Independence Days

by Alex; Ogg

  A demonstration of the naivete of the exercise can still be seen on the label credits. Young: “I remember when we were designing the label we simply copied what was on other 45s and so put ‘permissive songs’ as a publishing credit – which didn’t ever exist. In fact none of us (including Terri) even knew then that there was such a thing as publishing. We only discovered that a few years later when Pete Waterman signed us to a publishing contact with Leeds Music. He was horrified and assumed we’d been ripped off by Good Vibes. We had to reassure him none of us had a clue what we were doing at the time.”

  Hooley relished being at the hub of the phenomenon. He immersed himself in the local music scene, DJing between bands, joining the Harp Bar committee as well as distributing a regular leaflet with gig and release news and, later, helping to found a Punk Workshop. The latter helped to get mainland bands such as The Nips and The Fall to visit, but later flagged when it became a committee-based exercise. “The Punk Workshop was just a name I wanted to use for the Harp bar,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to do just gigs, but do other things at the time, running reggae discos and so on. I wanted to call it something strange. I talked to friends and people involved in Good Vibes that were helping me. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing half the time, and there was no point talking to bands, because they had no sense. They were only interested in talking about their band, none of the wider things – and that’s still the case with some of them!”

  He also had significant obstacles to overcome. So stagnant had Northern Ireland’s showband dominated music scene become, that no pressing plant was available in Ulster, meaning pressings had to be shipped from either Dublin or London. Fold-out poster sleeves – which looked cheap even in the current climate – were usually hand-assembled by the bands. No contracts were signed by any of the acts, and the majority of the singles were recorded at the cheap Wizard Studios facility run out of a converted disused clothing factory in Belfast. Eventually the underdog’s constant ally, John Peel, played ‘Big Time’ when everyone else on the mainland ignored it (Hooley had sent copies to record labels in a wholly benevolent attempt to secure them a ‘proper’ recording contract). Without doubt it would be the release that put Good Vibrations on the map.

  The label documented all the early local bands; Rudi, Victim and The Outcasts, before the release that would ensure Good Vibrations’ place in posterity. It came not from Belfast, though, but from Derry’s Undertones. Recorded on 16th June 1978, the ‘Teenage Kicks’ EP resulted roughly from two parts accident to one part design. In truth, the band had been on the brink of breaking up prior to its release. They’d also only persuaded their errant vocalist to rejoin so they’d leave behind something to remind everyone that Derry really did have a punk band back in the day. ‘Teenage Kicks’ wasn’t even intended to be the lead track, either.

  The connection came through Hooley’s friend, Bernie McAnaly. “His brother Sammy worked for a TV company called Radio Rentals,” remembers ‘Teenage Kicks’ author John O’Neill. “That’s who my brother Vincent and Feargal [Sharkey] worked for at the time. Bernie’s brother heard that we were looking to try to make a record. So he told his brother, Bernie, if he could help out.”

  Bass player Michael Bradley takes up the story. “Sammy had the Radio Rentals van when Feargal wasn’t using it, so Sammy would have given us lifts with the gear up to the Casbah. So we made the demo tape that was rejected by Stiff, Chiswick and Radar – it must have been Feargal who gave it to Bernie via Sammy. We knew Good Vibrations was happening because we’d heard [Rudi’s] ‘Big Time’ on John Peel, and read a little bit about it. So we felt a wee bit left out. Bernie gave the cassette to Terri Hooley. Terri has said on more than one occasion that he never actually listened to it. But he was asked so many times about it by Bernie that he says he remembers walking across a zebra crossing in Belfast and going ‘Aye, OK, tell them OK’. News came back down to us via Bernie, and Bernie drove us up there. That’s how Terri got the tape. Terri wasn’t an A&R man, really. He did see a couple of bands. But he just decided – this band should make a record. He may have thought, because we were from Derry, it would be good to do a band from outside Belfast. But he gave us the go ahead, and it was all organised for June, and he put up the money for it.”

