The teenagers who just won't grow up

The Glasgow band which rivalled Nirvana just keep on going - and gettingbetter, writes Kevin Courtney, who takes a look at the bandwagonwhich is Teenage Fan Club.

Howdy! Say, buddy, have you ever come across a band - jangly guitar rock types - kinda influenced by The Beatles. Ring any bells? No, not Oasis, they were a bit later. These guys have been around since the late 1980s, but real musical magpies even then. Talk about copping riffs. Nothing was safe from these guys - they'd grab anything that came to hand, a chord progression from The Who, a blues scale from The Byrds, a few sparkly bits off Big Star.

But they never stole nothing without making it sound even cooler, know what I mean? They said they came from someplace called Northern Britain, not Manchester, a bit farther north, Glasgow I think. They call themselves something young, not rock kids, not teenyboppers, something like . . . I know, Teenage Fanclub. That's it. Course, they ain't teenagers no more, more like Middle-age Fanclub.

If anyone is looking for a short-cut to one of Scotland's finest guitar bands, they should pick up a copy of Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds - A Short Cut To Teenage Fanclub. It's a 21-track compilation of the Fannies' finest moments, spanning their illustrious career - from their début album, A Catholic Education, to their 2001 album, Howdy. In it, are some of the greatest, most deceptively simple tunes of the past decade or so, from the albums Bandwagonesque, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain, along with a few unreleased new songs. Creation Records may be no more, the band may be getting long in the tooth, and the music may not fit in with the nu-metal zeitgeist, but in the eyes of their fans, TFC will always be AOK.

The Fanclub started up in the mid-1980s, when Bellshill boys Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley formed a band called The Boy Hairdressers. At that time, Glasgow didn't have much of a music scene, so bands such as Primal Scream, The Pastels and The Jesus And Mary Chain started putting on their own nights, attracting a growing audience of enthusiastic indie-kids.

The Boy Hairdressers mixed heavenly 1960s pop with devilishly sleazy lyrics, with Blake and McGinley sharing guitar playing, songwriting and singing. They were joined by bassist-singer Gerry Love - also a songwriter - and released a single, Golden Showers, before falling apart.

Blake did a stint with BMX Bandits before reuniting with Love and McGinley in 1989, and going by the trashy name of Superdrug before settling on Teenage Fanclub. With drummer Brendan O'Hare on board, the Fannies joined up with Alan McGee's Creation label and released their début album, A Catholic Education. The album's murky, feedback-drenched sound supplied the missing link between British shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine and American grungers such as Nirvana and Mudhoney.

The inescapable presence of tunes suggested that the three songwriters had been feasting on a sonic diet of Byrds, Badfinger and Big Star. If there was a Beatles influence, it was in the band's democratic structure, with Norman Blake as John, Gerry Love as Paul, and Raymond McGinley as George, each singing lead vocal on his own composition.

For me, the Teenage Fanclub story began with Bandwagonesque, their second - and classic - album in 1991. Opening with the crunching chords of The Concept, a jangly epic about life in a band, Bandwagonesque - recorded in Liverpool - was a swirl of classic Fanclub tunes, including Alcoholiday, What You Do To Me and Star Sign.

Bandwagonesque was released on Geffen in the US, and it topped Spin magazine's albums of the year poll, beating another Geffen release, Nirvana's Nevermind. The were Rolling Stone magazine's Hot Band of 1992, guest band on Saturday Night Live and opening act on Nirvana's tour. Talk about a bandwagon. It was proof that, even before Oasis, Alan McGee's instinct was unerring; Bandwagonesque ended up selling half a million copies worldwide. At the time, McGee was waiting for two mad geniuses, Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream and Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, to finish their new albums.

"My sights were set on Screamadelica and Loveless as I was trying to get a pair of lunatics called Gillespie and Shields to finish their respective masterpieces, not on the Teenage Fanclub and Bandwagonesque," recalls McGee. "This was Creation's finest hour but we never knew it, as we were just trying to not go bankrupt and also have a party at the same time - a complicated manoeuvre. I remember going up to Liverpool and being blown away by the LP. I immediately knew after one listen through that this was a world-class record, and Creation suddenly had the third great band we had always been looking for."

But just as the Fannies were about to conquer the US, Geffen pulled back on promoting Bandwagonesque, and poured all its energy into Nevermind, which had sold 10 million copies.

Their third album, Thirteen, was unluckily titled, and was panned by the critics, but their next record, 1995's Grand Prix, restored the faith of fans and pundits alike.

After that, came the fine Songs From Northern Britain, and the pretty good Howdy!, and also a trail of drummers who have come and gone in true Spinal Tap fashion. But the core trio of John, Paul and George - I mean, Norm, Gerry and Ray, are still together, and starting their Irish tour in Cork tonight.

The Fannies are a template for a great band - perhaps that's why they always seem to jangle along while lesser groups grab the glory. They've always stayed true to their roots, they've used their influences wisely, they've never tried to be too clever or to second-guess their audience, and they have an unerring radar for that little spark of magic that makes for great, timeless pop music. May they remain forever young at heart.

Teenage Fanclub play the Savoy, Cork, tonight; Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick, tomorrow; Dublin's Ambassador on Wednesday; the Limelight, Belfast, on Thursday; and the Nerve Centre in Derry on Friday.