NME 1980-04-26

DERBY is a pretty town - divided by a river and by the folly of ages.

The five Undertones live not more than a mile away from each other - on the Catholic side of the river. At school - their books taught one version of history - while those of their counterparts on the opposite bank taught another. The folly is perpetuated in a conspiracy of ignorance.

Feargal Sharkey - The Undertones' tremulous vocalist - lives with his parents in a tiny two-bedroomed terraced house in Rosemount - where he and his three sisters and three brothers grew up surrounded by symbols of one of the town's two authorities: a tatty painting of Christ on the cross over the hearth - a wooden rosary on the wall - a blessing from the Vatican atop the TV - and a sofa that doubles as a bed in the front room.

Photographer Anton Corbijn - who is Dutch - remarks as we approach the house that the whole town is full of Undertones.

Indeed - Feargal Sharkey is an inconspicuous Derry youth. He is lean and reedy; his lank - greasy hair falls to a fringe that refuses to keep out of his face. So deeply unfashionable are his clothes that! wonder if his mum didn't buy them for him at the local Littlewoods. As a ' result of spending too long in the customary pair of Air-Wear soles - he walks with a permanent forward spring. ; Some local kids playing terrorist under parked cars spot him as he walks by. : "Hey - Feargal - "they tease - "your .songs are clever!"

He flashes us an embarrassed grin and tries to hide in the hood of his anorak.

DERRY is to The Undertones what Manchester is to The Bhomcocks. It's home. They - in turn - are its cultural envoys - and they are ever so humble. When your reporter took it upon himself to put a little perspective on the blinkered adulation that came to surround them last year by writing a less than charitable review of their reissued debut album - they were actually pleased. How perverse can you get?

They were so pleased in fact - that they decided the author of the review would be a good choice for an interview. Naturally - I agreed.

Thus I approached the new Undertones album - ostensibly the reason for the interview - with more than the expected amount of trepidation.

Feckless teenage pop is all well and good in small doses; things like innocence - naively and clean - uncomplicated small-town charm are guaranteed to win the hearts of us big city cynics. The almost alarming critical success of The Undertones makes perfect sense in this respect. Their music is untainted by the disillusionment of recent times and so has - winning appeal to the disillusioned.

But to say they were the right tonic - a timely way to relive that first pop flush - reminding you of what you liked about it in the first place - hardly begins to explain the sheer phenomenon the Undertones. A phenomenon that makes confused middle-aged trend-wearers like John Peel forget their inability to come to grips with the times and start behaving like fawning teenyboppers. Admittedly Peel used to annoy - his old audience by playing T. Rex singles - but this last development verges on the pathetic. '

It was Peel's nightly patronage that started the phenomenon of The Undertones - and it was soon accelerated and eventually defined by the rock press. The basic premise was that The Undertones had somehow effortlessly is achieved a sublime - perfect unity of everything punk and pop had ever sought to be.

Their utterly mundane appearance (and the implications of this on Top Of The Pops even I could appreciate) was somehow so uncontrivedly street that it had to be the culmination of all punk's social statements. Their utterly innocuous music was somehow so complete - in noise - theme - and delivery -that its appeal defied all rational explanation. Never mind that it was a natural provincial development of The Ramones and The Bhomcocks - not some sort of spontaneous flowering of perfection -

The Undertones nevertheless achieved something quite remarkable. And this is the real phenomenon: they managed to reduce almost everybody to a state of fandom!

They won for themselves in the process almost a state of grace. And they didn't even have to leave home to do it.

But given the nature of rock fandom - as fickle as it can be stubborn -this puts the group in a paradoxically sensitive position. Sensitive to the claims made on their behalf. Vulnerable to the doubts expressed by the likes of me (in the minority though we are).

They have a lot to live up to - arid even more to live down.

thE COVER of their second' Hypnotised' captures the appeal of The Undertones almost too well. Taken on Damian O'Neill's genuine Polaroid Instamatic - the photos of the group as chums on tour - often out of focus and sometimes even out of frame - positively reek of homespun charisma.

But there is another angle to the photos which is carried through to the first song - 'More Songs About Chocolate And Girls' - with the marvellous line about it being "never too late to enjoy dumb entertainment". Both the sleeve and this song reveal the Tones unexpectedly sending themselves up; pricking the bubble inflated by so much hot air over the past year. The enigmatic lobster motif could almost be a cypher for the enigmatic Undertones themselves.

