Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem, Good Vibrations

by Terri Hooley, Richard Sullivan

Overview

‘A drunken lunatic, a lucid guru, a hilarious storyteller and many more things besides.’ Gary Lightbody (Snow Patrol)

An influential music promoter and producer, Terri Hooley is the undisputed Godfather of Punk. His life has been colorful and extraordinary and was the inspiration for the recent Good Vibrations film. Told here for the first time, Hooleygan is Terri’s own no-holds-barred account of his career in the music industry – a career that began in 1978 when he opened an independent record store in Belfast that took him from the highs of working with John Peel and The Undertones, to the lows of bankruptcy and arson.The rest of Terri’s story is the stuff of myth and legend – run-ins with Bob Dylan and John Lennon, drinking sessions with Phil Lynott and clashes with paramilitaries and racketeers.

With over 130 illustrations, including flyers and memorabilia from the 1970s and 1980s, and featuring contributions from David Holmes, John O’Neill, and Jonny Quinn, Hooleygan is an irreverent, funny and in-your-face account of punk, paramilitaries and the music business.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780856401534
Publisher:	Blackstaff Press, The
Publication date:	03/06/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Music legend and Belfast’s godfather of punk Terri Hooley was born and brought up in Belfast. In 1978, at the height of the Troubles, he opened a record shop, and later founded the music label Good Vibrations. The shop quickly became the hub of the punk movement and of the music revolution sweeping Northern Ireland. The record label had an impressive portfolio of bands including The Undertones whose classic hit 'Teenage Kicks' it released and which DJ John Peel described as his favourite song. In spite of bankruptcy, arson, and run-ins with Bob Dylan and John Lennon, the label, the shop and Terri survived a turbulent and colourful career in the music industry.  A biopic of his life, Good Vibrations, has received rave reviews and was nominated for a BAFTA. Terri tells his story in his acclaimed autobiography, Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem and Good Vibrations.

Follow Terri on Facebook: www.facebook.com/terri.hooley

Read an Excerpt

‘The art of storytelling with Terri Hooley’ – Glenn Patterson

To tell a story you must have a story.

If you are blessed with many stories tell one at a time.

If you must tell the many, hold one fixed point in mind. Range where you will, but try always to come back to it.

Try harder next time … the time after that.

The ambition one day to come back to the point will do to be going on with.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth only applies in a court of law.

The unlikely, the improbable, the frankly incredible, are acceptable if the punch line is good enough.

Punch line in this instance will always include a bona fide punch.

Revision is positively to be encouraged, even five hours after the story has been told; even five hours after midnight. Even by phone.

Revisionism, conversely, is never to be countenanced; revisionists are always to be denounced. History is not safe in their hands.

Brandy is the begetter of intimacy.

Brandy is the enemy of chronology.

Swings. Roundabouts.

Twin sisters go a long, long way.

But that is a whole other story.

Please Be Upstanding …

I cried the night John Peel played ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones on his late-night show on Radio 1, and that was before he uttered the words I will never forget: ‘Isn’t that the most wonderful record you’ve ever heard in the world? In fact I’m going to play it again.’

I cried because, until that point, I thought the music industry had beaten me. I had just returned from London doing the rounds flogging ‘Teenage Kicks’ to the record companies and none of them had wanted to know. I couldn’t understand it, this was a great song from a great band. Recorded in a back-street studio in Belfast for only two hundred pounds over a few cans of beer, several bags of crisps and some stale sandwiches, it was two minutes and thirty-two seconds of immaculate guitar and great vocals, but those arseholes in the Big Smoke just didn’t get it. I cried because I thought I’d let the band down; this was our chance to put Northern Ireland back on the music map and it had gone down the tubes.

But John Peel got it. He got it straight away, got what the Good Vibrations record label was all about. He could hear the energy in the record and he knew it was going to become one of the greatest songs of all time. ‘Teenage Kicks’ was the first record in the history of BBC radio to be played twice in a row and it would remain Peel’s all-time favourite.

In the late seventies Northern Ireland was a no-go area, bombs were going off left, right and centre. It was a very grim time for everybody, but for our young people in particular. By playing The Undertones and other Good Vibrations artists, John Peel proved to people that there was more to Northern Ireland than bombs and bullets.

Thirty years after ‘Kicks’ was released I was doing a gig in a Belfast pub and at the end of the night I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding for the National Anthem.’ The bar manager nearly shit himself, ‘You can’t do that in Belfast, what national anthem are you going to play?’

I played ‘Teenage Kicks’ and the place erupted! That’s a legacy.

Table of Contents

Please be Upstanding... 11

One in the Eye 13

Parties and Politics 27

Bombs, Bullets and Ex-Beatles 37

Good Vibrations 49

Big Time Punks 59

Working with Outcasts 77

Teenage Kicks 89

Hitting the Road 109

Laugh at Me! 129

What Goes up 145

Down but not Out 159

Thursday, I Think 169

Phoenix from the Flames 187

A Brush with Fate 199

Back to the Future 209

Acknowledgements 222

Index 226