How the Undertones Put Derry on the Punk Rock Map
Looking back on 45 years of the Northern Ireland band’s debut LP
In a church graveyard in Suffolk, England, there sits a simple gravestone for one John R.P. Ravenscroft.
Better known to his audience as John Peel, beloved BBC disc jockey and tastemaker, he had one request for the stone. At the bottom, one can see the fulfillment of his wishes, the inscribed words “Teenage dreams so hard to find.”
They come from the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks,” a song he deeply loved from the moment he heard it, writing “This is the one” on the E.P. and crying when he heard a colleague play the song on his show. It was Peel’s own show that broke it, as he played the song twice in a row on his radio show (a rare occurrence) in September, 1978.
Decades later, Peel told the Guardian, “‘But what’s so great about it?’ People, from my own children to complete strangers in wine bars, have asked. I’ve never yet come up with an answer that pleased me much, falling back each time on: ‘There’s nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it.'”
Almost immediately, buzz around the band grew louder, which likely would have led to a record deal, but the clock sped up thanks to the fact that Seymour Stein, in London to see The Searchers play, was listening to Peel’s show in the car when the host double-dipped “Teenage Kicks.” Sufficiently impressed, Stein quickly pursued the Undertones, signing them, leading to their self-titled debut album being released 45 years ago this month.
VIDEO: The Undertones “Teenage Kicks”
It was a sudden, welcome turn for the fortunes for a band of men 21 and younger from Derry, Northern Ireland, who had been frustrated trying to break through.
“It was pretty much a struggle for a couple of years because we were getting a lot of abuse here in Derry for being punks, for dressing different, for having short hair, you know? So that was tough,” lead guitarist Damian O’Neill told the BBC last year.
Feargal Sharkey, in particular, was a lightning rod given that he was not a shy and retiring frontman and also was the most likely to not take any shit if some other local popped their mouth off or crossed the street just to spit on him.
The group’s lineup came together in 1975, with their first couple of gigs being for kids because Sharkey was a Boy Scout leader at the time.
Sharkey, just minutes before the first show, christened the band The Hot Rods, a no-go with there being a band called Eddie & The Hot Rods. Same with Little Feat, Sharkey’s band name idea for the second show.
Fortunately, drummer Billy Doherty had an idea from one of his school textbooks, thus, they were called The Undertones before Sharkey could suggest calling themselves The Doobie Brothers or Canned Heat.
As much as the original outbursts of punk are viewed as a response to the tendencies of AOR and prog bands to veer into pretension and bloat, one also can’t minimize the love a lot of those punk bands had for the classic single.
The Ramones, for example, covered ’60s songs they loved like “Surfin’ Bird,” “Let’s Dance” and “Do You Wanna Dance” and one could spot their love for simple catchiness and girl group toughness in their early bursts of greatness.
The Undertones, too, had their own loves. Rhythm guitarist John O’Neill, the group’s primary songwriter, said his first loves were bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But it was coming across newer American bands, particularly from the New York scene, that became his awakening.
“The Ramones’ LP was a massive influence on us because it was the same chords that we were playing anyway, except done twice as fast, and that was a lightbulb moment for us – it was more fun to play them fast anyway,” he told Punktuation in 2022.
Derry was no stranger to political strife at the time. The Battle of the Bogside, which was the start of the Troubles, took place in 1969 in the neighborhood where the band members grew up. Three years later, it was the site of Bloody Sunday, where 14 unarmed protesters were shot and killed, some in the back.
But whereas a band like Belfast’s Stiff Little Fingers were unabashedly political, the Undertones mostly avoided that, no matter how tempting it might have been considering their members all grew up Catholic under the thumb of occupying rule.
“Anybody looking at the situation from the outside probably would have expected a rock band coming from that background to be full of anger with ugly sides, snarling at the world,” journalist Eamonn McCann said in the 2004 documentary Teenage Kicks: The Story of the Undertones. “And the peculiar thing with Derry was that was the general attitude of young people in the Bogside. So, in a way you were revolting against the things around you, revolting against anger in a strange way. It was an oppositional statement to decide to aim for the mainstream.”
Part of it was that they felt it was too predictable, but it was also a matter of not feeling comfortable at their ages in being too strident.
“You have to remember we were seventeen or eighteen when we were writing and recording those songs,” John told Razorcake in 2012. “On one level, we were aware of how bad things were—it was literally outside our door—but, as teenagers, we were also trying to have as ‘normal’ a life as we could. It’s the only way you could deal with it and stay sane!”
Sharkey, years later, said practicality played into it. The Casbah, which became their go-to venue in the early years, couldn’t be accessed by fans without going through a British military checkpoint outside.
Frankly, calling it a venue might be a stretch, as it was a place to play built above the ruins of an older pub the IRA bombed out. Restrooms? Look for a clear shot at the wall and be prepared to duck flying beers.
Over time, the Undertones started to accumulate their own material, partly because John O’Neill found it easier to write songs rather than figure out chords and work arrangements for covers.
Terri Hooley, who owned a record shop at the time, liked a demo tape the band had passed on to him. He agreed to release an EP, which they recorded for £200.