How about it - Feargal?

"That started with the record company advertising campaign. They were organising this big spending spree to do with being 'Hypnotised'. We wanted something that had _ nothing whatsoever to do with being hypnotised - so we came up with the idea of using that lobster. "

"We went down to the big executive meeting where they plan their strategies and said we wanted lobsters. They said: Do they fuck! They wanted to know what all these lobsters were about - and we said: Nothing! They're about absolutely nothing - we just want lobsters. They fiddled for a few weeks so eventually we just came and sat down and said okay - we're not going until we get lobsters."

What about that song? Were you sending ' yourselves up - or just pre-empting the backlash - or both?

"It was like a safety device - to take the zap out of it in case anybody did slag us off for writing more songs about chocolate and girls."

It just doesn't have the same impact if we've already stated it on the first song on the first of side of the LP.

"it was just a thing we have within the band. Really it started out back in Derry - when 3 people said you'll never get past practising - a We proved them wrong when we did gigs in Derry. Then they said youse'll never get anywhere - and we made a record and got it over to England and into the English charts without leaving Derry - so we proved them wrong again. And then when we got to England they put us up a front - right? And we just keep doing it all the time - It gives us something to work towards - even if it is just to spite what people say."

"Providing you've got a goal - you work towards it - strive for it one hundred per cent."

FEARGal treats me to a Black Bush in his local - almost across the road from his - . house - and I wonder if this setting isn't contributing to the rather hackneyed image hi band have of being reluctant to venture far from home - preferring the comforts of Derry other rigours of touring.

We're rebelling against that at the moment. We're getting annoyed about it because the press keep playing it up - but it's a stupid angle to be going at in the first place. It worse because of the fact that we keep going back to Derry - which is our home. Bands that live in London keep going back to London. The Skids live in Edinburgh and no one goes on about that.

"Anyway - this year - because of all the tours we're doing - the idea of us staying in Derry has gone completely out the window. It's hogwash. But it grew from the time we did the Rezillos tour. We'd just signed up and we were doing our first British tour - which we were chuffed about. There was ten of us in the back of a Transit with our gear. Then the whole ' thing fell apart and we just said stick it - we're fed up. we wanna go home which was a natural reaction - but everybody's played up on it ever since. We don't really feel that way at all though. We keep coming back because it's our home - but we are nor afraid to leave home."

It did seem to fit in with everybody's perfect view of untainted innocence that you should reject all the plaudits and come down to earth in Derry.

"Aye - I agree with you - and we still do reject a lot of that: the whole music business in London - the cliques - and the scene - maaaan. We still do not want to be doing this when we're 45. We hold to that idea. But at times it was getting to be a case of why the hell are we doing it in the first place if all we wanna do is stay in Derry?"

"Everybody seems to forget that the initial idea of any band is just a bit of fun - and that progresses to writing songs - and then to making records. We were caught at a very early stage. There were many aspects we were very naive about - but now we're a lot wiser."

So what about all that unequivocal praise - all the kid gloves - the halos that were drawn around the group - does your music justify it?

"Ahhh - No." Feargal flashes that grin again. "Like - when I hear the new LP now there's things I think could've been better which is good - because there's no point sitting back and thinking it's brilliant and that's it"

Wasn't that the danger with everybody saying that your first album was ?

"aye - but we were too insecure. We were worrying about the second LP. Everybody was saying the first LP was brilliant and we thought-. Bloody hell! Is the next one going to be as good?"

"We've always maintained that you should judge a band by their second LP - because you get years to make the first - and. then six months or whatever to make the second. We thought the first LP would be one - another LP - That's it. Full stop. Then everyone started ranting and raving about it and it began to sink home - began to put pressure on us. We had to make the second one better than the first."

And they did. I could even grow to like it.

thE SHARKEY household is renowned for its siblings' musical powers. "It comes from the mother's side - " says Mr Sharkey - who finds his son's music a little perplexing - being keen on light opera himself. A shield full of awards on the sitting room wall attests to the fact that singing was something fate constantly threw in Feargal's path.

"I'm a bit of an exhibitionist when I get on stage - " he admits. "I know I totally change."

Ellen - his fiancee - a small mousey girl with bobbed brown hair who has been sitting quietly by his side as we talk - can't stifle a shy giggle at this. She declines to reveal the reason for her amusement.

