Good Friday Agreement at 20 - the night when music met politics in Belfast

20 years ago, Hot Press brought its infamous Rock Awards to Belfast for the second year in a row. As it happened, the April 9 date coincided with a monumental moment in Irish and British history. Here's Hot Press editor Niall Stokes' original reflection of the event from 1998:

What a strange warp we were in. On Good Friday, I walked through an almost deserted BBC building in Ormeau Avenue with Mike Edgar, the producer of the Heineken Hot Press Awards show, as well as one of the presenters. Deeper into the bowels we went, along claustrophobic corridors, until we finally came to Edit Suite No.5.

There the director, Róisín Browne, was ensconced with a small team. They were beavering away, making the cuts and adjustments necessary to fit the programme into its allotted duration later that evening.

"Our time-slot has gone back ten minutes because of political developments," Mike Edgar reflected. "We've been in touch with the powers-that-be and we're hoping that we'll get an extra ten minutes as a trade-off. Images flickered on the screen and what had seemed chaotic the previous night was transformed. The studio wasn't small, but now, on screen, the camera angles and the set design made it look vast. Eight hours before lift-off and you could see that the programme was beginning to take shape.

Across the way in another edit suite, a separate production team was sifting through the interview footage, recorded by Stuart Bailie in the Green Room, and elsewhere about the BBC building, while the Awards show was running, and selecting the highlights. This was another painstaking, deliberate process. But the real fun would start when this material would have to be mated with the show itself.

Given the imminent deadline, this was no time to start hanging around, and running the risk of distracting people from the job in hand. Walking back out through the labyrinth, Mike pointed down into the studio below, where the news and current affairs teams were beginning to get themselves organised to handle post-settlement talk shows.

What's the latest state of play, I asked Mike, and he turned to me.

"You know, I haven't got a clue," he laughed. "I know that an agreement has been signed, but beyond that I really don't know what's going on. I've been so locked into Awards mode that the whole thing has passed me by for the past week."

I had to admit that I knew the feeling. A strange warp indeed.

For the previous five months, the phone lines had been humming between the Hot Press office in Dublin and the BBC in Belfast. It's hard to believe, but the decision to take the Heineken Hot Press Awards north again had been taken about half a year ago.

Various dates had been discussed for the event. At one stage St. Patrick's Day was considered, before the obvious pitfalls became apparent: it's a night when a significant number of Irish musicians are likely to be working, for a start. A date towards the end of March became the preferred option. And then, as contact with the nominees intensified, it became apparent that April 9th would be the ideal date.

A couple of brave decisions were required. In particular, from the BBC's perspective, it might have been considered risky doing the show on 'Holy' Thursday – and, more pointedly, broadcasting it on Good Friday. But Paul Evans, the station's head of production, was prepared to run with it and so the date was set.

From a scheduling point of view, the head of programmes Anna Carragher not only committed the time on Good Friday, but slotted in a second, daytime run on Easter Sunday as well. Clearly, the BBC's commitment to the project was substantial. Now the challenge was to deliver a programme that would justify it.

It wasn't just the phone lines between Dublin and Belfast that were humming. Irish rock stars, pop stars and musicians are scattered all over the world at any given time, and there were a few substantial international big names in the mix to reckon with as well. And so London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Rio, as well as Manchester and Cape Town, at different times, became vital points of contact.

Besides trying to ensure that the maximum number of nominees could be present and correct, there was also the live music to be lined up. And on top of that, with a heavy input from Heineken, of course, there was the kind of logistical exercise that would have frightened Napoleon to be planned and executed: transport, hotels, before-show party, after-show party, arrangements for press, radio, TV and other media, the Hot Press cover-mounted CD, food, drink, guest lists. . . and that's just for starters.

And then – in the midst of all this – it became apparent that our deadlines were going to coincide with George Mitchell's, and that for the few days that the Heineken Hot Press awards extravaganza was scheduled to roll into town, Belfast would be the focus of a level of international attention, unprecedented except in the context of the worst explosions of violence and mayhem in the city's troubled last 30 years.

There's no doubt that the strange conjunction of events added enormously to the sense of occasion. The word was that George Mitchell had been booked into the Europa Hotel, and so for a while it seemed that rock 'n' rollers would be rubbing shoulders with statesmen. The contact turned out not to be quite so close, but people travelled to Belfast in expectation, thinking, believing that this really could be the perfect night to be in the North's first city and Ireland's second.

