Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  At around 4.30 a.m., as lead singer Michael Rafferty, bassist Kevin Carson, John Henry and I sat in the living room still drinking, there were a few loud knocks on the front door. John went out to answer it but as soon as he opened the door, two men forcefully pushed their way in. John fled upstairs while one of the men slammed the living room door shut and held it closed by the handle, leaving me, Kevin and Raff locked in the room. We tried the handle.

  ‘Get away from the fuckin’ door or we’ll shoot you through it,’ the voice on the other side shouted. Naturally we obeyed. There had been a lot of sectarian shootings in Northern Ireland around this time so we weren’t going to take any chances. Besides, we were totally out of our collective trees and hadn’t a clue what was happening. It was then that we heard a commotion upstairs. The band’s drummer Stephen O’Sullivan had been coming back downstairs when John had fled past him and locked himself in a bedroom. One of the thugs had followed but, meeting Stevie on the stairs, attacked him instead. Stevie, with the advantage of being on a higher stair, kicked him off but the bastard dusted himself down and started coming back at him.

  Stevie ran back upstairs, and started banging on the door of the bedroom John was hiding in, shouting, ‘John! John, let me in, let me in! Let me in for fuck’s sake!’ but the door was locked and by all accounts John was hiding behind the bed. The guy was still attacking Stevie, and he was kicking him back, banging the door and shouting to get into the bedroom.

  The shouting became louder, until it was almost screaming, and the banging was deafening. Meanwhile, downstairs, we were in a real state. ‘What the fuck is happening up there? What the fuck will we do?’ There were no mobile phones so we couldn’t call the police from where we were. The house phone was in the hall, but our friend was still guarding the door and threatening to shoot us if we came near it. I decided to take the lead – it’s amazing how brave you get after a skinfull of booze and some serious drugs.

  ‘Your friend is getting killed up there!’ I shouted to Michael and Kevin, ‘Are you going to sit back and let your best friend get killed?’ I grabbed a guitar and rallied the troops, ‘Are you with me?’ I shouted, and smashed my way through the bay window at the front of the house.

  Once it was demolished we three intrepid heroes, armed with an upside down electric guitar, slowly stepped out into the street, being careful not to cut ourselves to pieces on the jagged shards of glass that surrounded our exit. As we straightened ourselves in the street and made for the front door, we were greeted by the welcome sight of our two assailants running up the street, away from the house. The police arrived shortly afterwards, undoubtedly notified by the neighbours. If only they had arrived earlier, it would have saved us a lot of stress, but then we wouldn’t have this story to tell.

  To this day I have no idea what it was all about – I suspect they were opportunists looking for drink or drugs, or else money to buy drink or drugs – but I think John Henry is still hiding behind the bed. When the band released their first album in 1996 and entitled it Holyland, I thought it was a fitting tribute.

  We continued to record music, and over the next few years Good Vibes released material from other bands such as Four Idle Hands, The Mighty Fall – with a certain Jonny Quinn, now of Snow Patrol, on drums – and PBR Streetgang. There were a lot of good bands out there during the nineties and I’m proud of the great records that came out on the label at the time.

  By the nineties the process of recording a record was a little different to when we first started out. Then we hadn’t a clue how to do it properly, the bands would just go into the studio and belt out the songs as they would have done on-stage – they simply played the song. During the nineties, we had access to better producers who knew how to maximise the sound, and they got the bands to lay down tracks in layers – vocals, harmony, guitar, drums were all recorded separately and set down on top of each other. It made for a richer production, rather than the slightly tinny, shallow sound of the early Good Vibrations records – although in many ways, I believe this is what makes the early stuff so special.

  Of course, the format had ‘evolved’ from those days of vinyl records and bands were now putting their stuff out on CDs instead. Now, I like CDs … I sell CDs … but I have always lamented the demise of vinyl. For me there is nothing quite like getting a new album, sliding it out of its sleeve, sticking it onto the record player and sitting back to read the sleeve notes. Thankfully, the format has made a bit of a comeback in recent years, but at the same time, we now have downloads to contend with. Nowadays people know the songs they listen to, but not the bands performing them, it’s a real shame.