"If somebody asked me to sing here I wouldn't do it for love nor money" - continues Feargal. "But I can get up in front of 3000 people and not think twice about it. And I enjoy having 3000 people out there - talking to - them - even though they might not have a clue ; - I what I'm saying because of my accent."

His first thought of work when he left school was with the Ordnance Survey. One geography '0' level does not quite put the world at your feet. But his ambition at the time was even more modest. He simply wanted to "get a job". That's the sort of place Derry is -

Ellen whispers something in Feargal's ear.

"She's like all women - " he says teasingly.

"I'm not!"

"She tries to run your life."

"Well - somebody's got to do it."

FEARGal'S relationship with Ellen doesn't exactly seem to be the stuff of an Undertones song - but then he doesn't write them.

"I don't really question what the others write about. I think about the lyrics in as much I think about what they meant when-they wrote them. Stuff like 'My Perfect Cousin' - I was working on that for months in my head. She always complains 'cause I sing to myself all the time. I wanted it to be firm but polite at the same time - I didn't want it to be aggressive."

"Someone could hear it and enjoy it as a record - enjoy it as a noise; but if they wanted to sit down and listen to it and find out what it was about they'd feel that the singer really hates that guy - his cousin - who's a know-all shite. Thinks like that I try and do all the time."

Does it ever grate to be singing from a constantly spotty - smitten - adolescent Continues over viewpoint - especially about girls? "They're not all about girls." A lot of them are. "Oh aye - admittedly they are - I do not I deny it." The grin is a bit more cheeky this i time. "But I don't look at them all. 1 just 1 approach each song as it comes. It's just that at the end you look at the LP and notice there are 12 songs about girls -"

It's nearing midnight and Ellen has missed the last bus. The evening's business at a close - we drive Ellen the few miles to her house on the outskirts of town. An invitation is extended to partake of a cup of tea - but inside the house - Ellen's father has been waiting up.

He gives Feargal a reproachful look as the pair walk in - then he catches sight of the gaggle of unexpected strangers following behind - and is forced to content himself with silent disapproval of the wayward hours kept by his daughter's suitor. Feargal pretends to be oblivious to the drama he has averted. He hides his cunning behind a brassy - affable exterior.

This same slyness and occasional bald neck seems to undercut The Undertones' better moves. It's there behind 'More Songs About Chocolate And Girls' - and it's one of the reasons why 'My Perfect Cousin' is streets ahead of the dumb - pedestrian pop froth of 'Jimmy - Jimmy' and Teenage Kicks' (let's just forget 'Here Comes Summer'). And strike me down if it isn't beginning to make me crack a smile.

thE NEXT day Feargal takes us to the O'Neill domicile - a slightly larger house than his - right opposite the wall where the - first cover of their first album was photographed -to meet the group's main songwriters - the brothers Damian and John. - Also present is Mickey Bradley - who co-wrote 'My Perfect Cousin' with Damian. Billy Doherty is off putting a deposit on a house - and is anyway the member of the group least inclined to sit still for interviews.

He turns up later for a photo session - and seeing the group together forces the realisation upon me that their charisma is inextricably linked to one key item of dress: not the DMs - nor the dowdy anoraks - nor the gaudy C&A jumpers - but the fact that their trousers are uniformly too short. The Undertones look as if. they are. permanently caught in the gangly mid-teens dilemma of out-growing one's clothes every six months.

"What do you think of the new album - then?" asks Mickey. "Do you think it's trite - puerile - adolescent-?"

Not as much. Nevertheless I bought the latest Howard The Duck on the way out here to prove that I too enjoy dumb entertainment (sorry - Howard). To be honest - though one of the reasons that review was so negative was that everybody else thought you could do no wrong.

"I sorta welcomed it in a way - " admits John.

"It's a pity it was so short - " says Mickey. "It would've been better if you'd said I don't like it because - rather than just that there were too many steals from Bhomcocks - which is fair enough - it's a good point!"

So why do people feel you can do no wrong?

"Because we were from Northern Ireland was half the reason - wasn't it?"

"When the first LP came out we expected to be slagged - " says John - who is modest almost to the point of lacking any self-esteem whatsoever. "We didn't think it'd be taken seriously. There are people that deserve to be taken seriously - but we don't - "

Damian cites The Clash and T Rex - John mumbles something about The Who's

'Pictures Of Lily' and 'I'm A Boy' - and Mickey names Elvis Costello as examples of things they respect and admire.

