If You Enjoy Doing It, Why Stop?
The Undertones: Still Playing for Kicks
50th Anniversary Tour: Why Not Indeed?
Interview with Billy Doherty: Drummer
 |
| The Undertones, still good mates doing their thing in Blackpool, 2026. Photo: Seán Cummiskey |
When I got in touch with Billy he was in Brighton prior to a festival appearance, part of a very busy period for the band. They have already been on the bill with the Sex Pistols this summer and are playing a number of festivals and gigs across the UK and Europe, before playing alongside Stiff Little Fingers in Belfast in early 2027. All dates and tickets can be bought via this link direct to the official band website.
I started by asking Billy for his personal highlights of the past fifty years with The Undertones, give of take the odd break along the way:
There has been highs and lows and there’s been some setbacks over the years. We are very lucky that we are doing this 50 years on and I consider myself to be exceptionally lucky to be part of it. Our success was down to quite a few guys, but particularly :
- TerrI Hooley who owned Good Vibrations Records and recorded Teenage Kicks for us in his studio on Great Elizabeth Street in the heart of Belfast.
- John Peel who played Teenage Kicks back to back on his late night radio show.
- Peter Powell making it Single of The Week on his afternoon Radio 1 show.
And then we played on Top Of The Pops!
My ambitions were quite modest: I wanted to make a record with my friends, get it played by John Peel and thirdly, get on Top of The Pops. That all happened to me quite quickly and so I could have died happily, but when I look on the past fifty years, I don’t look back at the band particularly. I look back on the good times I had with my friends.
And John particularly, who wrote Teenage Kicks. We were very close friends and we went on holidays. We had no money and so we put an ad in the local newspaper to say, that for anyone wanting their house whitewashed, estimates would be free. So we would whitewash peoples’ backyards and when we got that money we went on holiday. John and I went rambling around County Donegal. We spent the week just travelling. We had a bus Rover ticket and stayed in Youth Hostels and it was one of the happiest and most memorable times I’ve had. So, for me looking back on fifty years, that has struck in my mind. It was the funniest, happiest time I’ve had. Obviously, I had a lot of situations like that after, but in connection with the guys in the band, that is one of my lasting memories.
That's a lovely story. It provokes some vivid memories of my own mid-teenage years and I think that the appeal of The Undertones was down to the early songs initiating the first feelings of nostalgia in me and my contemporaries. The songs, even for people in their late teens, gave cause to look back and recall what is was like to be a kid, even when it was only a few years before. That sense of looking back to times past and remembering being young, totally naïve and those happy times of childhood, working out what girls were and seeing characters forming in other children, as sung about in My Perfect Cousin and Jimmy Jimmy was where The Undertones came in.
What do you think?
Well, I think that’s fair enough, but I don’t analyse it. I am just very grateful that the songs have stood the test of time and that people are very fond of the band. I think what they probably get is that we are fairly anonymous. We are not high flyers, not showbiz types. We always reverted to being ourselves and I like to think that’s what they see when they see the band.
We are our own worst enemies. There’s things that we should do and have never done.
Like what?
Well, it is an industry and we’re dealing with the media and there’s certain things you have to say and certain things that you have to do. There’s a procession for you to follow to be a pop star and we just never fitted that mould. We were the counter to it.
The band has always been against the grain, constantly. Even back home, we had to compete with rock bands and show bands, which was fine, they were doing their thing, but we weren’t under attack, although we were under attack.
Billy laughed as he remembered that yes, in fact they were attacked individually and as a band.
People were saying you can’t play your music and you can’t do this and you can’t do that, but we did what we wanted to do and that belief in the band has kept us together. We come across like a unit, like a force. But I don’t consciously sit down and think why did people like us. My job is to be the drummer in The Undertones. That’s basically it. I consider myself exceptionally lucky that I’m there and we get on and do our thing. I don’t need the trappings of fame, or whatever. I don’t need it.
 |
| Live in Halifax, Yorks 2026. Photo: Seán Cummiskey |
I think Punk was an attitude or to try something and not to accept your current circumstances and expectations, so what you did in making a record and being on John Peel, was doing something with your mates, was the epitome of Punk. Many people hold the band close to their hearts because you come across as a bunch of mates doing your thing regardless.
I read that the band dressed as they would have at home and read that this was to avoid looking flash when you went back to Derry. Was this because Derry was a difficult place to be different in because of the sectarianism?
Well, that’s a long question! Basically we were essentially working class and we never had money to buy flashy clothes. Within the band we used to share clothes. I would borrow John’s trousers, John might borrow my t-shirt, I might wear Micky Bradley’s jacket. We’d share clothes to some extent within the band. But it wasn’t how we looked that was important, it was what we were doing that was the thing. We were definitely shielded from fashions because of the situation in Northern Ireland.
