Music politics can be uneasy bedfellows. But on 19 May 1998, at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, they combined to make a real difference. It was just five and a half weeks after one of the most historic days in Northern Ireland’s history: on 10 April, the Good Friday agreement, brokered by the Irish and British governments, was finally sealed between the main political parties.
It was a watershed moment that would eventually help to end four decades of chaos and bloodshed. However, the agreement still needed the support of the people on both sides of the border. Referendums were set for 22 May. In the intervening weeks, a mood of negativity and controversy was emerging over the release of republican and loyalist prisoners, weapons decommissioning and major police reform. A yes vote was by no means a formality.
Music had always brought people together during the Troubles. Whether this was the cross-border showbands era of the late 1960s and early 1970s; Led Zeppelin playing the Ulster Hall in 1971 and giving their first ever live performance of Stairway to Heaven; the vibrant punk scene of the late 1970s with bands such as Rudi, Stiff Little Fingers and the Outcasts; David Holmes and Iain McCready’s Sugar Sweet acid and rave sets in the early 1990s; and Shine’s clubbing nights at the Mandela Hall in the mid-1990s. All these scenes brought people together under one roof, enabling sectarianism to be left at the door. Music was one of the few havens that endured throughout a period of intense division.
Inspired by some young upstarts in the Ulster Unionist (UUP) and Social Democratic and Labour (SDLP) political parties, one night of music in Belfast starring Ash and U2 would play a pivotal part in signalling a new start – spawning that picture of Bono with David Trimble and John Hume. SDLP leader Hume and UUP leader Trimble went on to jointly win the Nobel peace prize later that year. Despite this, these two major players of the peace process were said to have a difficult relationship; Trimble described dealing with Hume as like “grappling with fog”.
Such events do not happen by accident. They need catalysts. The catalysts in this case were David Kerr and Conall McDevitt, who were working within the respective communication teams of the UUP and the SDLP at the time. Both men now run successful PR companies away from the political spotlight.
Kerr realised the importance of the younger generation if the referendum and the agreement were to be a sustained success. “It would make the wider public see that the Good Friday agreement was about young people more than anything else,” he says. “We couldn’t change our past, but we could change their future.” U2 were one of the biggest bands on the planet, so it was a great achievement to get their weight behind the Belfast gig. There were however some major grumblings within the Unionists, with some unsure whether it was a good idea. Thankfully, David Trimble remained unfazed and took a leap of faith.
Kerr recalls the press conference on the day of the concert and how Trimble broke the ice: “David started talking about his love of Elvis and the future of his children, especially his eldest daughter, Vicky, and the mood was transformed, the tension lifted.” Kerr himself was not unaffected by the prolonged violence over the decades. He was originally from County Fermanagh, and his brother narrowly escaped death in 1987 at the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen by the IRA. Poignantly, he recalls watching U2’s Rattle and Hum documentary in a cinema in the ravaged town a year after the atrocity.
The SDLP’s McDevitt spent his formative teenage years in Spain. He was part of what he refers to as the post-Franco “transition generation”, for whom music was rooted in politics and protest. He remembers getting the wheels in motion for U2’s involvement: “About a week before the gig, we spoke to the movie director Jim Sheridan and told him how we felt we were losing the vote, or that it was slipping away. I felt that we didn’t have an image to frame the occasion. So he picks up the phone to Paul McGuinness [U2’s manager at the time] who then explained the situation to Bono. Jim said to us: ‘You want a fuckin’ image, you have to put on a gig!’”
The gig itself, MCed by the music journalist and broadcaster Stuart Bailie, was primarily attended by more than 2,ooo Catholic and Protestant sixth-formers. This was an intentional private invitation to the youth to showcase hope and cross-community solidarity. Ash opened the concert with a 45-minute set that included breakthrough hits such as Goldfinger and Kung Fu. Bono and the Edge then joined the young band on stage to sing the Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down before closing with Ben E King’s Stand By Me. But the moment that has stayed in the collective memory was U2, joined by Wheeler, playing One, whose themes of unity and redemption seemed perfect for the moment. As the song reached its conclusion, the band subtly changed its ending to incorporate the melody of Give Peace a Chance.
