signed both XDreamysts and Protex, releasing their respective singles, ‘Right Way Home’ and ‘Don’t Ring Me Up’. In Easter 1979, both bands played together at a gig held in Chester’s, Portrush, where they were seen by A & R men from Polydor, London, and it was with great excitement that we learnt that Polydor had decided to sign them both to the label – at long last the big record companies had woken up to the fact that there was talent in Northern Ireland! But we would all soon learn, through Protex and XDreamysts, just how the music industry monster can chew you up and spit you out.

  XDreamysts were a four-piece from the Coleraine/Portrush area and while I thought their music was fantastic, they weren’t really ever a punk band, being influenced more by the likes of The Beatles and the Stones. In fact, they were good enough to earn a gig supporting Thin Lizzy on their 1979 UK tour. But after releasing three singles and an album, Polydor made the decision to drop them in 1981. The band split up not long after.

  Protex, I’m sorry to say, didn’t fare much better. All four of them – Aidan Murtagh, David McMaster, Paul Maxwell and Owen McFadden – were still at school and studying for A levels when they were signed to Polydor, but they headed off to London where they packed more into two years than most people do into a lifetime.

  They released two singles, recorded an album (which was never released), performed two tours of the USA and landed a gig supporting the Boomtown Rats on their 1979
tour, but by the end of 1981, Polydor had made the decision to drop them too – they were all still in their teens.

  In 1979, I approached local punk band Ruefrex and asked them if they too would be interested in putting something out on the Good Vibrations label.

  The band had first come to my attention in mid-1978, and I knew that they had a great sound. They had played at our Battle of the Bands event in McMordie Hall that June, but the guys had been playing gigs for a year or so before that. They played their first gig in The Trident in Bangor in 1977, supporting SLF, but by the time they signed with us, their name had changed from Roofwrecks to the current spelling, and the line-up had also changed slightly, with Allan Clarke as their new lead singer alongside Paul Burgess, Tom Coulter and Jackie Forgie. I remember seeing them play The Harp and Clarke was an absolute lunatic, a ball of energy. The audience loved them.

  Good Vibrations put out their single ‘One By One’ in 1979. It was the only single they did with us, but they continued to make a huge mark on the local scene anyway. They never turned down a gig no matter where it was, or how dodgy the area. Shankill, Ardoyne, Falls, Turf Lodge, any religious enclave you care to mention, they played it. Their message was way ahead of its time and I liked that about them.

  That being said – and I can look back now and say they were a great band – at the time we didn’t exactly see eye to eye, if you can forgive the pun! To say they were angry boys is an understatement, and that often led to some heated arguments. Drummer Paul Burgess once claimed that I tried to hit him with a chair, but if I did, it’s an incident that I truly can’t recall. He seemed to think that I was making money off the back of his band, which would have been quite a feat since they only released one single with us!