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The late great John Peel regularly cited "Teenage Kicks" as the greatest single of all time. 30 years since the song put Derry's beloved Undertones on the map, RBP revisits the time of its release in this ace piece by NME's Belfast correspondent Gavin Martin. -- Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

Fist outstretched above his head, Fergal Sharkey flails his arm like a helicopter propeller going into take off as the Undertones hit into the revolving guitar intro of their brand new hit "Teenage Kicks" for the second time this evening.

Para-jacketed youths, lotsa sweet young things and even a few older, hairier folk follow Fergal's lead as the hall fills with demented human helicopters. It's just one of the countless encores the band play; a series of encores begun by Sharkey himself taking the microphone and leading the audience in a chorus of "We want more..."

The Undertones are a cliché of most rock journalists' imagination--it's easy to apply hackneyed, well-worn phrases like "youthful vibrance", "lustful aggression," and "teenage exuberance" to them--but for once this band actually fits the bill. They produced a beautiful noise, all wacky Johnny-Thunders-style guitar, excitable vocals and bouncy boppy rhythms; it may be messy and immature at times, but when you've only seen sixteen summers pass you by it makes more sense than almost anything you've ever heard.

Derry is a city with some of the worst housing and unemployment figures in the U.K., a town of two communities segregated by a river and religion. As you may have guessed, Derry isn't the most exciting place in the world. Jesus, even the town's football team was axed from the Irish League a few seasons ago.

In about 1975 the O'Neill brothers [John and Finney] got together with a gangling acne-smitten jokester called Micky Bradeley and a fresh-faced drummer called Billy Docherty. They were all pretty well pissed off with just playing football and doing little else, so they thought it would be a "good crack" to start a rock band.

As they learned to play on borrowed equipment, to the tune of such pre-punk manuals as Nuggets, they realized that a younger O'Neill brother (Daimion) might be more suitable as a lead guitarist (although Finney remains connected to the band as van driver, roundsman and all-round helper) and that the silly kid with the squint who sat beside Billy in English class, name of Fergal Sharkey, might with time turn out to be just what they were looking for the ideal vocalist. Or the next best thing, anyway.

"Bill was always on at me to come round and sing for this band, but I just kept whistling and singing to keep him going," says Fergal.

Eventually he was persuaded to come round to a rehearsal in John's bedroom and after seeing they had guitars and some equipment he joined. In the months ahead Fergal could be seen arriving at practices in a state of fatigue after carrying his record player for two miles across Derry to put a microphone through to use as a PA.

Following a few feet-finding gigs in Derry in 1976, they played the infamous Casbar in early 1977. The venue has since been immortalised in the Undertones' "Louie Louie" offspring, "Casbar Rock," which more or less documents the attitudes towards them in those early days when they were more likely to get a shower of beer glasses than an encore from the reactionary dandruff carriers who frequented the pub.

"It was good when everybody hated us. We used to get all these old hippies laughing at us and calling us shite. Billy kicked his drums in the first time we played there--it gave us a sort of adrenalin."

Traveling to Dublin twice in 1977, they found great encouragement from the alternative music scene there, moving out and away from the morass of showbands and bearded folkies weaned on Guinness. However, their second visit to Dublin was at the Belfield Festival which culminated in the tragic death of Patrick Coultry last summer.

Billy Docherty was unfortunate enough to be wearing the same garb as the suspected murderer, and found himself being grilled by cops in both Dublin and Derry. The band split up for a while, confused and shocked by the aftermath of Belfieid.

But braving the beer, gob, and glass at the Casbar until Christmas was to reap its dividends. As they built up a hardcore following of kids just like themselves, the band at last found themselves playing for their real audience: Derry's lost youth.

It should be remembered that the Undertones remained the sole originators of the scene in Derry. There were no groups or fanzines, and the distance between Derry and Belfast made co-operation with emerging bands there impossible. They've always been a singular phenomenon and John, with typical modesty, opines: "If we can do it, anyone can. We were just a group of fellas playing to people like ourselves. It could just have easily been them playing and us in the audience."

They recorded a demo tape which was sent to and refused by most of the major independent labels (who's sorry now?), but after a phone call to the ever helpful John Peel had attuned his ear to the fact that there was life beyond Stiff Little Fingers the DJ expressed interest in hearing the band's demo tape. Suitably impressed, he arranged a session to be recorded.

