not

one

word

to each other for twenty long minutes as the buses come & go & the guy on the opposite bench jingles his change

over &

over &

over again.

April 9 - Cordoba

  I’m sitting in the courtyard outside the mosque, intoxicated by the scent of orange trees overhead and the music of the fountain, where I sit on the wall and write these lines to myself. We have been blessed and surrounded by wonders on this magical history tour, the beautiful backstreets of Cordoba opening their arms, enfolding us in the scents of the Jewish ghetto. Narrow high-sided lanes opening into courtyards where musicians play and orange blossoms twirl down onto the table tops and sparrows dart happily between the chairs.

  Last night we ended up – blown like cotton blossom – back up from the old Roman bridge, through an archway and the ghetto – in a little square where a pavement cafe advertised five tapas for ten Euro. We took a seat and waited for service. Our waiter was a dark-faced, jet-haired man, who rolled as he walked between the tables with the stiff, powerful gait of an old boxer or a bullfighter gone to seed. He never smiled, rarely made eye contact, labouring up and down the slope of the cafe terrace with the orders or the bills or the change, cleaning tables as he went. We found out later he was from Ecuador.

  Over our heads from the beautiful pulpit windows overlooking the terrace we could hear a piano starting and stopping. Young dancers arrived – it was a ballet school – as the piano trilled above us. At one point, the owner of the cafe came out onto the terrace. A bicycle entered the plaza and the rider sounded his bell. The owner leaned to see below the fringes of the parasols and waved to the cyclist as he rattled across the cobbles and disappeared down a narrow street. It was like a scene from an Andalucian tourism advertisement.

  Later that evening we stopped for more food at Los Palcos – a neighbourhood bar with a pretty covered courtyard restaurant. There we had more tapas and some superb Rioja – and heard the sound of music from the front bar. We tipped our young waiter and he brought us three shot glasses full of a honey-coloured drink. We took a sip and were immediately caught off guard by the combination of fantastic sweetness and alcoholic kick. ‘Que es?’ Andrea asked him, pointing to the glasses. He showed his gums in a proud smile: ‘Vodka caramel!’

  Outside in the bar, two teenage boys were loosening their vocal cords with beer, one strumming furiously on a cheap Spanish guitar, both singing with stirring, Middle Eastern fluency. They sang in tight harmony, their melody swooping, diving, swimming around corners at amazing speed. It reminded me of a sight we had seen earlier – swifts darting in and out through the arches of the Roman bridge. People were hammering the bar in rhythm. The waiter brought us more vodka caramel.

  Another customer came into the bar and the guitar was handed to him. He began to play a furious, complicated flamenco tune. Without hesitation, the youngest singer picked up the melody and joined in, singing with supple abandon. I had the impression, watching them lock eyes on each other, that whatever key the guitarist would choose, this youngster would reach the note, and nail it like a quivering flag on a peak.

The ceiling of the mosque, CordobaApril 10, Cordoba - Today we saw the mosque and the cathedral. It’s a soul-stirring, neck-stretching, eye-widening, spectacle of a place. One that is almost not worth describing, like the Alhambra. For how can you capture in words the swooping, rising majesty of stone, light, colour, glass and religious fervour? I have taken many pictures and could take a thousand more. The place was packed with pilgrims, modern pilgrims who have no connection whatever to the religious iconography and muslim splendour they’re witnessing.

  They are here for the spectacle, and since there is little to be said in the face of such beauty, they gobble it up with their lenses, photographing and filming in their thousands, so they can believe some time in the future that once upon a time they stood face to face with a thousand years of history and a million ton of stone, plaster, glass and paint, arranged in such a shape that could stop the heart, could prevent the tongue from speaking in wonder.

  After dinner we walked in the cold night air down to the Plaza Nueva and towards the cathedral. Echoing beautifully through the square, we could hear the horns and drums of another procession and soon we were following another icon through the backstreets until we came to the Plaza Del Carmen.

  The music was again stirring and sombre, the whole black-clad river of faith and devotion very moving. It was cold in the streets and we made our way back to the hotel late, the winding alleys and gabble of tourists setting off strange echoes at every corner.

  During the night I had a nightmare – I was witness to a man being kicked to death by a group of people. I felt like I was expected to participate. Blood was everywhere – the man wore a black suit with a white shirt, everything torn and stained red. And they threw him to the ground and against walls and gouged and punched him. He gave little or no resistance.

  It struck me when I awoke that he wore the uniform of the musicians we had seen in the street. And since it was Good Friday, my dream must have been a savage modern version of the Crucifixion of Christ.

The old city of Granada, the Albayzin district seen from the walls of Alhambra PalaceApril 7 - At breakfast this morning, our German host is all information. In comes another family staying at the hotel, a Spanish family from the north. And the old Basque grandma was having none of him. As he started describing the four different types of marmalade that he had on the table, she spoke across him, completely ignoring what he had to say, and grabbed one of the dishes.

  Later, her son told us that they had found some of the religious processions very difficult. As Basques, they associated the military march and the martial music with the Fascist past. He told me that his mother had trembled in fear and discomfort as some of the parades had passed.

  We had a brief exchange about the struggle for independence and civil rights that had affected all our regions – the Basque, Northern Ireland and indeed Quebec. And here we were, our shoes caked with the dust of all of the places we had been, united for Easter in the holy city of Granada.

  A small world shrinks with every meeting of every soul with every other soul.

