The Undertones' John O'Neill On The Life, Death And Rebirth Of The Undertones

It seems vaguely surreal that Irish rockers The Undertones are finally heading down south for their inaugural Australian tour. After all, it's been nigh on 40 years since they released their groundbreaking debut single Teenage Kicks - the one which famously became the favourite ever song of legendary UK DJ and tastemaker John Peel - although that was only the first of an eventual stream of garage - and punk - influenced gems that they would release during their original all-too-brief tenure as a band.

Having formed in the Northern Ireland city of Derry in 1975, they released four increasingly divergent albums before splitting asunder due to internal divisions in 1983. When they inevitably reformed in 1999 it was with vocalist Paul McLoone replacing original frontman Feargal Sharkey - who'd by then embarked on a successful solo career - and this line-up of the band has been continuing on and off ever since. Now they're finally heading Down Under, and even the band seem flummoxed that it's finally happening after all this time.

"I don't think it's hit me yet myself, to be honest," chuckles founding guitarist and chief songwriter John O'Neill. "We never thought we'd ever get the chance to come. We were asked a few times over the last four or five years, but just financially it was never really viable, but for some reason this time it's worked out. When we heard of a good chance finally we said, 'Well, we've got to take this opportunity'.

"It's good that people are looking forward to us coming. Obviously people know the songs from the records, but we never really made a live record which is a shame because I think the songs sound even better live than they do on record. I know a lot of bands would probably say that, but I think in our case in particular there's a great atmosphere when we play live and people enjoy the whole concert each time we play. Everybody's smiling when they leave the shows, and we wouldn't be doing it ourselves if it weren't for the fun of it anyway."

Despite The Undertones having made two more albums during this second career phase, O'Neill explains that the current setlist will mainly be taken from their initial burst in the late-'70s and early-'80s.

"It's mainly based around the first two albums really," he tells. "We do songs from the two records that we made with Paul as well, but to be honest it's mainly songs from the first period - all of the singles and the first two records. Those first two albums - The Undertones [1979] and Hypnotised [1980] - are the ones that still sound the best today, I think, when we were at our peak. And they're the ones that sound the best live."

Why have those first two albums stood the test of time so well?

"Well, for instance we loved the Ramones, but each new Ramones album tended to sound more or less the same as the last one and we knew that we couldn't get away with doing that all the time," O'Neill reflects. "Arguably we probably should have stuck to that and just kept playing the same guitar stuff, but when we were brought up each Beatles record was a different event - after the first two or three they were always experimenting and trying out different things - so the idea with Positive Touch [1981] and The Sin Of Pride [1983] was to probably use more influences, and it probably didn't work as well.

"But that was the way we were, we wouldn't do anything because of our 'career', we just did it because that was what we wanted to do, and maybe we should have just stuck to the formula. But the first two records were definitely when we were at our peak without a doubt, and that's why we focus on them when we play live. We throw in a couple of songs from Positive Touch and The Sin Of Pride as well, but the first two records are the best."

Obviously it's well-documented how the band burst into public consciousness with the Teenage Kicks single and EP in 1977, But O'Neill explains that a lot of work had gone into the band before they became 'overnight sensations'.

"It took us a long time to even make that Teenage Kicks EP," he recalls. "We got a place to play in 1977 in Derry - that was a place called The Casbah - and before that we'd been playing once a month. The pressure would be on to get a set done because we'd usually play about two-and-a-half hours, you'd play for a bit and have a break then play again, and the whole thing would be two-and-a-half hours, which is a lot of songs to try and play.

"That's how we learned to play really, because each month we needed to have a new song written or a couple of new covers. At that stage we'd discovered New York Dolls and The Stooges and MC5, and in particular the Nuggets compilation of all the '60s garage bands - those records were basically how we learned to play properly, and it was just fantastic fun. We'd get up and play say Dirty Water [by The Standells] from Nuggets and then Personality Crisis by New York Dolls and then TV Eye by The Stooges and then something of our own, and people would come to see us and that gave us momentum to keep going.

"And punk was happening around that time, so there was that idea that you were almost part of a community, a do-it-yourself thing based around the idea that you weren't a star - you were just the same as the people in the audience - and that kind of thing was really important to us, we really believed in that whole idea. Then once we heard there was a label up in Belfast a friend got in touch with Terri Hooley who ran the Good Vibrations label, and he eventually agreed and let us make a record.

