Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake on the band’s revamped lineup, new music, and what they learned on the OK Computer tour

After a relatively quiet couple of years, the past few months have been a flurry of activity for Teenage Fanclub. The long-standing Scottish power-pop torchbearers recently unveiled remastered vinyl versions of their classic Creation Records albums (1991’s Bandwagonesque, 1993’s Thirteen, 1995’s Grand Prix, 1997’s Songs from Northern Britain, and 2000’s Howdy!), and celebrated the extensive reissue campaign with a series of multi-night stands in the UK where they played all of the albums in full over three nights in each city. The shows were a celebration of the band’s storied past, with early drummers Brendan O’Hare and Paul Quinn joining the band on-stage, but also served as a send off to founding member Gerard Love, one of the three songwriters in the band.

While Love’s departure may be a tough pill for fans to swallow, the split seems as amiable as can be, and the band is forging onwards with a newly revamped lineup, including moving long-time member Dave McGowan (also of Belle and Sebastian) to bass, and brining in Euros Childs (of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) on keyboards.

We caught up with Teeange Fanclub founding member / songwriter / guitarist Norman Blake on the eve of their Asian tour to discuss the massive album shows, the new lineup, their upcoming record, and what they learned touring with Radiohead on 1997’s OK Computer tour.

Teenage Fanclub play Montreal’s Petit Campus on March 9, 2019. Tickets are available here. For all tour dates, and to order the recent vinyl reissues, head to the band’s official site.

Bad Feeling Magazine: Are you in the midst of tour rehearsals now?

Norman Blake: Yeah, we’ve just finished actually. We’re actually flying out to Hong Kong tomorrow, at about 4:30 from Heathrow. So we’re in Glasgow at the moment. We’ve actually been doing a couple of things, we were rehearsing this week, and the week before we were in Hamburg, doing some recording. We’ve got a few new tracks, we’re working on a new record. So we’re in Glasgow rehearsing, but we packed up all the gear yesterday and today’s the day when everyone goes out and buys new underwear and T-shirts and whatnot, before we embark on the tour. So that’s where we’re at, it’s been really good. We get to Hong Kong tomorrow, and from there we go to Japan and then we go to Australia and New Zealand, and then we fly up to Los Angeles, and we work our way across Canada and America, and we eventually get to Montreal in about six weeks or so. We’re all looking forward to it, as you can imagine.

Have you ever played in Asia before?

We have yeah, for some reason there are certain parts of the world for every band that they do well in. We’ve been lucky that for us one of them is Japan, we’ve always done well in Japan, although we’ve never played in China, this is our first show. We’ve transited through Hong Kong but we’ve never played a show there, so this is the first one. But we’ve been going to Japan for many years now, and its amazing, it’s really great to play over there.

The band recently did these massive, career retrospective full album shows — what was that experience like for you?

It was fun, I mean, it was daunting, you know, because of course we had to learn all of the songs. And what happens is, when you make a record, when you release the album you probably play a lot of the songs, and then some of them slip by the wayside, and some of them remain in the set for years, and years, and years, and others don’t get a look in. And so what happens is that you completely forget how to play ’em, and so there was a bit of going back to the records — it was a bit like the Engima code, you know? [Laughs] So we basically had to go back to those records and work out the parts that we played, and it was a lot of songs.

I think over the course of the 3 nights we played 75 songs. So all of the album tracks, but then on the third night we played the Howdy! album, and a lot of B-sides and outtakes and rarities. It was a lot of fun. Well, that part of it wasn’t so much fun, having to learn all those parts, but we did it, we rehearsed for about 5 weeks. We brought in the original drummers from those records, Brendan O’Hare and Paul Quinn, they were involved too, the gang was all together. We worked out the sets for each night, which was pretty easy because the sets were comprised of the albums in chronological order.

There was a good sense of camaraderie. It was Gerry’s last show with the band, of course he’s not coming on these trips. I guess it could have been a bit of a downer in some ways because it was the end of an era, but it wasn’t. We had a really good time, spirits were high and everyone was in really good spirits actually, it was fun, it was good. I’m interested to go back, because as you go on over the years you maybe look at things a little differently in terms of your, you know, your rating, you now, lyrically, or whatever. Your outlook in life. The first record is kind of optimistic, you’re 22-year-olds, but by the end of it you’re a bunch of jaded old guys approaching 40. And I’m now 30 years beyond that, my god.

When you went back to those records, were there any surprises for you? Did any particular album resonate differently with you now? 

What was interesting to me was the way the musicianship — and this is kind of really boring, and sort of technical in a way — I can notice the technical improvements in terms of musicianship or whatever. That was one aspect of it. We got a bit more adventurous. The start is pretty much verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-boom-out, but as the albums go on we started to get a bit more adventurous with the structures and instrumentation. And then within all of this we have our kind of more acoustic-y periods, and then we’ll dig out the distortion pedals again.

