Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  The band was brilliant, and so were signed up to EMI’s CPL label in 1984, re-releasing ‘I’ll Do The Talking’ to critical and commercial success – it was a great track and people still come into the shop and ask for it. They recorded an album too, though CPL never released it. The band – Colum and Philamena Muinzer, James Clenaghan and Mike Edgar – split up in 1985, but drummer Edgar went on to become a DJ for Radio Ulster, creating the show Across the Line, which, to this day, is a showcase for new and established local bands.

  In 1982, I also worked with a great outfit called The Bankrobbers – John McDonald, Liam Carville, Joby Fox and Seamus O’Neill – releasing their single, ‘On My Mind’. They were very talented and they too were quickly snapped up by EMI. They released a few things with them but, tired of continual gigging for no money and getting little support from a disinterested record label, they split in 1984. Joby Fox, along with some ex-members of 10 Past 7­, went on to form the excellent Energy Orchard – another band that should have enjoyed greater success – before he formed The Blue Dolphins.

  I really felt that The Bankrobbers should have had much more success than they did, although I must admit that they often made things difficult for themselves and had some colourful run-ins with the law. In 1979, they posed for a photo shoot in Newtownards wearing combat gear and were mistaken for paramilitaries, so when they got back to Belfast and went into Robinson’s Bar for a pint they were greeted by armed police who had tailed them home. Then, in 1982, they decided to mark the release of their debut EMI single, ‘Jenny’, by printing fake £50 notes embossed with the band’s logo and were arrested on forgery charges – they just couldn’t seem to catch a break!

  My difficulty was that I loved the music and the bands, but I hated the industry. The big companies could afford to sign up new bands in the hope that they might turn into a success, but if they didn’t it was no big deal. The bands needed support and help and, nine times out of ten, they didn’t get it. But I did my best to support the bands in any way I could, making sure that the fans would always know about the band’s next release. We sent records all over the world, and if you ordered a single from us you also got a Good Vibes newsletter with information on all our bands. We sold badges and other merchandise – it was a proper package. And our bands had fans all over the world. We would get invitations to play festivals in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and even Israel.

  Of course, I made sure that we put on as many local events as possible too, and during the eighties the message also finally started to get through to Belfast City Council. On 14 May 1982, they let Good Vibrations put on a festival at Maysfield Leisure Centre. I arranged for English band, The Membranes – who weren’t on our label, but whose manager came from Newtownards – to come over, along with The Shapes and, with other bands from the label, we put on a fantastic festival. The council put up the funding but didn’t publicise the event which mystified me at the time, but I later found out that gangs of mods had been fighting with punks in Belfast city centre, and the council had thought that if they didn’t tell anybody about the festival, the mods wouldn’t turn up.

  Sadly, the festival came to have a sombre and important overtone. It was staged the day after Colin Cowan from The Outcasts was killed in a road accident. The day became a tribute to him, and fans came from all over Northern Ireland to register their sadness. His funeral was huge – so many kids turned out to mourn in what I saw as a remarkable display of loyalty. It was then that I realised that these bands had become heroes to many people. Colin was a great person, a real character, and I miss him to this day, so this book gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to him and his role in the music revolution that was punk.

  Although Ruth and I had separated, we had stayed friends. She was worried about me living on the other side of the city. Single again, I was partying far too much – the drink and drugs were flying. So with her help I moved into a rented house in Wolsey Street, just off Botanic Avenue in south Belfast, and one lovely Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1982 I, along with a few others, decided to throw a street party for my new neighbours.

  We had Punch and Judy shows for the kids, street theatre, a huge barbecue and, of course, music. We didn’t ask anyone’s permission, we just blocked off the street and partied. The police seemed happy as the street wasn’t a main thoroughfare, and there was no trouble. The next day, as we cleared up the mess and looked forward to going to the pub with the £80 I’d picked up from the street – coins that people had dropped as they danced to ‘La Bamba’! – I received a phonecall from Father Pat Buckley, a local priest who had heard about our mini-festival.