One of McDevitt’s most vivid memories from that time was the dynamic between Bono and John Hume. “John knew when a story was building and was very nervous on the day as a result. However, he was reassured as Bono was always a John Hume fan. When you put them in a room together, Bono changes character entirely and becomes an apostle to Hume.”
When Bono raised the two leaders’ arms aloft, boxer-style, McDevitt recalls the “wall of sound” that came from the young audience. Backstage, Bono remained in awe of Hume: “John made a short speech in the green room after the gig, thanking U2 for taking part. When it was Bono’s turn to speak, he just disintegrated, because he keeps looking at Hume and turns into this child who can’t string it together. It was fascinating, the moment I really appreciated the significance of John Hume and the power of his persona.”
Via email, Bono offers his reflections on those seismic events. “You would think there would have been massive support for a peace deal, but the yes vote was starting to falter when everyone agreed to gather that day,” he recalls. “Bitterness is a hard pill to not swallow. We only agreed to do the yes concert if the two opposing parties would come on stage, shake hands and not speak. Asking politicians not to speak at such an event is like asking rock stars to be nuanced. Everyone dug deeper. Ash’s songs contained the freedom everyone was (not) fighting for. Me holding up the hands of Hume and Trimble was a visual rip from Bob Marley during a peace concert in Kingston, Jamaica, where he held aloft the accusing hands of two bitter rivals, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga. You can always rely on Bob for some poetry.”
For John Hume’s funeral in 2020, Bono wrote a speech called Leadership that was read aloud to the congregation by the Right Rev Dónal McKeown, bishop of Derry. It conveyed the deep respect that Bono carried for Hume. “We were looking for a negotiator who understood that no one wins unless everyone wins … and that peace is the only victory … We were looking for a great leader and found a great servant. We found John Hume.”
David Trimble died in July 2022. His daughter, Vicky Trimble, was in the crowd that night in 1998, only a teenager at the time. Her father had a great love of not only Elvis but also the opera. She described her memories of that moment as being extremely “proud and excited”. Now, with some perspective, she also recognises the gravity of what her father did during that period: “It was a great moment of togetherness. It was all about ‘we’ instead of ‘us and them’. A moment of everybody coming together to support the peace process; a time of hope.”
Ash frontman Tim Wheeler appreciated the part that the band, who were formed in the Northern Irish town of Downpatrick in 1992, could play in terms of giving the younger generation a voice. “I was 21 at the time,” he says. “We were like an extension of the youth in the audience. The moment was pretty clear to us. It was a no-brainer to drop everything and do the gig. It was the first chance we had to try to help change things. We were born right in the middle of the Troubles. Sometimes as a band we felt, in the years leading up to 1998, that we were doing more than politicians were doing in bringing people together.”
Bertie Ahern was taoiseach of Ireland at the time. He wasn’t in Belfast that day as he had been canvassing for the yes vote across the Republic of Ireland. His role in getting the agreement across the line with delicacy, respect and diplomacy cannot be undervalued. A Bee Gees fan and father-in-law to Westlife’s Nicky Byrne, he too knows how music can bring communities together. “David Trimble was an opera man, John Hume was a ‘trad’ [traditional Irish music] man. Bono is a rock’n’roller. It was a powerful symbol. There’s a time for everything, and that was the perfect time. It was a great night and music played its part.” Ahern remained good friends with Hume and Trimble until the end of their lives. Ahern recalls that Hume loved to sing and would regularly give a blast of the folk song The Town I Loved So Well (about his native Derry) at party gatherings.
Although from a very different musical background to Bono, let alone the “trad” stuff loved by Trimble, David Holmes played his own role in uniting communities through his Sugar Sweet raves. In recent years, the acclaimed movie score composer, musician and DJ has once again made Belfast his home after a stint in LA. Holmes has scored the likes of Ocean’s Eleven and is one-third of the band Unloved, who supplied most of the music for the BBC’s Killing Eve. At the age of just four, Holmes and his family were petrol-bombed out of their south Belfast home, the result of being Catholic in a predominantly Protestant neighbourhood. This was a sad reality on both sides of the divide at the time.
