Music > Interviews

Billy Doherty of The Undertones

29/03/19

Billy Doherty is the founding member and long standing drummer of one of the longest surviving punk / new wave bands, the legendary The Undertones. Starting out in their home City of Derry back in 1975 at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, they have gone on to sell millions of records around the world and still tour on a regular basis, they remain a great live act and will be back in Norwich on May the 16th at Open Studio’s

Outline’s Steve Plunkett caught up with Billy as they get ready to prepare for their up and coming tour that starts at the beginning of May.

So it’s the fortieth year since the release of your self-titled debut album, hence the tour, where has that time gone and how can you best sum up those years?

It’s flown by, it’s a long time ago since we started out now, but things have not really changed that much to be honest, were still the same people, were still friends, we all still get on really well with each other, we are just quite a bit older, we have always have been friends, there’s still a great chemistry within the band. At the time when we first started, if you had of asked us to pick our favourite colour we would maybe have all picked blue, it may have been a different shade of blue but it would’ve been blue, that’s how close we were then and it would probably still be the same if you asked us now, although Fergal would’ve picked green! But it’s not like we had a masterplan or anything at the start we have just been very lucky that we have been able to keep playing in the band and be quite successful.

I remember seeing you back in the summer of 1979 and then you came back three months later, both times at St Andrews Hall here in Norwich, do you remember any of those shows at all or are there any other memorable moments from the many gigs that you have played here over the years?

I can’t remember those gigs to be honest, but Mickey (Michael Bradley) is the one in the band with the great memory, he doesn’t forget anything, he would probably remember those gigs as he remembers everything from our careers. When we played there the last time we stayed at the Holiday Inn at the football ground (Carrow Road), we wanted to take a look in the stadium but we couldn’t get in as it was locked.

I remember Fergal getting covered in spit back in the day, all over his parker. That was never a good look was it (the spitting from the crowd over the acts, was a punk rock thing), although the parker was just fine of course!

Do you know what I have still got some awful stains on my cymbals from those days! It was disgusting, it really was.

I remember seeing The Pretenders at the same venue in Norwich not long after I saw The Undertones, Chrissie Hynde hated being spat at (she was in a gold and black jockey suit) and she was getting covered in it, she kept threatening to walk off stage or to sort someone out in the crowd, but she somehow managed to stay the course.

We were on the same label as The Pretenders and she was in the Sire Records office one day when we were in there, she was really charming and together we all sat round talking about our mutual appreciation of Marc Bolan and T-Rex.

What would you have done if the band hadn’t of worked out in the late seventies?

We would’ve all carried on with our studies and gone off gone to University. I was training to be an architect, in fact we were all studying. We were all doing quite well and then the band came along and the studies took a back seat, we failed our exams through a lack of study time, but the band became so important to us, it took over as we rehearsed all the time whenever we could, we lost the motivation to study and thankfully it all worked out.

On your Facebook profile, you look like you are working in a department store on one of your photos? What’s the photograph of? Are you moonlighting?

My nephew works in a phone shop, it was taken there. We all have other jobs, except John, he was the main song writer so he gets the lion’s share of the royalties, he gets the bigger cheques, so he doesn’t need to work at all other than playing in the band. I work for Seagate here in Derry. We all still get a share of the royalties for the songs that we have written, except Fergal. We all sat round one day and our manager produced these cheques for each of us, except him, he asked where his was as he puffed away on a cigarette and our manager told him, you didn’t write any of the songs so you don’t have one!

You have played with some great bands over the years including XTC, Talking Heads, The Stranglers, The Clash, Orange Juice, Toots and The Maytals, The Cure, Elvis Costello and Ian Dury and many more. Do you personally have any particular memorable moments from any of those gigs and tours?

Yes we did play with some great people, the highlights would be playing with Orange Juice, Edwyn Collins was great, also I enjoyed playing with the Dolly Mixtures and touring with The Clash was amazing too, but it was a real culture shock, we had just arrived in America for the first time and we just like got dropped off in New York City and left to our own devices. It was very daunting and mad and I really struggled with the lifestyle, parties all the time, it was crazy. There was a guy called Cosmo Vinyl, he hung around all the time and Pennie Smith was hanging around too taking photographs. Joe Strummer was just a brilliant guy, he really looked after us, and he was very respectful too, most bands don’t always show too much respect to the support act, but he really did. The Stranglers were also very nice, when we played with them Jean-Jacques Burnel their bassist made sure that the venues doors didn’t open until we had done a sound check, which generally you don’t always get to do as a support act.

What else are the band up to right now? Are there any plans to record any new material?

I have been getting my visa sorted out today for the USA tour, it’s been a real pain, and it’s taken me ages to process that today.

It’s really extremely difficult to find the time to record new material as we have jobs and families, we are all living in different places too, so the logistics make it very challenging but do you know what I would love to do something again, take some time out to record some new material, maybe do something like David Bowie’s Pin Ups, an album of covers that would interpret the music that influenced us as a band when we were starting out. That would be great.

I understand that you have formed another band? A Ceili band called The Billy Doherty Rambling Band? Can you tell me more about them? I have seen them described as a punk, and folk band that blends with Irish traditional fusion. Sort of an Irish Nouvelle Vague maybe as it looks like you throw in some cover versions as well as playing traditional Irish music?

I don’t know of Nouvelle Vague, but yes although we haven’t played together for a while, they are all traditional Irish musicians, they’re so amazing and so very talented, and it makes you feel out of your depth when you play with them. Some of them are classically trained, it’s great when we do play, but again it’s the getting together that makes it difficult when everyone is so very busy.

