On a memorable evening at The Deer’s Head, music journalist Stuart Bailie launched his new book chronicling 40 years in music journalism — The Song is Nearly Over. The event featured an intimate conversation with Tim Wheeler of Ash, followed by closing reflections and a performance by Terry Hooley, the legendary founder of Good Vibrations record label. The evening brought together three generations of Northern Irish music history, weaving together stories of punk, Britpop, and the transformative power of music journalism. ... Read more...
On a memorable evening at The Deer’s Head, music journalist Stuart Bailie launched his new book chronicling 40 years in music journalism — The Song is Nearly Over. The event featured an intimate conversation with Tim Wheeler of Ash, followed by closing reflections and a performance by Terry Hooley, the legendary founder of Good Vibrations record label. The evening brought together three generations of Northern Irish music history, weaving together stories of punk, Britpop, and the transformative power of music journalism.
Charlotte Dryden, who runs the Oh Yeah Music Centre, set the tone for the evening, describing it as part of the Sound of Belfast Festival’s opening night. She spoke warmly of her own connection to the Britpop era, recalling her twenties in London, “following all the bands around Camden” while Stuart was “doing something for NME” and Tim was opening his A-level results. “We were just so proud,” she remembered, citing Ash, Divine Comedy, and Therapy as bands that made the Irish contingent in London feel represented during that golden period.
The genesis of a music journalist
Stuart Bailie’s journey into music journalism began in his teenage years in County Down. “I was buying NME when I was about 13, 14,” he recalled. “I went to school in town and you could pick it up a day early.” Those early issues of NME, along with Sounds and Melody Maker, shaped his understanding of what music writing could be.
His influences were the legendary writers of the 1970s and early 1980s. “You would’ve been reading Charles Murray, Roy Carr, Nick Kent,” Bailie explained. He painted a vivid picture of the NME office culture, describing Nick Kent as someone who “had a pair of leather trousers he never took off” and was “more rock and roll than a lot of the musicians.”
The transition from reader to writer came through persistence and passion. Bailie’s first major break came when he left Record Mirror in 1987 and was asked to cover The Pogues in New York for their “Fairytale of New York” video shoot, despite having just left the publication. This assignment would become one of the defining moments of his early career.
Tim Wheeler: from teenage fan to Britpop icon
Tim Wheeler’s perspective on the era came from a unique vantage point, as both a fan and participant in the Britpop movement. He was just 15 in January 1992 when Nirvana entered his consciousness. “I’d been like a teenage metalhead before that,” Wheeler admitted. “Some friends in school turned us on to Pixies, Stooges, and Nirvana, and it was just a kind of a glorious time to be finding music that was kind of punk influenced and DIY.”
The Nirvana concert at Kings Hall in Belfast in June 1992 proved transformative. Wheeler and his bandmates, then a five-piece metal band, saw the power of the three-piece format. “With Nirvana, we were just like, oh, we strip it down to three piece and just three committed people, we can just go for this,” he explained. That same month, Ash formed, and Wheeler wrote his first “decent” song, “Jack Names The Planets”.
The Britpop era: the battle that defined a generation
The conversation inevitably turned to one of the most iconic moments in British music history, the Blur versus Oasis chart battle of August 1995. Bailie was at the epicentre of this cultural phenomenon, having helped create the narrative that would dominate headlines for weeks.
“We all agreed we should signpost the event rather than let it just happen,” Bailie explained, describing how the NME editorial team developed the story. The magazine’s cover, designed like a boxing poster, declared it “The Battle of Britpop”. The response was immediate and overwhelming. “Next day there were two television crews in the office,” Bailie recalled. “A dozen more followed by Thursday. It was a lead story in the national evening news, all over Radio One.”
The personal encounters during this period were equally memorable. Bailie described meeting Liam Gallagher outside the Astoria on 18 August 1995, just before the chart results were announced. “Liam Gallagher’s playing drums on my head,” he read from his book. “I hear a few rhythmic taps like he’s keeping time on the snare, there’s an occasional switch across the top of the bald napper, casual and Ringo style.”
The moment captured the tension and theatre of the era. Liam sang Blur’s “Country House” while drumming on Bailie’s head, “loaded with contempt” for Damon Albarn. When NME’s singles review gave “Country House” the edge, Liam was affronted, demanding “What’s all this bullshit about?”
