They never intended to fill stadiums. Being faithful to the truth, they did not succeed either. What they did manage to do was leave a handful of letters stapled between the punk fascicles. In that genre born of grime and fury, they maintain a place, although almost half a century has passed since they hit the charts with their Teenage Kicks. Another factor may also influence to treasure that space in history, anomalous in the guild: all its members are still alive and are still friends like that youth gang that discovers the world through some frayed chords and, most surprisingly, still They go on stage together in different parts of the continent.
The Undertones, a band born in the mid-seventies in Northern Ireland, are torn between rarity and the canonical. Their origin in the midst of an armed conflict, their future plagued by blank periods or their current push leads them to legend. However, that emblematic germ, that troubled trajectory or that validity without fuss also refers them to a stable, calm existence. The same circumstances that propelled them into an ‘underground’ scene have led them to an unpretentious biography. They show it in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday in rehearsals for the concert that they will give a few hours later in the 16 Toneladas room, in Valencia. In this venue – which is celebrating its tenth anniversary and where they have been invited to headline a night that is completed with Heatwaves and Deaf Devils, two groups from the area – they test sound between drinks of water and silence to rest their voices.
“We only perform once in a while, really. The last time was in December and the next time was in June, a month from now,” says bassist Michael Bradley, sitting in the sun in an adjacent park. Like the rest of his colleagues, his aesthetic at this point in the year and in life does not correspond to the leather jackets and sweaters of then. Now, they wear shorts or jeans and light-colored T-shirts, according to the climate and their philosophy: “The idea is that this is a hobby. We are very happy to be able to play and we do not consider continuing or quitting, we just do it,” concedes the musician, who turns 65 this year. A more than acceptable age to think about retirement: “I have thought about it at times, but the answer is easy: no one cares what we do. So if they offer it to us, we say: ‘Why not?’
Bradley is one of the souls of The Undertones. She created the band with John and Damian O’Neill, Billy Doherty and Feargal Sharkey, a singer who was replaced by Paul McLoone (he started a solo career and is now an environmental activist). The project was nothing more than a hobby of five colleagues who liked rock from the fifties and sixties. “We started around 1975, but it took us three years to record because we had to learn to write and play the guitar,” says the author of Teenage Kicks. My life as an Undertones, a memoir without a Spanish translation. There were more ingredients in those beginnings: the Derry where they lived was one of the hot spots in Ulster in what has been called the troubles (“issues”). The clashes between republicans and loyalists (or those who wanted to belong to the Republic of Ireland, with a Catholic majority, and those who defended the union with the United Kingdom, Protestants) resulted in thousands of victims: it is estimated that nearly 4,000 people died due to the disputes. sustained over three decades.
As if that were not enough, one of the bloodiest episodes of the conflict took place in their city. What was known as Bloody Sunday became a key date. That January 30, 1972, a large group of residents went out to protest in the streets of Derry against British oppression. Law enforcement officers opened fire on the crowd, killing 14 protesters. The rage spread and sharpened the rivalry between the pro-Irish guerrilla groups – with the IRA at the helm – and the agents or paramilitaries related to the crown. In the musical field, this magma of discontent merged with the currents that came from nearby latitudes: in London, the Sex Pistols called for anarchy, the Clash toasted breaking the law and in The Damned they directly advocated chaos.
Together with the names that arrived from the other side of the ocean, an alternative scene was forged in this island corner with attacks and kidnappings in the background. “For us, in reality, it didn’t have much to do with what was happening. On the contrary, Derry was great. Even the situation made it more interesting. In my family there were 11 siblings and we lived on the outskirts, where there were shootings. The conflict was a drama for many people, but what we liked was playing, we even went to the place where we heard gunshots,” explains Bradley. As he approached adolescence, he was already hitting the bass. They had discovered the Ramones, the New York Dolls or the Buzzcocks and wanted to imitate them, but they didn’t even foresee a professional career. “At 15 or 16 you don’t think about the future. The future simply happens as the days go by. It was something very spontaneous. It was done for enjoyment. Maybe in some hidden corner of your mind you were thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if this got big?’, but it didn’t really matter,” says Bradley.
