Stairway to an all-star gig

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This was published 14 years ago

Stairway to an all-star gig

It's all very rock'n'roll. Usually the Belfast Music Tour starts at the Ulster Hall with a live performance but today's band hasn't shown up yet. "More time for you all to look around," says the guide, Damien Murray. And to step on to the stage once trodden by U2, the Smiths, Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and the Rolling Stones. This is also the place where Led Zeppelin played Stairway to Heaven in public for the first time.

"Until that point, they'd been playing so loud, I don't know how we survived," says Murray, who was there that night in 1971.

"Suddenly, they began this lovely, gentle song and everyone just looked at each other open-mouthed. For Zeppelin fans, it was a historic moment."

So much so that people regularly fly from as far away as Australia to pay homage to the place where it all happened. And with the Belfast Music Tour, they can visit not just the Ulster Hall but a host of other musical landmarks relating to bands such as Snow Patrol, Stiff Little Fingers and the Undertones. What's more, you get to hear their songs played as part of the tour commentary. And no one's music gets played more during the journey than Van Morrison's, whose songs represent something of a tour of Belfast in their own right.

"See that wall?" asks Stuart Baillie, who takes over the microphone once we board the bus. "That was where the Maritime Hotel used to stand. Legend has it that in 1964 they were looking for an R&B act to play there and this taciturn chap came in, said he could sing R&B and although he didn't have a band, he knew a good one called the Gamblers, which rehearsed in a bicycle repair shop round the corner. That young man was Van Morrison. The band changed its name to Them and in three weeks they had queues around the block."

Sure enough, tickets to these gigs are among the most prized exhibits at the Oh Yeah Music Centre, which forms the last point of the tour. Before that, though, we're going to drive around several Van landmarks: City Hall, then Hyndford Street (the singer was brought up there and wrote a whole song about the street) and finally Cyprus Avenue, a leafy and prosperous part of East Belfast (best-known resident: the Reverend Ian Paisley) that was celebrated in the song Cyprus Avenue, on Morrison's 1968 album Astral Weeks. "This is a place where he found some sort of rhapsody," Baillie says as our coach trundles past the red-brick mansions.

"He often refers to it as a place where he could come and think. It's certainly very different from Hyndford Street."

Absolutely. Van the Man's old home is a humble two-up, two-down terrace house in a street so small our coach has trouble squeezing down it. Instead of a big blue plaque on the wall of No. 125, there's a tiny brass plate.

Mind you, it turns out there are plenty of other Belfast-born stars who come from unglamorous beginnings. We pass the early York Street stamping ground of flautist James Galway (who played with the 39th Old Boys Flute Band) and Benburb Street, home of 1950s singer Ruby Murray (biggest hit: Softly, Softly). She is commemorated in a mural collage of local children's pictures that combine to form her face.

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But it's by no means just the internationally known stars upon whose lives the tour shines a light. Pressed to name the most powerful song ever to have come out of Belfast, Baillie chooses the punk anthem Alternative Ulster, recorded by Stiff Little Fingers. "It came out at a very dark time, during the Troubles, when bands just weren't coming to Belfast because it was impossible for them to get insurance," he says.

"Suddenly, we got this song all about what a drag and a thrill it was to be a punk in Belfast. Northern Ireland is one of those places where you ask someone where they live, what school they went to and within four questions, you've got them pegged as Protestant or Catholic. The great thing about punk was that it was non-sectarian."

Baillie has first-hand experience of the power of music when it comes to healing differences. He was MC on the night in May 1998 when U2 and Ash played at the Waterfront Hall and U2's lead singer, Bono, had rival politicians John Hume and David Trimble shake hands on stage.

"They say that handshake helped swing the Good Friday Referendum vote three points in favour of peace," Baillie says proudly. "Now that is the power of music."

TRIP NOTES

The Belfast Music Tour takes place on the first Sunday of the month, beginning with a tour of Ulster Hall, Bedford Street, at 2pm. A bus then departs from Ulster Hall at 2.30pm. Tickets £8 ($14). See belfastmusic.org or www.gotobelfast.com.

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