The Undertones

Teenage Kicks

by Fabio Guastalla

The Undertones – Teenage Kicks

(1978 – included on the EP “Teenage Kicks”, Sire Records, 1978)

Are teenage dreams

so hard to beat?

“Anyone who saw the early punk bands in action will remember that it was standard practice to cover Sixties songs, making sure, however, to play them at twice the speed”. This statement by bassist Michael Bradley, taken from his recent memoir, might not strike you as particularly revolutionary. And yet, to understand a band like his Undertones, this is exactly where you have to start: from the arrival of punk and its irreverent notion that you can take, twist and demolish whatever you like, however you like. Even if you can barely hold a guitar.

In 1975, when the Undertones formed, punk was fast reaching British shores: that same year, for instance, saw the formation of the Sex Pistols. A few hundred miles to the north-west, in Derry, brothers Damian and John O’Neill, both guitarists, drummer Billy Doherty, singer Fargal Sharkey and the aforementioned bassist Michael Bradley perhaps had rather different reasons for pouring all their energy into music. The memory of “Bloody Sunday” was more vivid than ever, and above all that episode had reignited the flashpoint of conflict between British forces and IRA activists along the streets of Northern Ireland's second-largest city. As if that weren't enough, the gloom was deepened further by record-high unemployment: in the band, the only one with a steady job was Sharkey.

In any case, it was precisely the arrival of punk that showed the Undertones the way forward. Their early repertoire consisted of a string of Fifties rock'n'roll classics and Sixties garage tunes, but then came Buzzcocks and Ramones, and nothing was ever the same again. To hear live music in Derry, you could only rely on two venues, run by the same owners and located on the same street. In the bigger of the two, The Casbah, the Undertones started cutting their teeth, playing every chance they got. Until, one day, they decided it was time to start writing their own songs.

There's no telling how a rock anthem is born. What alchemy of factors, what fleeting moment gives rise to the winning riff. One minute you're a kid with a guitar, the next you've written a legendary song. And the beauty of it is that you don't even realize it, because it's not you who decides what will go down in history, but someone else out there. When John O’Neill came up with the chords for “Teenage Kicks”, he had in mind the hit by fellow countrymen Them, “Gloria”, as sung by local idol Van Morrison. “I thought it would be great to write a song like that, a song any garage band could play, even if they were just starting out”.

In five minutes, “Teenage Kicks” was ready, but it would take a while before it was actually put on tape. In June 1978, after taking part in a Battle of the Bands in Belfast, the Undertones stepped into the Wizard Studios in the Northern Irish capital. In their pockets they had two hundred pounds, just enough to cover a few hours in the studio. In a hurry, as people with no time to waste tend to be, they recorded four songs meaning to put together an EP. The first of these was “Teenage Kicks”.

For the first time, the five of them had access to a proper studio equipped with professional gear. The budget, though, was what it was: in the space of just three days, the four songs were recorded and mixed. And ultimately, who cared if it was full of imperfections? It was a punk record, and punk doesn't bother with details. The EP came out on a small Belfast label, Good Vibrations Records, whose owner, Terri Hooley, also ran the record shop of the same name on Great Victoria Street. Hooley is said to have been rather reluctant to sign the Undertones at first, but in the end he not only came around, he even decided to take a few dozen copies with him to London, where the major labels and distribution companies were based. That trip would turn out to be the greatest success of his life, and of course of the lives of the five lads from Derry.

The EP opens with the title track, “Teenage Kicks”. The other three songs, in order, are “True Confessions”, “Smarter Than U” and “Emergency Cases”. Only one of them, however, was destined to live on forever in the annals of rock. In under two and a half minutes, “Teenage Kicks” captures the essence of an era: punk's frantic rhythms, garage guitars, power-pop touches, and then a lightheartedness that runs through not just the melodic lines but, above all, the lyrics. There's no need to paraphrase to grasp the message spelled out by Fargal Sharkey in one of his most inspired performances: teenage kicks are nothing more than the sexual urges stirred up by a girl who has just moved into the neighbourhood and instantly becomes the object of every boy's desire, so much so that she keeps you up at night and makes you grab the phone right away to set up a date. “I need excitement, oh I need it bad”: certainly not Shakespeare or Yeats, but – in its raw, sincere bluntness – a statement that sums up all the drive, and perhaps the frustration, of youth. And yet, alongside thoughts like this, there's also a question so urgent, and in a way so philosophical and universal, that it could be borrowed by teenagers of any era and any place, as indeed it would be: “Are teenage dreams so hard to beat?”

When he arrived in London, Terri Hooley knocked on every door that mattered: Rough Trade, EMI, CBS and so on. Yet no one seemed to show the slightest interest in the debut of five unruly Northern Irish lads with such unlikely appeal. That is, until the EP landed in the hands of a popular BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel, who not only listened to the tracks but was so taken with them that he played them all back to back, one after another, on his show on 12 September 1978. As if that weren't enough, for the first time in his life he played the opening track a second time during the same programme, explaining his choice with a simple line: “It doesn't get much better than this”. The song was “Teenage Kicks”.

The rest, as always, is history. “Teenage Kicks”, hastily reissued by Sire Records in October 1978, entered the UK charts at number 31. For the record, it wouldn't be the Undertones' biggest commercial hit: “My Perfect Cousin”, in March 1980, would reach number nine; “Wednesday Week” would peak at number eleven, “Jimmy Jimmy” at number sixteen, “It's Going To Happen” at number eighteen. But thankfully, it's not chart positions that determine a song's immortality, rather its melodies, its drive, that strange alchemy that turns certain notes and certain songs into landmarks of an era. “Teenage Kicks” has been played, and is still played, by thousands of bands in every corner of the world. As for John Peel, in an interview given a few years before his death, he said he couldn't listen to this song without getting tears in his eyes. At his funeral, in 2004, the coffin left the church to the sound of “Teenage Kicks”, his favourite song. On his gravestone, just below his name and dates of birth and death, an epitaph reads: “Teenage dreams so hard to beat”.

Are teenage dreams so hard to beat

Everytime she walks down the street

Another girl in the neighbourhood

Wish she was mine, she looks so good