Wheeler, despite being younger, found himself caught up in the Britpop wars through his connection with producer Owen Morris, who worked with both Ash and Oasis. “We were lucky that someone like you, a Belfast man, was there,” Wheeler told Bailie, acknowledging the importance of having supportive voices in the press.
Memorable encounters: Nirvana, Oasis, and the chaos of the road
The evening was filled with extraordinary stories of encounters with music legends. Bailie’s account of the Nirvana concert at Kings Hall in Belfast on 22 June 1992, painted a picture of chaos and brilliance. “Around 12,000 fans are drunk, teenage, unbelievably joyous, puking in corridors and dry humping in alcoves,” he read from his book.
Courtney Love, six months pregnant, was “smoking, loudly at war with concert services”, but took a liking to a fan’s knitted jumper, procuring it for Kurt for £35. The show itself was powerful despite the mayhem. “Kurt sits alone on the floor of the hospitality area, his back to the wall, his hair cropped and bleached Iggy style, keeping himself low and unremarkable,” Bailie wrote.
Wheeler shared his own Nirvana story from that night, revealing that he and his bandmates met Kurt, Courtney, and Dave Grohl after the show. One mishap stood out: “Mark got his jeans signed by Kurt, and he got home that night and threw them on his floor. His mum put his jeans in the washing machine. He’s still mad about that to this day.”
The Oasis stories continued beyond the Britpop wars. Bailie recounted returning to review an Oasis show at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast in 2002. Noel Gallagher spotted him in the photo pit and announced to the crowd, “See that guy down there taking photos? He’s a wanker from NME who started Blur versus Oasis.” Liam joined in, pretending to urinate on Bailie’s head before emptying a bottle of water on him. “I was being bullied by 9,000 Oasis fans and bullied by the Gallagher brothers,” Bailie reflected.
Music journalism: its golden age and decline
The conversation turned philosophical as Wheeler asked about the current state of music journalism. Bailie traced the evolution from the 1950s and 1960s consumer journalism through the counterculture magazines like Cream and Rolling Stone, to the golden era of the 1970s with writers like Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus.
“By the time punk arrives, you had Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill just throwing abuse at people, which probably went too far, but it was part of that irreverence that came in,” Bailie explained. The NME office culture he described was intense and demanding. “These people were just brilliant human beings and very sharp. They knocked you into shape. They expected a lot from you.”
The decline began around 1997-98, Bailie suggested, using Radiohead as an example. After spending extensive time with the band during the “OK Computer” era, including two days in Oxford and a trip to New York for the Tibetan Freedom Concert, Bailie noticed a shift. “The next album, they didn’t do any press hardly. They just started talking to their community through their online, direct community.”
“I’d say ‘97, ‘98 was that era of access and indulgence and the power of the press, and it’s been a sort of lingering death since,” Bailie concluded. Wheeler agreed, noting that “artists used to need journalists to be their megaphone out to the world” but now have direct access to fans through social media.
The consequences of this shift were significant. “If you said something stupid, you didn’t have any way of replying or fixing it,” Wheeler observed, recalling bands like Symposium who “went a bit pro-life” and “probably never recovered” from the backlash.
Tales from the road with Shane MacGowan and other legends
One of the evening’s highlights was Bailie’s reading about The Pogues in New York in 1987. The story captured the band at their peak, filming the video for “Fairytale of New York” and playing shows at the Ritz. “Three inches of snow, says Frank, and that’s only on the hotel room tables,” Bailie read, quoting the band’s manager Frank Murray about the state of their Gramercy Park Hotel rooms.
The Pogues meant everything to Bailie. “The second album, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, was my welcome to London, a party essential and a balm for the displacement blues,” he wrote. “It had been my friend in lonely times and a primer for lost weekends.”
His interviews with Shane MacGowan and Jim Finer revealed the band’s attitude toward their public image. When asked about The Smiths and Morrissey, Shane responded bluntly: “He knows fuck all. How can he? My friends really like that guy. He’s probably a really nice bloke, but half the people I know think he’s a fucking genius. If he’s a genius, what’s he doing in a fucking pop group?”
On their reputation as “moronic drunk cartoon characters”, Shane was philosophical: “That image has been laid on us by the press. They’ve been kind to us, but the press have created a stereotype for what we are. When we started, there were no live bands in London to speak of, so we became a live band. We’re a dance band. We used to play a lot of weddings.”
