“MY life wasn’t boring, let’s put it that way,” says Terri Hooley as he reflects on his life, much of which was spent entrenched in Belfast’s punk scene.
However, despite being dubbed The Godfather of Punk he is quick to confess he “much preferred being a hippy” as we chat.
“Punk was my hippies’ revenge on the world – you didn’t listen to us in the 60s and look what you’ve got now,” he chuckles.
“I really liked the whole idea of hippies and what they stood for in terms of looking after the planet and everybody loving each other, sure there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Terri also supported the movement’s condemnation of the Vietnam war and was an active campaigner against it, which is how he first established a reputation.
“I was the first person to be arrested under the 1965 new civil disobedience act for protesting against the war in Vietnam - and I still think the Americans were wrong,” he says defiantly.
But getting arrested didn’t stop him, in 1966 he confronted Bob Dylan at his concert in Belfast questioning his refusal to stop paying taxes as a protest about the war.
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“He told me he wasn’t a protest singer and to f*** off and never speak to him again... But he wrote some great songs so I’m still a fan.”
His interactions with stars have become local lore, from corresponding with Bob Marley and booking Shane MacGowan’s first concert in NI, sharing a snog with Cilla Black and getting into a altercation with John Lennon when he mistook Terri for an IRA supporter.
Terri has always been “fanatical about music” but says when the Troubles began it was as if “everything went quiet”.
“Belfast in the 60s was so colourful and I grew up in a time when there were 80 places in Belfast where you could go and hear live music from small halls to great ballrooms,” he recalls.
“Then the Troubles came and there was nothing - hardly any of the clubs stayed open and it was just horrific and suddenly it all became black and white.”
Despite this, Terri remained in Belfast as the conflict continued starting counterculture magazines and pirate radio stations.
But it was an attempted kidnapping that encouraged him to go one step further and open his own record shop.
“I worked for Kodak down at the docks and one night, when it was very dark, these guys jumped out of a car and tried to grab me. Two other guys jumped in and saved my life and I got away.
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“But that experience inspired me to do something I really wanted to do, so I set up the record shop.”
Terri opened Good Vibrations in 1977, transforming a ramshackled building in Great Victoria Street into “a little oasis of positivity when everything was awful”, even though it was situated on “one the most bombed half-miles in Europe” (which Terri tells me was not intentional).
“I wanted Good Vibrations to bring people together and give people hope,” he explains.
“The whole country was having a nervous breakdown - I wanted to spread love and peace not more violence and hate.”
Over the years many local punk bands passed through the doors of Terri’s shop, enabling to him to work with some of NI’s most iconic musicians.
The fourth single released by the new Good Vibrations label was by an unknown band from Derry. Terri says he knew they could be “the next big thing,” but when he hightailed it to London with 200 copies of the Undertones’ Teenage Kicks, it was roundly ignored by every label and distributor in the city.
“If you came from Northern Ireland you hadn’t a hope in hell of getting a record contract so when we went over to London nobody wanted to know,” Terri recalls.
However, Teenage Kicks is now a firm fan favourite and even experienced a revival in 2013 when it featured in a medley released by former pop group One Direction for Comic Relief. Other bands represented by Good Vibrations included the Outcasts, Rudi and Protex who all helped to further establish Belfast’s creative punk scene.
Read more: Damian O’Neill: ‘The Undertones got a lot of abuse in Derry for being punks’
“I just wanted to help put Belfast on the music map and hopefully I did that to a degree and the rest is history.”
It’s a history which has been chronicled by music journalist Stuart Bailie in his biography Terri Hooley: Seventy-Five Revolutions, which was released last year.
“Thank god he didn’t put the real story in because he knows more about my life than I can remember,” laughs Terri, who claims it was within the pages of The Irish News that he first found out himself and Stuart were close friends.
“When his book Troubles Songs came out he did an interview in The Irish News and he was asked who his best friend was and where they met.
“And he said ‘Terri Hooley - and we met when he turned down my first punk band’ – well you could have knocked me down with a feather – I thought we had an ongoing argument.
“I never had a clue that I was his best friend, it came as a big surprise to me.”
Now the dynamic duo - or rather “the George and Mildred of the music business”, as described by Terri, are coming together to discuss his life and legacy as part of Sound of Belfast 2024.
Read more: Arts Q&A: Stuart Bailie on Hemingway, The Hairdresser’s Husband and Terri Hooley
“We bicker like mad but it’ll be really good craic,” assures Terri.
“We’re like an old married couple and people might learn a few things about Belfast they never knew – especially east Belfast, although I should clarify I am definitely not a wise man from the east.”
Now at 75, Terri undergoes three rounds of dialysis a week but says he’s “never been as happy” since moving to suburban Bangor three years ago.
“We live in a little cul de sac, we’ve got Amber our one-eyed rescue dog and I’m really content.
“It’s only taken me nearly 76 years to be as happy as I am now - if I didn’t have dialysis my life would be perfect for a change.
“My life has had so many big highs and bigger lows and now it’s so well balanced, it’s unbelievable.”
Terri Hooley will be in conversation with Stuart Bailie at Templemore Baths on November 12. eastside.ticketsolve.com