Sharkey by that point, was ready to quit in frustration, but was persuaded to stick around for recording. In the end, someone (Hooley, Doherty, Sharkey have all been mentioned) got the EP, also titled Teenage Kicks, into Peel’s hands, setting the wheels in motion. Within a month, Peel had recorded them for a BBC session and the band was booked to play Top of the Pops.
All these years late, it’s easy to see why Britain’s most beloved DJ connected with the song. It contains the a youthful desire to connect with the opposite sex, but the tone is exuberant and yearning rather than frustrated and resigned. There’s that indomitable chorus, Sharkey’s perfect vocal (especially on the verses, the way the chord shifts in that repeated riff, the way the handclaps kick in.
In short, it’s damn near close to a perfect punk anthem and pop record.
The song only peaked at 31 in the U.K. and didn’t chart at all in Ireland. But the song, seemingly with a will of its own, became regarded as a classic of the genre and the band’s signature tune.
“The reaction we get whenever we play that song is just overwhelming, so I have no problem performing it,” John told Sound in 2011. “You know, it’s our song and we recorded it, so why can’t we play it? I think it’s timeless: a song that is loved by people of all generations, and which gets the same reaction every time it is played.”
Even when a level of fame approached, the Undertones weren’t universally loved in their home city.
“Derry was all heavy metal and progressive rock and all that stuff. Because we weren’t doing five-minute guitar solos, we were just [seen as] crap musicians, so we had to take on the chin,” John said in 2022.
As huge in the band’s history as “Teenage Kicks” is, the song, which John wrote in five minutes starting with the title, wasn’t on the debut album. But that wouldn’t last, as a reissue five months later added it and their second single, “Get Over You.”
Crushing on an unobtainable “bad girl” has been lyrical fodder across genres over the years. The Undertones’ rip through it is raw, yet tightly played, a good choice for a single.
The Undertones stepped into the studio with producer Roger Bechirian, then most known for engineering Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ This Year’s Model and Armed Forces. Unsurprising for an album where every song clocked in under three minutes, the self-titled affair was recorded and mixed over three weeks in early 1979. The tracklist held songs that dated back to 1977 and others written just before the sessions.
“Family Entertainment” is fast, melodic, full of thumping drums and chiming guitars. Sharkey had been an actual choirboy, but he cuts his tremulous voice with a rasp on the opener, snottily telling a sibling to be careful trying to get to second or third base with a partner with mom around.
“Girls Don’t Like It” insistently depicts romantic frustration, when fancy cars and baseline wooing fail equally. You can practically hear the blue balls in the way Sharkey sings ““Making us stop instead of letting us go,” but in the end he respects consent.
It’s not difficult to spot the Ramones influence, like on the riff and the way the others shout along the chorus with Sharkey on the wittily defiant aspirations of the poverty-constricted wannabe clotheshorse of “Male Model” (“I wanna wanna be a male model! I wanna wanna be a male model!”).
There’s almost a jangle to “I Gotta Getta,” a joyous tone clashing with the thinly-sketched portraits of sad lives in the lyrics. And that’s before the surprise organ sound gets whipped out.
The tempo picks up a notch on “Wrong Way”, where Sharkey sings lyrics like “Stop treating me this way, girl/’Cause you know I meant no harm.” I sense a theme here.
The opening riff on “Jump Boys” recalls the Clash’s “Clash City Rockers.” The song itself (which even takes time for a brief bass solo), seems at first like a takedown of aimless street toughs, until you hear “We’re all jump boys” in the chorus.
It may not be New Jersey, but County Londonderry has shores of its own to escape to. “Here Comes the Summer” is a quick, organ-propelled blast of standing on the corner, watching all the beach girls.
“Billy’s Third” is serviceable enough, but it’s not as memorable as what comes before or after. But that’s also grading against a sharp curve.
The lone single released from the original album, “Jimmy Jimmy” became the band’s first Top 20 hit. Jimmy’s situation is kept vague which, at first glance, leaves the lyrics feeling unfinished. But then again, the disconnect of not knowing what happened is the point. Nobody listened to Jimmy. Nobody saw him taken away.
VIDEO: The Undertones perform “Jimmy Jimmy” on Top of the Pops
The musical stomp and Sharkey’s voice, in full vibrato, carries the song anyway.
Evidently, not every girl was unobtainable, but the “True Confessions” isn’t any happier, as it’s a view of a breakup about to happen. At the time of the E.P., the band thought it was a better song than “Teenage Kicks” (ah, youth).
The original version, a B-side to that single, has a rough charm that might have been a better fit, but the album take, more keyboard-centered, makes for a nice post-punk curveball.
The Undertones were well-suited to the changeup, their musical chemistry coming together in a short time, matched by enough musical skill to put the ideas together. The O’Neills meshed well on guitar. Bassist Michael Bradley and Doherty were locked in.
“(She’s a) Runaround” has nothing to do with overflowing hormones, because the girl in question is showing signs of depression, a tale told with a call-and-response chorus and accented with an interesting instrumental break.