  “Up until then,” O’Neill continues, “all the Good Vibrations bands were from Belfast. I remember when we went up to Belfast the day before recording it, we were playing at a concert with all the other Belfast bands. I remember thinking that night, I’m not sure how good we are, but we’re at least as good or better than the other Belfast bands. That made us confident going in to record the record the next day.” The single was intended as a memorial more than a launching pad for a pop career. “We obviously didn’t expect anything like the reaction the record got. We had been playing for maybe a year, and a year may not sound like a long time, but at that age, a year is like a lifetime almost. And we had got to the stage where we thought we were just banging our heads against a brick wall. We thought well, at least we’ll put a record out to prove there was a punk band that existed in Derry at the time, some kind of document to prove we did exist.”

  “The Undertones always had a bit of chip on their shoulder about the Belfast bands,” notes Young. “Quite understandably too, as they had been playing for at least as long as any of the Belfast bands yet been relatively overlooked by most all of the local zines which were Belfast based and raved mostly about local Belfast talent. Historically too, there has always been a rivalry between people from Belfast/Derry and some folks here definitely saw them as ‘hicks from the sticks’. In hindsight, it gave them a real sense of purpose. When they played the Battle Of The Bands, where the rest of the line-up was all the smug Belfast bands who hung around Good Vibes (including Rudi) I guess they saw this as a chance to show everyone who was boss. I remember them setting up that afternoon and sound-checking and we were all laughing at this geeky roadie they had who was wearing crappy plastic sunglasses and PVC strides. Then they started playing and the geeky roadie started singing and we all realised immediately that they were good, very good.”

  The Undertones had agreed that their best song was ‘True Confessions’, but then relented on the title. “We called it the ‘Teenage Kicks’ EP because obviously we were teenagers,” explains O’Neill, “and it just had a good ring about it – the ‘True Confessions’ EP wouldn’t have been as good. I still don’t think, even when we played the song live then, it stood out any more than any other song. We obviously thought it was one of our best songs to put it on the EP. But we thought ‘True Confessions’ was the best song on the record. It just made sense, after calling it the ‘Teenage Kicks’ EP, to put it first on the record. That’s the only reason I think it was chosen. Our blueprint was the ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP by Buzzcocks. That’s why we chose to do an EP. There were four songs on that, so that was all we were thinking of – the four songs to be taken together as an example of what we were like, not one particular song.” In fact, there are also similarities in cover design between the two records. “We probably stole that idea as well,” laughs O’Neill.

  In order to get to that point, they had to persuade Feargal to return to the band. “Aye,” recalls Bradley. “I remember phoning him from the O’Neills house, which was the centre of operations. I definitely remember saying, listen, just make the record. And he said all right. I still can’t remember what the argument was about. God, we had so many fights and leavings. To-ings and Fro-ings.” And they never did find out who wrote the derogatory local graffiti immortalised on the cover: ‘The Undertones are shit pish counts wankers.’ “It could have been anyone, to be honest,” notes John O’Neill. “At the time, punk wasn’t that well known in Derry. We had a core following of 50 people or so, and friends, but apart from that we were treated with a lot of suspicion. And there was nobody really playing any music the way we were. So there was a lot of antipathy against us too.” “Usually in Derry,” Bradley points out, “about 30 peop
le would come forward and claim that. But no-one has. I think it’s because they can’t spell cunts right. Who would own up to that?”

  John Peel, meanwhile, was utterly entranced. But he wasn’t the only one. Seymour Stein had a similar moment of revelation when he heard the DJ play it on his show. “I was going down to see the Searchers play. Something came up a couple of times where I couldn’t. I had the most horrific headache that day. I said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t get out of it a third time.’ We’re on the road down to wherever they were playing, a south coast seaside town. Paul McNally was working for me at the time, and we’re listening to John Peel. All of a sudden this record comes on. And I screamed, ‘Pull over, pull over, stop the car!’ He thought it was something to do with my headache. ‘Are you all right? Do you want to go to the hospital?” He turned white as a ghost. I said ‘No, it’s this record, it’s fantastic!’ God bless him, John Peel played it over and over that night. And he gave out all the details. And I said, ‘I’ve got to sign this band, they are fucking amazing!’ I said to Paul, ‘Look, my name is Stein, yours is McNally. Don’t you think it’s better that you go to Northern Ireland?’ He did. And he was so impressed when he went to Feargal’s house. In Feargal’s front room there were all these awards that Feargal had got in Catholic school for winning singing contests.”

