My
first trip to Belfast would have been when I was about six years old. My dad
took me down on the bus. I’d never been in a city before and I just loved the
buzz and the unique aromas of the city. Coming from a small rural village I
couldn’t believe the actual volume of the noise around and about the streets.
In my home town, Magherafelt, if someone sneezed up the town it was news in the
following week’s edition of The Mid Ulster
Mail, and, most likely on the front page at that.
My
memories of that precious trip to Belfast are of streets crammed with exotic
cars; lorries packed so high you felt they might actually topple over; my first
ever sighting of a double-decker bus; the same streets absolutely bursting with
busy and hyper people mostly laughing and joking; chilled people gilding along
the footpaths and, the hustle and bustle of Woolworths, crammed so full you
could hardly move through it. The shop assistants appeared so sophisticated
with their chic make-up so expertly applied they looked just like movie stars.
But packed though Woolworths was, my dad worked his way around the super-shop
diligently buying hardware: hinges; brackets; nails; thingamabobs and
cuttermegigs, lots of cuttermegigs. Things, which on paper he’d no need for,
but then over the course of the next few years bit by bit, item by item, they’d
all get used up and used in a manner that was always vital to making pieces of
furniture and suchlike that had such a positive impact on our lives we invariably
found ourselves wondering how exactly we’d ever managed to do without them. In a
way I suppose that’s where I picked up the habit of hoarding; yes hoarding
things like: locations; words; character-sketches; accents; traits and sayings.
You just never know when they’re going to come in handy, do you?
The
memories of that day, both of my introduction to the tangible excitement of
Belfast and of being there with my father, have stuck with me so far through my
life, and very vividly at that.
I
have to admit I was up in Magherafelt while the Beatles were on stage at the
Ritz Cinema on 8th November 1963. I would have been sitting down to
tea with my family when they would have appeared on BBC TV at 18.10 and UTV at
18.30. Playwright Alun Own was in Belfast observing John, Paul, George, Ringo,
Mal and Neil and the fans very closely that night for a screenplay he was working
on. We have to assume he would have been inspired with both band and fans and
worked some of the ideas from his Belfast research into scenes for the final
script of A Hard Day’s Night.
Since
those early days Belfast has always been close to my heart. There has always
been something mystical about the city for me. I will admit I don’t really know
why. Possibly it might have something to do with the fact that the grand city
was home to George Best, Van Morrison and Alex Higgins, a trio of geniuses so
talented in their chosen field that - although while all three were most
certainly outstanding in their fields, sadly the fields were empty bar
themselves - the world has just never been big enough for them.
Following
my trip with my dad my next memories of Belfast are of visiting the city in my
teenage years seeking bookings for my first group, the Blues by Five. It would
have been on some of those adventures I would have been lucky enough to see and
hear Taste, The Interns, Cheese, The Gentry, Sam Mahood and The Soul Foundation
(Sam was way, way ahead of his time) and The Method, in places the likes of The
Maritime Club, Sammy Huston’s Jazz Club, Betty Staffs, and Clarks Dance Studio.
Sadly I never got to witness a live performance by Them but I did witness one
of the best gigs I’ve ever attended one Saturday afternoon when The Interns
played at Them’s old stomping ground, The Maritime Club. We - The Blues by Five
& manager - had a group trip down into Belfast on 23rd July 1967
to witness the Small Faces do an absolutely blistering set at the Floral Hall.
There were also a couple Northern Irish bands on the bill that night - I seem
to remember The Interns being one of them, but I couldn’t swear to that. The
Pink Floyd also played at the Floral Hall in April the same year but for some
reason or other we didn’t make it down to Belfast for that show, catching them
instead up at the Flamingo in Ballymena.
Later
again came The Pound, Good Vibrations, The Ulster Hall, Fruupp and EMS at
Queen’s Student’s Union.
Even
when I moved to London in 1967 I still retained my strong links and connection
with Belfast. I became the “London Correspondent” for all
pop/contemporary/progressive music for City
Week, a Belfast newspaper, which eventually morphed into Thursday Magazine. But more about that
later.