  Of course, by this stage, the punk era was well and truly over. The world had moved on and, while the influence of that time still resonates to this day, we had entered a new age for music. The sound had changed but, I’m sorry to say, the industry had not – we still had the same problem of getting our bands seen by record company A&R men. We could never entice them to come to Belfast and so, more often than not, we had to bring our music to them. This was pretty frustrating for us, especially as I remember hearing that seventy talent scouts flew over for the Cork Music Festival in 1989 just to see The Cranberries, while we could barely get one to come to Belfast. I decided to take action, and in 1990 I set up the three-day Belfast Rocks Again Festival at the Limelight. We did this for three years in a row and, during that time, we showcased bands like Four Idle Hands – whose single ‘99 Streets’ was released on Good Vibrations in 1990 – alongside other Irish acts like The Divine Comedy, Therapy?, Ghost of an American Airman and Ashanti, but even then we couldn’t attract the attention of the big record companies. It was pretty disappointing. Thankfully, many of the acts on the bill did eventually get signed up by major labels. I’m quite proud to think that, however small, we had a hand in that.

  Thursday, I Think

  In early 1993, Warner Brothers, in their wisdom, approached me to ask if I would be interested in writing a poetry album for them. The idea was for me to recite songs as poems – the sung word spoken! – a bit like Bob Dylan. There would be a musical accompaniment and I would read original material that they wanted to commission from me. I accepted, pitched them the title, Belfast, Beirut and Berlin: Three Divided Cities and, for that little gem, they gave me an advance of £5,000.

  I had developed a good relationship with Warner Brothers over the years, having met a guy called John Gustaffson in London during the 1960s. We were both hippies and he was part of the London scene so our paths crossed a few times. I remember that he had a house full of records, but he didn’t own a record player so had nothing to play them on. I don’t know why that was but I always thought it a little strange. He wasn’t involved in the music industry then, but in the seventies he got a job with Warner Brothers and was tasked with setting up a panel of people – some in America, others in Europe and the UK – to give advice on tracks that would make good single releases.

  John approached me to be a part of this panel and Warner Brothers frequently sent me album tracks by some of their recording artists to select the ones I thought would make good singles. I remember in 1982 recommending Laura Branigan’s ‘Gloria’ – which would go on to become a worldwide smash – but they probably already had their eyes on that one! I wasn’t paid for it, but every now and then they would fly me to London and wine and dine me for a couple of days, which suited me.

  Anyway, I decided that I would use the advance money they had given me to get away from Belfast and work on the album. I was given carte blanche to choose anywhere in the world, and believe it or not, initially I thought of Donegal! I had spent a few days in Ramelton in Donegal just after hearing about the album, and while there I had bumped into Arty McGlynn, a fantastic traditional Irish musician from Omagh. I told him about the album and I was delighted when he offered to play on it. I came back to Belfast where I happened to meet Liam Ó Maonlaí from Hothouse Flowers, a fantastic rock band from Dublin who were doing a gig in Belfast’s D
uke of York bar. When he too offered to play on the album I was over the moon. I thought Warner Brothers would be really impressed with my networking skills. But it was the exact opposite. They said they wanted the album to be made with the help of my mates, not established stars, that it would be too much hassle to get them released from their record labels to work with me.

  After all that I realised that, if I went back to Donegal, I would get no work done – I knew too many people there and there were too many pubs! – and so, in the end, I chose St Lucia as my destination. Warner Brothers will never know just what they did for me by enabling me to go there – I had the time of my life! The music was astonishing and, before I saw it for myself, I could never have imagined that there was a place as beautiful as Rodney Bay on this planet. There was a lot of beer, hash and parties of course, but what I remember most is the people.

