by Terri Hooley
They approached the Official Receiver to inquire about buying stock, offered to buy the business and decided to keep it based in the original shop. They didn’t, however, ask me to step in and help. At least not initially. It seems that they believed that the reason the original store had failed was because I was unable to run it properly. People had been amazed when I went bust as they had assumed the business was worth a fortune; an assumption, I think, that was probably due to all the media attention we got.
That attitude soon changed when it came to light that a lot of the stuff I had been ordering when I was owner hadn’t even reached the shop floor. Instead, they had found boxes and boxes of records at the home of one of the employees. Once they realised the shop hadn’t got into debt because of my mismanagement they came to me, told me what they had discovered and asked if I would be interested in managing the shop.
It seemed perfect. I was back behind the counter of the store I loved, without the stress and worry that came with actually running the business – it certainly took the pressure off me for a bit. Although, if I’m honest, I was never truly happy with the arrangement, as I don’t think Ken and Willie really understood what Good Vibes was all about. To them it was simply a business venture – for me it was a way of life.
As time went on, and it became obvious that Good Vibrations was never going to pull in the sort of profits they were looking for, Ken and Willie made it clear that they wanted out. In 1984, a very dear friend of mine, Eamonn McWilliams, who had worked in his family’s bakery business – Ed’s Bread – came forward with a package to buy the business, and they accepted. I think they were glad to get shot of it, to be honest. The last I heard was that Ken was living on a boat in Spain, and I don’t mean a small dinghy!
Thankfully, Eamonn understood what I was all about and agreed to become a silent partner, handing me control of the everyday running, while he looked after the books. Unfortunately, we had to relocate to premises on the other side of Great Victoria Street as there were plans to knock our original building down, but I didn’t mind too much as things were going so well. Of course, we still had the Troubles to contend with, and on one occasion in 1992 we had to evacuate the store because a car bomb had been left down the street. All our windows were blown in and a lot of stock was damaged. Not wanting to make a crisis out of a drama, the insurance firm refused to pay out! But it was a good location and we had some great people working for us, so we ended up in that shop for almost ten years.
The label, I’m sorry to say, didn’t do nearly so well. In fact, apart from a few bursts of activity, which were often years apart, the label was pretty much dormant. In 1983, to coincide with the Channel 4 show The Tube doing a special on the Belfast music scene, Good Vibrations released two singles – ‘Jenny’ by The Bankrobbers and ‘Cracking Up’ by 10 Past 7 – but these were self-financed, and really only used the label’s name, which still carried some weight in the music world.
We just didn’t have enough money to release singles on our own, and for the next seven years the label didn’t put anything out. At that particular time I had felt that it was up to someone else to pick up where I had left off, for other labels to spring up and follow our example, but apart from a few half-hearted attempts from other like-minded music fans, it didn’t happen.
Aside from my work in the shop, I had also taken up the mantle of pirate radio DJ once more. I had become friendly with a guy called Miles Johnston, who worked for the BBC, and who had also set up a string of pirate radio stations across the country. Miles is best known now as the founder of the Energy 106 pirate station, which broadcast from Alien Mountain in County Monaghan from 1998 to 2005, but the operation in which I became involved – the appropriately named Radio Ganja –was a lot less grandiose.
Miles broadcast under the pseudonym, The Phantom, and I acted as guest host for him on a number of occasions. Quite often we would just pre-record the shows – usually in Miles’ house in south Belfast, in a room covered in Samantha Fox posters! – because it was so difficult to get a place from which to broadcast live. But one day in the summer of 1987 the Irish Times journalist Jim Cusack offered us his house as a venue.
At the very last moment however, Jim was called away and we lost the site, but thankfully that turned out to be a blessing in disguise! In one of those great coincidences that life throws our way my great friend, the late Anne Maguire, was throwing a party to celebrate the end of her year as student president of Queen’s University and she invited me to come along. I told her I would be delighted to come to her party, but on one condition, that we could broadcast Radio Ganja from the Students’ Union – all we had was a hi-fi system and an aerial to put on the roof. She agreed and we wound up with the best site we ever had. There we were; free dope, free food, free drink and free radio and that night they were picking us up in Sweden!
Both The Phantom and I were very grateful to Anne for letting us use the Union that night – she was a lovely, bright, intelligent, witty girl who, in other circumstances, could have become a future Mrs Hooley! After university she secured a position with the News Letter, where she worked for several years before joining the Irish Times, and was set to become one of the finest journalists this country has ever produced. Tragically, one night in 1992, when driving back from a visit to her family in Fermanagh, she was involved in a car accident and was fatally injured – her loss was an unspeakable tragedy.
But as a talented writer Anne had left a legacy. Along with her journalistic writings, she released a book in 1990 that covered the campaign to release the hostage Brian Keenan, who had been kidnapped by Islamic jihad while working as a teacher at the American University in Beirut. Brian is an old friend of mine, so the campaign to have him released was one I was very passionate about. I knew him from my anti-Vietnam war days and he had been as involved as I was in the protest. We had marched together on a number of occasions, including the march in 1966 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. We were all young socialist republicans at that time, though none of us had been taught Irish history in school or anything like that. In my case, I think it was a reaction to being brought up in east Belfast where I was constantly exposed to loyalist prejudices and, as a result, when I learned about our political and social history, I was heavily influenced.