During
the Troubles, while living in London, I booked all the music acts into Queens
University (and the Irish University circuit) and it was during that period I
got to know the Queens campus area of Belfast very well working with Queen’s
ace social secretaries, Gary Mills, Tim Nicholson, Roy Dickson, Allister McDowell,
Brian Gryzmek and John McGrath while we persuaded people as diverse as Chuck
Berry, The Stranglers, The Clash, Loudon Wainwright III, Stackridge, Mike
Nesbitt, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Clash, Dire Straits, Eric
Clapton and Elton John to visit while boasting, truthfully, that they’d get the
best reception of their lives while on a Belfast stage. Conversely, but we
never admitted this in advance, should the said act, shall we say, not be at
the top of their game performance wise… well then, there were few other stages,
excepting Glasgow of course, where they’d wish to be caught out, as it were. In
the interest of full disclosure all the above mentioned artists enjoyed
rapturous receptions while in Belfast.
In
my City Week/Thursday Magazine days, as I said, I covered the London music scene
with a special emphasis on the Irish/Ulster acts doing well in the UK. I went
to see Herbie Armstrong and Rod Demick (aka Demick & Armstrong - an act
from Ulster formed out of the ashes of The Wheels) performing at the Lyceum
Ballroom in the Strand in London. During the course of the evening they performed
a song called Friday’s Child which Herbie introduced as a song written by his
mate Van Morrison. In my following week’s City
Week column I mentioned the show and particularly the song Friday’s Child.
I’d never heard it before and couldn’t find a recorded version of it. I asked
“if anyone out there” knew where I could find a copy. A few days after that
week’s paper was published an envelope addressed to me was dropped off at the City Week office in Pottingers Entry. In
the envelope was a mint copy of a single on the Major Minor label. The A side
of the 1967 single (D410) was a re-release of Gloria (the original B side of
Them’s hit, Baby Please Don’t Go) and on the B-side … yep, you guess it,
Friday’s Child. Also in the envelope was a very nice and gracious note from a
Mrs Violet Morrison, none other than the mother of Van and a fine singer
herself. The only reason I mention this here is due to the fact that when I’m
walking about the streets of Belfast the song which most frequently comes to
mind is the very same Friday’s Child.
You
don’t really get to know a city until you’ve walked it. Recently I had
reason to spend a few weeks in Belfast; I probably wore out a pair of shoes in
those couple of weeks. In Down On Cyprus
Avenue the main character, McCusker, likes to walk absolutely everywhere.
Lucky for him Belfast is an extremely walkable city. He loves to ramble about
the city being seriously distracted by the incredible historical and dramatic
buildings. Buildings like the City Hall where, during my research for Down On Cyprus Avenue, I was allowed to
spend several hours investigating it from the inside. As I checked out the breath-taking beautiful
building I couldn’t help thinking that the City Hall was so big, one could quite possibly fit all of Magherafelt into it. Well,
at the very least, all of the Magherafelt I had left in the 1960s.
But
back to McCusker.
McCusker
had a cameo appearance in the Christy Kennedy 2002 mystery, I’ve Heard the Banshee Sing (as did Inspector Starrett.) I liked
McCusker. I liked the way his mind worked. He’s is fearless of the
investigation, he doesn’t see it as a chore. He’s not jaded and is genuinely
excited about leaving his paper-pushing days of the RUC behind him in favour of
front line investigating as an agency cop. He is driven not as much by
apprehending the guilty as by protecting the innocent. He was (and is) a real pleasure to work with.
But I couldn’t see a way of making it work in Portrush as I was already
covering the rural setting with The Inspector Starrett series set in Donegal
and the Castlemartin novels set in Mid Ulster. Time passed, as it has a habit
of doing, I kept thinking about McCusker and the more I visited Belfast for
concerts and book events the more I wanted to write about the city. So then I
started to think about how it might be possible to set a McCusker mystery in
Belfast and in that thought McCusker’s back story was born.