  I got chatting to a man called Carlton who insisted that he had met me before. He told me that he had been a student in Dublin, but had been going out with a girl from the Falls Road. Apparently, they used to go to a bar in town called The Spanish Rooms and he swore blind that it was there that we met and that I used to ply him with cider. I have no recollection of plying anybody with cider in The Spanish Rooms – apart from the odd lady of course – so I had to take his word for it. I asked him if he could get any grass and when he came back he had three big silver balls, each about the size of a football, and all full of grass. ‘They’re all for you,’ he said, ‘that’s for the cider in The Spanish Rooms.’

  When I got back to the room, Eithne looked at me and said, ‘You’re stoned!’ –she couldn’t believe her eyes when I showed her what I had. I didn’t know what to do with them, there was too much even for me, and in the end I actually stashed a couple of them outside the hotel! I even had to pay the maid in the hotel not to come and clean the room. So instead of sitting in my room writing all this stuff for Warner Brothers, I sat there watching TV and getting stoned instead!

  But I did get chatting to quite a few of the locals who recommended that I make a trip to Kastisse, the capital, and visit a club where Gregory Isaacs and Denis Brown had played. It was incredible.

  And word of my interest in the old music was getting around. The next day I got a call from reception to tell me there were people in the lobby asking for me, wanting to take me on a tour of the island. I agreed of course, and soon earned the nickname, ‘Belfast Terri’. I had a wonderful day, which ended with me being brought to a festival in the hills. There were guys playing dominoes, gallons of Red Stripe beer to be drunk and, of course, tonnes of hash to be smoked. I was coming to the end of my trip and I still had two balls full of the stuff Carlton had given me, so I was dishing it out hand over fist! By the end of my trip there was even a woman selling ‘I’ve partied with Belfast Terri’ t-shirts! By the time I left the island I felt more St Lucian than the St Lucians. In an ideal world I would like to retire there, it is the only place on earth I would leave Belfast for.

  Not surprisingly, when I returned from the Caribbean I did so empty-handed – I had been far too busy enjoying myself to do any real work! – and the only writing Warner Brothers ever got for their £5,000 was a postcard from Rodney Bay with the words ‘Thursday, I think’ scrawled on it. The words are taken from J.D. Salinger’s novel Franny and Zooey, but I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote them. To be fair to Warner Brothers, they never actually asked me to repay the money, though I was summoned to a meeting in a plush Park Lane hotel in London to discuss the project. In the end we just agreed – over a few bottles of wine – that we would write the whole thing off, which was just as well as there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of them getting that money back!

  But it was back to reality for me, back to working round the clock at Good Vibrations. What a downer after St Lucia. I felt so low. I tried to get back into some sort of routine, and whenever I wasn’t at the shop I headed to the pub or to a party to try to cheer myself up. One evening in particular, I went down to the Rotterdam Bar in the docks area of Belfast and stayed late into the night.

  The next morning I got up and didn’t really feel the best but, putting it down to a hangover, I caught the bus to the city centre and headed for the shop. I had only travelled a short distance when I started to feel pains in my arms and chest, it was then that I figured I should go home. When I got through the door I made myself a cup of tea to help settle my nerves a bit, but instead of diminishing, the pain was getting steadily worse. Then it hit me – I was having a heart attack.

  I managed to stay on my feet but the pain was incredible. I knew I needed to call the hospital. I picked up the phone, rang Belfast City Hospital and said, ‘I’m having a heart attack here.’ I expected them to leap into action, to tell me an ambulance was on its way and that I would be OK. Instead they replied, ‘You have to phone the Royal!’ I couldn’t believe my ears – hadn’t they understood me? I tried again, ‘Listen, I’m having a fuckin’ heart attack,’ but they only responded by offering to give me the Royal Victoria Hospital’s phone number! I hung up and dialled 999.

  As I waited for the ambulance to arrive I began to assess my life – I wasn’t scared, I felt ready to go. I don’t mean to be flippant, but I can genuinely say that, at forty-five, I really thought I had done it all. I would have had no complaints if the Big Man in the sky had called me home right then. I remember thinking at the time that if there is a God there was still a good chance I would get into heaven – I’ve done more good things than bad over the years. Maybe I was still stoned from St Lucia.

