How Music Works: Stuart Bailie on forging an alternative life in music

It’s not easy to reduce a life’s work in the music industry to a simple phrase but “punk rock” is apt in the case of Stuart Bailie. Over the course of 30 years, the DIY spirit of the genre that galvanised a generation into autodidact action and made them believe anything was possible has been a mainstay in Bailie’s life.

Punk rock was the root of his music obsession. Growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, The Clash and The Sex Pistols were on stereo rotation at home but it was what was happening in the city’s record shops that gave Bailie and others around him, hope. On one side of the town was Caroline Music; on the other side of town, was Terri Hooley’s Good Vibrations shop, both selling punk rock records.

“On Saturdays, you’d walk up and down between the two shops and meet people on the way,” remembers Bailie. “The conflict was horrendous with random car bombs, incendiary devices and all that but you were lifted out of this sectarian thing through this alternative life which was just brilliant.”

“Terri Hooley emancipated a whole generation and made them believe you were in charge of your own destiny be it make a record, make a fanzine, do what you want. From 1978-82, Belfast was probably the most exciting city in the western world there was just so much going on.”

Bailie picked up a bass guitar in 1978. He played with a few bands like Acme Music (“never amounted to much”) and the Trouble Shooters (“trying too hard to impress A&R men”) but soon found a kinship with music journalists.

“I liked talking to them and I kind of thought if I gave them this slant on our story, it’ll get more space in the paper and if we organise a proper photoshoot, we’ll get more space.”

London calling

In 1985 after watching himself play in a band on a TV appearance, Bailie decided he was never going to make it as a rock star and ditched his guitar for a typewriter and hatched a plan to get some work in London as a writer.

“I told people I’d be there for a couple of weeks and I was there for 11 years,” chuckles Bailie.

At the time, music newspapers were popular with five titles in circulation: NME, Melody Maker, Sounds, Record Mirror and Music Week. Bailie was rejected by NME who said he wasn’t good enough but he found work at Record Mirror and wound up reviews editor.

The music industry was still largely based in Soho and Bailie got to know people in his industry, which was prone to partying. “ Every lunchtime, there was a band launch at Ronnie Scott’s - the music was generally bad but the food was great.”

Driving the NME train

After a stint as press officer for Warner Music where he briefly looked after Motley Crue’s press, NME asked him to join them in 1988. He became reviews editor shortly afterwards.

“It was like wanting to be a train driver and finally becoming a train driver,” Bailie says fondly.Every Tuesday, an editorial meeting would take place. At the time, some of the most respected writers were working for the paper including Steve Lamacq, Mary Anne Hobbs, Stephen Wells, Stuart Maconie, Barbara Ellen and James Brown.

“The paper would come up from the printer, everyone would spend an hour reading it and then go into a room and shout and scream at each other, tearing each other’s articles to pieces. Then the second half of the meeting, you’d build it all back up again and plan for the next few weeks.”

The passion and respect for NME, the brand and name was evident in the staff. “There was immense pride in the title and what it was about; they didn’t really tolerate slackness.”

Bailie was at the NME at the start of acid house, techno, Britpop and trip-hop, from 88 right up to 1996. He recounts a time he travelled to Disneyland in California with the Manic Street Preachers and later that same day, going to Compton to interview NWA’s Eazy-E in the studio during the LA riots in 1992. Despite this rock’n’roll lifestyle, Belfast began to call him home.

“I had a young family, a daughter and I was homesick,” Bailie recounts. “When I left after the punk thing, the eighties got very dark, there was no sign of a political breakthrough but the nineties had more positivity. I was home in Belfast a lot and I was aware that David Holmes was doing well, I wrote the first cover story on Ash, Divine Comedy was doing his thing.”

His parting gift from his time in the NME office was a modem, which enabled Bailie to continue to work for the title. He was be flown to the U.S. to write features for the paper at the major record labels’ expense - Tanya Donnelly in Boston, Radiohead in New York and U2 at the launch of Popmart in Las Vegas among them.

Back in Belfast, Bailie did more radio work with BBC Radio Ulster’s Across The Line, which he now co-hosts, along with some TV and radio documentaries.

Oh Yeah?

It was a pub crawl on December 29th 2005 with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol and others that lead to Bailie’s current fate. Lightbody asked the assembled what Belfast was in need of music-wise. Bailie and others agreed a music hub, modelled on the Nerve Centre in Derry would be a fine addition to the city’s music community. Far from being a forgotten drunken conversation, Lightbody followed through in early January and 2006 was spent hatching plans for what was to become the Oh Yeah Centre. Bailie was wary at first.

“You’re going to get so much abuse from begrudgers, you’re going to have really long hours, you’re going to be stressed out of your mind, it’s going to be financially terrifying,” he thought to himself. “ Yet, I had always thought I would set up a recording studio in a farmhouse so this seemed like the right thing to do.”

After a period of seeking funding from public bodies and a lot of paperwork, the Oh Yeah team decided to return to their punk rock roots.

“We decided not to ask permission and just do it,” says Bailie. “We didn’t ask for a lot of money. It took longer but we’re a maverick thing: we’re still a bit punk, a bit DIY, a bit Terri Hooley.”

Now a registered charity, the Oh Yeah Centre relies on volunteers and has been operating for just over eight years on Gordon Street, offering rehearsal and studio space, offices for local industry, a Belfast music exhibition, a café space, a venue, an outreach programme, training, regular panels, events for older people and countless other invaluable resources.

Artists like The Undertones, Ash, Duke Special, Two Door Cinema Club, Elbow, Lisa Hannigan and have played there over the years. Like SOAK, who first played the venue at age 15, and just won The Northern Ireland Music Prize 2015 for her debut album, some of the teenagers who came through their courses and workshops have gone on to find a career in music.

“You get messages from parents who say ‘my daughter has completely blossomed since doing your course, she’s confident and knows what she wants to do’,” says Bailie with a smile. “The good stories help you get up in the morning.”

Oh Yeah just finished this year’s cycle of Scratch My Progress, an artist mentoring programme in which four bands are lead through the process of a release, from photoshoot, to biography to recording to finance and other practical advice.

“You can no longer train someone to be ready for a record deal,” offers Bailie. You almost have to prepare them as a microbusiness. There’s a bit of moral support as well”

“As I get older, I lot of what I do is advocacy now,” he suggests. “A wizened old geezer who puts on a jacket and goes to Stormont every now and again.”

It’s a long way from the punk rocker with a dream but in his own way, Bailie has kept that alternative spirit alive, now an offering valuable advice to youth and politicians alike on his own terms.

Bailie recalls a time when he visited the careers advisor on the last day of college that he says was the best advice he ever received, that seems pertinent.

“The careers person just looked me in the face and said, ‘I think you want to be creative. You have to knock on doors.’ You have to cut your own groove, forge your own destiny, I’ve been knocking on doors my whole life. I’ve been living on my wits and toes for 30 years.

“Every now and again you have to meet a financial advisor to figure out what age you’re going to retire. I’m just going to be writing until a die,” he suggests. “Put a modem in my coffin, in case there’s any late copy deadlines.”