There was a curious lesson for everyone at Stormont in what was happening across the city in the environs of Broadcasting House. Because rock 'n' roll had already established its own cross-border initiatives. All together, under one roof, and in a spirit of mutual respect, people of orange background, of green, and of neither would be coming together to celebrate the achievements of Irish musicians, North and South of the border.

There's been a natural evolution in this direction, best symbolised by the experience of a band like Therapy? who come from a loyalist background in the town of Larne, but whose lead vocalist and main inspiration Andy Cairns has been Dublin-based for a couple of years now. In common with many Northern Irish people, the way Cairns tells it, Therapy? became aware of the fact that they were Irish when they went to London and were treated as Paddies. In a recent interview, he articulated his feelings well, emphasising that to a large extent, to grow into rock 'n' roll involves a willingness to let go of any traditions that might limit your vision. And so, within the rock 'n' roll community, exists a very significant number of people who have gone beyond both orange and green, who are prepared to ditch the baggage of the past, and the destructive hostilities that go with it, in favour of turning the present, and the future, into something people from any and every tradition on the island of Ireland can live comfortably and constructively in.

It hardly needs to be spoken about, but that was certainly the prevailing mood when the entourages began to congregate in the Europa Hotel, and later on in the BBC Studios. Outside, in nearby Glengall St, a motley crew of protesters organised by Ian Pailey, were hanging around the UUP offices. They succeeded in making the tennyboppers, shivering in the cold and screaming at every second limo in the hope that it might contain Ronan Keating of Boyzone, seem positively dignified.

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He didn't show on the night, but Van Morrison's words, spoken in the beautiful 'Coney Island', seemed ever-more appropriate as the night gained momentum, and the roll-call of stars adding their presence to the occasion, grew: "Wouldn't it be great if it was like this all the time?"

Not in any corny or simplistic way – but Belfast as a city, and the North in general, have been denied the possibility of events of this kind for much of the past 30 years. We were conscious of this – and conscious of the need to change it – when we made the decision to take the Heineken Hot Press Awards to Belfast in 1997.

That decision was vindicated then by the extraordinarily warm and positive response from everyone in the North, beginning with the BBC and moving outwards from there. And it was vindicated even more fully this year as the emotions about what was going on politically reverberated in the BBC studios. When the suggestion was first mooted that Brian Kennedy and Ronan Keating would sing REM's 'Everybody Hurts' together, it seemed like a fine idea. In the event – juxtaposed by directior Róisín Browne with marvellously appropriate footage from a Francois Truffant movie of a child running (from or to what isn't clear) – it turned into a piece of television magic, that connected beautifully with the spirit of the agreement that was being hammered out in Stormont.

And then, finally when Bono quoted a chunk from the song written by Christy Moore, Edge, and himself, 'North and South of the River', the resonances were unmistakable.

It would be easy to argue that none of these things mattered in the grand scheme of things, but that is, I think, to miss the point. What happened, finally, at Stormont was that David Trimble, in particular, recognised the tide of history was turning, and that it was necessary now to look to the future, instead of the past. And in signing the agreement, he paved the way for the complete marginalisation of those who believed in the use of violence as a means to achieve their ends in Northern politics. If it is the case that everyone who participated can walk away from the table knowing that this is the best deal that could have been done by them, if a deal was to be done at all, the 'settlement' is indeed a good one.

If it allows the vast bulk of loyalist and republican paramilitaries alike to lay down their arms and to begin to participate in the political process free of the taint of murders committed by them or their associates in the past, then the settlement is a good one.

I believe that John Hume, Gerry Adams, Seamus Mallon and Martin McGuinness have done well by their constituency. I believe that the same is true of David Trimble, Gary McMichael, David Ervine and Billy Hutchison. Because, together they have created the conditions in which one and all can, like the musicians who gathered in Belfast for the Heineken Hot Press Awards, go beyond orange and green, and the hostilities that these definitions plunged people into, to create a society where justice, peace and equality can become a fact of everyday life.

That was the prospect people could focus on, as the wagons began to roll out of Belfast on Good Friday, and the news was confirmed that an agreement had indeed been signed, sealed and delivered. There's still a long road to travel – but already Dublin feels closer to Belfast. As it should be.