  My only regret would have been that I’d never got the chance to tell the people in my life how I felt about them. Though when I say ‘the people in my life’, I don’t mean the people I loved, they already knew how I felt about them, but rather the people who had let me down in my life. I won’t mention any names, but I remember thinking that I might not get the chance to speak to those bastards again. So I called a few people and told them I was having a heart attack and that I was in no mood to forgive them for what they had done to me during my life! I was very calm and I must admit it felt very liberating to be able to say those things. Of course, the very people I rang were among those who flew over from London and further afield to visit me in hospital.

  Once that was done, I suddenly felt very composed and knew I needed to call Eithne and tell her what was happening. I hadn’t wanted to scare her, and I think I sounded reasonably calm, despite being in incredible pain – I’d experienced nothing like it ever before. The ambulance seemed to take an age to come, and by the time I eventually arrived at the hospital to be met by Eithne – who actually worked in the Royal at the time – she looked more worried than I was, so I put out my hand and asked if she was OK.

  When they got me settled on the ward they were able to tell me that I had suffered a massive heart attack, that I was lucky to have survived and that I should consider it a warning that I couldn’t continue living the sort of lifestyle I had enjoyed for so many years. And looking back I can see the strain I was putting on my body – I was drinking too much, smoking like a train, taking drugs and I never did any exercise – but we all think we are invincible and I was no different. It was a warning that went in one ear and straight out the other.

  My arrival at the Royal sparked ten days of fun and madness and I had a lot of visitors. Jim Cusack and Mervyn Crawford, who were great friends of mine, and Joby Fox from The Bankrobbers came most days and there were always people standing at my bed. It got so loud at times that staff had to warn me that unless my visitors calmed down and toned down their language they would be refused entry. One day the lads suggested I put on my Dracula cloak and run screaming through the ward at about three in the morning and then we would see who really had a bad heart! It was just a really funny time.

  In the bed next to me was a really big man, a loyalist with ‘I hate fenians’ tattooed on his arm. He assumed I was a Prod and we sort of got on all right until one day a nun arrived at my be
dside, got the holy water out and started blessing me. I thought he was going to have another heart attack! He hardly spoke to me after that, which suited me as I didn’t have much in common with him.

  The day I got out of hospital, with warnings about no drinking or smoking still ringing in my ears, we called in to see friends of ours who lived close to the hospital. Within ten minutes I was smoking a joint – so much for a new lifestyle. They say that coming so close to death should be a life-changing experience, but not for me. If anything it made me more determined to live life to the full and I haven’t looked back. Of course, I recognise what a trauma it was for my family but I really just put it down to another little obstacle on the path of life, you get over it and move on. It’s funny, Nigel Martin who used to be my guitarist suffered a stroke a while back and he got the same warnings about changing his behaviour, but he said he wanted to recover the Hooley way!

  The one positive thing the heart attack did for me was to light a fire under me work-wise. When I got back on my feet I decided that I wanted something bigger than working for someone else. By that stage Eamonn McWiliams no longer owned the business, having sold it all to an accountant called Abraham Titus a few years before. It had seemed to me at the time that an accountant for an owner would be no bad thing – it was what I had been lacking all those years – but Titus was all wrong for Good Vibrations. I had very little contact with him – at times I felt that he was completely ignoring me. It was clear that there were problems and my heart attack only served as an excuse to pull the shutters down, and shut up shop. I don’t really know what happened to Mr Titus after that.

  Naturally, I came up with the idea of opening another record shop of my own – the fact that I was an undischarged bankrupt was a minor detail. The most important thing for me was having my own store, it didn’t matter if it was making money or not and, to be honest, it was the only way people could ever find me! So Eamonn McWilliams stepped in to help me once more. Together we sourced the premises and he was a great practical help in getting me to a position where we could move in. Finally I owned my own store again!