Hooleygan

by Terri Hooley

  A few weeks later I had forgotten all about ‘my new band’ until I called into the shop and Terri told me that we had our first gig booked. It was going to be in Reading and we had better start practising. No pressure there then!

  We arranged to hook up a few nights later back at the shop and when I got there, guitar in hand, we started to rehearse straight away. To my shock and surprise Terri had no timing, and was more the front man than the singer, but all that didn’t matter. Never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, Terri was more into telling me about his encounters with Them, Phil Spector, Neil Young, the Stones and so many other artists that I didn’t think my brain could take much more information. This was more than just a mere practice session, for me it became an education. Terri just kept on playing his favourite records, while I tried to take in as much information as I could, though I was failing miserably. I think we might have rehearsed about two songs that night over a seven-hour period.

  We carried on for a few weeks like this, with Terri spending his time playing more tunes on the record player than on the guitar; or else he would be at the mic with a brandy preaching to me, the converted, in a performance that Ian Paisley would have been proud of! But eventually we got to a point where we had six songs loosely put together.

  Now, with any other band I had played in, this would have only meant a twenty minute set, but I was dealing with Terri now after all! Allowing for his stories in between the songs meant that this gig was gonna go on for well over an hour. I couldn’t wait to get up on-stage with this mad one-eyed lunatic …

  Berlin

  It was 19 August 2002, almost seven years after Terri and I had first met. I had been up partying all night as it was my birthday the day before and Terri turned up in a taxi at The Point bar to bring me to Aldergrove Airport for our flight to Stansted – I was in top form for sure!

  It was there that I met the film-maker Roy Wallace for the first time, the legend that he is. He was coming with us to Berlin to shoot some footage for Big Time, his documentary on the Belfast punk scene. Also travelling with us was Rosie McMichael, who we had hired as a tour manager – I had only agreed to go to Berlin if we had someone there to keep Terri on his best behaviour. In the end, though, it was Roy who babysat us and got us all to Berlin in one piece!

  We arrived at the hotel at 10 p.m. and Rosie and Roy headed straight to their rooms for some sleep. Terri and I were sharing a room and, rather than going to bed, he wanted to take me out for a birthday dinner. We left the hotel and conversation immediately turned to getting some food and drugs.

  As Terri has always been ‘to the left’, so to speak, and since it was my birthday, I decided when we walked out of the hotel that we should go to the right for once. So, as soon as we came to a junction we turned right, then right, then right again and staring us straight in the puss was the most amazing African restaurant. Inside, we were met by a beautiful pregnant African woman and her husband. We both fell in love with the place immediately.

  Terri turned on the old Hooley charms and the lady made us the most delicious chicken dish I had ever tasted. I turned on the old Symington charms and her husband went off to get us some recreationals – result on the old Hooley/Symington charm all round then. What is it they say about taking the boys out of Belfast and all that?

  When the day of the gig came round we arrived at Kaffee Burger to find the bar already crammed with Terri’s followers. I knew that he had always been a legend in Belfast but this was Berlin and he was getting pawed left, right and centre – they were even pawing me simply because I was with him! It was uncomfortable and I couldn’t believe the love we were being shown – talk about feeling out of your depth – but that night we met some of the nicest and most beautiful people in the world.

  I am the most privileged man in the world to be able to count Terri as a true friend. He gave me a job when no one else would. He is the man with the biggest heart and glass eye in the whole of Ireland, and I owe him everything – he is my tutor, my mentor, my hero.

  ‘Hearts of Steel’ – Jonny Quinn

  For any music lover growing up in Northern Ireland, Terri Hooley is a bit of a legend. The man behind the Good Vibrations label, he’s known to us all as the ‘Godfather of Punk’. Not only that, but he seems to have been connected, in one way or another, to everything that’s ever happened in Northern Ireland music – he set up his own pirate radio station, he started the Belfast Reggae Club, he was the first guy to bring The Pogues over to Northern Ireland … he was always hugely passionate about music. During the seventies and eighties he fought hard to keep the Belfast music scene alive, facing down various paramilitary groups who’d demand protection money at gigs, because he always believed that music should cross all religious and political barriers. He had a shop in Belfast, also called Good Vibrations, and everyone would hang out there – punks, indie kids, bands – because this was when going to record shops was a social event.

  I had been in several bands before Snow Patrol and I used to go into the shop and ask him if we could be on his Good Vibes label. Every time I did, he would just smile and say, ‘I’ll sign you if I fancy your girlfriend …’ Of course, even though he never did sign up any of the bands I was in, that didn’t stop him from jumping up on-stage in the middle of our gigs, grabbing the mic and addressing the audience. He did this more times than I can count, and each time he had been completely uninvited.

  One day however he asked me to join his band, Hearts Of Steel, and told me that our first rehearsal was to be held in the shop one particular night, after he’d closed up. I turned up on the evening in question, ready to begin, only to find that there was no drum kit there for me to play. Instead Terri pointed to a box in the corner and said, ‘You can just play on that.’