Do you have any contact with Fergal (Sharkey) at all these days (Ex lead singer), since he left the band in 1983?

None at all, any contact that we do have is all through our manager. It was his decision to leave, he was always his own man. We hear different bits and pieces you know through the family connections that we have, but that’s it. When there were check points in Derry he was always getting arrested as would insist on speaking Irish to the soldiers when he got stopped, we were regularly calling his parents back in the day to go and get him out of the cells. One night after we had been on Top Of The Pops, when Jimmy Jimmy was in the charts, I was in Derry walking to my house in Bogside and I got stopped by the soldiers and they asked me what my occupation was, I told them I was a musician. More questions were asked, like what’s the name of your band then and when I told them I was the drummer in a band called The Undertones, I was all of a sudden surrounded by soldiers singing Jimmy Jimmy (in a cockney accent) and wanting autographs for their families, it was a surreal moment.

So after all these years, do you still enjoy getting out on the road and touring still? What do you look forward too and what do you not look forward too?

Yes definitely, but the travelling can be a bit of a bore, you know you crave for your slippers and pipe (laughs) sometimes. But we are a great live band and that’s what it’s all about, sometimes you go on stage thinking can we still do this, but we know that we can, it’s great to come off stage having nailed a show, it’s fantastic. The buzz of playing live is still there, you look out at the audience and see their faces and the different ages of the crowd and you feel a responsibility to perform, we always seem to sell out the shows too. The feedback is always positive and it’s great that we can still do it and have a laugh together and maintain our energy and chemistry. We have always been able to discuss after a show, who played a bad note or who came in too early or who sang the wrong words, maybe at the wrong time, we have always had that openness and I think that’s a really good thing to have. Even with our singer (Paul McLoone), he obviously hasn’t been with us since day one, but it’s like he has always been with us as he fits in really well with everyone.

What are your fondest memories of the period where you were at the peak of your success doing things like Top of The Pops?

To be honest I have achieved everything that I wanted to achieve in a relatively short space of time really, we made a record, met John Peel and did Top of the Pops. There are so many great memorise for all of us and many years ago I was lucky enough to meet Ringo Starr at an event. We had a chat, he was really nice, I got his autograph, we talked about drumming and he told me that he can’t read music. I am also as a big fan, in fact we all are of The Beatles, Paul McCartney and Wings and we were on the tour bus last time we toured and we all had a moment, our manager was playing some music and on came the brilliant Wings song, My Love, it was magical a real togetherness band moment, we just looked at each other, we all so love that song, it was a really beautiful moment. I was also able to see Paul McCartney play live in Liverpool in December, last year for the first time. He is seventy six years of age and he was just excellent, I loved all the stories that he told about The Beatles, Liverpool and his career, he was so engaged, there was some great dialogue with his audience. I would like us to do more of that when we play live at this stage of our careers.

I read Michael Bradley’s book and as a lifelong Undertones fan it was a great read while on holiday in Greece last year. Have you personally got any plans to write a book about your life?

No, as I am not a big reader, the others read all the time, but for me music is an escapism, I don’t want to hear about the negatives of a particular band or artist that I really like. I don’t want to know about all the fall outs, I just want to hear the tunes, if you hear too much negative about your favourite artists, it can change your perspective.

I heard that you haven’t been too well in recent times?

Yes that’s correct, I have had a stroke and a heart attack and I have recently been diagnosed as having osteoporosis, I am still undergoing some tests, but I will be on the tour bus. When I was ill the staff at the hospital in Derry were just brilliant, so kind and dedicated and once they knew I was in The Undertones I had a constant stream of people queuing outside my door from all sorts of job roles in the hospital coming to see me for an autograph, it was crazy. I got some of our gold discs made up and gave the ambulance staff  a copy and also the team from the stroke charity, they were lost for words, but it was nothing really, we so depend on them when we are not well. The health service gets a tough time, but certainly the staff in Derry were great.

I remember reading that you quit the band in the early days, but that you soon went back and re-joined, the next day. What happened and are you glad you went back?

I think I maybe just worried about all the rock n roll baggage, we had signed a good deal with EMI and they had hired a hotel room at the Post House Hotel at Heathrow for our meeting, but I remember leaving the meeting and calling our manager and telling him I’d quit the band then I called my then wife who told me she’d be gone when i got home if I left, the cold reality really hit me hard at how much I had ballsed it up in London and I knew that fundamentally I had to sort it out when I got back home. I am glad that I stayed.

Forty one years ago, the band wrote Teenage Kicks, just how proud are you of this song? I understand that you were the one that persuaded the others to actually record it? Can you believe what a phenomenon it has become?

No I can’t really. It has taken on a life of its own and when we went to John Peel’s funeral it really had an overwhelming impact on us all. We had Jimmy Page and Robert Plant sitting behind us and as if that wasn’t enough as they carried John’s coffin down the aisle after the eulogies had finished, they played Teenage Kicks, well we all looked round at each other and we all had tears rolling down our cheeks, then we could hear the crowd sing along to it outside. The last time we were in the area in 2016, we visited his grave and we were blown away that he has some of the lyrics on his gravestone, it reads, “teenage dreams so hard to beat”. He really put us on the map and when he visited Derry to do a documentary on us and we felt concerned at how he would be, but how wrong were they, he talked incessantly, it was incredible. He interrupted filming for a break at a local bar and our table was covered in drinks, alcohol and lots of it from well-wishers. There were lots of pints of Guinness from people just wishing him well, it was great for all of us as we helped him to drink it all.

And finally, what is Billy’s Third written about from your debut album?

Quite simply it was the third song that I had personally written, I tried to write a song in the style of the Ramones, simple as that really. We still play it at the shows.