Lost In Music

One thing the North has never been short of is rock ‘n’ roll action.

“There’s this myth that no big names came to Belfast during the ‘70s but my Dad, Jim, had Led Zeppelin over in 1971 at the height of The Troubles. That was the night they played ‘Stairway To Heaven’ for the first time. It was eleven hundred people seated in the Ulster Hall, which was a few hundred short of a sell-out. The old fella took John-Paul Jones and Robert Plant up St. Peter’s Hill to look at the rioting because they wanted to see it.
“He had Pink Floyd in six months later, and that didn’t sell-out either. Touring then wasn’t at the level it is today. There were no local radio stations to hype things up. Even when Downtown Radio launched in Belfast in 1976, it was mainly country music they were playing at first.”
Like most of his mates back then, Peter was an ardent rocker.
“I remember on the night before my Geography A-Level exam, going to see Thin Lizzy on the Live & Dangerous Tour, which was incredible. And Rory Gallagher used to come to Belfast every Christmas and do five shows in the Ulster Hall. If you look at The Irish Tour ’74 movie you can see me and the old fella in it! Rory made the film and then toured it round the local cinemas – he’d take 80% of the door and they’d take the remainder. He was actually bigger in the North than he was anywhere else.”
Peter swapped his lumberjack shirt for bondage trousers in 1977 when he discovered the delights of Stiff Little Fingers, The Undertones, Rudi, The Outcasts et punk al down the Harp Bar.
“That could be a rough place,” he winces. “The Outcasts had a particularly tough following who stormed the stage when they supported Elvis Costello. It wasn’t so much a case of them causing trouble, as trouble always managing to find them!
“I thought the whole Clash posing in front of the cages thing was a bit embarrassing. People say now that it was their manager pulling the strings, but I thought Stiff Little Fingers were the real deal. To have a local band comprising two Catholics and two Protestants singing songs like ‘Suspect Device’ and ‘Wasted Life’ was a huge deal back then. They were brave fellas for saying what they did in those songs. I still think the greatest record to ever come out of Belfast was Inflammable Material. Stiff Little Fingers played the Ulster Hall and did sell it out, so they were bigger than Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd! I saw The Ramones shortly after that and they were rubbish in comparison.
“Another band who don’t always get the credit for being really good live were The Boomtown Rats. Geldof was a great frontman and their Belfast shows were always a bit special.”