We never had the Sex Pistols, we never had The Damned (I don’t think). We had The Clash admittedly and we had the Ramones, but there was never that scene to copy from. It was a mixture of that, plus back then in Derry there was a lot of dislike of the band. We not only had to deal with people who didn’t like the band, didn’t like the music, and probably didn’t like our attitude, we also had The Troubles. We had to deal with the police, the British Army, discrimination. We had all those things going on and we just went through it. We probably did realise it at the time, but you didn't dwell on it and if we were to get above ourselves, we would have been thrown into the River Foyle. They’d chuck you in.
But Feargal had a tough time. He was the lead singer and already had a profile. He'd been a singer and won all these competitions and he would make appearances on local TV and he got a lot of abuse. He was definitely a target. He was known. But he’s a tough guy. He might be thin and wiry, but he’s tough.
There was a huge media backlash to anything Punk. It was seen as anti-social, almost perverse, whereas we youngsters, saw it has the ultimate form of teenage expression. But there was a lot aggression about generally. Where I grew up Punks were being beaten up just for being Punks and it was quite a violent time, for example at football matches.
We had sectarian violence. I had moved into a Protestant area and you were marked as a Catholic. “Let’s get him!” We had that sectarianism and prejudice going on. But I think every period in music history they had their rebellious element. If you go back to Elvis Presley, they tried to close him down because of his gyrations. He was ‘Elvis The Pelvis’. Every generation has gone through it. I don’t think that Punk was the breakdown of anything, or the beginning of something new. It just developed. It was organic, it just happened. I put it down to the Pistols and Malcom McClaren and Vivienne Westwood. Ultimately that was the start of a different style of music, but I think that rebellious attitude in music remained in rock’n’roll. It was always there.
Had you called yourselves The O’Neill Brothers, (like The Clancy Brothers), you would have possibly been associated with the rebel music of The Republic and traditional Irish sounds, by people who did not know you, but to come up with a striking band name and to play in a style after The Ramones, led you down a different route.
The Ramones influence does come through strongly when I listen back to the early music, of The Undertones ,but I always felt that the band was growing musically over the years. For example, I still really enjoy your fourth album, The Sin Of Pride album. How did you contribute to the musical progress of the band?
My ambitions were very modest and very basic, but as you go along, you do realise that it is a business and it is an industry and record companies have more say in what you can do and I sensed that and felt very uncomfortable. The Punk thing didn’t last that long anyway and then came along the New Romantic thing and music changed, so the life span of these music types is quite brief, but at the same time they have a longevity through the songs. Punk lasted a couple of years, it died, something else came along, that died as well, and like everything the more you record, how you tune your instrument and the more you play, that (your music) naturally develops anyway. A band is like a child growing up, you just grow. For me, it was a big regret the band breaking up, we had a lot to offer.
With Feargal leaving the band and then me leaving too, created a lot of difficulties. Maybe we should have taken a break and done a lot of things with different people, then reconvened. I think it was a mistake. I think Feargal had had enough and I didn’t like the recording process.
I would be do the basic backing track with Michael (on bass), but then I wouldn’t want to stay for the vocals, because John was really meticulous and Feargal, being the lead singer, would have probably gone a different way. This created conflict and I didn’t like it. I like to keep things nice, calm and there was conflict there. I saw it like this. Everyone has different colours. John, Michael and I would have different shades of blue, Feargal would be brown and that always created conflict. Feargal was never really part of the band. After we would performed he didn’t really tune in afterwards and that affected the recording too. When we finished recording he would just go off. Feargal never wrote anything.
When I looked back over all your records it surprised me that Feargal did not write anything, it really surprised me. But you had a few songs, as Michael did too, but I wasn't meaning to talk too much about Feargal because your friend Paul McLoone has been with you since the band reformed in 1999, far longer than Feargal Sharkey was singing with you.
Paul’s like James Bond. A new actor playing the lead man. He’s been with us longer than Feargal has been with us. He had to replace Fearghal and the band had a lot of success with Feargal and Feargal has had his own number one hits, so Paul had a lot to overcome. He does it really well and I’m glad he’s here.
To give you an example of the thing with Feargal. My father, (God bless my father), was listening to the radio and on came ‘A Good Heart’ (Feargal didn’t rate it as a song), he was saying “That’s a great song!” Thinking it was The Undertones, because Feargal was singing it and I had to say, “No Dad, that’s Feargal singing a song.” 'But Feargal’s with The Undertones.' and I said “No he’s not." My dad couldn’t understand that and wondered why we broke up.
I was sorry to note that you lost your close friend, the film maker, Vinny Cunningham last year, and he was only 58, so I wondered if his loss had spurred the band to get on with things and celebrate being still here after fifty years.
Vinny was a big loss and I feel more for the family. We were close. His son was in the same school as my nephew and we’ve all grown up together and stayed together in Derry. It's still tough for his family. Losing Vinny has been bad, but it didn't change what we do.