  It became apparent that The Undertones would not be Good Vibrations recording artists for very much longer. Hooley made no attempt to stand in their way. “At the time,” notes Bradley, “he would have been perfectly within his rights to say, listen, I own the copyright to ‘Teenage Kicks’, so any deal you do with Sire, I should have a percentage of that. He would have been 100% entitled. And he didn’t. ‘Away you go, good luck to you!’ He still jokes with me, I see him quite regularly. He says he’s discovered a legal document, which shows that he owns the copyright to ‘True Confessions’! And we’re going to be hearing from his solicitor! But he doesn’t mean it.”

  The deal negotiated with Sire saw a delegation – Bradley and Sharkey – despatched to London, with the rest of the band waiting by the telephone at O’Neill central. Why those two? “I was the smartest!” laughs Bradley. “In terms of O-Levels! But I would be completely and utterly financially incompetent. Feargal because he would have been seen as being the hardest-headed. He wouldn’t have been afraid to put the case of the band forward. Whereas the others would have been too self-effacing. That’s interesting – why me and Feargal? Maybe to keep an eye on Feargal (LAUGHS). I always make comparisons with 1920 and Michael Collins, when they went over to London to negotiate. It reminds me of that. Because John and Damian and Billy were back home. They had the veto to a certain extent. I remember being on the phone in this flat in London. And it was like those Michael Collins treaty negotiations. I would be the representative, in hostile territory. Billy [Doherty] and John from the safety of the O’Neill’s house – ‘The Rich Kids got more!’ And I had to cup my hand over the phone and say to Seymour, ‘We’d like more money!’ And that kind of wee New York Jewish voice went – ahhhhhhhhh! I think he did give us more money, but he was probably going from a very low base anyway. He knew he wasn’t dealing with Alan Klein here. These are boys who would have taken a couple of planks of wood and a mirror.”

  Good Vibrations went on to issue several more singles, including notable ones by Ruefrex, Protex and The Outcasts (who also released the label’s first album), and an entirely ridiculous artefact featuring Hooley himself on vocals. The musical vocabulary of the label’s output was distinctive, too. These releases were effectively pop-punk affairs, rich on hooks and melody, without the self-referencing that labels such as Fast, Postcard, Factory or Rough Trade embraced.

  Brian Young still bemoans the conditions of production, however. “The fastest selling Good Vibes 45 post ‘Teenage Kicks’ was ‘I Spy’ by Rudi. It should have done much better than it did but was crippled by a truly tragic production by Davy at Wizard studios. After ‘Big Time’, Terri arranged most of the Good Vibes recordings via Wizard studios. That was fine for the Undertones who were tight and knew what they were at, but not so fine for everybody else. What Good Vibes sorely lacked was a competent producer with vision and imagination who would both encourage and motivate the local acts into making the best goddamn records they could and which they could be proud of – a local Martin Hannett/Martin Rushent/Nick Lowe/Vic Maile if you will? Instead, we had to make do with a guy who owned a string of hippy shops selling platforms and satin flares who mostly used the studio to record demos for his own showband circuit combos. The bands most certainly had the material – but Wizard’s lamentable production jobs steered far too many potentially great records straight into the dumper. But they were the only studio in the centre of Belfast who would let Terri run up a tab.”

  After signing Leamington Spa’s Shapes, Hooley also opened up a Good Vibrations International franchise. “That was a piss take,” he acknowledges. “In the 60s, you had Pye International, but it was just a piss-take. At that time we were getting demos from people all over the world, with no money to put anything out. I remember years later, clearing out Good Vibrations, and finding this tape of a band from Dublin that Sinead O’Connor was fronting at the time, In Tua Nua. One time we almost put out a record with Glen Matlock. He’d put it out in England and it hadn’t sold, but it did well in Good Vibes, so we talked about putting it out as a green vinyl release. But in the end I didn’t get on with his manager.”

