This is the first of a two part interview with legendary guitarist and songwriter John O’Neill from The Undertones, That Petrol Emotion and trip hop darlings Rare.
The man famous for writing ground breaking hit songs Jimmy Jimmy, Wednesday Week, Julie Ocean, Here Comes The Summer, Big Decision and of course John Peel’s favourite all time song and punk/new wave anthem Teenage Kicks.
Our expert music industry A&R man Richard Rogers asks the questions.
Richard Rogers: Hi John, it’s great to see you. We are here in Düsseldorf for your band, The Undertones who are playing tonight at a sold out Zakk club. Welcome.
First question, why are you doing the tour when there is nothing to promote?
John O’Neill: hi Richard. To make money, basically that is the simple answer. Since 1999, our fees have trebled. With Feargal Sharkeyl not being in the band, we don’t get played on the radio now. Maybe Radio Six but otherwise we don’t get played, it’s very frustrating. At this stage, everybody has retired from their main jobs, so we do it just for a bit of money and we really enjoy it. We are getting bigger and bigger audiences and we are selling out most of the shows.
RR: so you’re just doing it for the craic (fun) really?
JON: yeah that’s it. And merchandise is selling better than ever before. So really, it’s just a hobby. But you know, The Undertones even in the olden days, we regarded it as a hobby, not a career thing. We never took ourselves that seriously. Even now with the last two albums they are under copyright control with us. We do not even have a publishing deal. It never seemed worth our while so we just kept the copyrights.
Andy Ferguson, our manager always made sure that we had our rights, particularly after we had paid off our advances to record companies such as EMI and Sire Records. The last deal Andy did for us was with Universal and that was a good deal. We even have our own publishing company now called West Bank.
RR: so what happened with all the publishing when you were with the band That Petrol Emotion?
JON: well, Andy was managing the Petrols as well. We did not have a publishing deal for the first four albums by which time I had left the group. They got Scott Litt to produce the fifth album the guy that did the R.E.M. albums and they immediately got a big publishing deal. The albums I did with them were put into the deal, so in fact I got no money at all from them. I get the odd royalties for those albums now and again.
RR: I bought the first two albums Manic Pop Thrill and Babble but never went out and bought the third one which I’d heard and thought sounded odd, quite strange?
JON: no, it wasn’t that great. But the fourth album Chemicrazy, the one after I left was a great album. I personally think it was their best album, even though I wasn’t involved. It’s a good record again produced by Scott Litt.
RR: I heard a rumour and I don’t know if it’s true, that Paul Whitehouse, the comedian, actually auditioned for That Petrol Emotion in some capacity.
JON: yeah, that is true. He wanted to be the singer. We had no singer before Steve Mack and we put an advert in the NME. We didn’t say anything about The Undertones and this guy turned up and he couldn’t sing a note and it was Paul Whitehouse. But he was very funny, even then.
RR: actually, my mother said that he’s doing a fishing program with some other comedian, but I live here in Germany so I don’t see it. They’ve both been quite ill, I believe.
JON: yeah, that’s right. He is doing the program with Bob Mortimer from Reeves and Mortimer. Fishing must be an end thing that they do to relax.
RR: why did you leave That Petrol Emotion?
JON: my wife got pregnant with our second child, she was homesick to get back to Derry, basically. There was a tour that was going to be set up in America for about three months and I said ‘no, I can’t do that’ so I said I would leave the band.
RR: and of course you were in the band Rare as well. I thought Rare were incredibly innovative and ahead of their time.
JON: well, I don’t know about that! I enjoyed that and we wrote some good songs. Funny enough, we’ve reformed and we’ve made another record. Which maybe we will try and put out as well.
RR: are you looking for record labels at the moment?
JON: well, no, we are just going to try and do it ourselves, there’s no point, no point. Maybe we’ll press about 1000 copies on vinyl, just to get it out there.
RR: how did you get on with Seymour Stein head of Sire Records who initially signed you up in the 1970s?
JON: yeah, we got on great actually. But the deal we signed was dreadful and it seemed Sire Records was getting 90% of everything we did and Andy Ferguson was seeing what was happening as he was working at Sire. He could see that we knew nothing about publishing and PRS and he said ‘I can see that you need help and I’ll manage you for one year and I won’t take any money for it and get you out of that deal and I’ll teach you all about publishing and everything’. You know we were so lucky getting someone as amazing as Andy from the very start. He’s been with us the whole time up to this year because he’s not been very well. The last thing he did for us was sign a new publishing deal.
RR: people will be very happy that you’ve done new music with Rare can you tell us a bit more about that please?
JON: well, we did it all ourselves. Luckily, a guy we were working with had a studio in his sitting room so we did it there and he helped us do the mixing there too. I played nearly everything, but we got in a drummer.
RR: so the six or seven albums you’ve done with The Undertones plus the three That Petrol Emotion albums and the Rare album of those which is your favourite and why?
JON: well, I think the first Rare album actually. I got so involved with it because it was at the time when electronics were really coming in, so I was learning things like software, Cubase and Logic and how to use a sampler. I liked the thrill of it all out there, and I like that whole thing with bands like Massive Attack and Portishead, and I just fell in love with it, the whole Trip Hop thing. And that’s where I was headed. I was just starting to just write songs, getting them through a loop and then cutting them up and getting a tune that way..
RR: it seems like a completely different way for you to write songs.
JON: well, I was trying to get out of the same old chord stuff. Just making up a tune without the chords and then putting the chords in later, but really having that really cool beat there. Although it was very hard to re-create that live. We worked with triggering and samples live, but we had a live drummer as well. Especially back then in about 1995 with the technology as it was. You’d be in the middle of a set and the computer just crashes. It’s just unbelievable how the technology has come along.
Part 2 of the interview with John O’Neill will be available on Music2deal shortly.
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