"We were quite idealistic I suppose, and we'd pretty much decided that we'd make a record and then we'd break up - that would be a really cool punk thing to do - and in our minds it was going to be the last thing we ever did. So once the record came out it took us totally by surprise, we had no idea that it would get the reaction that John Peel would have from it. And about a day after he played the record twice the phone started to ring here at my parents' house and it was from record companies, so it was, like, 'Oh dear, we'd better not break up then!'

John Peel's patronage of The Undertones has become legendary - he even had the line "teenage dreams so hard to beat" from Teenage Kicks inscribed on his tombstone upon his passing in 2004 - and O'Neill believes that this support was pivotal to both the band's initial success and their eventual longevity.

"Yeah, it was crucial," he smiles. "John Peel was playing all of the independent punk records anyway, and it could have been just another record that he played and that would have been it. But the fact that he made such a big deal about it made us just that bit more special in people's eyes, and that legacy kind of carried on. Especially after when he died, it gave the song a whole new momentum again, and the band as well. In one sense it was really sad that he had to die to have that momentum for us, but I suppose that us and The Fall were the two bands that he championed the most, and we feel so privileged and so lucky that he did do that."

The Undertones' songs usually deal with universal tropes such as the perils of adolescence and teenage angst, but given that the band evolved during the tumultuous time in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles did O'Neill ever consider writing from a more political viewpoint?

"That's a question we get asked a lot," O'Neill offers. "You've got to remember that we weren't thinking in terms of a career or taking ourselves too seriously, and the obvious thing could have been because we came from where we came from that we would write songs that were political. And it did cross my mind now and then in the early days to try and do it, and then obviously when bands like Stiff Little Fingers came along and they kind of did it, we felt that we didn't necessarily want people to feel sorry for us because we came from Northern Ireland. We wanted to stand on our own feet.

"And we were still trying to learn how to write good songs, that was the most important thing - the songs had to really stand on their own and be good. And I did try to write like that - Positive Touch has a couple of songs that in an oblique kind of way refer to coming from Derry and what we were going through - but the natural thing for me was to write about adolescence and loneliness, that's what felt the most natural. And I felt later on as I got more confident and got some more ideas maybe I could write something that made a statement about living in Derry and Northern Ireland. Later on I formed another band called My Petrol Emotion, and that was more the point of what that band was about.

"But you have to remember too in The Undertones everybody had slightly different political ideals as well, so it wouldn't have been fair to push my ideals on the rest of them because they didn't feel the same thing. It was easier just to be not too self-conscious and just stick to your own instincts, and just be who we were. And if anyone knows us we're not really that serious as people, we want to enjoy life as well.

"And another thing was that we were Catholics living in the north of Ireland, and the whole point of The Troubles and the war that was going on was to try and change the political system that was there, and we would have had to berate the unionist politicians and the British intransigents and that, and we would have been setting ourselves up as targets possibly for Royalists gangs and stuff too, so it wouldn't have been the easiest thing to have done. You have to keep that in mind as well.

"Plus the truthful answer would be that I just wasn't good enough at that time to do that justice, that's basically the true answer. I couldn't have written a song like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? - one of the many amazing songs written about the Civil Rights movement in America - I just wasn't capable of doing something as good as that unfortunately."

O'Neill (and his brother Damian, The Undertones' lead guitarist) spent a decade in the more politically-attuned That Petrol Emotion before reuniting their original band in 1999. When they returned to The Undertones' catalogue did they have a different appreciation for those songs?

"Even after the Petrols I was into more electronic pop sort of thing and I stopped listening to a lot of guitar music to be honest," O'Neill admits. "That whole Britpop thing that happened in the '90s, I was listening to Tricky and Massive Attack and that sort of stuff so that whole wave sort of passed over me. So when the idea was to reform The Undertones I hadn't even listened to The Undertones' records in about 10 to 15 years! Then when we got together with Paul and had our first rehearsal I looked over at Damien and Micky and said, 'I can't believe how good these songs still sound!' And I hadn't listened to the Nuggets in years either and I really got back into listening to all that garage stuff as well, and it got my enthusiasm back for guitar music."