  Hooley also did his best to help the Good Vibes bands get on. “One apocryphal tale that is true from later on,” adds Young, “was when Terri was over trying to get a deal for some of the bands with Polydor. They offered him the grand total of, I think, £6,000 for Rudi, Protex and Xdreamysts – but insisted Rudi would have to sack our drummer, who was a ‘madman’. We refused and the other two bands were signed up. We reckoned we had a lucky escape after what we saw them do to both bands.

  However, cash flow problems – specifically late or non-payment by distributors – would lead to Good Vibrations’ bankruptcy in 1983. Within a year Hooley had managed to square the debts and resurrect both the shop, which eventually relocated across the street, and label. But effectively, the moment had been lost. Hooley would continue to trade in records at various premises. The label stumbled on too, reviving in the early 90s and releasing one of Hooley’s favourite singles, ‘Time Flies’ by Tiberius Minnows, with whom he is still currently working, plus records by PBR Streetgang and Four Idle Hands.

  The beauty of Good Vibrations and the Ulster punk scene was that sectarian politics, which dominated the province’s outward image, were set aside. Hence the roster accommodated both the Undertones, a band from a strong republican background who, initially at least, refused to be drawn into any discussion of the Troubles, and outspoken Shankhill Road Protestants Ruefrex. In many ways, Northern Ireland caught punk in its purest sense, and its participants’ unwillingness to compromise that ideal can be seen as a small part of the building of consensus that has restored peace to Northern Ireland. “Good Vibrations was like a ray of sunshine,” notes Guy Trelford, “cutting through the dark grey that shrouded the moribund city of Belfast in much troubled times. It offered hope, gave inspiration and a sense of optimism to the nation’s morose youth. But above all else it gave us Rudi, Undertones, Outcasts, Ruefrex, Victim, Protex, Moondogs.”

  “Belfast was a ghost town at night,” Hooley recalls of the pre-punk city. “It was the only city in Europe where people didn’t use the city centre.” But he’s wary of overstating how much those relationships helped bring peace to the province. “I don’t know about that. Jesus Christ, I was set upon so many times. It’s nine years since anyone tried to kill me.” A not insubstantial peace dividend, you might have thought. “I suppose. I was practically beaten to death nine years ago, I couldn’t walk for two weeks. There was a band here way back called Offensive Weapon, a National Front band, and Johnny Adair (i.e. loyalist Mad Dog Adair) was in the band. I got them banned from every gig h
ere, and I think it was because of that, and Johnny Adair was back on the streets again and took a dislike to me.” He has no hesitation about putting that in print. “No, I’m bringing out a book next year, and it’ll be in that!” There’s also a movie about to be made about his life. “People always ask about the film, and I say, yeah, it’ll last three and a half minutes too.” Ah, just like all those breezy Good Vibrations singles. Who would he like to play him? “I don’t give a shit, as long as they’re tall, dark, handsome, and hung like a donkey.”

  Ruefrex’s drummer Paul Burgess would face attacks from both sides due to his outspoken lyrics. He’s also a good source for pricking any over-inflated claims about the role punk played in the peace process. “Ruefrex never enjoyed the kind of cosy relationship other Northern Irish bands had with Terri Hooley and Good Vibrations,” he reflects. “The camaraderie often cited by Rudi, The Outcasts and a variety of Harp Bar flotsam and jetsam who hung around the place was relatively unknown to us. And to my mind, the claims that Good Vibes set out to be some engine of reconciliation and an oasis of non-sectarian fraternity is little short of revisionist nonsense. If Good Vibes came close to providing any of these things, it was because a loose affiliation of non-conformists and agitators adopted the shop as the focal point for Belfast punk – not the other way around. For some, there was definitely an alternative ‘Youth Club’ vibe to the place, where kids could hang out all day, posing in their leathers and pins, flicking through record sleeves, and listening to the latest cuts. And in that regard, the place certainly served a purpose. But for anyone in a Belfast band at the time, the primary function of ‘this ‘ol hippy’ and his beloved shop was his willingness and aptitude for releasing the records of local bands and getting them airplay. This big, camp, one-eyed space cadet made all that possible, God bless him! And if any legacy be required, surely that’s enough.”