Teenage Kicks is the kind of song One Direction cover for charity and football writers still lift for headlines, and the Derry punk band behind it, The Undertones, are marking their 50th anniversary with a run of shows that includes Project House in Leeds on Friday 16 October 2026. Ahead of the tour, bassist Michael Bradley told us about supporting the Clash in America, miming on Top of the Pops, writing about the Troubles and why the band never gave up the day job.

By Stanley West

How do you feel about the tour?

I’m enjoying it, it’s on and off, you know. It’s not like one of those bands where you go away for two months and you never see anyone and you live out of a suitcase. It’s short bursts of about three, sometimes four shows and then we go home. I’m looking forward to it; we’re doing a run [of shows] in October and November and we’re going to Sweden [in September].

When was the last time you played Europe? Has it been a while?

No, it’s been a couple of months. We did some shows in Germany in around about May… that was good. I always enjoy it. In July we did some shows in Germany with a German band called Die Toten Hosen who are extremely successful, they’ve played football stadiums and they asked us to play there. It was great, it was way out of our league [laughs], but we were only the support band so that’s alright.

I guess they were fans.

I think so, yeah. They’re a little bit younger than us; they were going since like the 70s or 80s. They’re very conscientious in that way, they’re obviously punk rock fans but they sort of reach out and get bands of our vintage and bring them along and it’s great. Whether we or other bands have any impact on Die Toten Hosen fans I don’t know, but I don’t think they care, they just go “right, we’re gonna put on bands that we like”. They’re a great group of people.

I was going to ask if you consider yourselves punk, you have a lot of different songs.

Yeah, I do. I think the older I get, the more reinforced I get in that way. Because, you know, it was about music, but it was about an attitude as well. The idea that rock and roll back in those days had just got far too big and far too… I don’t want to say pretentious because pretentious is sometimes good, but it became too much of an industry and it needed a reset. I think it’s probably needed resetting many times in the 50 years since. But it was an attitude, for us, that we were starting from scratch. We had a love of basic rock and roll, a love of basic music, we loved the Ramones especially, they kind of… they really were the band for us. And as well as that we loved the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, Buzzcocks, and all that. But it was that [idea] of rock and roll starting again, it really was.

And it was a huge schism [laughs] as you would say, it’s like talking about the Church. But it really was at the time. Since then, everything’s alright, people love the Rolling Stones now, but back in 1977 it really was “us and them” and I look back on that very fondly. Of course, we were the right age. In 1977 I was just turning 18 and it was the ideal age to be listening to and making records that adults didn’t like – and that made a difference too. Nowadays I like bands who are in their 20s, but back in 1977 it wasn’t done. There was the exception, John Peel, who was around 38 – he was allowed to like punk, but there was such a huge generation gap then that hasn’t happened since.

I’m interested in why, especially since you were growing up in the Troubles, you didn’t immediately write about politics. I think the third and the fourth Undertones albums are quite political but the first two are not, I’m just curious.

It was because our influences were records. I think that’s what it was. John O’Neill would be the main songwriter in the band, but I myself and Damien, we wrote some songs too. But we were kind of connected with it, we knew what was happening. I think it was because we loved records so much that they were the inspiration for us when it came to writing songs. When John wrote Teenage Kicks especially, he said he was influenced by the girl groups from the 1960s: the Ronettes, the Crystals and so on. And that was the kind of thing that informed him.

It’s not like we were apolitical, either. We’re from Derry, which is where a lot of the Troubles started, it was a very political city, and we knew that we were across that.

I can only speak for myself, but I remember thinking at the time that for us to write a song about the Troubles, we’d need to be really really good. If I was going to write about something like that, I’d need to come up with something like, I don’t know, Blowing in the Wind or A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, you know? Not even White Riot, you know… it’s a great record but it wouldn’t suit us. Even though we used to play it and I can see what it was in terms of the Notting Hill riots, but in Derry it wasn’t just about riots. It was about imperialism; it was about religion, it was all kinds of things. I remember thinking at the time “that sounds like [there’s] an awful lot of work and an awful lot of genius needed”.