McCusker
was a detective inspector stationed in Portrush. He dabbled at playing golf,
more for the social opportunities than for the sport. He and his wife, Anna
Stringer (McCusker always refers to her by her maiden name) successfully
accumulated several properties which they (well Anna really) rented out. The
idea was on McCusker’s retirement they would sell their property portfolio and
retire on the proceeds. When the Patten Agreement offered a handsome payment
for those willing to take early retirement during the transition from the RUC
to the PSNI, McCusker bit their hand off. He was happy to give up what had
become more of a paper-pushing chore than the art of detecting he’d originally
joined up for. Anna Stringer perhaps fearing becoming a golf widow, (perhaps
not, we never get to hear her side of the story in the first mystery) quiet and
subtle as you like, sold off all the properties and disappeared with the
aforementioned nest egg. The Patten payment was clearly not enough to last
McCusker the remainder of his days. The only thing McCusker knows how to do,
the only thing he wants to do, is detect. The Patten Agreement forbids retired officers
from being reinstated but Grafton’s Agency (Belfast’s answer to USA’s Pinkerton
Agency) took him on as a temp-agency cop (nickname Yellow Tops after the
inferior in-house supermarket brands) and found him employment with the PSNI in
the Custom House, Belfast. The PSNI aren’t actually stationed at the Custom
House but I thought it ideal for McCusker’s team. I did get to spend a few
hours in there and it really is an amazing building with an incredible history.
One of
the original ideas for the McCusker Mysteries (hopefully plural) was to have
D.S. Willie John Barr (no ‘e’) as McCusker’s side-kick, as was the case in the two
McCusker short stories, Based On A True
Story (included in this year’s Mammoth Book of Best British Crime - No. 11)
and the Case of The Humming Bee.
However when I came to start work on Down
On Cyprus Avenue I had to deal with the fact that McCusker would have to be
a Yellow Top and as such would have no real authority or seniority in the PSNI
structure. So I introduced D.I. Lily O’Carroll who arrived on the page fully
formed and who consequently quite literally forced her way into the
partnership. Barr is still around though in what is also becoming a very
important role.
The Case of The Humming Bees brings us back nicely to
McCusker’s preoccupation with the beautiful and historic buildings in Belfast
in that it is entirely set in The Ulster Hall. The Ulster Hall was built in
1859 and designed by William J. Barre (with an ‘e’ this time.) The Ulster Hall
is the hallowed concert hall we all visited to be in the presence of the
greatness that was Rory Gallagher. Rory played there on numerous occasions
either with Taste or, later, with his own band. A Donegal born, Cork bred man
who also spent a lot of time soaking up the Belfast vibe and giving it all back
to the audiences in spades at a time when few artists were visiting Belfast.
The photos (but not the music) on the Live Taste album are from the Ulster
Hall. The album was in fact recorded in Montreux Casino, Switzerland on the 31st
August 1970. The album was released on Polydor on 1st January 1971
with my (short) sleeve notes. Sixty-four days later on Friday 5th March 1971
Led Zeppelin took to the stage in the Ulster Hall, Belfast and performed for
the first time in the world a new song by the name of Stairway To Heaven.
In 2014 McCusker
reckons that he and Belfast were starting over again at the same time. They both
reached a good point in their life cycle and both seemed very happy to be doing so. McCusker for his part is
thrilled to be getting to know the city; getting to know it in this era.
I have my father, Andrew, to thank
for introducing me to Belfast. McCusker (indirectly) has Anna Stringer to
thank. Yes he still has things/issues he needs to address and resolve but he
frequently reminds himself about what he’d committed himself to when he left Portrush. He’d promised
himself that he would forget the past, ignore the future, and get lost in the present.
Talking
about the present I’d like to thank the Dufour fab four for producing such a
handsome volume of Down On Cyprus Avenue
and getting it out there into the world (November 2014.) I’m continuously
humbled by this entire magical process.
This time I've been listening a lot to Leonard Cohen's beautiful new album, Popular Problems. To my ears a true classic and the best album of the year so far by a country mile.
Until
the next time,
Cheers,
pc