But fear not, for the lads are back to crushing again on “I Know a Girl,” this time in a setting that showed John’s love of the first Nuggets compilation was genuine.
Dual guitars drive “Listening In,” an ode to eavesdropping on a party line, a reference that would become obsolete over the next decade or so.
“Casbah Rock” is a 50-second coda. Its production is so lo-fi that it makes early Guided by Voices sound like Steely Dan, a fitting choice for the club in question.
The Casbah itself is long gone, closing in the early ’80s. It’s location’s now an entrance to a shopping mall, a spot also used as a meetup for commercial walking tours of the city.
Despite the circumstances of life in Derry for a struggling band, the Undertones sometimes took matters into their own hands. They organized a punk rock festival in Derry (which was not a place bands came to), getting The Clash and The Damned to agree to play.
The festival fell apart when Joe Strummer got death threats, but to make it up to them, the Clash had the Undertones open for them for three weeks on their 1979 American tour. They were there that night at the Palladium in New York City when Paul Simonon smashed his bass in frustration with the venue’s security trying to keep concertgoers seated, a moment preserved on the classic London Calling cover.
Beyond the history, the opening slot was an education.
“At that stage, when we used to play live, we didn’t even have a setlist. They had a setlist, and they stuck to it, and it made them so tight,” John later recalled. “That was one of the lessons that we learnt from watching them, that it was a good idea to have a setlist after all – because we used to go, ‘what song are we going to do next’ when we finished one song. Everything was very ad-hoc. And they were such lovely, genuinely nice people.”
The Undertones wasted little time in delivering a follow-up. Hypnotised, released 11 months after the debut, offers more of the same to strong effect, starting with the witty opener “More Songs About Chocolate and Girls.”
They branched out more on 1981’s Positive Touch, both in moving away from their punk roots more and with increased political lyrical content.
Their final effort with the lineup, The Sin of Pride two years later, put the sound of their first two albums in the past with its embrace of soul. It was as if Paul Weller had turned the final Jam album into The Style Council. The results were good, but the album flopped miserably.
“We thought we were doing all these really good things, taking up all these challenges and, we felt, meeting them, and nobody was saying a damn thing about it. Everybody still wanted us to be these 16-year-old kids covered in acne and playing ‘Teenage Kicks,'” Sharkey told the Montreal Gazette in 1986.
The album’s commercial failure made it impossible to paper over tensions (particularly between John O’Neill and Sharkey), as the singer finally left. “After that I just had to get away from it for a while. I felt I had finished myself off anyway as far as bands were concerned. I just couldn’t put any more into it, and still be constructive or creative. Nothing left to offer,” he said.
Sharkey’s first venture was to say “yes” when Vince Clarke asked him to sing “Never Say Never,” a single for a short-lived project between Yaz and Erasure called The Assembly. The song reached No. 4 on the UK charts, setting the stage for a solo career.
His self-titled debut (produced by Dave Stewart) was a success in 1985, led by his cover of Maria McKee’s “A Good Heart,” which hit No. 1 in a number of countries. Two more albums were less successful artistically and commercially, leading Sharkey to walk away from performing.
Sharkey did so before he hit his mid-30s, telling the Times he hadn’t want to be “waking up one day to discover I was the wrong side of 50 with a receding hairline and a ponytail, deluding myself that I would be back on Top of the Pops next week.”
He’s spent most of the last 30 years working behind the scenes in the business, including time as head of the UK music industry’s lobbying firm.
He’s also become an environmental campaigner, fighting against corporate pollution of rivers. As important as the issue is to him, he did quip to the New York Times last year, “I do not want, on my grave, the epitaph ‘Sewage Czar.’”
The O’Neill brothers moved on to That Petrol Emotion, which was more political than the Undertones and fused punk, post-punk and dance music together in a way that would influence bands in the ’90s.
Over the years, there hasn’t been bad blood between Sharkey and the rest of the band so much as there’s no relationship at all. It’s no surprise he had no interest when approached about a reunion after John left That Petrol Emotion.
Thus, when the remaining four got serious about the idea in 1999, they didn’t talk to him at all, instead turning to Paul McLoone, who’d been in a post-Undertones band with Doherty. They put out a couple of reasonably well-received albums in the 2000s and continue to tour, with shows scheduled throughout the rest of the year.
But the Undertones returned without any such illusions of past pop glory, and besides, TOTP left the air in the summer of 2006.
At the time, the Undertones felt they had better songs than “Teenage Kicks,” but their appreciation for it has grown. “The reaction we get whenever we play that song is just overwhelming, so I have no problem performing it,” John told Sound on Sound on 2011. “You know, it’s our song and we recorded it, so why can’t we play it? I think it’s timeless– a song that is loved by people of all generations, and which gets the same reaction every time it is played.”
With The Undertones, the band had an album that lived up to the promise of that first blast that made Peel a fan. It’s unmistakably a product of youth, albeit talented youth, energetically having fun.
All these years later, it’s still one of the greatest, catchiest punk albums ever made, as worthy as the best by their heroes.
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A really great article about a really great band. Thank you, Kara.