I still can’t even think of that many novels written about the Troubles which I think really nail it. It was a very complicated thing to write about, and maybe that’s why, I don’t know. John would have a different idea… after the Undertones broke up John was writing quite political songs.

A lot of your songs are young, they feel like they were written by young people. I’m wondering what it’s like to play them on tour now – especially songs like My Perfect Cousin and Teenage Kicks.

It’s a good question. If we thought about it, we’d go “why are we still singing about being a teenager and being jealous of your cousin and all that?” And I have no great, smart answer apart from the fact that whenever we play it [My Perfect Cousin] I look at the crowd – people absolutely love it. People really do love hearing that song, they love Teenage Kicks, they love Here Comes the Summer – they love those songs which were written when we were in the first flush of youth. I think I would be overanalysing it and being a little bit joyless to go “we’re not playing those any more, they’re irrelevant to what we are”. But it boils down to trying to make people happy, trying to entertain people. And, you know, it works for us. We play them and they [the audience] enjoy them.

The older I get the more I can appreciate them [the songs] for what they are. I remember saying to John not long ago that one of the songs, I can’t remember which one, we were playing it and I was listening to the words, and I said “that is really good you know”. He gave me a funny look.

Because it’s a new experience every time, it’s not like reading out of a book, you’re performing and it still works as a creative thing.

I hope somewhere in that long answer there might be a kernel of truth.

You must hear Teenage Kicks all the time I imagine because it’s so huge. What was it like when One Direction covered it with One Way or Another?

I was delighted; I was absolutely delighted. Even I had heard of One Direction. It was funny, the reaction I got from people my own age… some of them expected me to be in some way annoyed or not happy by the fact that Teenage Kicks was being played by Harry Styles and his chums. I could not understand that, of course I’m not going to get sniffy about One Direction. Even then, I was not in their demographic, and nobody expects me to be a One Direction fan, but I thought it was great. I’m not gonna call it an honour because that’s a bit pretentious, but it was a huge favour – a huge compliment – for a song which wasn’t even that big a hit back in the day. For a song to be so well established that a band like One Direction would cover it for charity is great.

In fact, there was something similar many years ago, I went with my children to see Green Day, they had a big show in Dublin. I was there as the responsible adult, as the driver, but I was standing beside them. I don’t really know much of Green Day, but they did Teenage Kicks and my chest swelled – they’re doing one of our songs! My children were around 15, 16 and they looked around and smiled.

Having a song like Teenage Kicks – although I didn’t write it, I wish I had written it – for us as a band to have a song like Teenage Kicks which is part of the fabric of society now [laughs], you still see Teenage Kicks written in headlines, sometimes football stories, it’s just fantastic.

I wonder what Paul McCartney feels like being a Beatle. He’s probably fed up of it, but we’re not [laughs].

I mean, it must take a while to get fed up of it.

Yes, that’s true, I must work harder trying to get fed up.

Has there been a tour you’ve enjoyed the most as part of the Undertones? You opened for the Clash once which must have been huge.

Good question. The Clash one, I think, would be the highlight because it was our first time in America and it was… The Clash. We were supporting the Clash. They asked for us to play with them, which I still think is fantastic. And we caught the Clash at a great time; they had recorded London Calling and they were playing these songs that we hadn’t heard because the record wasn’t out. So that was fantastic as well. And they were just so good. It was kind of, not contrived… It was choreographed. The way the three of them… They knew what looked great. When you’re in the audience and you see that, and you hear this THUMP… It’s not like it was a stadium, it was fairly big halls – it wasn’t an arena – there were no screens and you could see them and it felt really, really natural and it felt like you were there.

Also, there’s the old cliché, no one was filming it. You were there, you saw this and you knew that this was it, you weren’t going to see this again. It was absolutely brilliant.

They were very nice to us as well, as a support band. We were – I was – certainly too awestruck to actually engage in conversation but it was just a fantastic experience. That was September 1979, a year before that we were still playing at a pub in Derry. So, on so many levels I think that was absolutely the best tour.

It’s like someone asking “what was it like being in the court of Henry VIII” [laughs]. It was so long ago, and the world has completely changed since then. “What did you do in the war, dad?” – I played with the Clash!

