Sarm West and Sarm East recording studios were established by Chris Blackwell of Island Records and later owned and run by husband-and-wife pair Jill Sinclair and Trevor Horn. Non-Island performers also recorded there, including Madonna, The Clash, Depeche Mode, Queen, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley the Wailers, Genesis and The Rolling Stones. Dave Robinson’s Stiff/Island connections meant that the authors had been lined up to record in Sarm West from 16 to 29 October 1985. Music history seeped through the pores of the place and the author’s head was spinning to be in such exalted company. The Music Works Studio was scheduled as a replacement, with an undertaking that they would return to Sarm West for the album mix from 4 to 8 November. By the end of their time in Music Works, the author and band had finished ten songs.

If Cohen’s first musical formation was folk, he joined it as its viability as a commercial music genre was already in decline. One of his first major gigs was to appear at the singer-songwriter afternoon of the Newport Folk festival, along with Joni Mitchell, an event that pointed away from the traditional folk music the festival had long favored. By 1970, singer-songwriters such as Mitchell and James Taylor were now reclassified as occupying a niche of their own, and Cohen fit that niche. Cohen’s autobiographical songs were actually closer to the confessional mode of the singer-songwriters than they were to traditional folk. Where folk had claimed to be public, political music, the singer-songwriters were singing about private struggles and mental anguish. The singer-songwriters were defined by the sense of direct address to the listener, seeming to reveal their very souls in the details of their misdeeds. Called “confessional” because of perceived similarities with the poetry of Lowell, Plath, and Sexton, singer-songwriter music is often self-therapeutic, but unlike the poetry it does not usually use self-exposure as cultural criticism. This chapter reads Cohen’s songs in relation to the singer-songwriter movement, exploring the similarities and differences between his recordings and those of other figures central to the formation. Cohen’s poetry, while not usually associated with the confessional movement, bears some similarity to it, and his songs sometimes invite a broadly cultural reading.

The EP of three songs appeared in the Good Vibrations catalogue as GOT-8, and was preceded in the series by Rudi, Victim, The Outcasts, The Undertones, Xdreamysts, Protex, and a compilation disc. The strongest song of the three was ‘One by One’; indeed, it was always intended as the featured track. The author relates how Sound Engineer Davy Smith largely earned a living recording radio jingles and Irish country-and-western songs at the Wizard Studios in Donegall Street, Belfast. The lyrics were a jumble of alliteration, suitably surreal to complement the essential oddness of the track. For kids in rural communities, away-day gigs by Belfast bands were a serious affair. The author’s band cornered Hooley for a release date of GOT-8, but he seemed to enjoy stringing them along and they became more frustrated with each other. Unsurprisingly, there was no imminent release of GOT-8.

By 1980, Stiff Little Fingers’ star was truly in the ascendent. They had a successful first album via Rough Trade Records under their belt and, as Northern Ireland’s sole ambassadors on the mainland, a place at the top table with the punk elite. So it was the stuff of dreams when Ruefrex were offered the support slot on their Irish tour featuring Dublin, Cork and Belfast. SLF would be assured of full houses all the way, so a captive audience was guaranteed. The Black Catholics band had a reputation for disrupting gigs and were in situ early that evening. The Black Catholics’ behaviour grew worse, and one of the gang, noticing that Clarkey had reverted from his manic, all-action style to stand still and deliver a love song, saw his chance and attempted to set fire to his trouser bottoms.

Authors such as Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway were among the most important celebrities of the earlier part of the twentieth century. Authors were later overshadowed by movie stars and then rock stars, who by the time Cohen began recording were at the top of the heap. This chapter will examine the transformation of Cohen from a literary figure who was already a celebrity in Canada into an international rock star. This unusual career path meant that Cohen would have a different sort of persona from those who were merely authors or popular musicians. His claim to the status of poet, for example, was different than that of Dylan or other songwriters who did not publish books of verse. His fame as a singer-songwriter gave the books he published later new meaning and a larger audience.

In this chapter, the author discusses his love affair that started with the press in 1986. A review by Muir MacKean of a Ruefrex gig at Jules, a secret nightclub in Belfast, spoke about Ruefrex as a powerful, mature that only needed a decent sound system to be heard as one of the most important bands in Britain. The front i profiles were down to the backing of the good people at Melody Maker magazine, which was prepared to dedicate a healthy amount of iage to reflect on the more nuanced political and cultural interpretations of (Northern) Irishness as represented by Ruefrex and others. The author relates how Bill Graham, a stalwart of old-school music journalism, had published an article whose title was controversial, making the author realize how the fourth estate could hinder, rather than help, one's best intentions.

The whole ‘legacy’ debate on how people deal with the past continues to torment, pulling in one direction the urge to (perhaps) forgive but not forget the awful inhumanity of the recent history, hauling in the other, the generational and pragmatic tug to simply move on. Powerful actors in this drama find uncomfortable narratives, retroactive and limiting. For the orthodox narratives surrounding Belfast punk are entirely problematic. Yet Good Vibrations and the standard bearers of Belfast punk rarely cite the band in any official or historical context. Occasionally, the self-appointed keepers of the Belfast punk flame are compelled to give Ruefrex their due. The Ruefrex song ‘The Perfect Crime’ features a prolonged overdriven guitar introduction, loaning itself to use as film incidental music. It had been employed in John T. Davis’s Shell Shock Rock in this way to great effect.

When Leonard Cohen died in 2016, he left a treasure trove of notebooks, recordings, manuscripts, and other materials that had previously been inaccessible to anyone but the artist himself. Unlike some other rock stars, Cohen has not been represented by bootleg recordings, and his written records have appeared only to the extent that he has sometimes published excerpts from them. Thus, the archives, when they are available to scholars and journalists, will be a significant boon to our understanding of the man and his creations. The concluding chapter of this volume both offers a survey of the Cohen archives – real and virtual – and provides some sense of how they might change our understanding of Cohen and his work.

Dave Robinson was one of those quintessential Irishmen, perhaps best defined by the term ‘chancer’. There is something of the rebel in the DNA of the Irish chancer that people often fall for, despite their better judgement. Ironically, it is the English themselves who invariably and wholeheartedly embrace the amiable, charismatic Irish chancer, oblivious to the fact that they themselves are his mark. The author discusses his conversation with Stiff's Head of A&R Nick Stewart, at the Stiff/Island offices, wherein he was offered finance and help for the recording of their album. Publishing would be dealt with separately, but Dave assured him that this was in hand, likely with Zomba Music Publishing. Dave informed the author that he needed to sign on behalf of the band, and then dropped him at a tube station to make his way home in the rain.

By 1978, a hierarchy of bands had already formed in Belfast. Posturing and ego were nipping around the edges of what the author and his band had assumed punk was supposed to be about. Having played a particularly strong Saturday night set at the Harp, support band The Androids suggested that the author travel down with them the next day to Dandelion Market, Dublin, for a gig. The bohemian buzz around the market seemed a million miles away from the open wound of urban decay and raw violence associated with Belfast at that time. Vintage clothing, accessories, furniture, music, Dandelion Market evoked childhood memories of Smithfield Market at home. The author outlines how the band was supported on a tour by Lou Reed, and his delight when he secured a press pass from the Record Mirror. Punk could make everyone a star and a fan at the same time.