April 5 - Malaga: Andalucia laid on a welcome for us from the opening day. Coming in from the airport, our taxi was diverted as the centre of Malaga was thronged with onlookers for a military parade. We dismounted and made our way on foot through the sunshine. The main street, the Alameda, was packed with people standing up on dusty folding chairs under the palm leaves, craning for a viewpoint. Andrea stood up on a lamppost for a better view and looked adorable as an eight year old as the soldiers marched quickly by in ranks, followed by buglers who twirled their instruments expertly - and blew sweet, shrill, soulful notes out into the cool sunshine.

  When the parade had passed, the crowds broke up quickly and we pulled our suitcases through the narrow streets to our hotel, close to the broad, pale open space of the Plaza de Merced. The hotel is an oasis of cool, tiled calm, a maze of corridors and shuttered windows.

  We dumped our bags and headed out for lunch, eating under the shade of a beautiful bougainvillea by the church at San Augustin. We were serenaded by a beautiful player – a Peruvian who sang and played for tips as ordered lunch. As we ate, we could hear the approach of drums and cornets – playing the most beautiful, mournful music. And here through the narrow streets in the afternoon sunshine came the wooden icons of Joseph and Mary, both riding donkeys, which were carried into the grounds of the church while the band, dressed in black with vintage German style helmets with points, played outside.

  We went back to the hotel for a siesta, and awaited Julia’s arrival. After a long catch-up, we ventured out around 7.30pm. As we arrived at the cathedral, more crowds were gathering, and soon another icon was carried into the street, flanked by penitents wearing the pointed black hoods and carrying black candles.

  We went for dinner at Il Jardin restaurant, and when we emerged, another icon of the virgin was being carried back in, this time in darkness, very dramatic.  I managed to squeeze off one shot above the heads of the crowd, and caught this amazing image of the rows of faces of the carriers as they brought the icon back to the cathedral. The accompanying music was heartstopping – beautiful and moving, sad and complex, lots of shifting, deep harmonies in minor keys. As we made our way back to the hotel on the pavement of the Calle Madre de Dios there were rose petals dropped earlier in the evening from one of the many processions making their way across the town that night.

  The first day in Andalucia left my head swimming with impressions that reeled over and over in my head as I tried to sleep: The ringing of the bells. The sound of the bugles in the open air. The rich and glamorous people gliding around the back of the cathedral. Now and then, the heartbreakingly beautiful little Spanish girls. The smell of incense in the street. The shimmering icons carried aloft. The little shot glasses of sweet sherry offered up by our waiter after we tipped him. The sparrows twittering in terror by the church of San Augustin, as the bugles and drums started up.

There were two or three such excursions – Diamond had occasional business with the yard. He says he can’t remember the exact reason for this trip, but here he is, lounging in the back of an old Austin van with Pat Hutchinson from Portglenone. Pat has now joined the legions of the long gone, but my father, of course, shines on.

I am not even a twinkle in my father’s eye at this point – we believe this picture may have been taken about 50 years ago. He remembers Harland & Woolf as an intimidating place, a world and a tribe all of its own, and as a young catholic from up the country, I’m sure he couldn’t wait to get on the road north again.

The picture has come into my possession just as I am about to take part in my own little piece of shipyard history in this year of All Things Titanic, next Sunday afternoon, April 1^st. I’ll be participating (either walking or cycling) and then performing briefly at around 1.25pm as part of the Titanic Yardmen Cycle and Walk.

Organised by the Connswater Community Greenway Group, the event aims to re-stage this classic photograph (left) of 1,000 yardmen standing on the slipway at Harland & Woolf. The numbers for Sunday’s event were limited to 1,000, and I’m delighted to say they’ve made the target and the event is now officially sold out.

Everyone taking part will receive a ‘duncher’ – the flat caps worn by the shipyard workers – and a ‘piece’, a packed lunch, courtesy of sponsors Edwards & Co Solicitors and Fitzer’s Catering. The event has been organised with the intention of raising awareness of Bowel Cancer.

The event starts at the Billy Neill Centre in Dundonald (for the cyclists) at 12noon, and at Pitt Park on the Newtownards Road (for the walkers) at 12.45pm, and both parties converge on the slipway at Harland & Woolf, arriving by 1.15pm.

Compering the event at the slipway will be Dan Gordon, and I’ll be singing a couple of songs with Belfast references – Sailortown and You’re The One. Then after some speeches and the re-staging of the photograph, there will be some music from Belfast Community Gospel Choir – it should be a memorable afternoon.

If you’d like to know more, get in touch with the Connswater Community Greenway group on (028) 9046 7934, or visit the website: www.communitygreenway.co.uk.

Full circle in the Triangle… After the heady days of the Sixties and Seventies, Henry McCullough worked with some of the rock scene’s biggest names, and piled up the experiences before carving his own niche with a handful of excellent solo albums. In this third and final part of our series, Henry recalls the miles and the memories, the accident that almost finished his career, his life with his partner Josie, and looks to the future, his new album, and his important work with some of the area’s less well-known musicians…

Breadknives & Blues

The original Coleraine Times article - June 3, 1992(…The images of the seventies reel over and over again during the opening words: newspaper headlines, slow motion newsreel footage, snatches of glam rock, heavy metal, the punk explosion, the death of Elvis…)

HENRY: After the split with Wings, I was pursuing some very loose ends throughout the mid to late Seventies. I had the chance to work with some of the legendary figures from the Sixties, who were still rolling on through the decade that followed – Ronnie Laine, Marianne Faithfull, Eric Burdon…

MUSIC: Suzi Quatro – Devil Gate Drive

(CUT TO: An elegant and spacious Georgian house in rural Ireland. Eric Burdon is working on a jigsaw of a human face as the camera circles him in the white open space of the otherwise empty room. He frowns in intense concentration.)