The New York shows were spectacular, with Joe Strummer filling in for the sick Philip Chevron. “The crowds, like every other Pogues crowd, knew all the words to the old songs, performed acrobatic feats and waved scraps of cloth around with gusto,” Bailie wrote. One fan passed Shane a sheepskin bag of brandy, which he “gratefully squirts into his mouth” before passing it to Spider, who “immediately falls to his knees in agony at the taste of the vile liquor.”
Bailie also shared a hilarious 1997 news story about The Fall’s Mark E. Smith having a spectacular meltdown at the Belfast Empire. Smith “walked off the tour bus straight onto the stage and started kicking stuff around and decking microphones. He sacked the band and they went.” The situation escalated until Terry Hooley was called in to calm Smith down. “At one stage, Hooley grabbed the singer by the neck to restrain him. The singer thought he was about to get punched and asked if he could remove his false teeth first. Terry removed his own glass eye instead.”
The godfather of Belfast punk: Terry Hooley’s closing reflections
The evening concluded with Terry Hooley taking the stage, offering his own perspective on the music scene he helped create. Hooley, the founder of Good Vibrations record label, was responsible for bringing many legendary acts to Belfast for their first Irish shows, including The Clash and The Fall.
“I used to be the lonely kid in the bedroom in east Belfast,” Hooley began. “I wasn’t into football and I wasn’t in the fucking hatred sectarianism and all that shit.” His journey from that isolation to becoming friends with Shane MacGowan and bringing groundbreaking bands to Belfast was, he admitted, surprising even to himself.
Hooley spoke candidly about his current health challenges. “I have been on dialysis. I don’t go out very much. In fact, I’ve got an ASBO and I’ve got a tag here and I’m not allowed to go into the city centre,” he joked. “But tonight I’m allowed out to perform with my old friend, Michael Callahan.”
Despite performing together for years, Hooley’s memories of their shows were selective. “Michael tells me that we’ve done 50 gigs. I totally remember a couple of them,” he quipped, before recounting memorable performances in Berlin, Glasgow, and other venues. One gig that stood out was at a Glasgow rockers club, which Hooley described as “the most dangerous club that I’ve ever been to in my life”, though the night ended well thanks to a local connection who ensured their safety.
Hooley’s closing words captured the spirit of the evening: “Being amongst this company with so many friends and so many people that I really like, I am having the time of my life. So thank you very much.”
A night of stories, music, and shared history
The book launch event for Stuart Bailie’s memoir was more than a simple reading; it was a celebration of an era when music journalism mattered, when bands and writers engaged in a complex dance of mutual need and occasional antagonism, and when Belfast punched far above its weight in the global music scene.
Through Bailie’s stories, we glimpsed the chaos and creativity of the Britpop wars, the tragedy and brilliance of Kurt Cobain, the wild energy of The Pogues, and the everyday absurdities of life on the road with rock bands. Tim Wheeler provided the perspective of an artist who lived through that era, navigating the demands of multiple music papers while building a career that has lasted three decades.
Terry Hooley’s presence reminded everyone that Belfast’s contribution to music history began long before Britpop, rooted in the punk era when Good Vibrations became a beacon of hope and creativity in a divided city. His journey from “the lonely kid in the bedroom” to the godfather of Belfast punk embodied the transformative power of music.
The evening demonstrated that while the golden age of music journalism may have passed, the stories remain vital. They capture a time when music felt urgent and important, when a singles chart battle could dominate national news, and when a journalist could spend days with a band, building relationships and crafting narratives that would define careers.
As Bailie reflected on his book’s title, taken from The Pogues’ “A Rainy Night In Soho”, he acknowledged that this was both a celebration and a farewell. “I’m sort of halfway shy. I don’t necessarily tell stories like some people do,” he admitted. “But then suddenly this felt like the moment. It’s a little bit sad, but it is me not necessarily retiring, but saying that this was a period I rolled through and it was great.”
The night ended with music, as it should, with Hooley and Callahan performing, bringing the evening full circle from stories about music to music itself. It was a fitting conclusion to an event that honored the past while acknowledging how much has changed, and how much those stories still matter to those who lived them and those who wish they had.
The Song is Nearly Over can be purchased from Stuart Bailie.
Article cross-published at Mr Ulster.