Brian and I hadn’t seen an awful lot of each other over the years but our paths had crossed regularly until 1986, when I heard the news that he had been kidnapped. I remember bumping into a pal of mine, Dr Ian Banks, in the Crown Bar in Belfast some time after hearing the news and he suggested that I should get involved in the campaign to have Brian freed.
I arranged to meet up with Brian’s sisters, Brenda Gillham and Elaine Spence, as they were leading the campaign. All they knew about me before then was that I had once jumped out of a coffin onstage dressed as Dracula, so I’m not sure how much confidence they had in me, but we got on really well and I promised to do what I could to help the campaign.
We wanted the press to keep the topic of Brian’s captivity in the public eye, so I contacted Jim Cusack and asked him to help. Jim approached his news editor at the Irish Times and told him that he had spoken to people inside the campaign to free Brian, but, I’m sorry to say, his editor told him not to bother with the story, as he believed Brian was already dead. Thankfully, Jim persisted and soon became deeply involved in the campaign himself. Through his own contacts in the Department of Foreign Affairs he discovered that the Irish government believed that Brian was very much alive and that they were working closely with the Iranian government in an effort to secure his release. The British government, by comparison, had no interest in doing anything for Brian – or the other hostages, Terry Waite and John McCarthy – but his friends in Belfast were not about to give up so easily.
In early 1988, I got in touch with a couple of people I knew who were involved in the Irish Arab Friendship Society and asked if they had any way of finding out how Brian was. I was given a message that Brian was
still alive, although he was in a very bad way. I immediately contacted his sisters to pass on the news but their response took me aback. ‘Of course he’s alive,’ they said. ‘He’s our brother and we would know if he was dead.’ The strength of their belief that Brian was fine and that soon he would be allowed home was admirable.
In the meantime I did whatever I could to help. I protested outside the City Hall and the Dáil and I organised gigs to highlight the issue and to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. I’d also hoped that by organising concerts we could raise enough money for the sisters to fly anywhere in the world to talk to people who could help.
In early 1990 – which would turn out to be only a few weeks before Brian’s release – we had been in London for the launch of the Korgis’ hit ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime’, which had been re-released to raise funds for International Hostage Relief, and it was there that I met John McCarthy’s girlfriend Jill Morrell, who was a lovely girl. That event inspired me to plan a benefit in Belfast to raise funds for International Hostage Relief and, on 24 August 1990, a week before it was due to take place, it was announced that Brian had been released. Through an intermediary, a large sum of money had been paid to secure Brian’s release, and the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, Gerry Collins, was flying to the region to bring him home. We went ahead with the gig of course – we wanted to make it clear that we weren’t going to forget the plight of the other hostages.
I was in the Limelight bar in Belfast a few days after Brian’s return to Ireland, and it was there that I received a message from his sisters. Brian, it seemed, wanted to see me. So the following day Eithne and I went down to Dublin. When we went to check into our hotel – the Fairways in Dublin, where all the supporters were staying – we got a nice round of applause and a cheer. But of course the real hero of the time was Brian. He gave a press conference at the Mansion House where he spoke about his treatment at the hands of his captors. His voice was so weak that I had to strain to hear him and, even taking into account the years he spent in captivity, I was still shocked at his appearance. He was shockingly thin, but his eyes burned brightly and I knew his spirit was strong. What was most surprising, however, was what he had to say. He didn’t condemn his captors, he just tried to explain that he understood why they did what they did. I’m not sure too many of us would have been so forgiving.
The following day I got a taxi out to Blackrock Clinic to visit Brian. When he saw me, he tried to get out of bed but it was clear that he was in considerable pain. His face was completely unmarked, though etched with the pain and suffering caused by more than four years in captivity, and his body was a mass of black, blue and green bruises. He told me that, before his release, his captors had given him one last ‘treat’ – they had put him in a sack and beat him so hard that he thought it was the end.
I told him to get back into bed, and he thanked me for my part in the campaign. I reminded him that the last time we had met he had said to me, quite out of the blue, ‘Hooley, I’ll never forgive you for what you did.’ I didn’t know what he had meant at the time and his comment had haunted me during the years he had been held captive, so I asked him if he could remember what it was I was supposed to have done. He told me that he had no idea so I said, jokingly, that if I’d known he was going to forget I wouldn’t have bothered trying to get him out!
That same year Brian was presented with an RTÉ People of the Year award and I was invited to the reception in Dublin. It was there that he told me about the full extent of his treatment and it really shocked me – his captors had even been putting cyanide in his food. But when Anne Maguire released her book about Brian’s sisters and their campaign, I saw how quickly we can all settle back into normality. I went along to the launch, and afterwards we all went to the pub and I remember the two sisters were having a row. Brian went to sort it out but they both turned on him – it was like he had never been away!