…At one stage we were working on this Eric Burdon album called Darkness Darkness in this big house down the country. He used to do these big jigsaws of whatever guru he was into at the time, with all the colours made out of microdots of acid. He believed that if he took a jigsaw piece from the eyes, he would go off on a visual trip. One from the ears would give him a musical trip, and so on…

(Henry is sitting underneath a tree, obviously in a state of some agitation. Rain is spattering down through the leaves, soaking him. His knucklewhite hands are clutching frantically at the grass…)

…I remember I tried one of the pieces of acid, and ended up sitting underneath a tree trying to hold onto the earth for the better part of two days. Eric was a bit of a spacer. Really – he would often record your conversation, and then play it back to you. And there were things on the tape that had never been said. Weird… Around 1975 I teamed up with Frankie Miller for his album The Rock. Frankie is a cousin of the legendary Glasgow villain Jimmy Boyle, and although he was a great singer, we would have our clashes…

(Dressing room scene – Henry and the rest of Miller’s band are getting ready to go on stage. In walks Frankie with a plastic bag. He starts pulling out pairs of moccasins and handing them to the band, who look at him with puzzled expressions…)

… Frankie was on the small side, and he was very conscious of it. At one point, he insisted that we all wear moccasins, while he was wearing these high heeled Beatley boots. The idea was that nobody would appear to be taller than him when he was on stage. And that meant you weren’t allowed to stand downstage of him, either…

(On stage, Henry is about to launch into a guitar solo. He strolls to the front of the stage as the spotlight picks him out. And Frankie, in a rage, runs over and shouts: ‘No – Back! Get Back! BACK!!’)

(CUT TO: Night, car interior. Henry is at the wheel, driving in a drunken state through the streets of San Francisco. The radio is playing ‘You Sexy Thing’ by Hot Chocolate.)

Henry and Frankie…At that stage I was drinking pretty heavily, and this led me to one of my more bizarre escapades of that time. We’d had quite a bit to drink this night. I was driving, through San Francisco, just Frankie and myself in the car. I remember coming to this T-junction and I turned without thinking, so that I was driving on the wrong side of the road – and the first car we met was the Sheriff’s car. They took us out and put us up against the wall, the real American trip, and the fact that I was the driver and slightly under the influence meant they just told Frankie to get lost, and Frankie wandered off into the night. They handcuffed me and put me into the back of the car and I had an old purple geansai on me, with a big chunk of black dope in the folds of it. This would have meant real trouble, so somehow I managed to manoeuvre it out onto the seat and I ate it (laughs)…

(Henry arrives at the police station, where they throw him in. He flicks his long blond hair and looks around him. There are various street hoods standing around him – Puerto Ricans and pimps. They’re looking him up and down, from his wild dope-crazed eyes to the leopardskin shoes. The music starts up as one of the pimps smiles to reveal a cartoon-sized gold tooth. The tooth gives a big cartoon sparkle)

MUSIC: Steve Harley – Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)

…By this stage the dope is beginning to take effect and I think ‘I’ll be all right, no problem… Frankie will be here in the morning’. But the band were on a week’s break at that time, and Frankie had gone on a total drinking binge, during the course of which he totally forgot about me…

(on the third day: Breakfast back at the hotel. Frankie is sipping orange juice with a pair of shades on, obviously in some discomfort. The rest of the band are buttering toast. ‘Have you seen Henry about?’ one of them asks. Frankie removes the shades, with the orange juice halfway to his mouth, as he thinks hard and retraces his steps. Then with sudden realisation, he shouts: ‘Jesus – Henry’s in jail!’)

…It’s funny in retrospect, but at the time… Frankie and I were always falling out anyway. I had just recorded this album of my own, called Mind Your Own Business, on George Harrison’s label Dark Horse. And it would send Frankie mad to drive down Sunset Strip in LA and see all these billboards advertising Henry McCullough…

(CUT TO: Domestic kitchen. Henry is slicing bread)

MUSIC: Stevie Wonder – I Just Called To Say I Love You

…After I left Frankie, I set about trying to make some sort of career of my own. Throughout the early 80s I was gigging and playing with my own band. I recorded Hell of a Record in 1984, and came home that year because my sister was extremely ill…

(Still in the kitchen. In the background, someone starts messing around with Henry. He is laughing. He raises the knife in mock threat, at which the point of the knife strikes the wall. His hand slide down the blade and blood spurts over the wall and the kitchen units)

…While I was there I had a terrible accident with a breadknife, which lacerated the tendons of three fingers of my right hand…

(CUT TO: Ambulance, roaring through the streets of Belfast)

… I underwent five hours of microsurgery at the Royal Victoria Hospital and was out of action, playing-wise, for about eighteen months. That was a strange time for me, and I did quite a bit of soul-searching. The upshot of the whole thing was that I moved back to the Triangle and settled down with Josie…

(CUT TO: Interior – Henry’s house in Coleraine. Country music oozes tinnily from a transistor radio in the kitchen. The sound of Hank Williams – Move it on Over. The camera pans slowly over the objects in the kitchen and then round the corner into the living room: a battered Gibson 335, photographs of Ronnie Laine, Eric Burdon, Joe Cocker, Roy Harper, Henry on stage in various bands, with friends Jim Leverton, Percy Robinson and co. We round the corner and come right up to the world weary, lined features of Henry McCullough for the first time, as he is speaking to someone unseen in the corner of the room)

…By this stage, my first marriage had broken up. To be honest, that was no surprise, after all the years I had spent on the road or out of the country. Home and family, all those things, seemed like a bit of an afterthought at times. Since then, I’ve been organising my own tours, and playing with friends. Very laid back. It’s come full circle really – here I am back at home, playing the sort of music I love, when and where I want to. Many people wonder why after all the travels and the work, playing at Woodstock, on tour with Wings and all, I don’t have a bungalow in the suburbs and two cars outside. It’s funny – it sounds corny, but money never really mattered that much to me. I was always more interested in the music, taking things as far as they would go before they became boring. I never worried about the money until I had to put petrol in the car or buy a loaf of bread. Recently I’ve been involved in a project locally called Shoot the Crow, to help some of the area’s most promising musicians find their way onto record for the first time. I’m in the middle of recording a new solo album and I’m still touring now and then. But no big deal. I’m just enjoying myself…

(The interviewer says: ‘The gold disc is a nice touch, Henry.’)