  Buckley was an outspoken parish priest, based in west Belfast, and a constant thorn in the side of the Catholic Church, calling for an end to the vow of celibacy and campaigning for those who had been abused by members of the clergy. He also declared that, like him, as many as forty per cent of the Catholic clergy were gay, and even claimed that the Devil himself could be cleansed of his sins – so there’s hope for me yet! Anyway, Father Pat told me that he helped to run a small community festival every year in the Divis Tower area of Belfast, and asked if I would help to get a few bands to play.

  Divis Tower is a huge complex in the west of the city. Built in 1966, it had become a focus for sectarian tensions. In the early seventies the British Army installed a huge listening post on the roof of the tower in order to keep watch over the natives and so there was barbed wire everywhere, armed troops on every street corner and sporadic outbursts of gunfire. Young people growing up there really hadn’t a chance – they were virtually unemployable because of their address, and quite often their only option was to join the paramilitaries. As a result, Divis Tower became a symbol of IRA resistance to the army throughout the Troubles, which were at their height when Father Pat called me about helping to run a festival at the heart of the complex.

  We agreed to meet at the shop, and then myself and Mervyn Crawford – whose band Apartment had just released their record ‘We’ll Have A Holiday’ on Good Vibrations – took him to lunch in Capers Restaurant on Great Victoria Street and then to Lavery’s bar for a couple of pints to talk about the festival. Pat was concerned that we wouldn’t be able to convince anyone to play in Divis, but by the end of the day we had a great line-up including The Bankrobbers, Apartment and 10 Past 7 – a band featuring Brian and Bap Kennedy who, in 1983, would eventually release their single ‘Cracking Up’ with Good Vibrations.

  The only thing left for us to do was sell the idea to the Divis Residents Committee, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded. They wanted total control and were suspicious of someone from outside their area coming in and calling the shots, but Father Pat was right behind me and in the end we won them round. He agreed to get in touch with the police and army to ask them to stay out of the area, while I was to go to the IRA and tell them that we didn’t want them to use this as an excuse to shift bombs and shooters. I met with IRA representatives and they agreed to our terms, assuring me that everything would go smoothly and that we would be able to get our gear in and out without it being damaged, burned or stolen.

  Logistically it was difficult to get a sound system into Divis, because the tower blocks formed an amphitheatre, which could only be accessed by narrow passageways. On top of that, to get the sort of sound we wanted we needed a big system. I spoke to John Connolly at Queen’s University who let us rent a huge fifty-thousand-amp system, which was actually paid for with money from Belfast City Council. It had been tough to persuade them to give Divis any money, let alone enough for them to stage a festival, but we succeeded. With tower blocks on all sides a huge sound stage was generated and it was a truly momentous event.

  It’s hard to say how many people were there in total. People watched from their balconies and from the ground – there must have been at least two thousand – and as far I could see, everybody enjoyed themselves. We called the festival ‘Have a Holiday For a Day’ as there was no trouble from ‘the boys’ and fo
r once the kids in the area could play without the sound of army helicopters hovering overhead.

  Sadly, things were not going as well for Good Vibrations. The store and the label were experiencing some real financial difficulty – we were owed at least £5,000 from distributors in England who had failed to pay us for goods we had already supplied. I also remember getting an order from Italy for five hundred Outcasts’ albums and I was so pleased that there was such demand for the record that I didn’t think twice. I just packed up the records, sent them over and we never got paid. At one stage the shop was doing phenomenal business but we just didn’t seem to have the money to show for it. Looking back I suppose what I really needed was a good accountant to look after the money side of things.

  I never really made any money from sales of records on the label either. There was never a formal arrangement with the bands’ though they sometimes made a few quid doing gigs – we operated like a collective and pretty much all profits made were centralised and ploughed back into buying equipment, or putting petrol in the van and so on. It was the same for everybody, we were in it together.