  Of course, anyone who has ever been present at one of Terri’s ‘rehearsals’ will not be surprised to hear that we didn’t actually do any rehearsing in the end: the evening consisted of Terri simply playing records for a few hours until we all gave up and headed to The Crown Bar – or, as Terri calls it, his ‘office’ – to talk about music.

  He did book one recording session for the band though, at a little studio in the countryside, but for hours he just sat drinking brandy and telling stories as the studio filled with cigarette smoke. We’d already set up the gear and we knew that we’d have to make a start at some point, but as the night went on it became obvious that that just wasn’t going to happen – instead Terri just got more and more hammered and reeled out more and more stories. At one point he even said, ‘I don’t know why I’m here … I can’t sing.’ And we all thought, ‘But, er, you booked the session …’

  We started again the next day, with more booze, more fags and more stories, and eventually we had to push him into the live room to record. All the while he was saying, ‘I can’t sing in front of you guys, I’d be too embarrassed, it’ll be terrible.’ But he did it in the end – he turned away from us and read the lyrics from sheets of paper stuck to the walls.

  Surprisingly, the songs still turned out really well …

  Years later, when Snow Patrol were signed to an indie label, we were given three months off, and I was pretty skint, so I walked into Terri’s shop to ask if he needed anyone else to work there. ‘No,’ he said, ‘to be honest I already have too many employees and I’m losing money.’

  I was disappointed, but we carried on chatting about music anyway and, at the end of the conversation, as I was walking out the door, he turned around and said, ‘You start on Monday.’ Because that’s the sort of character he is, a guy who will help someone out even when it makes no sense to do so.

  And I can tell you, working in the shop was an experience. People would come from all over the world – England, Germany, America – just to chat to Terri. Famous people would also drop in when they were in Belfast, and they’d always leave clutching records. Terri would say to me, ‘You should never meet your heroes … but at the end of the day they’re paying custo
mers too.’

  Not that Terri has ever been that impressed by celebrity – as he showed when he punched John Lennon – though he has had several brushes with fame himself, not least of which was his Number One indie charts single, ‘Laugh at Me’. He always insisted that he only released that song to prove that anyone could have a Number One single, and it is pretty bad, to be honest – I have a copy of the single at home actually – but that’s not really the point, the point was that he did it.

  And that’s Terri you know, always doing stuff he believes in, whether anyone else gets it or not … When anybody else in his position would have left Belfast for greener pastures, he stuck it out. He always has and always will believe in Belfast and Northern Ireland. Punk was more than the hair and clothes, it was about attitude and no one has more attitude than Terri.

  Phoenix From the Flames

  Vintage Records was gone but I wasn’t about to let that beat me. In November 2002, even as the shit was hitting the fan for Vintage, I was preparing my next shop, Cathedral Records. It was located in North Street Arcade, a fantastic old building situated in the Cathedral Quarter area of the city – hence the name!

  The arcade was a listed, stylish building that had been built in 1936 during the Great Depression. Back then it had been the location of some of Belfast’s most exclusive shops, but in later years, as the northern edge of the city centre grew ever more run down, it became a bit more bohemian, home to a motley crew of artists, second-hand book shops and tattoo parlours. It was perfect! Now all I needed was the money.

  In stepped Andrew Thompson, a great friend of mine whom I had known from the seventies. He brought me to see the premises at North Street Arcade, and I had a good feeling about the place from the start. Andrew offered to help me with the rent in order to get me started and even bought me some stock. Without him I would never have been able to get back on my feet so soon.

  I moved all my stock in and as time went by I could really feel the old arcade come back to life. It wasn’t long before the other tenants and I began to build a wonderful community in that building. My friend Lesley Anderson asked if he could use the room I had upstairs to set up the Belfast Bohemian Collective, an art studio for performance artists, painters and other creative types. Bands would also often use the room upstairs to rehearse and some would even put on live music in the main arcade. My shop became a sort of commune – there were always people I knew hanging about – and all my mates from the days of the first shop in Great Victoria Street were still with me. As a result, we had some really excellent parties ­­and some nights we didn’t even go home.

  I remember one night in particular when me, Lesley, and another friend of mine, DJ Death Darren, found ourselves sitting in the store at six in the morning after yet another evening of drug abuse and partying. Lesley was due in work at 9 a.m. so we knew there was no point in going home. Instead, we all bedded down and I slept behind the counter. A few hours later we were wakened by a customer banging on the door. Unfortunately for him, I had taken out my glass eye before going to sleep and couldn’t find it! Instead, I had on a black eye patch – which I’ve always felt made me look a bit weird – and it was only when my glass eye was found jammed between a couple of albums that I returned to ‘normal’.

  There was no denying that the parties we had in our little arcade community were amazing, but unfortunately my business wasn’t doing as well as I had hoped it would. I had an incredible record collection, don’t get me wrong, but my store was just too far out of the way so we just weren’t making any money. In business terms, Cathedral Records was probably the worst of all my shops to date – though the parties went a long way to make up for that!