But Belfast's Good Vibrations label also got a taste of the tape, and the band recorded an EP for the label the day after their first ever Belfast appearance at a Battle of the Bands gig at Queens University.

The rest is common knowledge – fervent plugging by Mr Peel led to a £36,000 recording contract with Sire Records, a Peter Powell record of the week, Top Of The Pops and a golden classic of a single called "Teenage Kicks," which, I'll be darned, seems destined for No. 1.

On the afternoon before the gig I saw last week, the band stopped off in Coleraine. Their initial qualms at going into the city centre – religious differences – were soon washed away when a visit to the local music shop saw John and Daimion returning to the van beaming. "Two guys asked us for our autographs," John tells me.

But for tonight's gig at Chester's Arcadia in Portrush the band still have to make do with a borrowed PA because various hassles with van hire firms maked it impossible to shift the band's own PA up from Belfast. This calls for considerable readjustment of the stage, after which recreation is sought playing football with a cigarette carton, or listening to "Teenage Kicks" at 33rpm (try it, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Bryan Ferry) or alternatively down at the local amusement arcade.

In downtown Portrush there's a picture of Micky Bradeley in a record shop window. "Hey boy, that's a great picture! Look at it, you can't see my acne!"

When he hears the band are to do Top Of The Pops he suggests the make-up department will have to lay cosmetics on with a trowel to hide his pubescent pimples. Bradeley's a card; onstage he finds time to play bars amidst pulling a whole range of comical expressions, engaging in often hilarious rapport with his mates at the front and haranguing the rest of the band with good-natured banter.

Billy Docherty is slightly reserved, but he sums up the band's attitude succinctly enough before the gig. "Fun, Fun, Fun--Fun is the key word. As long as we get two busloads of people from Derry out to have fun we'll be happy." He may be quiet offstage, but put him behind a drum kit and he'll lay into it with the gay abandon of a bunny rabbit about to get its jollies cracked.

The band provide one of the raunchiest rock 'n' roll shows I've ever seen. They make no compromises to punky wavedom. Micky wears white skinners, Fergal sports a natty line in rollnecks--they look like they could have come straight out of a Jilted John scenario. Their numerous little anthems of frustration, exemplified by "Teenage Kicks" (the actual inspiration for that particular gem comes from the Crystals' "He's A Rebel"), provide catharsis for the post-punk and has-been teenyboppers in the audience.

John occupies the left flank, a human rocking horse with wayward knees-to-the-chin dance steps, merrily slashing out metal splitting guitar and taking the lead vocals on one song, the short, breakneck, "She Can Only Say No."

Sharkey gets through twenty fags a gig, punching the air frantically and losing his £20 digital watch in the process. He particularly excels on "Male Model," a snigger at the would-be Kays Catalogue brigade; after shave, open neck shirts and polyester slacks essential.

At the far left Micky and Daimion share the microphone, delivering scant, off-the-cuff harmonies just where they're needed. After a one-hour blitz--having resisted the temptation to blow some of their advance on alcohol, thus avoiding the shambolic performance common from groups in their position--it's over. "We can't go on, my arms are all smelly," offers Fergal.

Looking ahead, it's hard to see how the Undertones are going to keep their innocent joie de vivre intact. Certainly they couldn't have gone on playing the Casbar forever, but I can't help feeling they're inevitably going to become a sanitised product to satiate the greed of their multi-million pound recording conglomerate. Plunged in at the deep end, they are already becoming confused and unsteady in face of contracts and offers from the well-meaning and leeches alike.

The pressure of being a hot commodity may simply be too great to bear. John even says he's "sorta beginning to regret signing." We express mutual disgust at the whole industry where it's possible to earn more in a week than your dad ever earned in his life.

But they accept the transient nature of their music, and, whatever, I'd advise you to go and catch them whenever and wherever you can because they are the virtual essence of rock'n'roll.

I just hope they tread warily, because they are entering the mouth of a giant corporation that opens to feed, not to kiss, and the valley of slobbering sycophants who suck the life-blood from the young. Unfortunately, survival kits aren't part of the recording deal.

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