A celebration punkspirit of our on stage
Dexter’s Aaron McCusker leads the cast in a story of one man’s musical revolution that changed so many lives...
MY first encounter with Northern Ireland’s punk rock godfather Terri Hooley was as a student in Belfast. I walked into the Good Vibrations record shop and a man shot up off his chair and roared: ‘What do you want?’ from behind the counter. I swiftly turned on my heels and ran, promising that I’d never darken the shop door again unless someone else was serving.
That soon changed though. I can’t remember when I properly met Terri but as music lovers, our paths were bound to cross sooner rather than later and inevitably, as a young journalist, I interviewed him.
He told me about his life, his bands, his ups and downs and addressed a certain myth that surrounded his glass eye. ‘I have never once taken my eye out, Maeve, and put it in someone’s drink. I don’t do that,’ he told me.
Cut to a few years later and after a few drinks with Terri and the Snow Patrol lads in the back bar of a Belfast pub, inevitably there’s an eyeball floating in someone’s drink.
If you have ever heard The Undertones song Teenage Kicks then it’s just as likely that you’ll have heard of Terri, the man who against all odds managed to get the record to the John Peel show, having released it on his Good Vibrations record label.
Back then Terri was a dreamer, a schemer, a man who pushed punk and bands from Northern Ireland to the fore, a one-man music machine that flipped the bird at sectarianism, often at no small cost to himself.
The record shop Good Vibrations bore the motto ‘a way of life’ as indeed it was for so many who eschewed the red, white and blue and the green, white and gold in favour of another path where music united both sides of the religious divide.
But punk really isn’t the end of Terri’s story - he has nurtured countless other bands, including the likes of Snow Patrol who he championed, as well as giving gainful employment to at least one of them.
Many a musician and DJ earned a crust selling CDs and vinyl, seven inches and picture discs over the Good Vibrations counter.
Part of Terri’s story was brought to the big screen a few years ago as writers Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson, along with executive producer David Holmes, Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Isa were nominated for a Bafta for the film Good Vibrations, which starred Richard Dormer as Terri and an almost unrecognisable Killian Scott as a guitar-slinging singer from the punk band Rudi.
Now Patterson and Carberry have distilled the essence of Hooley — and the film — into what Carberry describes as a ‘play with music.’
‘It’s not like it’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,’ Carberry muses over the question as to whether this is a musical or not.
‘I can’t quite place where this is. ‘It’s not like a juke box musical where it’s all set up and no-one bursts into song. But it’s filled with music and whenever a band is playing, you hear it.Once I’ve seen the play about ten times I might be better placed to answer this.’
BUT what was it about the story of Terri Hooley that engaged the writers so much they wanted to immortalise him on screen, and now on stage?
‘It’s a story about a rebel, essentially,’ Carberry explains. ‘The thing is, for all Terri’s rebelliousness what he actually wanted to do was completely normal.
‘He wanted to open a shop. He wanted to go and see bands, he wanted bands that he really liked in his hometown to be heard elsewhere. Everything he did, if he had done them anywhere else they would have been great things to do, but it is the fact that he did them in Belfast in the 1970s when the Troubles were at their worst, that made the story so intriguing.
‘On top of that Terri himself is this larger-than-life ball of contradictions, enthusiasms and passions. He is a great music lover, he is a wild man, he is a fantastic storyteller. He is loyal, generous, crazy.
‘All of those things together —that world of violence he was living in, the person that he is and the rebellious spirit that he represents. And on top of it all, he was the man who made Teenage Kicks by The Undertones into a record.’
Patterson is one generation too young for the punk era, Carberry was a child in the 1980s but the story of kicking against the sectarianism still resonated with both deeply.
‘Growing up in Belfast in the 1980s, there was so much focus on what you couldn’t do,’ Carberry says. ‘ ‘You can’t support that football team. You can’t take that bus. You can’t move to that street. You can’t go out with that person’. It was all about narrowing down options.
‘And Punk — on a very basic level — was about opening your options up. Expanding your record collection, yes. But also expanding your circle of friends. Ultimately, expanding your view of the world. That this happened in Belfast during the worst of the Troubles was something I found really liberating and empowering. And I still do.’
A stage version of Good Vibrations has been mooted since the film came out four years ago, and again David Holmes was the catalyst.
‘Jimmy Fay, the executive producer of the Lyric had been speaking to David Holmes in the bar and flagged up the idea of doing a stage play of the film and David put us all in touch.’
Initially the pair were reticent about the idea of a stage production. So why the change of heart?
‘Jimmy was very persuasive,’ Carberry says. ‘Since the film was released we had been asked by production companies about doing it as a stage play and we had said no for a number of reasons.
‘It almost felt like we had got away with the film — everyone seemed to like it, and all the people who were in it didn’t seem to hate us and seemed fairly happy with the way they had been presented. The punk scene here plays such a huge part that the slightest bum note or misstep would have had people on top of us.
‘So, by and large, for them all to like it and appreciate the film, I was thinking, job done and we have dodged so many bullets, I don’t want to push my luck.’ ‘Most people who get biopics made about them are dead — pretty much everyone in this story is still alive. So they appreciated that we went into the film and now the play seriously and spoke to everyone and yet brought our own viewpoints and opinions to it as well.’
The play sees Aaron McCusker, formerly bad boy Jamie Maguire in Shameless and star of Dexter and Fortitude, take on the role of Terri. Niamh Perry, who made her name on the BBC show I’d Do Anything before hitting the stage more recently in the touring production of Once: The Musical takes on the role of his then long-suffering wife Ruth.
And for Patterson and Carberry, flooding the stage with live performance of classic punk hits amongst other tunes, has been a joy.
‘Terri is saturated with music — it is how he sees the world and hears the world,’ Carberry says. ‘And in a way this play is taking you into Terri’s head and there’s music everywhere. And 90% of it is being played in front of you. This is risky but it is one of the reasons for doing this in this way, to have that visceral feeling which is something you can do in a theatre that you can’t do in the cinema. Terri isn’t just a punk fan so there’s all kinds of music in this.’
Indeed, all the people who the play is centred round have come to talk to cast about their lives and the times they lived in. Members of the bands featured have also helped on the music side of things, including Rudi’s Brian Young who has been showing the musicians a thing or two, in preparation for curtain up.
And what worked for the film that
is now also working for Derry Girls is that it is the story of the the normal and abnormal lives of people who grew up through them are now seen beyond the context of the Troubles.
As two people who grew up during some of the worst times and found their joy in books and music, Patterson and Carberry are well-placed to state why the punk movement along with Terri Hooley’s grand plans, were so important — and remain important — to so many.
‘At the heart of punk from Northern Ireland was pop music and there was something magical about it. Considering the time that it came from, it was aiming for the stars.
‘And I think that is the most punk gesture as the easy thing would have been to write dirgey songs about the Troubles. The fact that I Spy came out of this era, Here Comes the Summer came out of this, Self Conscious Over You — that is the most amazing thing,’ Carberry says,
‘Even to this day I think there’s something about that we can all learn from. It’s not about despair. The big lesson is, not only the bands but all the people we write about in the story wanted to get on and live their lives. They tried not to succumb to despair and that’s something that is still relevant today, in Northern Ireland, in Dublin, in Ireland.
‘If there’s a message it’s that no matter how desperate things are, don’t give into despair. Live a life. Grab it, change it — it’s yours.’