CUT TO: The gold disc on the wall – for Wings’ album Red Rose Speedway.

…I used to have five or six gold discs, actually. But I gave them all away. One went to my mother, and I gave one to my son Jesse. My ex-wife got one as well, and the rest just sort of… disappeared between here and there, I suppose…

FADE TO BLACK as the music well

TITLES: End of Part III

(Catch the remarkable Henry and his band at: The Leeson Lounge, Dublin on Saturday March 3, The Playhouse Portrush on Sunday March 18, The Fest for Beatles Fans in New Jersey on March 23-25, The Iridium New York on Thursday March 29, The Titanic celebrations Belfast on Tuesday April 10, The Marketplace Armagh on Friday April 13 and the Bridge Bar Ramelton on Saturday April 14. For more details, visit www.henrymccullough.com) 

After an apprenticeship in showbands and beat groups, then booted out of 60s pop band Eire Apparent during an American tour, Portstewart guitarist Henry McCullough is back in Dublin... 

Woodstock & Wings

The original article - Coleraine Times May 27, 1992(Henry is on stage with the rest of the folk group Sweeney’s Men. The band are playing some modern folk song, very Fairport Convention-style. Henry is the only musician in the group with an electric instrument, and his guitar drones on in the background, the sitar-like sound of an open tuning)

Henry: When I came back to Dublin, I was musically at a very loose end. By this stage the folk thing was really taking off in Dublin. I met up with Johnny Moynihan. He and Andy Irvine had a really successful folk outfit at the time, called Sweeney’s Men. But Andy was packing it in, to head off to collect Romanian folk songs or whatever. They asked me if I was interested in joining, so I decided to give it a go. At that time, Luke Kelly was at the height of his influence. We had this adventurous idea of marrying the sound of the electric guitar with the other acoustic folk instruments. But while that was all very good for the broad-minded, we died a death. People down the country wanted to hear the traditional bit…

(On stage, Henry is picking out all the open strings, and a coin flies up out of the audience and – whack! – bounces off the front of the guitar. Henry stops playing and checks the finish on his Gibson guitar to see if any lasting damage has been done. Meanwhile, pennies start to rain down on the unfortunate band as the crowd show their displeasure…)

Sweeney's MenMUSIC: John Lee Hooker – Dimples

(CUT TO: The Madison Hotel, London, 1969. Henry and a few other long-haired types are jamming in one of the bedrooms…)

…About that time I was staying at the Madison Hotel in London. I got really fed up with the folk thing, and with the blues boom in full swing, I was dying to get back into a real band again. The Madison was an incredible place at that time. Upstairs, Freddie King had a room. John Lee Hooker was in the basement. There were hordes of musicians drifting in and out of the place. It was there that I met up with this guy from Sheffield called Joe Cocker. He had a band together, The Grease Band, but his guitarist, Mickey McGee, had just left. He asked if I wanted to join and I jumped at the chance. Pretty soon, we were playing the Northern Club circuit, had a residency at the King Mojo Club in Sheffield. Joe released his biggest ever single that year – ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and before we knew it, we were off on another American tour…

MUSIC: Joe Cocker – With a Little Help From My Friends

(CUT TO: Woodstock – hordes of hippies in the mud, grooving in slow motion. Footage of Joe Cocker’s majestic, shambling performance of the single at the festival)

Loads of people say to me – wow, Henry that must have been something, to play at Woodstock. But the significance of the event wasn’t really apparent at the time. Just like when you say you shared a bus with Jimi Hendrix on a tour. At that time, nobody knew how significant it was going to be. Jimi was just like the rest of at that stage – and up and coming musician. And by the same token, Woodstock was just another gig. But it was big… They would fly in the artists from up the country where they were staying at various hotels, we would play our set, hang around for an hour and they would fly us out again…

The Grease Band - on stage at Woodstock(…in the helicopter on the way to Woodstock: The Grease Band are obviously nervous as hell. Chris Stainton is obviously on something and some of the players are trying to help him as he approaches a state of near collapse. As he gasps for air, they prise open the doors of the helicopter, much to the consternation of the pilot, and stick his head out, jamming his shoulders between the doors. They can only laugh as he proceeds to hurl his breakfast down on the heads of the crowd. ‘Look out below!’ someone shouts)

…The American tour was to be the death of the outfit as we knew it. Along the way, Joe met up with Leon Russell, and he had a major influence on the album we recorded in Los Angeles. By the time the album came out and we were poised for another American tour, we were at the end of our tether. It seemed that the session men and the arrangers had taken over and we left to go out on our own. From 1970 to 1972, we worked our own circuit, recorded a couple of albums and achieved some fame as session players, after a fashion. We recorded the Jesus Chris Superstar album, which was to be the first gold disc I ever received…

(CUT TO: A Transit van, driving the streets of Nottingham. As Henry speaks, the van makes its way through the suburbs to the University…)

