It's now in bold print - The Undertones sans Feargal Sharkey are about to perform together again. Already billed for Fairyhouse and the London Fleadh, their fans of over 20 years are now rubbing their eyes in sheer disbelief - first that they're actually together again, and second that it's all being done without their once vibrating, and previously necessary, front-man.
"If Feargal had written Teenage Kicks," says bass player Mickey Bradley, "or if he had written My Perfect Cousin and Jimmy Jimmy, then none of us would have agreed to this. But they're all John O'Neill's songs. Whatever about Feargal, we wouldn't have done it without John."
So that explains that one. That said, the absence of Sharkey is certain to be one of the main talking points of the venture. In fact, this reunion might well have happened some years ago, but Sharkey simply was never up for it. And now that certain possibilities have arisen again, the four original members have decided to go ahead without him - replacing him with another Derry singer, Paul McLoone.
"If we thought it wouldn't be any good without Sharkey then we wouldn't be doing it at all. Sharkey refuses to do it and I don't think he likes the idea of it either - but the four of us do want to do it. We're looking at it like this - the four of us were together in 1975 and then we got him in as a singer, and now we've got a new singer in."
Mickey Bradley was the tall gangly one who kept making faces. His jumpers were always too tight, his jeans were always too short and his boots were always too big. He was the spottiest and cheekiest Undertone of all - the giggling corner-boy in the van of Parka chic. A much different prospect these days however, he works as a producer with Radio Foyle - a uniquely inspired corner of BBC Northern Ireland which daily broadcasts the subversive genius of the Gerry Anderson Show. Along with colleagues like Anderson and Sean Coyle, Bradley has long been involved in the very best of the BBC's local output - most of it, like the Undertones themselves, quite separate and very Derry indeed.
"We were always very Derry. We are lucky. We all have jobs and are settled, respectable members of the community! We only had a few years of being pop stars and we quickly got back to being ordinary boys. I like to think that we're all normal enough. The last success we had was in 1980/81 and that was a lifetime ago. So none of us are trying to make it as rock-stars. So there's no grasping need about what we're doing. None of us ended up with heroin habits that we have to feed."
There was a time, however, when Mickey Bradley simply didn't want to talk about his previous career as a pop star. He maintains he never thought anybody would have been interested, but those who worked with him always suspected it was the old story of the dream gone sour. His spell of pop stardom had, after all, been followed by a period as a courier and, back in Derry, a further long spell on the dole. But then, almost overnight, he began to recount, with some pleasure, his many rock 'n' roll anecdotes about a bunch of Derry teenagers misbehaving in public. And now he's more than happy to laugh about those days when The Undertones could well afford as much chocolate and attitude as they dared.
"I laugh at how hateful we were. We were naive and sort of hateful. I mean, we took the whole long hair thing very seriously. We didn't like people with long hair. We didn't like people with satin bomber jackets. We didn't like people in record companies with the moustache and the permed hair. We didn't like Belfast either. We liked Terri Hooley on and off but we definitely didn't like the other bands. In fact we hated being associated with Belfast because we'd already been doing it for two years in Derry. We weren't part of the Belfast scene until we made Teenage Kicks and we hated being lumped in with Belfast. We were just thran, and we stuck to what we thought were principles - being in Derry and not being tubes."
The Undertones went on to make probably the best Irish singles ever - and with Teenage Kicks came up with one of rock 'n' roll's truly glorious moments. From the Casbah in Derry through Terri Hooley's Good Vibrations label to the deal with Sire Records and the unstinting patronage of John Peel, The Undertones blazed through a string of undeniably classic records. It was to be an extraordinary but short-lived burst. The band continued to get more adventurous musically but despite making great records, they soon discovered that albums like Positive Touch and Sin Of Pride would never be as successful as those early singles. In 1983 they knocked it on the head.
Feargal Sharkey enjoyed a further brief period of serious solo success. The O'Neills formed That Petrol Emotion and made some quite brilliant music of their own, and meanwhile back in Derry, drummer Billy Doherty and bassist Mickey Bradley wondered what to do next. In fact it was Billy Doherty, who now works for computer firm Seagate, who was the driving force behind the reunion. He was always strongly in favour of The Undertones doing something together again and, strangely enough, it was a friendship with The Sawdoctors which finally made it happen.
It was New Years Eve 1992 and Billy and Mickey joined The Sawdoctors on stage at the Point for a performance of Teenage Kicks. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the exercise was repeated on a few further occasions - but always entirely for the sport. Then last July John O'Neill agreed to join in. Then Damien showed up and suddenly they were four. The Sawdoctors organised a Galway show in the Warwick Hotel during the Arts Festival and the four Undertones, who had long given up on Feargal, found themselves rehearsing seven songs.
`We thought of it as a bit of craic, and if we didn't have Feargal, well somebody else could sing. In fact that night in the Warwick Hotel, Davy and Leo from The Sawdoctors sang a couple of songs and then there was a boy brought up from the audience for Wednesday Week. He was a big fan of The Undertones and he loved Wednesday Week. So he sang it!"
The Derry gig in November was a rather more serious affair. John was working in The Nerve Centre and it seemed like an ideal place to test things out. They also knew that this might well be their toughest audience anywhere. They practised for two or three weeks, putting their trust in themselves and their friends and relying heavily on people who would tell them the truth about how they were sounding. The feedback was all positive and people began to suggest that maybe The Undertones, even without Sharkey, should perhaps do something more. A meeting was called.
"We set out the limits. Billy was all for doing everything. John was easy about going along with whatever we decided. Damien definitely didn't want to start touring or anything like that, but I was the one who was really limiting things. For instance, when the notion came up about new songs it was firmly dropped. One thing for certain, none of us wanted to hear the words, `and now we'd like to play some of our new material'.
"This was just for the craic, but it was was serious in that we wanted to sound alright on stage. We were not tempted in any way to footer about with the songs, or to reinterpret them. So we decided that we had to make something like Teenage Kicks sound just like the record. And that was the very first one we played - just to make sure that we all knew it. And it sounded good."
As Mickey Bradley returns to his production duties on an afternoon magazine show, he seems pleasantly giddy about the forthcoming gigs. He's enjoying the way they are going about it - perhaps playing for the first time since The Casbah with no real pressure. That said, he just is a little disconcerted by the final query. Do The Undertones now actually exist as a band?
"That's a good question. I hadn't thought of that. I think it's a bit like the Trinity. It cannot be understood. You could study it for years but all you will learn in the end is that it cannot be understood. If you think you understand it, then you are mistaken. So do The Undertones exist? No."
The Undertones play Witness at Fairyhouse on August 5-6th, and the London Fleadh on June 10th