Terri Hooleymusic promoter
I am best known for . . .discovering and signing The Undertones, running the Good Vibrations record shop – HQ of Belfast's rich music tradition in the 1970s and 1980s – and putting Belfast on the international map, promoting bands like Rudi, The Outcasts and Stiff Little Fingers. I'm just as famous locally for being a gobshite.
The best days of my life were . . .the 1960s. I was a teenager just as rock'n'roll gave way to the Beatles. Belfast in the 1960s was very exciting, and I lived in the heart of it, right on Botanic Avenue. There were music clubs everywhere. There were artists and poets living up the street. In 1965, I was playing Bob Marley's first record in a jazz club in Belfast and going to see my favourite band, Them. There was a sense of it being possible to change the world. I was the 17-year-old chairman of the NI Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In comparison, the 1970s were scary and very depressing. The music clubs closed down, bands stopped coming because of the Troubles. That's why punk was such a lifeline – it was the only hopeful thing happening.
The most inspiring person I met was. . .Bob Marley. When I was a very young fan, I wrote to him and he replied, telling me his father was Irish. Later, in the 1970s, I met him in London and he was every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped.
Rumours abound about me . . .including the story about me punching John Lennon. Granted, I did meet him in London and we didn't get on. You used to meet all these musicians in Britain and the US who were pro-IRA, but they hadn't a clue. Having said that, most of the musicians I met were really nice, from the Rolling Stones through to Pete Doherty, who's become a good mate.
These days I . . .still run the Good Vibrations record shop, do some DJing, and conduct Alternative Belfast walking tours, which stay clear of the Troubles and the Titanic. My Belfast was about Van Morrison and Them – a place teeming with gospel music, rock'n'roll, and later punk. I was never into sectarianism. My dad was English and a big trade union activist; my mother was deeply Christian.
It's weird to be the subject of a film . . .but I respect the people behind it, including writer Glenn Patterson, actor Richard Dormer, and David Holmes and Snow Patrol who will provide the soundtrack. It will focus on how I took a chance on The Undertones, with the help of the late John Peel, who became a great friend. I'm due to visit his grave soon – he has "Teenage kicks, so hard to beat" engraved on his headstone – for a BBC documentary.
My favourite quote is . . ."None of the North's leading politicians have ever heard of him, because they are too ignorant" – from They Are Of Ireland, by Declan Lynch.
My motto is . . .One Love.
Good Vibrations, currently being filmed in Belfast and Dundalk, is due for release later this year
In conversation with Una Bradley