…Like everything else, the Grease Band began to fall apart. I was friendly with Denny Laine at this stage and I had been trying to put my own band together in London. Denny got a call from Paul McCartney, who was hiding out in Scotland at the time. Paul knew him from his Moody Blues days, and he said he was putting a working band together. They were lying under the trees up in Scotland playing all this light stuff. The lead player at the time was Hugh McCracken, but the music they were putting together was extremely laid back, and Hugh packed it in and went back to America. So then Denny called me and said that McCartney was interested in having me in the group. I went up to Campbeltown, where Paul and Linda were living at the time, and auditioned. Of course I was as nervous as hell, but I got the gig. Paul held this big fancy dress party at the Empire Ballroom to announce the formation of the group. We rehearsed over Christmas and started touring in February. What a tour…

(…the van pulls up outside the Students Union. The driver goes into the Union and speaks to the entertainments manager: ‘Listen mate… We have Paul McCartney and his new band Wings out in the van, and they’re really keen to play here this evening. Any chance of a gig?’ The Entertainments Manager smiles in obvious disbelief. In the next scene, we see him being led out to the van, where McCartney sticks his head out from behind the front seat and gives a little wave. Obviously shocked, the student just keeps saying ‘no problem, no problem’…)

…We hit the road on this really low-key tour, arriving unannounced at Universities up and down the country. Paul was keen to see if the band would work as a live unit, which it did. The two singles that we released at the time stirred up a lot of controversy, and by the time we started out European tour later that year, ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’; and ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ had more or less secured Paul a less than serious reputation in the newspapers. But no-one could argue that the band was not a good live unit. A lot of the material that later appeared on the Red Rose Speedway album was tightened up on that tour…

MUSIC: Wings – C Moon

(the band are on tour in the most outrageous bus conversion job in history. The inside of the double decker has been gutted – Cliff Richard, Summer Holiday style – and fitted with fridges, televisions, big overstuffed sofas and brightly colour cushions. Through all of this, the McCartneys and their offspring and their dogs run riot, as the bus trundles down the leafy roads of France…)

Wings - Denny laine, Denny Seiwell, Paul and Linda and Henry…We toured in this converted bus. The bloody thing was so slow they usually had to send out cars ahead, to pick us up for the gigs. Being with Paul was okay, although he could be very overpowering at times. After a while, the superstar thing wears off, and he becomes the bloke that you work for. I remember that we had been playing the song ‘My Love’ the same way night after night on the tour and the guitar solo that I had been playing was recorded for the song on the album but it was wiped.

MUSIC: Wings – My Love

(CUT TO: Abbey Road – Henry on lead guitar, standing alongside the conductor in front of a 50-piece orchestra)

…I had to go back in on my own to record the solo again. I mentioned to Paul that I wanted to change the solo and he was aghast. He liked things to be pretty much as he had arranged them. That day, I discovered they were doing the strings at the same time. I actually had to stand up on the podium with the conductor, and play along with a 50-piece orchestra, with the Beatles studio genius George Martin at the controls. It was a nerve-wracking experience, but thankfully I pulled something special out of the bag. It’s a little guitar moment that I’m still quite proud of, and one that most people seem to have heard…

(…into the guitar solo, thirty seconds of guitar beauty – Henry in one of his finest moments. Then…)

CUT TO: Big wheels – trucks on the roll through the English countryside.

…And then we were on the road again, promoting the Red Rose Speedway album. On the last night, we developed a jam session with a host of stars, people like Elton John and that, at the Café Royal, to celebrate the end of the tour. And then there was the Live and Let Die thing, all of us dressed up to the nines to attend the film premiere. We had played the title music for the film. By this stage I had collected another three gold discs, for Red Rose, My Love and Live and Let Die. Heady days indeed. But I was already at this stage beginning to get fed up. I know it sounds really ungrateful, but after a while, packing the suitcase for another jaunt off to Morocco or whatever becomes a real chore. Denny Seiwell and I had had enough by this stage and on the day we were all supposed to fly off to record in Lagos in Nigeria, I packed my bags and left in the early morning.

(Campbeltown, Scotland, August 9^th, 1973. Morning – Paul McCartney comes down into the kitchen, opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of milk. He drinks from it as Denny Laine enters the kitchen, a sheepdog running in behind him. ‘Henry’s gone,’ he tells McCartney, who stops drinking for a minute. ‘Gone where?’ he says. ‘Gone,’ says Laine. ‘Vamoosed.’ McCartney shrugs and puts the milk back in the fridge.)

MUSIC: 10cc – Rubber Bullets

(CUT TO: Henry on the train, guitar case and suitcase by his side, staring out the window and smoking a cigarette)

…We cited musical differences as the reason, which everybody took to mean we were fed up with being bossed around. I suppose there was an element of that. But I couldn’t have carried on. I was bored by then, and had completely lost interest. I just felt that if I had stayed, I would not be giving it everything, and that would never have been fair, to him or to me. I never regretted leaving, although ironically the band went on to their most successful phase then with Band on the Run. Maybe Paul had been expecting it, I don’t know. I was later told that he didn’t react much. Some time later, he came to see me in London and we talked for a while. He said he understood why I had left and was very gracious about it. Years later, Denny Laine sold his story to The Sun and told everything about the McCartneys’ private life. I always thought that was a despicable thing to do, and I’ll always revile him for it. I was approached by the National Enquirer, who were willing to pay big money for scandal on Paul, but I wasn’t interested. I suppose everybody has their secrets from the showbiz world, particularly the rock’n’roll scene. As for myself, I could never speak highly enough of him. He was an extremely gifted musician, on many, many instruments. He was a very generous  guy – always very warm, polite, well-mannered with everyone we met. And I remember every moment that I worked with him with real happiness.