  My first store may have been long gone, but on 13 August 2003 the people of Belfast showed me that it had not been forgotten – I was asked by the Regional Development Board to plant a tree on Great Victoria Street, just in front of where the original building once stood. The board had used the press to ask the public who they thought deserved the honour and my name came out on top. They had previously asked people like Cliff Richard, Alex Higgins and Seamus Heaney to participate in the scheme, but I was the first person to be nominated by the public, and that meant a lot. I took Michael along that day – it was a very humbling experience. It touched me to see just how much people cared for Good Vibrations.

  Sadly, things were not going so well in my private life. My hectic lifestyle had finally taken its toll on my relationship with Eithne and it was clear we weren’t going to stick the pace. We had been a couple for more than twenty years, but we lived quite separate lives. I had my music, and she loved her sports, devoting a lot of her time to camogie and football – she even played for the Northern Ireland Women’s Football Team. In time, our relationship changed into a close friendship, and in some ways she has become the sister I never had. I still love that girl to bits.

  We both decided that perhaps the best thing for me to do was to move out of the house. However, I needed time to sort out somewhere to live and while I was prepared to stay in the shop it was hardly a long-term solution. So we compromised – I would move my belongings into the shop and out of the house, but I would stay at Eithne’s until I found somewhere else. So one weekend in March 2004, while Eithne was in Donegal I loaded up most of my possessions and brought them down to the arcade.

  Three weeks later I was still at Eithne’s but I wasn’t worried, I knew I’d sort myself out eventually. It was Saturday 17 April 2004 and I was due to act as compere for the ‘Maritime Reunion’, an evening of music organised to commemorate ‘The Maritime Session’, a legendary event that used to take place every week in Belfast in the long-demolished Maritime Hotel. Throughout the sixties, many of the city’s greatest talents – including Them, and the superb Sam Mahood – took to the stage there and the place was packed to the doors with people clamouring to hear some of our best bands. However, like almost everything else in this town, ‘The Maritime Session’ soon fell victim to the Troubles, as acts became ever more reluctant to travel to Belfast, while the hotel’s location – close to the bottom of the Falls Road and a stone’s throw from the Shankill – made customers even rarer than rock stars!

  But times had changed since then, and some of the old artists, including showband stars like Frankie Connolly and ex-Them legend Billy Harrison, had decided to put on a night at the Empire bar in south Belfast to celebrate the Maritime and its musical history. It was a real honour for me to have been asked to compere as I had been barred all those years ago from the hotel for making political speeches and I was eager to do the old place proud.

  I’d been off the drink for two weeks and before I went out that night I made a big bottle of orange cordial to see me through the night, though I remember that Eithne had little faith in my ability to stay dry. ‘You will find an excuse to drink tonight,’ she said, ‘I know you will.’ But I was determined not to drink and so, even when I saw that all my friends from the sixties were there, and even though people were smoking dope and offering to buy me drinks all night, I resisted. I can’t think of any other occasion in my life when I turned down a free spliff or a glass of brandy!

  Despite the lack of artificial stimulants however, I was thoroughly enjoying the night and I remember getting up shortly before 10 p.m. to introduce Billy Harrison on-stage. This done, I headed outside for a fag and swig of orange juice just as my mobile phone vibrated into life. It was my mate Biggy Bigmore – his real name is something of a mystery, even his family know him as Biggy! – who operated a recording studio and organised rehearsal sessions for bands in the arcade where I had my shop.

  ‘The arcade’s on fire,’ he said, ‘It’s all gone.’

  I couldn’t quite take it in, ‘What do you mean it’s all gone?’ I asked, ‘What part of the arcade is on fire?’

  The moment he replied, ‘All of it,’ my heart stopped. What if someone had been hurt? Bands would often use the soundproofed rehearsal rooms on a Saturday night and Lesley Anderson had a
habit of bunking down in the shop after a day spent drinking – many a time I would pop over from The John Hewitt pub across the road to get some tobacco, only for Lesley to pop up from behind the counter and scare the shit out of me. And Anita, an artist who ran a business called The World Turned Round, would quite often spend all night working in her own shop – what if something had happened to them?

  I made my way back inside where I met Frankie Connolly, who was due to go on-stage. I told him that the arcade was on fire and that my shop was gone – I was still in shock. But I still had a job to do, and in my confused state I thought it best to carry on. I don’t know why I didn’t just leave straight away – I suppose I was thinking, ‘What’s the point? There’s nothing I can do and the show must go on.’ I’m proud to say that, before I left I gave Frankie the best introduction he ever had.

  I called myself a taxi soon after, but even before I made my way round to the arcade, I knew I had lost everything.

  When we got there, the taxi driver wouldn’t take any money. ‘Good luck Terri,’ he said. I barely heard him – the sight that greeted me when I turned into Donegall Street left me breathless. I headed straight to The John Hewitt bar, keeping my head down and tripping over fire hoses the whole way. I marched up to the bar, ordered a pint of Guinness and a brandy – all the while thinking, ‘sorry Eithne’ – and it was only then that I dared look across the street. All I could see, past the fire engines lining the street, were flames climbing into the sky.

  ‘Could anyone still be in there?’ I wondered. I asked around and discovered that a band had left the building a mere twenty minutes before the fire started, but that no one else was suspected to be inside. My friends were safe, and now there was nothing else I could do but have a few more drinks and go home.