My darling Hit The Northers, I know you have a history with a certain Stuart Bailie. I know he used to hang around these parts and that y’all would hook up and go have fun together. That’s cool. I’m confident enough in our thing not to get twitchy about your past. Luckily, even though I bet someone has probably told you otherwise, I’m not the paranoid type.
Just to prove it, I’ve an idea that I want to run past you (and please try not to get too flustered). How would you feel about me arranging for you lot to hook up again? Because this month Stu’s responsible for a few of Belfast’s most welcome diversions, and it would be mean of me to let you miss out.
Let’s start in Charlie’s Coffee Shop – a recently opened enterprise that sits snugly about halfway between Lavery’s and the front of Queen’s. If you’re in for a lunchtime sandwich over the next month (and I’d recommend the chicken salad on granary), you’ll find yourself in some exalted company. Lining the walls, in strikingly flattering monochrome, the likes of Michael Stipe, Wayne Coyne and Tim Wheeler attempt to stare out local faces such as The Olympic Lifts and Red Sirus. Throughout the exhibition, portrait shots mix with live snaps; artful poses (yes, Rufus, we get the idea) with captured moments of chaos. These pictures represent a small but significant percentage of the images Mr Bailie has been slowly stockpiling over recent years, and even a cursory glance will tell you that they’re the impressive products of a genuine (and recently discovered) passion.
“Oh definitely,” he says. “When I came home from London and set up the Oh Yeah website, I couldn’t afford to pay a proper snapper, so I got myself a digital camera and away I went. My relationship with music has always changed over the years. I was originally in a band, then I began writing about it, now I’m an amateur smudger. It’s whatever gets the mojo working.”
Stuart’s stint at the NME saw him regularly “carry the bags” for some of music’s most celebrated lens-pointers (“Kevin Cummins, Pennie Smith, Anton Corbijn – they’ve all really different approaches. It’s fascinating watching them work.”). It also coincided with a boom-time in seminal images. From the paint-drenched Roses, to Kurt’s Panda-eyes and Richey’s horrifyingly 4-Real forearm, Stuart was there as these shots were filed – and admits to experiencing that gnawing ache familiar to most scribes: the grim realisation that image rather than text is rock and roll’s most compatible bedfellow.
“You read a Nick Kent article,” he grins, “or a Charlie Murray or Paul Morley feature and you think: that’s it. That says something. But then you see that picture of Richey and it’s hands up. At the time people care more about what’s written – I know that certainly the artists do – but as time goes on, the image is sometimes the thing that lasts.”
And this desire to document offers us an appropriate bridge into the other aspect of Stuart’s life that he’s inviting us to share this month. Born and brought up on the Castlereagh Road, with Grannies on the Newtownards Road and Orangfield, it’s a surprise that it took him until his mid-20s to develop a full appreciation of Van Morrison.
“We were punks and he wore terrible jump suits and was the enemy; simple as that,” laughs Stuart. An enforced stay in Paris, with nothing but a cassette of TB Sheets and a strong dose of homesickness soon put that to rights. Since then, Bailie has been a confirmed Tonto to Belfast’s most famous cowboy.
“He’s given me a sense of self more than any other artist,” he admits. “Joe Strummer would be number two, but Van would certainly be number one. East Belfast gets a bad press, it’s not a very sexy place in many ways, but with Van and George Best, it hasn’t done too bad, has it?”
A few years ago, armed with nothing more than a rented mini van, an old ghetto blaster and a supply of Barnbracks and Wagon Wheels, Stuart organised a trip round some of the locations that float through Morrison’s songs – Hyndford St, Connswater, and (of course) Cypress Avenue. Future Van-biographer Johnny Rogan was on board, Billy Bragg hitched along too. Van-day (29 April) makes a welcome return at this year’s Cathedral Quarter Festival.
“There’s something very exciting playing ‘Madame George’ at this time of the year when the cherry blossoms are out and then stopping the bus at the top end of the Beersbridge Road, and walking along Cypress Avenue in the sunshine. It’s gorgeous. I’ve taken hundreds of shots trying to sum the place up, but I can never capture it as accurately as Van does.”
Go on – go along. Hang out, catch up.
Although I hope you don’t mind if I tag along too.