I’ll enjoy thinking about it and talking about it until the day I die.

It’s a bit of a cliché to ask, but when you first started what did you expect from the band – obviously, you didn’t expect to open for the Clash I imagine.

For me, I didn’t think about anything at all. But I think for the rest of them… your aims change but at the start our aim was to get one song finished – not our own song, but to play one song from start to finish. Then to have enough to play maybe six songs, the first show we ever did we played six songs, all covers. Then after that maybe start writing our own songs, then after that maybe making a record.

So, whenever we made Teenage Kicks, that was our last ambition because in those days you couldn’t make your own record, you couldn’t just get a laptop and record it using GarageBand or whatever. Someone had to pay for the studio, and someone had to pay for [the record] to be pressed and sold and all that.

So, I think that was our last ambition. But then of course once you do that you start to have more ambitions… well, I was going to say playing on Top of the Pops but that wasn’t really an ambition, that was completely and utterly impossible for us even to imagine. But within two months of the record being released on a small label and then a slightly bigger label we were on Top of the Pops. Then we could’ve died happy.

What was Top of the Pops like? Was it playback at that point?

Yes.

So that must’ve been strange, right?

It definitely was. Whenever we went over there, we were told that… you would mime but you would mime to a new backing track. We had to go to a studio in London the night before and record Teenage Kicks all over again. For us that was very easy, we didn’t have many extra overdubs or anything. So, you do that and give the tape to the BBC, then you go into the TV studio.

All I remember is that it was very dark, it’s almost like a cinema – you need to watch your feet, so you don’t trip over something. And also, you don’t notice how small the stages are. On TV it looks like they’re in a big room and stage, but when you’re there it’s tiny, it’s like someone’s front room.

So that was great. Also, we saw Elvis Costello, he was there doing Radio Radio. And you see people at the BBC, you saw newsreaders. We saw John Craven and we were sort of starstruck about that.

It was something everybody watched – not everybody obviously – but everybody that you knew watched Top of the Pops, even if you didn’t like what you were watching you still watched it. And for us to do and sit down and watch us, knowing that if you were back home you would be watching it too… just great. Mind-blowing.

There isn’t really anything to compare it [Top of the Pops] to I suppose. I mean, there just isn’t anything everybody watches.

Not now, no. There’s nothing to compare it to. As I said when I was talking about the Clash, it’s a completely different world.

You were high in the charts a few times, were you on Top of the Pops again?

We had a number 9 hit and a number 11 hit in the spring and summer of 1980, but I don’t think we were on Top of the Pops because there was a strike on, a technician’s strike. We definitely weren’t on for Wednesday Week, which was the number 11 hit. That was strange, but back then those things were not uncommon.

We were in the charts, but Top of the Pops wasn’t on. I always think maybe that helped us because nobody could see us, but you could hear the record on the radio. It was great because at that time as well… we weren’t that hard working, despite our manager’s best efforts. I remember when Wednesday Week had gone up to number 11… I only discovered it had whenever I went home because that day me and the rest of the band were in Derry playing indoor football, we weren’t paying attention to anything.

I can still remember my younger sister, Donna, saying “Wednesday Week‘s number 11!” We didn’t have a telephone, so it’s not like the record companies could phone [us]. Looking back, it’s a bizarre thing, but I remember at the time thinking it’s a good way to do it, when your sister tells you that your record has gone up in the charts instead of some guy in a record company.

Can you tell me what the reunion was like in, I think, 1999? How was it?

That was great, it was… we were kind of nervous about it. We hadn’t played together as the Undertones in almost 16 years.

Had you been in touch with each other? Had you been seeing each other?

Well, apart from Feargal [Sharkey, lead singer]. We weren’t really in touch with Feargal, but I would still have been in touch with John and Billy and Damien, you know, on and off. Damien was living in London, but John and Billy were still in Derry, so you ran into them. We still had some kind of… legal connection because we still had statements from the band and whatever.