"We've always had a tendency to put ourselves down a bit - I suppose - " says Damian. "We always were very critical - partly because we'd never had anything to compare it with in Derry. We only ever had records for comparison - and we never thought it was as good as any record."

"We had a friend who goes to university - " recalls Mickey. "He saw Generation X once and came back and told us we were better. We thought he was kidding. Then John went to Port Stewart and saw Rudi - and he came back and said they were not that great at all. You read reviews about groups that say they're good - or whatever - and we used to think that was the gospel truth I"

Nowadays they take even flattering reviews with a pinch of salt. Mickey finds the idea of them being - for instance a perfect pop group "a bit stupid". He doesn't understand why so many accolades should have befallen them.

"May be it's because they think we're nice home-loving boys and we deserve it. And then maybe it's because we're kinda harmless. They can safely say we're great and then they can safely say we're no good. They picked on us."

"Now/you begin to see wee snide comments - " says Damian. "Things like: 'They're so stupidly sublime -'"

But sublime means you're good!

"Somebody said that they thought it was so stupid that we were only joking - but then they found out we were serious -"

But you're not.

"Aye - but they thought we were serious because we kept on doing the same things - like writing summer songs."

"I don't know." John tries to find some perspective. 'The songs - on a superficial level - _ are catchy. And then we aren't sorta Bay City Rollers clones-we write all our own songs - so I can see what they mean about a perfect pop group in a way. What was always wrong with The Monkees was that they didn't write their songs and they didn't play on them.

"And also a journalist's idea of pop is always different from other people's idea. They say The Ramones are a perfect pop group too - but if you play The Ramones to somebody out on the street they'd say 'Jeeesus - what's this? Give me Abba.' Pop's what sells."

thERE IS another aspect of the group's image that tends to gall its members. They are getting rather fed up of being portrayed as home-loving boys who eschew the vices of the big city to return to the "war-torn streets of Derry".

"We were always afraid of people liking us when the first record came out because we came from Northern Ireland - " explained John.

"We thought John Peel played the record - because he felt sorry for us. We even asked him - and he said it wasn't so. And we tend not to want to have anything to do with all that - because it's just not true. That's maybe part of the reason why we don't write songs about Northern Ireland. But we don't deliberately avoid doing it - and maybe one day we will."

Nor is the reputation they have of being reluctant to tour absolutely true. John admits however that he finds recording more rewarding-

"-Than doing tours and all that. I still think we shouldn't be doing it. Something is wrong."

"That's a stupid statement - " argues Mickey. " 'Shouldn't be doing tours'. That's daft."

"Well - it's just that I don't like the idea of doing a record - then doing interviews and doing a tour. That's the way we've got now though-we're just another rock group doing all that."

"But it's also a fact of life if you're in a group -to make sure you sell records and so forth. We're doing everything for this LP - and it's going to be the last time we do it. I hope so anyway. I mean I wouldn't mind doing it for a couple of weeks like - for people that really want to hear you and see you- But then Feargal and Damian both hate staying in Derry."

"Ahh - it's okay - it's bearable - " says Damian. "When I know I'm getting away. But if the group broke up now - I couldn't see myself staying here. I'd get a job in London - or anywhere in England maybe."

They toured America last year - supporting The Clash - " just to get us used to the idea of going to America - " says John. "But some of the audiences were real skulls! All fuckin' students with beards - holding up lighted matches for The Clash."

He doesn't think The Undertones would be able to sell themselves to America the way The Clash have - however.

"If the LP takes off in America-say it gets to number 50 or something like that-then probably the record company will start saying 'another two tours and we'll crack it boys' and all that crap. I don't know what would happen then. It'll probably come to a fight because there's different opinions inside the group. I mean I enjoy playing - but I don't want to get caught up in it all the time - 'cause then I might not enjoy it. I dunno. I suppose Judas Priest enjoy it-"

And now must leave them. A group who chose their name because it sounded so corny - poised on the threshold of their second hit album and a thing called America. A group who still live with their parents - poised on the doorstep wondering whether they actually want to leave home.

This Undertones sceptic could not help but like them. They are plain and honest and uncontrived and you are right to love them for that - even though the lack of adventure and challenge in their music might be deplored in other bands.

The interesting thing is that as people - the group are starting to refute the question that their music still so obviously begs:

When will they grow up?

TheUndertones.net/nem_19800428.htm