  I tried everything to keep the business afloat, but in late 1982 our creditors filed a bankruptcy petition, and that was the beginning of the end. After five hectic years, it looked like Good Vibes was going to go under.

  It was a very difficult period for me but my friends rallied round and did what they could to cheer me up. A great friend of mine, Francis McCartney, had just come home from Canada where she had been living for a few years, and she convinced me to accompany her to a party in the Royal Avenue Hotel. On the way in I met another old friend, Mina Wilson, and she invited us to join them at their table. We hadn’t been sitting there long when Francis pointed out a girl who had been up dancing, ‘Isn’t that the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?’ she asked me. But I had already spotted the woman of my dreams, and it wasn’t the girl on the dance floor. I didn’t even know her name, but at that moment I knew she was the one and that somehow I was going to end up with her.

  I said as much to Francis, who couldn’t believe it. ‘Her?’ she said, ‘she looks like someone from the sixties!’ To which I replied, ‘Francis, I am someone from the sixties!’ But I wasn’t brave enough to approach my mystery woman, and before I knew it, the party was over and the crowds were leaving. Luckily though, as I was sitting in the taxi rank waiting to go home, she walked in and I offered to share my cab. That was the start of it.

  She told me her name was Eithne McIlroy, and when the taxi dropped her off, we arranged to meet up some days later. Over the following weeks I met up with her a couple of times and one night I took her to see a band called The Zen Alligators in Queen’s University. The band featured Eamon Carr from Horslips – one of the greatest bands Ireland has ever produced – and Eithne was a big fan of his, so I think she just wanted to see him rather than having any real interest in me. I don’t think I made a particularly good impression but I really liked her, so I rang her a couple of times and soon we started seeing each other. It wasn’t long before I was really serious about this girl.

  I wanted to spend time with Eithne away from the pressure cooker of Belfast and the reality of my business going under, but with the bankruptcy proceedings, I had no money of my own. So I went to my mum and asked if I could borrow £300 to take Eithne to Paris – she gave it to me without question, she knew I needed a break. If anything, I think she was just so pleased that her son could still come to her and ask for help.

  Eithne agreed to come away with me and within a few days we flew to London. I had arranged for us to stay overnight with a friend of mine, Bob Johnston, the manager of a band called The Gas who Good Vibes had worked with in the past. Bob was also managing Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who were a new band at the time, and he showed us a video in which they were performing ‘Relax’ in its rawest form. He asked me what I thought of them but before I could open my mouth Eithne said she thought they were brilliant, so I think she can legitimately claim to have had a helping hand in the success of the one of the biggest bands of the eighties. Mind you she never got a cheque!

  It was a good start to the weekend and we headed to Paris where we stayed in a small hotel. We did all the predictable things: picnics in the park, sightseeing, shopping, drinking wine and, of course, partying – I was floating on air. I remember standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower with her when I saw a bit of grafitti: ‘Even though you think that nobody in the world loves you, I do.’ I thought that this was a wonderful sentiment and I was so happy. I was supposed to be in court to answer bankruptcy proceedings, but I was in Paris acting as if I hadn’t a care in the world, while back in Belfast a judge was winding up my business.

  But reality has a habit of creeping back and I felt in my heart that the relationship with Eithne couldn’t continue while I had so much on my plate, so when we got home we broke up. I made my way to the shop where I was confronted by a bloke who identified himself as an officer of the court, before handing me a document telling me not to touch anything. He wouldn’t even let me take a few quid out of the till to see me through the day, talk about kicking a man when he’s down! It was a definite low point in my life. I bought a bunch of flowers for a friend of mine with the last money I had – I suppose I didn’t see the point in keeping such a small amount of money – and that was it, it was all over. I’d lost everything.