Fifty years on, Holmes beams at the rebirth of his beloved city. However, he recalls his reluctance to mix his art with the violence on his doorstep, and viewed the period around the Good Friday agreement with some reservations. “I made one track about the Troubles called No Man’s Land from my first album in around 1993-94,” he says. “That was after watching In the Name of the Father, a Jim Sheridan film. Apart from that, I just buried my head in the sand and got on with my private fantasy world. In 1998 I felt a sense of relief, but also history had taught me not to get too carried away with whether the peace was going to be lasting or not. I’d seen a few ceasefires in my time.”
So what of the generation that would have been in their late teens and early 20s in 1998? Gary Lightbody from the Northern Irish band Snow Patrol was in his final year at the University of Dundee. Although he was not present at the Waterfront gig, he was proud about the role that Irish artists had to play. “Musicians from our place were in the thick of it; they were the energetic, talismanic representation of the agreement,” he says. “I’ve always thought music had magical powers. To see rock’n’roll, Irish, Northern Irish, roaring flame-like at the heart of it, was profoundly inspiring. Personally, I’ve tried to live up to the promise of that ever since.”
Lightbody has remained a flagbearer for Northern Irish music, helping to establish the Oh Yeah Centre in Belfast in 2007, the city’s creative hub for aspiring musicians. Aptly, the centre was named after a song from the album 1977 by Ash, one of Lightbody’s biggest influences. He is passionate about the quality of Belfast’s music scene and is adamant that this part of the world is “no longer some crackling, remote outpost on the edge of civilisation”. He adds: “In the last 10 years we’ve had a few amazing artists break out internationally – Hannah Peel, Two Door Cinema Club, Soak and Bicep – but that only scratches the surface of what’s happening all over Northern Ireland at the moment: incredible artists and bands like New Pagans, Dark Tropics, Cherym, Jordan Adetunji, Saint Sister, Strange New Places, Dani Larkin, Robocobra Quartet, Lemonade Shoelace, the Florentinas, and many, many others.” Belfast was awarded the Unesco City of Music designation in 2021.
Vicky Trimble sees music as intrinsic to the healing process experienced by Belfast and Northern Ireland as a whole: “Music can be extremely powerful when cultures meld. That’s how society and humanity moves forward. The creative arts can help people deal with trauma.”
With the ongoing absence of a strong and functioning government, bringing traditions together in Northern Ireland remains a challenge. However it is hard not to marvel at the transformation the country has experienced in the past quarter century, with those born in the 2000s and beyond unfamiliar with the chasm the nation pulled itself out from. Still, the work and outreach and forgiveness cannot stop now.
“Music as a part of culture, the media, art, it’s at least 50% of the battle,” says the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, who was born in Derry and, like Wheeler, started performing during the Troubles. “It’s how we talk to each other. It’s how we express ourselves. Therefore, if we express ourselves positively, with understanding towards people, it can only be a good thing. Yet there’s only so much a song can do. It’s the people on the ground who are doing the hard yards. In those estates across cities, towns and villages, that’s where the good stuff happens.”
The Divine Comedy, who were having their most successful year to date in 1998, were not over-jubilant after decades of what Hannon refers to as “an overarching doom and gloom”. Not one for wearing his political heart on his sleeve through his songwriting, his feelings on the matter are best understood through his brilliant song from that period Sunrise – the only one to this day that Hannon has penned in relation to the divisive, sectarian past.
Hannon’s father was a minister in Northern Ireland at the time of the aforementioned Enniskillen bombing. Due to preach in the town that day, he was running late, and that tardiness saved his life. Fine margins of grace. “Sunrise was written literally as the agreement was signed,” Hannon recalls. “It’s saying it’s not all over, but it’s the beginnings of something good.”
In the words of the song: “From the corner of my eye, a hint of blue in the black sky / A ray of hope, a beam of light, an end to 30 years of night / The church bells ring, the children sing / What is this strange and beautiful thing? / It’s the sunrise.”
