Ramble, rant or reminisce, this is an artist’s opportunity to pen their own Clash article.
This issue, David Holmes praises a home town hero.
“I was always buying records, ever since I was eleven or twelve years old. My idea of heaven was spending the afternoons after school in Terri Hooley’s record shop, Good Vibrations on Great Victoria Street, just hanging out and annoying him.
One day Terri produced a dusty box of seven-inch singles from under the counter. They were all original pressings from Sue, Reprise, Atlantic and Liberty Records etc etc. There was ‘El Watusi’ by Ray Barretto, ‘La La La La La’ by The Blendells, ‘The Swim’ by Bobby Freeman (produced by Sly Stone) and many more rarities that I was discovering for the first time.
These were incredibly rare pressings, and I hadn’t a pot to piss in. By this stage, Terri knew music had become the most important thing in my life, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he produced those records. I was fifteen at the time and I would have sold my soul for them. They were £30. I told him that if he let me have the records I would pay him over a period of time.
Of course I never paid him, and spent the next twelve years avoiding him! Some of those records were worth £30 each, so I knew that to get the lot for the same money was a steal. Years later, when I was making myself some money, I eventually handed over the dough for the records, but one day I was getting my hair cut in Belfast when this guy walked in. We’ll call him Mr. Smith. He was an English dude and sharp as a knife. We got talking and he was telling me about being a mod in London during the ’60s, and how he was a regular at all the top London clubs like The Scene and The Flamingo, but then had went to prison. He told me how before he went inside he had entrusted his record collection to Terri, to look after while he was away. I couldn’t believe it! I shouted out ‘I’ve got those fucking records!’ All Mr. Smith could do was shake his head and say, ‘That fucking Hooley!’
So, twenty-six years later, Terri is the subject of a feature film, Good Vibrations, directed by my life-long friends and partners, Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa, for our production company, Canderblinks Film and Music. Terri Hooley: record label/record shop owner, raconteur, socialist, poet, randy drinker, anarchist, closet Nana Mouskouri fan and DJ. Started the Good Vibrations record label and signed Rudi, The Outcasts, The Tearjerkers and The Undertones. Sold the rights to ‘Teenage Kicks’ to Seymour Stein from Sire Records for £500 and a signed photo of The Shangri Las (he still hasn’t received the photo). Worked as Northern Irish correspondent for Oz magazine, where he famously encountered John Lennon and punched him in the face for wanting to send guns to Ireland…You couldn’t make it up.”
‘The Dogs Are Parading’, the best of David Holmes, is out now on Universal.