(as Henry speaks, the train pulls into another station. Henry looks down at his hands, looks out the window. Eventually he lights a cigarette and leans his head back, closing his eyes)

But as I made tracks for London, I was still sure that I was doing the right thing…

FADE TO BLACK as the music swells

TITLES: ‘End of Part Two’

Next Week: Part III - Breadknives & Blues

(Catch the remarkable Henry and his band at: The Leeson Lounge, Dublin on Saturday March 3, The Playhouse Portrush on Sunday March 18, The Fest for Beatles Fans in New Jersey on March 23-25, The Iridium New York on Thursday March 29, The Titanic celebrations Belfast on Tuesday April 10, The Marketplace Armagh on Friday April 13 and the Bridge Bar Ramelton on Saturday April 14. For more details, visit www.henrymccullough.com)

Henry McCullough. Pic by Ronnie Norton  I had managed to get an agreement with Henry McCullough to do a major retrospective on his career, and I really wanted to make it… different, somehow. I felt his amazing story deserved more than the usual local weekly paper approach: ‘And then he did this… and then that happened’. I had just read Michael Herr’s novel Walter Winchell, and the entire thing had been written as a kind of dreamlike, pumped-up screenplay. And I thought – that’s the thing for me.

  I put the idea to John Fillis, the editor. Like any wise editor, he said: ‘Write me the first part and let me look at it before I make a decision.’ When he read the first part, he went for it, and I completed the series and we ran it on May 20^th, 27^th and June 3^rd that year.

  We had an instant reaction – There's an enormous affection for Henry in that area, and I remember people saving them up and sending them to friends abroad, and a few people stopped me in the street and commented on the articles.

  Looking back, it all reads a little naïve, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I have tidied up a few glaring mistakes and inaccuracies, but by and large, the articles appear here as they did 20 years ago. I hope you enjoy them – Henry has led the most remarkable life. I always thought there was an amazing book to be written about his life and work. There still is. – AT

Life is a movie: As guitarist with Wings and Joe Cocker, as well as some of the seminal influences on rock music of the sixties and seventies, Portstewart man Henry McCullough has been luckier than most. This week the TIMES begins a three part feature on his life and times. This week, we look at his childhood, early influences, and life on the road with Jimi Hendrix

Top hat and tales

The original article - May 23, 1992(OPENING SCENE: We see Victoria McCullough, Henry’s mother, standing looking out of the window at the family home at Upper Heathmount in Portstewart. The sound of children can be heard off in the distance in the house)

HENRY: We were a musical family, although there were no instruments at all in our house. We all sang. In fact, that was where I first learned to sing harmonies, singing along with my mother. She would sing tunes like Lili Marleine and stuff like that. I didn’t really come from a musical background or anything. My father played the accordion, but I don’t remember him – he left when I was very young, took off for Liverpool, where he played the pubs and that…

(as he talks, the camera pans out from his mother’s view, down over the rooftops of the Promenade, across the Crescent to the Top Hat, lights blazing, music tinkling. Couples are walking along The Crescent hand in hand, past the sad little paddling pools in the early evening)

… I had a fairly ordinary upbringing, really. I attended Portstewart Primary School and later Coleraine Tech, but I hated school. By the time I reached my teens I was like lots of others of that generation, strung out on the Teddy Boy myth, listening to the charts. By this stage I was going to the dances at the Top Hat, starting to listen to some unusual stuff as well as the Elvis records and the Bill Haley bit…

(we see the young Henry, in his teens, at a friend’s house – Jim McGowan. He is looking through records by obscure American rhythm and blues artists. In the background, Radio Luxembourg is pouring out of an old Bush wireless: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ by Elvis Presley. The music continues as he speaks)

…The first guitar I ever saw was one that my friend Willie John Douglas bought from a catalogue. It was a Rosetti Solid Seven, a solid body electric guitar. He brought it up to let me see it one day when we were gathering potatoes. We just laid it on the ditch and looked at it. Just about everybody was fumbling around with guitars by then and so was I. My first job was as a guitarist with the Ken Brownlow Trio…

(CUT TO: The said trio – accordion, guitar and drums, finishing off some tinny waltz to a half-hearted half dozen couples in some Orange Hall)

…Our accordion player could only play in D Major, which suited me, because I only knew three chords at that stage. But this other band used to visit the Top Hat, called The Skyrockets…

(The Skyrockets are on stage – four piece horn section, piano, drums, singer out front. They’re wearing these tartan jackets, with music stands out in front of them. Very Big Band-style. They’re finishing off some uptempo number, and Henry and some of his mates are jiving at the front of the stage. One of the crowd, speaking to the singer, nods in Henry’s direction. The singer, Cecil Kettles, walks to the front of the stage and shouts: ‘Hey fella, can you play guitar as well as ye dance?’)

…Before I knew it, I was the band’s guitarist. It was an education for me, to play in a real band. In those days, just the sound of an electric guitar was enough to get you a job with a band. Because there was a horn section, a lot of the tunes were in strange keys like B flat or E flat – so I bought myself a guitar chord book, and when the rest of the band weren’t looking, I would practise like mad…

(CUT TO: Van interior, rain pelting the windscreen, cigarette smoke drifting across our view. The wipers are doing their best)

MUSIC: Bill Haley and the Comets – Rock Around the Clock

…And there I was, off on the road with a working band. The first time we crossed the border, I took out my camera and started taking pictures of donkeys, cottages, Cavan Cathedral… To me it was like a whole new world. I was glad to get away. Most of my mates were joining the army or the air force, or whatever, just to get away and see the world, so this was my effort…

(CUT TO: Van exterior – a yellow Commer van, with a priest standing in front of it, reading from a prayer book. The rest of the band (except Henry) are standing there in a line beside it, heads bowed, hands clasped in front of them)