  I went to see my ex-wife Ruth, who had encouraged me to go out with Eithne in the first place, and she could see how down I was – more about the end of my relationship than the end of the business, I have to say. She encouraged me to call Eithne and tell her the truth about my situation, that I was penniless. I did and we moved in together pretty much straight away.

  I was so grateful to Eithne for being there during such a difficult period in my life, though I had long since reconciled myself to the fact that it was time to bring the curtain down on Good Vibrations. I believe that we could have stayed open – many people owed us money – but I was tired. I had poured all my energy into the shop and the label, and it had all become too much. But at least I could take some satisfaction in knowing that we had proven to the world that it could be done – one tiny store in Belfast had made an impact on the music world. The Clash, Ian Dury, Jools Holland and many other visiting rock stars had all made pilgrimages to the shop, and countless stars had had their pictures taken with our beloved Elvis sign – we had made a difference.

  When the shop closed, I decided to burn Elvis to mark the passing of something so important. I wanted to give him a decent farewell but Belfast’s crematorium refused to let us use their ovens, so I put a match to him in my own hearth! We then collected the ashes in little bags and gave them to people, so Good Vibrations fans all over the world could have a wee reminder of the days Elvis pointed the way in Belfast.

  ‘Too Much Junkie Biz’ – Johnny Thunders

  In October 1984 the late, great Johnny Thunders – one-time lead singer of legendary American garage band the New York Dolls, and later The Heartbreakers – played the TV Club in Dublin before, at the behest of Terri Hooley, getting into a minibus and driving north for a memorable gig at McMordie Hall in Belfast.

  It was his first-ever visit to Ireland and, upon arriving at the border, he was shocked to be asked to get out of the vehicle while soldiers searched every inch of it. They were then questioned by the police and army before being allowed to continue. It was an everyday occurrence for those of us who lived here, but it left Thunders unsettled. He was spooked even further by the sight of gun-toting soldiers on every street corner.

  The band played to a packed McMordie Hall on 27 October, but his shock at what he’d seen was evident as he spoke from the stage:

  Hey kids, you’ve got a strange fuckin’ city here, a strange fuckin’ town. I don’t know how you live with it, I couldn’t live with it, but at least I have now seen what the rest of the world needs to see – it needs to see Ireland.

  I hear that if you are Irish you kick
with the left foot and if you are English you kick with the right, but I know that’s not true. You don’t care what you are, you just wanna live. Speaking about livin’, this one, ‘Too Much Junkie Biz’, is for that weird guy Terri. You know Terri the weird guy? The guy with only one nostril.

  There’s a lot to sing about here, I tell you man, I don’t know how you put up with it. What does it take to put up with something like this? But I’ll tell you something kids, you’re lucky to have a guy like this, real fuckin’ lucky. All you need is The One, and he is The One for you.

  When he got backstage, he had this to add:

  I dunno how anybody could actually live here, but the audience really appreciate you. When they get into it they really get into it, like Detroit used to be in ’74. I get the same feeling from Belfast.

  Johnny Thunders died on 23 April 1991, aged fifty. The official story was that his death was drug related, though family and friends remain convinced he died by foul means. New Orleans police have consistently resisted calls to re-open the investigation.

  Down But Not Out

  When I lost Good Vibrations I thought that my music store days were over – I had been floating along in a bubble of denial for so long that, when it popped, I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I wanted to stay in the business, I just didn’t know how.

  In stepped local businessmen Willie Richardson and Ken Donaldson, who recognised that Good Vibrations had the potential to be a successful venture. Willie came from Belfast and had worked for Virgin Records – for a time he was their head A&R man – later finding success as Van Morrison’s manager, a job he held for more than fifteen years. He loved music almost as much as I did! Ken, on the other hand, was a businessman through and through. His family were the ‘Donaldson’ in the famous Donaldson & Lyttle high-end furniture store in Belfast, so I think he looked at Good Vibes as a moneymaking venture.