Teenage Kicks

The explosion of punk rock across the UK and Ireland heralded one very welcome shift. Suddenly, bands sprang up in what might previously have seemed like unlikely places – and in the DIY spirit of the time, they were entitled to see themselves as being on an equal par with anyone from the metropolises of London, Glasgow or Dublin. To the forefront were The Undertones, an outfit from Derry who were signed to a new Belfast label, Good Vibrations, on the basis of a powerful song about teenage sex, entitled ‘Teenage Kicks’. First released in September 1978, it captured the imagination powerfully, catapulting the band into a deal with the influential US label Sire Records – and into the UK top 40 for the first of many times. A line from the much-covered and inspirational song is engraved on the headstone of the legendary BBC DJ, John Peel – who named ‘Teenage Kicks’ as his all-time favourite song.

The Story Behind The Song

While the Clash and the Sex Pistols were fomenting revolution in London, The Undertones were 380 or so miles away in Derry, the most Northerly city on the island of Ireland, writing what they jokingly referred to as their ‘songs about chocolate and girls’.

Despite resolutely avoiding the politics that so polarised their hometown, the Northern Ireland quartet’s rawness and ability to say what they wanted to say in frenetic two or three minute bursts fitted right in with the prevailing punk mood.

Hailing from the predominantly Catholic Creggan and Bogside estates, John O’Neill, Damien O’Neill, Michael Bradley and Billy Doherty formed a band and practiced by blasting out Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Small Faces songs in a neighbour’s shed. The fledgling musical enterprise gained a greater sense of purpose in 1975, when they discovered that, unlike them, their St. Peter’s High School classmate Feargal Sharkey could sing in tune and, that – as a participant in the Derry Feis! – he had actually performed in front of an audience before.

Further energised by their discovery of the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, MC5, Iggy & The Stooges, The Ramones and the New York Dolls, the band knitted together a set of punk-y covers, which they performed in schools, youth clubs, the scout hall, where Sharkey was a pack leader; and then at the Casbah – the zero-frills Derry bar that gave them their first paid gig.

No flies on him: The Undertones' Feargal Sharkey in full flight, by Mark Classon

One by one, the covers were replaced by originals, written by The Undertones themselves: including ‘Teenage Kicks’, which – fuelled by adolescent testosterone – John O’Neill is said to have dashed out in mere hours.

Forget love, this was the elder of the band’s two O’Neill brothers, alone in his bedroom, lusting over that “Girl in the neighbourhood/ Wish she was mine, she looks so good/ I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight/ Get teenage kicks through the night, all right.”

After that first exquisite chorus, he outlines his nefarious plans.“Gonna call her on the telephone/ Have her over ‘cause I’m all alone/ I need excitement, oh I need it bad/ And it’s the best I’ve ever had.”

A reiteration of how desperate he is to hold her tight and, boom, after just 2 minutes and 28 seconds ‘Teenage Kicks’ came to its thrilling climax.

“I’d been playing along on my guitar with various songs by The Crystals and The Ronettes and I could hear that most of them had the same I-IV-V chords with its relative minor; the same chords as most of The Ramones songs,” John O’Neill says now of his masterpiece. “So that got me thinking about trying to write something similar.”

With the O’Neills’ serrated guitars underpinning Sharkey’s choir boyish warble, and Bradley further adding to the wall of sound with his throbbing bass, ‘Teenage Kicks’ is everything its author wanted it to be – and more.

The Undertones on the streets of their home town, Derry, by L. Doherty

The Casbah in Derry conquered, The Undertones started looking towards Belfast, a city twice the size of Derry and with a far more developed punk scene, populated at the time by the likes of Stiff Little Fingers (who also scored global hits), Rudi, The Outcasts, Protex and The Tearjerkers.

While most of their new rivals were taking their sartorial lead from Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, The Undertones wore the same jeans and jumpers on stage as they did off it, which is part of what appealed to Belfast rock ‘n’ roll activist Terri Hooley when he first encountered them.

The record shop owner had just set up an independent label, Good Vibrations, which was as keen to sign talented new acts as The Undertones were to release a record. It was to their mutual benefit then, when on 15 June 1978, the band went into Belfast’s Wizard Studios and recorded not only ‘Teenage Kicks’ but also three other live favourites – ‘True Confessions’, ‘Smarter Than U’ and ‘Emergency Cases’ – which made it onto the subsequent piece of 7” vinyl.

Hooley initially only had enough money to print up a few thousand copies, one of which was sent to John Peel, the influential BBC radio DJ, whose liking of a record was regarded as the most ringing endorsement a young band could get at the time.

So enamoured was John Peel of ‘Teenage Kicks’ that for the first time in the history of his long-running show he played it twice in a row, with the explanation that: “It doesn’t get much better than this.”

When Peel died in 2001 it was in his will that the only words on his gravestone should be the song’s opening refrain: “Teenage dreams so hard to beat”.

Listening to him the night he gave ‘Teenage Kicks’ its unprecedented encore was Seymour Stein, the supremo at New York’s Sire Records (and manager of The Ramones), who decided there and then to add The Undertones to a roster that already included Talking Heads, The Pretenders and of course The Ramones. It speaks volumes about Terri Hooley – about whom the film Good Vibrations would later be made – that he let them transfer to Sire without seeking any pay-off.

Quickly re-pressed in larger numbers, on October 21st 1978 'Teenage Kicks’ entered the UK chart and earned The Undertones the first of many appearances on Top Of The Pops.

The folks back home were frankly a bit stunned. Eighteen-year-old Dana had won the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with ‘All Kinds Of Everything’ and become a Derry heroine; and local-boy-made-good Phil Coulter had been one of the chief suppliers of hits for the Bay City Rollers, as well as winning Eurovision with ‘Puppet On A String’. But this sort of thing just wasn’t supposed to happen to four gawky kids from Derry.

The song has been covered by Snow Patrol, who played it at John Peel’s funeral; by boyband superstars One Direction, in a medley that also included Blondie’s ‘One Way Or Another’; and variously by The Saw Doctors, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, Ash, Nouvelle Vague, The Raconteurs, Jedward, Therapy?, The Vamps and Razorlight, among dozens more. It provided the title to Derry director Tom Collins’ documentary about the band, Teenage Kicks – The Undertones (2001). And the famous opening line is the centre-piece of a mural painted in tribute to John Peel on a Belfast flyover. ‘Teenage Kicks’ was performed by the Expo World Choir (conducted by David Brophy) at an Irish-run event at Expo 2020 in Dubai, with vocals by Jerry Fish; and features on the Irish Song Book Vol I album, sung with a gender twist, by Lauren Ann.

Sadly, after a dozen or so hits, the rigours of rock ‘n’ roll life caused The Undertones to split in 1983, with Feargal Sharkey going on to pursue a successful solo career, and the O’Neills forming the critically-acclaimed That Petrol Emotion, a band that never quite scaled the commercial heights their music deserved to reach.

While Sharkey declined to be involved, the rest of The Undertones reformed in 1999 – and they continue to record and tour with another Derryman, Paul McLoone, handling vocal duties.

Forty-three years on, ‘Teenage Kicks’ – or as it’s known in certain swathes of Northern Irish society, ‘The National Anthem’ – has lost none of its perfect pop allure.

The Undertones, March 1983 by Eric Watson