…Most of the guys in the band were Catholics, not that it mattered to me, but on one occasion we bought this new van, and they took it down to Enniskillen to have it blessed, which I thought was hilarious. At that time, The Skyrockets were working six nights a week. We would change clothes for the second half of the night, coming out wearing these awful tartan jackets. And as for the travelling, the novelty soon wore off, with seven of us, plus the equipment and all the instruments all jammed into the back of this little Commer van. It was a nightmare…

(Darkness, Henry is walking along a country road at night, cursing under his breath)

… I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the whole thing as time wore on. By this stage there was a bit of rock’n’roll filtering through, and myself and a few of the other younger members of the band were getting fed up doing Jim Reeves material and all that. I remember being thrown out of the van one night on the way back from Sligo to Enniskillen, after a row about the length of my hair. They chucked me out on the outskirts of town and I had to tramp the whole way back to our lodgings in my Beatle boots. Eventually I became so disenchanted that along with a couple of the others, I left. We formed a new band, along with a South African singer called Gene Chetty…

(CUT TO: Henry in a hotel bedroom, with an electric guitar and no amplifier, trying to determine whether or not the singer, a good-looking, dark-skinned man) is any good or not)

MUSIC: The Beatles – Ticket to Ride

…I drove all the way down to Dublin to audition the guy, and we formed Gene and the Gents. At that time, we were playing mostly rock’n’roll, maybe some Beatles numbers. We were part of the whole Beat Boom scene that was picking up in Dublin and Belfast, which also featured the young Van Morrison and Them…

MUSIC: Them – Mystic Eyes

…To watch Them on stage was a real experience, but for me ultimately frustrating. They were doing things that I could never have dreamed of doing, because they had learned absolutely nothing from the showband days – it was all fresh. I was still stuck in that same format. Not that I wasn’t making money. By then I had my own car, plenty of cash, sixteen mohair suits in the wardrobe…

MUSIC: James Brown – Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

(CUT TO: The bright lights of Blackpool, glittering underneath a darkened sky, close ups of all the arcades and the slot machines)

…Around that time I got a phone call from a guy called Chrissie Stewart, who suggested I join him in a beat group called The People, based in and around Blackpool. So it was really with a sense of adventure that I left. We had the chance to perform without taking it all too seriously, and we learned material by the likes of James Brown and Wilson Pickett. Of course, we were being paid absolute buttons… About £7 a night. I pawned all the suits. We would sleep four to a room, sharing a bed with a line of DDT up the middle…

MUSIC: Wilson Pickett – In the Midnight Hour

(Back in Dublin, Henry danders up Grafton Street, where he runs into Liam McKenna. The two start talking…)

…I was visiting my wife in Dublin when I happened to bump into Liam McKenna, who was playing with The Creatures. He told me that there was quite a bit of money to be made on the beat circuit in Dublin, so when I headed back to Blackpool we just decided to give it a try…

MUSIC: Otis Redding – Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay

(CUT TO: Henry and the boys, sitting on the dockside in Dublin, smoking cigarettes and laughing as they shake their heads as if in disbelief)

…We arrived at the docks with literally just our gear. We had nowhere to stay, no money and no gigs, but things gradually fell into place and The People became quite successful on the Dublin scene at the time…

(CUT TO: Back in the van. Henry and the gang on the road again)

…We took things as far as we could in Dublin, but eventually took off for London, with roadie Dave Robinson in tow. He was actually later to become the boss of Stiff Records…

(early morning. The same van is parked underneath a railway bridge. A train passes overhead as the back door opens and Henry pops his head out, squinting. He climbs out stiffly and stretches)

…At that point we were actually living in the van, under a railway bridge in Camden Town. If anyone offered us a gig, we would race down to Leicester Square tube station and get ready in the toilets down there. But we loved it – the whole thing was still something of an adventure…

MUSIC: Pink Floyd – Interstellar Overdrive

(CUT TO: The UFO Club, London – with music over from The Pink Floyd, the manic and unpredictable sound of Interstellar Overdrive. Lights are swirling around the walls in crazy paisley patterns, little hippy girls grooving with long haired types…)

…The UFO club was all the rage at that stage, and places like Middle Earth. We were offered a gig supporting Procul Harum. That was really something else for us – they had just notched up a number one with ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’. As a result, there were quite a few people in the audience who were involved in the music business. After we had finished our set, we were approached by Chas Chandler, and his partner Mike Jeffries. They asked us to come and see them the next day, which we did. And they signed us…

MUSIC: Pink Floyd – See Emily Play

(CUT TO: Swinging London, Carnaby Street… All the fashion boutiques. Henry and the gang dander into one of the stores and can be seen trying on various hats, scarves, etc)

…Before we signed with Chandler, we didn’t have much of an image. But Chris was very keen to manufacture a look for us. He also changed our name to Eire Apparent. I thought The People was a great name, but I suppose none of us were really prepared to argue. He wanted us to prepare some material for an album, because we were still doing cover versions at this stage. So he sent us off to Palma in Majorca, where we were supposed to lie out in the sun for three months and write some material for the album…

(Majorca, 1967: Henry and the boys are lapping up the sunshine. Henry is by the pool with an acoustic guitar. He picks it up and begins to strum a few chords. After a moment, from off camera, a hand offers him a bottle of San Miguel. Without too much of a struggle, he puts down the guitar and accepts the drink…)

MUSIC: Jimi Hendrix – The Burning of the Midnight Lamp

…Not surprisingly, we came back from Majorca with only two or three songs, not nearly enough for the album. While we were in Palma, we had all heard this amazing record on the radio by Jimi Hendrix, and we were all amazed at the weird guitar sounds at the start of the record. Chas Chandler has signed him before he took us on. When we arrived back in Britain, we were told that Hendrix would be producing our single, ‘Here We Go Again’…

