The Undertones - The Next Big Thing?
Teenage Kicks' is the word and the sound, an anthem from the most unlikely of sources - Derry. Come in Phil Coulter, your time is up.
Bill Graham, 27 Oct 1978
Pleading, quavering vocals fit to be drowned in an echo-chamber, a surging melody beyond the ken of their contemporaries, an unvarnished production, 'Teenage Kicks' is the word and the sound, an anthem from the most unlikely of sources - Derry. Come in Phil Coulter, your time is up.
These Undertones, a band from nowhere, a name mentioned in no gig-guides, featured in no New Year tip-sheets; the Undertones with a record set to follow Jilted John in its passage from local label to international eminence. They aren't completely unfamiliar even if the majority of their appearances have been in their home-town of Derry. In June '77 the Undertones came to Dublin, this writer's first witness of them at Moran's where they confronted a crew of unconverted metal marauders, scornful of punk and all its pomps.
The Undertones weren't intimidated. They challenged the crowd with a purpose that would have made a more experienced outfit envious. They were raw, they were raucous but they were uncalculating and convincing.
They didn't lack some supporters that night and for them they played 'Louie Louie' as encore, an additional cause for fury among their detractors. Even more provocatively, they repeated it with Radiator Philip Chevron aboard, infuriating the metal fans, one bunch of whom seemed set on invading the stage. The Undertones had both divided and ruled and as they walked off the stage, drummer Billy Docherty kicked over his drums and flung his sticks at the mob in a gesture of livid defiance. Clearly a band to catch again.
It didn't come to pass. Next night, they played the bloodstained Belfield punk festival. Other duties meant I arrived late, missing both them and the stabbing so my sole memory is of five exhausted Northern kids, huddled alone for self-protection in the backstage area, their faces wan and pinched.
Both the fracas of the previous night and their patently dubious Derry origins - punks were violent but Ulster punks must be murderous - even led to the police initially listing them as suspects and when they trailed back home the RUC visited Docherty to interrogate him, a deed, or so the story leaked back, that led to parental disapproval and by extension a break-up of the band.
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