In 1990, things began to pick up for the Good Vibrations record label – several bands had come forward who were willing to finance their own records, but who wanted to have our name attached. As I used to say back then, the label would often ‘rear its ugly head from time to time.’ We were still in no position to finance the recordings but I was happy to let bands use the label. It kept the name alive and gave them a vehicle for releasing their material. I would let them use the contacts I had made in the music industry over the years, and agreed to help them in any way possible.
It was in this way that Good Vibrations came to release material from Tyrone band, tiBeriuS’ minnoWs. In 1989, the band had won the ‘Smithwicks Band of the Year’ competition which had been held in the Errigle Inn, a smashing music venue on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast. It was a big win for them and it led to a strong fan following. Within a year, hundreds of people were queuing outside the Errigle – the band’s new spiritual home – to gain entry to one of their numerous sell-out shows.
The lads became regular customers in the shop and, as so many people were coming into the shop, raving about how good the band was, I got them to play me one of their songs. They played ‘Time Flies’ and I loved it straight away. I could see they were serious about their music and, with such a strong following in Belfast, I knew they deserved a proper release. It was then that I suggested they put it out on Good Vibes.
This was greeted with general approval, but I was told that we had to get the band’s manager, John Henry, on board too. So one night, not long after, I found myself in a meeting in the cramped living room of a house in Collingwood Avenue, a street in Belfast’s infamous Holylands area. In an effort to help seal the deal, I had turned up with a case of beer – much to the band’s delight – and my ‘company secretary’, Albert Fusciardi, who was actually just a mate of mine that worked in the shop and who I’d asked along to take notes. The decision to bring him along however, was one I soon came to regret.
I had had a sort of mini-presentation in mind to help convince the band’s manager and, while I knew we should have rehearsed before going in, I really didn’t foresee what a bollocks Bert would make of it.
‘Bert,’ I said, ‘what band did I tell you was the best I’d heard since The Undertones?’
Failing to take my lead, Bert stared at me in silence, so I repeated the question, this time a little more impatiently. This time Bert was ready … with the wrong answer,
‘Uh ... The Airmen?’ By which he had meant Ghost of an American Airman. He had fucked up.
‘No!’ I shouted, a little panicked now, ‘It was tiBeriuS’ minnoWs. Didn’t I tell you that?’
‘Erm, yes,’ Bert quietly agreed, head down and obviously embarrassed by the whole situation. Ploughing on ahead, I moved on to talking about the song. ‘The minute I heard it I said to myself, “That song could be a hit”.’ And, giving Bert a chance to redeem himself, I turned round and said, ‘Bert, what song did I say would be a hit as soon as I heard it?’
‘Uh … “Teenage Kicks”?’ an uncertain Bert replied. Well, that was it! I lunged at Bert, grabbed his notebook and threw it in the fire, destroying the minutes of our catastrophic meeting. Although by that stage it still hadn’t reached its colourful conclusion.
By the end of the night, with the beers all finished and spirits high, we had all pretty much agreed that ‘Time Flies’ would be the minnoWs’ first single, and that it would be released on the Good Vibes label. It was then, full of beer and not satisfied with having bitten the head off Bert, that I turned my attention to the band’s manager John.
‘John,’ I said, slowly and deliberately, ‘can I tell you something?’ There was a silence as he nodded. ‘John, you’re a cunt.’ Now, in my defence, I did follow that statement straight away with what I had intended to be a back-handed compliment – ‘But there are a million bigger cunts over there than you’ – but it was lost in the melee that ensued. In my own way, I had been trying to say that while most people who manage bands are just in it for one thing, the money, I had admired that Jo
hn was prepared to give his band the chance to record a single with no strings attached. So much for my compliment-giving ability! The band was pissing themselves laughing, John was demanding an apology, and I was doing my best to calm the situation down, which I managed to do … eventually.
‘Time Flies’ was released in March 1991, and to promote it I went to London armed with a batch of singles and handed them into various radio stations in person. When Radio One played it on their prime-time programmes every day for a week, the band was delighted. DJ Dave Lee Travis even went so far as to say that if the minnoWs weren’t signed by a major label, there was something seriously wrong with the music industry in Britain.
As it turned out, there must have been something seriously wrong with the music industry in Britain, as the guys weren’t signed, but ‘Time Flies’ was a huge success in Ireland nonetheless. Hot Press magazine said it was a ‘bona fide pop classic’.
A second single ‘Oh June’ followed that same year with similar success, and in 1992 they released The Love EP. I thought it got a great reception, even making it into the Top Twenty, but the band were disappointed as they felt it was somewhat lightweight.
Good Vibes enjoyed a fantastic couple of years working with the minnoWs, but there is one particular incident that sets my time with them apart. It was 1991 and we had just returned to Belfast having watched the band play the Rock Garden in Dublin as part of the Belfast Rocks Again tour (which, incidentally, also saw them play the legendary Mean Fiddler in London). We had been drinking all the way from Dublin and weren’t quite ready to call it a night, so the band, a number of friends and I headed to Lawrence Street, an eight-bedroom house in the Holylands to continue the party.