(CUT TO: Studio, London. A nerve-wracked band, fumbling through chord changes, obviously aware of the major talent peering out with scary intensity through the glass of the control room)

…Most of the time, Jimi was a scary guy even to look at, with all that hair, all frizzed out, his eyes constantly alight. Onstage he was terrifying. The sound he created was like music from another planet, really frightening and wild…

(View of the side of a bus, rolling down the road)

MUSIC: The Move – Flowers in the Rain

Henry with Jimi Hendrix and (centre) Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine…By this stage we were part of a package. Chas booked us on those old fashioned package tours. We would share the same bus with people like The Nice, Amen Corner, The Move, Pink Floyd and of course, Jimi. We were treated with nothing like the same respect by the English groups. There has always been this… thing that the English bands seem to have, looking down their noses at Irish musicians. That, coupled with our funny hats and strange clothes, meant we were not taken seriously at all…

(CUT TO: Eire Apparent, being brought off stage. Roy Wood, Carl Wayne and the rest of The Move saunter past. ‘Is that it?’ says one of the band to Henry as he removes his hat, ‘eight bloody minutes?’)

… The time with Eire Apparent took us to America and Canada, as well as traipsing up and down the country. The whole thing lasted about two years. Then I ran into a spot of trouble in Canada…

(CUT TO: Henry, wearing furry boots and a bright purple waistcoat, smoking a joint in a hotel bedroom. One of the other guys in the band is standing nearby. ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’re back on in fifteen minutes.’ The camera zooms past them, close in on the doorway, where a sour-faced little bell-hop is watching the whole episode…)

…All of this was markedly different from the image that Chas had for us, and he was not impressed by my behaviour at all…

(CUT TO: Darkness. Dave Robinson, fumbling around in a hotel bedroom in the early hours of the morning. He rouses the sleeping form of McCullough, hands him his jeans. ‘Bad news, Henry… time to go.’)

…After I was bailed, I went back to New York to join the rest of the band. Chas sent Dave into my room with a one way ticket to Dublin at seven in the morning…

MUSIC: Jeff Beck – Hi Ho Silver Lining

(CUT TO: A sleepy-looking Henry, walking out of the terminal at Dublin on a grey morning, with a guitar case and a suitcase.)

…I was back in Dublin before the rest of the guys in the band even knew I was gone.

FADE TO BLACK as the music swells.

TITLES: ‘End of Part One’

NEXT WEEK: Part II - Woodstock and Wings

(Catch the remarkable Henry and his band at: The Leeson Lounge, Dublin on Saturday March 3, The Playhouse Portrush on Sunday March 18, The Fest for Beatles Fans in New Jersey on March 23-25, The Iridium New York on Thursday March 29, The Titanic celebrations Belfast on Tuesday April 10, The Marketplace Armagh on Friday April 13 and the Bridge Bar Ramelton on Saturday April 14. For more details, visit www.henrymccullough.com)

So you won't be surprised when you find out I've been drooling over this little box of delights - a box of sampler teas given to us over the weekend by our dear friends Michael and Alison. These are people of wonderful taste, and they probably don't even know how much they hit the target with this.

It's a very plush little cream-coloured box adorned with beautiful typography and elegant use of space - and inside are a variety of herbal and flavoured teas, each of them individually packaged in a tiny cardboard pyramid.

They've been laid head to head in the box, so when you lift the lid it's a sequence of very satisfying and snug little geometric shapes in a range of muted colours. I find stuff like this irresistible. I almost can't bear the tought of trying one of the teas and ruining this display.

Back in the vinyl days, I was always the kid examing the gatefold or double albums and the inner sleeves with the printed lyrics, soaking up every detail of the package. I've been known to buy certain 50s Blue Note jazz albums just because the cover looks really cool. Now I find not much has changed.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the wonderful cartoonist Ronald Searle, who passed away at the start of the year at the ripe old age of 91.

I first came across his irreverent, hilarious work when I in my second year at Coleraine Inst. There was a book of his work in the library, including his drawings from the War in Burma and inevitably the St. Trinian’s girls. I was immediately smitten with his comic invention and his inventive, stretchy and scratchy drawing style.

My favourite was a cross-eyed mare standing chewing on a wildflower in an overgrown meadow, captioned ‘Idiot Horse Labouring Under the Misapprehension That It Is Representative of Nature’.

I was all ready for a big art weekend in London in February 2010 - I was going to see the Van Gogh drawings and letters at the Royal Academy, but I also wanted (probably more) to see the Ronald Searle retrospective at the Cartoon Museum, laid on to celebrate his 90th birthday. The Ash Cloud put a spanner in all of those works, and I was grounded.

The papers were full of obituaries and tributes in the last week or so, but my favourite story was from Gerald Scarfe, himself perhaps the greatest of the legions of cartoon geniuses from this part of the world. Scarfe idolised Searle as a teenager. On a number of occasions, he had cycled from his home in Hampstead all the way over to Searle’s house in Bayswater and stood before his big green door, unable to overcome his nerves and push the bell.

Many years later, Scarfe’s wife (Jane Asher) threw a secret birthday party for him in an exclusive restaurant in Provence. When they entered, he found that the only two other people in the place were Ronald Searle and his wife, who happened to live nearby.

“A beautiful little package sat on the table, all done up with ribbon. I said: ‘Oh, is this for me?’ And Ronald said: ‘Yeah, it’s nothing.’ So I opened it, and there was a brass doorbell with a note saying ‘Please ring any time’.”