The story of Teenage Kicks: how a punk classic was born

I never really liked the title Teenage Kicks. It’s the “kicks” bit that still jars with me – not a word that we ever used and one I thought a bit too corny to put in a song. But then we never really expected much of it when John [O’Neill] played it for us in The Pit. The only bit of the creative process I remember was Billy [Doherty]’s drum intro, the “doot-n-doot-n” which I am sure he nicked from another song we were trying to learn. Come on, what do you expect when some songs leave their intros lying around, not even locked? They’re just asking to be taken and stuck at the front of punk songs.

The first time anyone outside the band mentioned Teenage Kicks was in the Casbah [in Derry], when someone standing at the bar named it as our “big song”. This was at least three months before we were in Wizard [Sound Studios, Belfast] so obviously someone spotted its potential. I was surprised that anyone could even work out what our songs were called, the way we sometimes introduced them.

“ThisonescalledteenagekicksIhopeyoulikeitbutevenifyoudont wedontcareanywayupyourbucket.”

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To me it was just another one of John’s songs, which were now starting to take over our set list. Most of them ended up on the first LP but some stragglers never made it to shore. They didn’t have the tune, the words or the legs to make it. Undercover Lovers? Do the Fast? We gave them a couple of airings but then quietly buried them under the floor of the Casbah. By early 1978, the songwriting was starting to spread among the band, although it was always as a supplement to the main supply from John. The first was True Confessions, a strange little song I had a hand in, along with Damian [O’Neill] and John. I remember it being worked out in Simms’s Shed and feeling there’d been some kind of breakthrough. Writing a song, and it not being at all bad, gave me a warm, almost Ready Brek glow inside. The totality of my input in the process was the bassline, three notes so basic that even Dee Dee Ramone would consider himself underused if he was asked to play them.

I know that I also had a share of the lyric construction, which consisted of rhyming “surprised” and “lies” followed by “wake up” and “make up”. As Louis O’Neill [father of John and Damian] used to say: “They were up all night writing them words.” A cutting remark that gets sharper and better in its insight as I get older. The only difference was that Louis would make that comment while we were watching Top of the Pops, and it is possible he was referring to David Bowie – “What stone did that creature crawl out from under?” was another critical barb – but Louis was kind enough not to direct either towards his sons and their wee band.

Once we’d written True Confessions, we were obviously on what I regretfully call “a roll”, because a slightly different combination of O’Neill and Bradley and Doherty came up with Smarter Than U. The U was Damian’s idea. He pre-empted Prince by around 15 years in the use of the 21st letter but I have a theory that he was inspired by Slade’s trademark mizzpellin. Or the reggae toaster U Roy. Maybe U Thant, the United Nations leader who died in 1974. I’ll ask Damian next time I see him.

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The final song on the Teenage Kicks EP was Emergency Cases, one of John’s songs. In fact, it’s really a tune taken from the Rolling Stones repertoire and sped up. Anyone who saw action in the great Punk Wars will remember that it was standard practice to cover an old 60s song but preserve your artistic integrity by the simple trick of playing it at twice the speed. An early example is Eddie and the Hot Rods (the actual Eddie and the Hot Rods, not us under a borrowed name) who revved up Gloria in their Live at the Marquee EP in the summer of 1976. At that time we were playing Gloria in our sporadic appearances in youth clubs and community centres but we were, in retrospect, quite sedate in our rendition. I was in Billy’s kitchen when the Hot Rods’ version of Van Morrison’s song came on the radio in what was a rare moment of inspirational playlisting. It was brilliant in its fist-pumpin’, head-shakin’ brutality. Why didn’t we think of that? Just do great songs but play them really fast. It took us a while but eventually we had learned a galloping I Can’t Explain by the Who, a newly souped up Gloria and a Parachute Woman with a new carburettor. If you’ve heard Beggars Banquet, you’ll know it as a blues song which has a certain jauntiness to its beat. When we decided to upgrade it, John sped up the riff beyond recognition. That’s our defence if the ghost of Allen Klein ever sues. For a few weeks, we were doing Parachute Woman in that way. Then John must have decided he was doing all that work for someone else’s song. “It just don’t seem right,” as one of the bluesmen who “influenced” the Rolling Stones might have said. So he came up with the suitably punk-rockin’ name Emergency Cases and, quite possibly after staying up all night writing them words, presented it in Simms’s Shed as his own song. Which it was. Eventually.

So. Four songs which would make our epitaph if Feargal followed through on his decision to leave. A 60s-influenced Ramonesy tune, a three-note wonder with dodgy rhyming, an attempt at a humorous song and Parachute Woman in disguise. Promising raw material for Davy Shannon to work with.

It was very promising, as it quickly became clear. Playing every weekend for 18 months had turned us into a real band, who could begin a song together and end at approximately the same time. Forgive me, I have used that line too many times in conversation over the last three decades. We were good but we didn’t really want to say it out loud. It wasn’t part of our character to boast, brag or bullshit about the band. Davy Shannon didn’t try to butter us up either, with any motivational moonshine from the producer’s manual. He put the microphones in the proper places, waited for us to tune up and pressed the play button at the same time as the record button and told us to go. We had the four songs on the tape before the day was done. They sounded OK to us. Even Feargal’s singing didn’t attract any mutterings from the corner where Billy and I were sitting. Bernie McAnaney stayed with us during the session and was roped in to provide some extra handclaps for Teenage Kicks. It was decided, presumably by Davy as he was in charge, that we would return to Wizard in the following week to mix it. Give us a chance to listen with fresh ears, or someone else’s ears or maybe even allow Terri to hear it. The great thing about [founder of the Good Vibrations label] Terri Hooley’s involvement with the recording was his lack of one. I only remember him arriving the day we mixed it and sitting on the sofa in the control room. He heard True Confessions and laughed at the title.

“What, have you got one called Dear Abby?”

No, no one laughed even then, but we did appreciate him giving us the chance to make a record and the freedom to do it exactly the way we wanted to. His job was to take the tape away, give it to the record factory and wait for the delivery of the singles. In the meantime we went back to Derry to continue our Casbah weekends.

• Teenage Kicks: My Life As an Undertone by Michael Bradley is out now.