We were in contact, Billy and I actually played together along with another band, an Irish band called Saw Doctors, they invited us to come along to one of their shows because in the encore they were doing Teenage Kicks and they asked us if we’d join in on bass and drums, so of course – why would you not?

Then in 1999 the Saw Doctors were very heavily involved in the Galway Arts Festival which is a fairly cool festival, and they asked, “would John and Damien play as well?” And at that stage That Petrol Emotion [a band including both John and Damien O’Neill from the Undertones] had stopped, so they asked and they both said yeah.

So, the four of us went over to Galway and we hadn’t really practiced much, and we didn’t have a singer because we knew Feargal wouldn’t do it and we didn’t really want Feargal for all kinds of reasons. So, it was just the four of us and we were completely and utterly winging it.

One of the Saw Doctors, Davy Carton, he sang for us… and we actually – it sounds really daft – but we actually asked the audience, “does anyone know any Undertones songs?” And of course everyone put their hand up. I remember we thought “well this is a bit rough, but it’s good fun”. So once the four of us got together, “would you be against doing more?” is the question we all asked each other, and we said “no”, so we needed to get ourselves a singer.

We thought of Paul McLoone, Billy was in a band [the Carrellines] with him after the Undertones, John knew him through various things in Derry. I knew him because I worked in the radio. So, we asked him and he said, “yes, of course”.

It was good, it was great. We got together and it clicked very very quickly. But doing the show in the Nerve Centre [their first show with McLoone] was very scary, because it could’ve been rubbish. People could’ve been “yeah, play Teenage Kicks and we don’t care about anything else” but it was such a great night.

I’ve seen a video of it and we look incredibly young, even though I was nearly 40. We quickly knew, as well, that this was not going to be a full on “let’s try and get everything back the way it was” thing, we thought we would do some shows. Later on, we wrote some songs too which was very enjoyable, but we knew from the start that it was not going to change our lives, which is kind of good. There was no pressure, we weren’t worrying about our next hit record or about how profitable the next tour will be, you just do shows and get yourself some money and go along. That’s basically what we’ve been doing for the last 27 years.

I’m interested in why you didn’t want to go all in on the reunion, why you just wanted to play a few shows and write a few songs

Because we’d experienced that with the Undertones and it’s great whenever it’s going well. First couple of LPs we weren’t under any pressure from the record company because whatever we did was a success – various levels, it’s not like we had number ones. But we made records and the records got in the charts and they got great reviews in the paper. But then by 1981, 1982, 1983 it became more difficult. None of us had the stomach for it, I hated that idea of a record company looking at you and going “no we don’t like this, you need to change it”. Feargal coped well with it, of course he had a number one record [after the Undertones, as part of his solo career].

But I think John definitely wouldn’t be that keen to go all out. Billy and Damien maybe a wee bit more, but we all knew that you could be running after something that you’ll never ever catch, and you wouldn’t enjoy the experience, it might completely put you off ever being in a band again. So, we just see how it goes, much to the annoyance of some people. But my view was “I’m not going to give up the day job,” the old cliché, and I didn’t give up the day job because I was a radio producer, and Billy didn’t give up the day job either. If you depend on being in a band to put food on the table, that can be very very difficult. Unless, of course, you’re a multi-millionaire. But if you’re struggling and everything is based around money this month… that’s disheartening.

What are your shows like at the moment? What should fans expect?

They are… good, the shows are great. We’ve done a couple of great festivals during the summer, so I’ll be happy to get back to doing club shows because we can do more songs. For us it’s great as well, because for the first time in years we’ve written some new songs – John has written some new songs, and we’ve been rehearsing them and working them out. We throw some of them in too to see what reaction they get and so far, they’ve been getting quite a promising reaction, and it’s interesting to see how they fit in with our old songs. I think we do about an hour and a half, so that means about thirty songs for us – a lot. Of course they’re mostly short songs, there are no hideous guitar solos, no hideous speeches being made between songs, unless of course one of our amplifiers breaks.

The audience really enjoy it, and as a band you really feed off of what the audience is giving you. It’s always a big compliment when the audience sing along to your songs.

The Undertones play at Project House, Leeds on Friday 16 October 2026.