Meanwhile, in Belfast a small circuit was beginning to be forged. Thanks to record labels like Good Vibrations, set up by Terri Hooley, and bars like The Pound or Harp, the capital of Ulster was nourished by bands eager to shake up that leaden reality. Rudi, The Outcasts and Stiff Little Fingers set the scene on fire with combative screams against the suffocating atmosphere of the region. A later phrase summed up that punk outbreak like this: “Manchester had the groups, London the clothes and Belfast the motives.” But The Undertones didn’t quite fit together. Their rhythms, for example, were more pop. The rhymes were more aimed at expressing the concerns of a teenager – girls, friends, vacations – than at social subversion. And, on top of that, they came from a city 100 kilometers from the center. Until 1979, when they published their first album with the single Teenage Kickswhich the famous disc jockey John Peel played on national radio and brought them to stardom.
“Things changed a little. People no longer said ‘Are they from Derry? Then they won’t be worth it,’ but we sold out two consecutive nights at the Harp,” laughs Bradley. Even so, they were still on his peripherals label. “We didn’t move to Belfast, so we’d perform, sleep on someone’s sofa and come home. Furthermore, we never wrote about the conflict. We didn’t feel like it and other groups were already doing it. And, honestly, no good song has come out on the subject,” she weighs. In 1983, after releasing a third album in just four years, they said goodbye. As they have reported on occasion, they were running out of “steam.” Their popularity was declining, they stopped having fun and Feargal Sharkey gave them the intention of going solo. Something that did not generate quarrels, but rather was a “relief.” The Undertones lowered the shutter indefinitely, until 1999 when they met again, now with Paul McLoone. “We just wanted to do a few more shows, and suddenly it’s 25 years later!” exclaims Bradley. They have also recorded new studio works and a compilation of their first stage, to which they continually return.
There is nostalgia, perhaps? “We often return to those times, but not only because we miss it, but because we have been friends for 50 years and we talk about things that happened to us. We didn’t meet to have a drink and remember, but we did share anecdotes,” Bradley clarifies, narrating one of them: “Just yesterday we shared one. In the hotel parking lot, there was a lot of echo and we remembered when we went to the center of Derry singing a chocolate advertisement with the same echo, because the streets were empty and the buildings destroyed by the conflict. And we didn’t see it as something tragic!” Despite the peace agreement in 1998, progressive disarmament and political renewal, “segregation continues,” she points out. “And it has been emphasized with Brexit and the border controversy. But I think it has more to do with social class than independence. It’s like the black and white areas in the United States: it’s not that easy to end the division,” she sighs, without a solution in hand.
Bradley, with a weekly program on the BBC about music and some collaboration in the press, is worried about the context, but he defines himself as happy. “I realize how lucky I am. We act without pressure, enjoying. And, the best thing, we still don’t feel ashamed of ourselves when we see ourselves on stage,” she says, mentioning a mural in his honor painted at the end of 2023 on a building in Derry. They never imagined themselves as stars or as owners of a long career, and that has kept them going. “Punk was not created with the idea of lasting, that is why it is still alive. Gender prevails. There will always be 20-year-old kids playing as best they can, even though many things have changed. Maybe you can’t see the crests, but the attitude is maintained,” he says. The Undertones are a model for several generations, although they straddle that line between the mythical and the strange.
“The issue now is that we are getting older and we see that our time on the planet is shorter, more limited. So we let ourselves be carried away by what we feel like at any given moment,” he says, about to begin this only concert in Spain and with some more dates in Europe throughout the summer. “We move on impulses. If when we were young we didn’t think about the next month, imagine now, we don’t have much left,” Bradley reflects, ending the conversation with one of the most punkish slogans: “Worry about the future? But we don’t have any!”
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