You can’t categorise something once you reach a certain age and say “I’m going to look a bit silly, I’m going to look a bit daft. You reach an age when you don’t give a shit anyway. But if you enjoy doing it, why stop? If you enjoy doing it, keep doing it. You’re not answerable to anybody. Linking it to the Punk attitude, it was about who gives a shit what people think. Get up there and get on with it and do it and so what? If you make it a success, great, or if you don’t, at least you tried!
Life’s not for sitting back and thinking I should have done this and should have done that. Life is full of mistakes and that is how you learn. As you are happy doing something, fly-fishing, golf or cricket and if you’re happy doing it, who cares?
My father was a tough guy. He was a joiner working on a building site and he became a foreman and he ended up as a civil engineer. He was very good with his hands, so he started building a boat and he taught himself to sail and he got me into sailing when I was 14 and 15 in Donegal. I won the Juniors and Seniors and was quite good. Someone said go down to Dublin and try for the Irish national team for the Olympics. Back then sailing was very middle class and you had to speak in a certain way and behave in a certain way and I felt very uncomfortable, so I went back home. But my dad kept sailing right until he physically couldn’t do it. He was very driven and even two weeks before he passed away, he came to Derry and he was on my roof painting it and I said,
"For God’s sakes Dad, get down off the roof!"
'What do you mean? I can paint this roof.'
I feel life is like that. Go on as long as you can, but if you have clean health, you have everything. You have to keep going. And I am still waiting to grow up!
It was a was a wonderful moment seeing The Undertones up on stage at The Piece Hall, Halifax in mid-July this summer. You were all having a lot of fun. A real chill went through me when you started singing 'My Favourite Cousin' . Seeing The Undertones live was a wonderful experience, The sound was great.
Is there any new Undertones music out there?
Yes, there is. We have done a couple of new songs live and audiences have been a bit surprised to hear songs that are not familiar to them, but committed followers of the band have told us they think they are good songs. I really like them, but it takes time for songs to emerge. They take time to evolve into their finished selves and be fit for recording.
Producers are important to that process. Their knowledge and experience counts for a lot. Its is a collaborative effort. You have to park your pop star arrogance and prejudices outside as recording is a completely different experience. Think about Nile Rodgers working with David Bowie, who had written a folky number called ‘Let’s Dance’. Rodgers suggested that it was better in a different style and they turned it into a worldwide hit. You need that kind of imagination and thought process when you have new songs, but we will be recording some new stuff before much longer.
Billy, I really appreciate your time this afternoon. Thank you very much for speaking with me. I look forward to hearing some of the new music, along with the classic Undertones' hits at the show at Epic Studios in Norwich on 15th October, 2026.
Spencer Ide
17th August 2026
~
The following list of shows has been taken from the official The Undertones website. Follow the link for first hand and up to date information from the band.
The Undertones Forthcoming Live Shows 2026
August
21 Beautiful Days Festival, Escot Park - SOLD OUT
22 Belfast - Custom House Square Tickets guests of Stiff Little Fingers
23 Henley on Thames - Rewind Festival Tickets
September
22 Gothenburg - Pustervik Special guests Ruts D.C. Tickets
24 Uppsala - Katalin Special guests Ruts D.C. Tickets
25 Stockholm - Kägelbanan Special guests Ruts D.C. Tickets
26 Norrköping - Arbis Special guests Ruts D.C. Tickets
October
02 Glasgow - O2 Academy Special guests Skids Tickets
03 Edinburgh - Corn Exchange Special guests Skids Tickets
15 Norwich - Epic Special Guests The Beat featuring Ranking Roger Jr Tickets
16 Leeds - Project House Special Guests The Beat featuring Ranking Roger Jr Tickets
17 Birmingham - O2 Institute Special Guests The Beat featuring Ranking Roger Jr Tickets
22 Sunderland - Fire Station Special Guests The Men They Couldn’t Hang Tickets
23 Sheffield - Foundry Special Guests The Men They Couldn’t Hang Tickets
24 Manchester O2 Ritz Special Guests The Men They Couldn’t Hang Tickets
November
05 Cork - Cyprus Avenue Tickets
06 Waterford - Bank Lane Tickets
07 Dublin - 3Olympia Tickets
12 Torquay - Arena Special Guest Jim Bob Tickets
13 Cardiff - Tramshed Special Guest Jim Bob Tickets
14 Bristol - Electric Special Guest Jim Bob Tickets
20 Southampton - The 1865 Special Guests Ruts DC Tickets
21 Brighton - Chalk Special Guests Ruts DC Tickets
22 London - Electric Ballroom Special Guests Ruts DC + Tom Robinson Tickets
December
03 Limerick - Dolan’s Warehouse Tickets
04 Galway - Roisin Dubh Tickets
05 Kilkenny - Set Theatre Tickets
19 Belfast - Limelight Tickets
20 Belfast - Limelight Tickets
Live Shows 2027
February
19 Derry - Millennium Forum Special guests Skids Tickets
20 Derry - Millennium Forum Special guests Skids Tickets
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank you for reading Spidewriter. Please get in touch with your observations or any questions you have. I look forward to hearing from you.