But also, I can sort of see a growth in terms of the confidence in our songwriting abilities. When bands start they’re kind of the sum of their influences, you know? Every band is, you can’t help but be that, even Bob Dylan was the sum of his influences, took some of those old Americana records that he was listening to and took the lyrics and rejigged them for his records. So basically I can see us finding our own thing, you know? And I don’t know if everyone can do that, I can certainly see that when I look back at the records. I’m actually happy that I don’t think any of it is too toe-curlingly embarrassing you know? Because of course you don’t listen to your own music, it’s masochistic to do that. It’s the last thing I want to listen to. [Laughs] So having to go back and listen to these things it was like, “Here we go, this is going to be horrible.” But surprisingly, I was thinking, “OK, it’s alright, It’s not so bad. We can do this.”

And of course lots of memories come back and reminiscences of certain periods, and things that you did in certain albums. For example, the Songs From Northern Britain album, we toured North America with Radiohead, we did Montreal too. That was amazing, so doing it kind of brings back those memories. Johnny [Greenwood] doing our lights every night because he was bored. He did a really great job, he’s a fantastic lighting guy, Johnny. If the soundtrack thing dries up he’s going to be OK! [Laughs] They’re really good guys, and we’re still kind of friendly with them.

There are memories attached to each record. And of course, when you’re touring, people would come along who we have associations with each of those records. “Oh yeah, I remember seeing you on the Bandwagonesque tour,” so there was lots of stuff going on with the whole event, it was quite something. It was a lot of fun, and by the time we go to the end of it in London, I felt we had achieved something. But it was also nice to kind of put a full stop at the end of that, and say “OK, that’s that, done,” and we move on.

That Radiohead tour you were on, at least in North America, was really when the band was just on the cup of super-stardom. You could tell at that show in Montreal that they genuinely seemed a bit taken aback by the intense crowd reaction. 

It was incredible. I know for a fact that they could have played bigger venues, but chose to play smaller theatres. They could have gone to much larger places, and I think it was a really good move. Of course, they’re a band that puts everything into their live show, I mean they gave it everything. That’s one thing I really admired about them. I remember on that tour, at one point on the tour Thom had a really bad throat, and you would see him during the day and he’s be like, really hoarse, his voice was shredded. And then he would go on every night and gargle with some soluble aspirin and then do it again. I’ve got a lot of respect for him for doing that, because he appreciated that people had spent money on those tickets. And I know that they were meticulous in terms of the sound, and even in the way they looked after us. We had full access to everything that they had, we even ended up sharing buses, you know? They’re a proper band in that respect, they’re proper. They’re good people, you know? Respect for their audience, respect for everyone actually.

Was that attitude helpful for you to see at that stage of your career? Seeing how a band like that could operate and not lose their minds? 

Sure, we were never anywhere near as big as them, but I think we make kindred spirits. If we have anyone playing with us there are no restrictions or any of that stuff. You hear stories about bands that are restricting the PA, the support bands have less of the PA, and that’s kind of ridiculous, you know? We would never think about doing that. If it was us doing it we would expect things to be that way, so it was just nice that other people are doing it that way and being respectful.

You talked briefly about Gerard leaving after those last shows; what was that conversation like when he told the band he wanted to leave? You’ve had some lineup changes over the years, but the core of the band has basically remained unchanged.

It has, yeah, that’s true. We’ve had a few different drummers. But you know, here’s the thing; we tried for six months to persuade him to do [the overseas tour] and he said, “Look, I just can’t face it, I just don’t want to travel around the world.” And he suggested it, he said, “Why don’t you get someone else in to play bass.” And we said, “We really don’t want to do that, we want you to do it,” but then eventually we sort of thought, “OK, well maybe Dave McGowan could play bass,” because everyone else really wanted to do the shows. And so we said, “OK Gerry, we think we’re going to do that,” and he said “No problem, of course that’s fine, it’s been a great ride.” And there you go.

But if someone doesn’t want to do something you can’t expect them to do it. Conversely, if a load of other people do want to do something, you can’t expect them not to do it. But it’s all amicable, it’s fine. I think it was good doing those reissue shows, because there was a good spirit in the group. And in terms of what we’re doing going forward, well Dave, who we talk about being the new guy in the band, and he’s been playing with us for 15 years, which is incredible. But Dave is predominately a bass player, he’s also a member of Belle and Sebastian, and he plays bass with them. He’s always been a bass player but with us he plays keyboards, he’s one of those multi-talented instrumentalists, he can play everything. But with us he was playing mostly keyboards and guitar, so it felt natural to have Dave go onto bass, and he was up for that.

And then we had to get someone in to play keyboards, and I’m very good friends with a guy named Euros Childs, who was in the band Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, he’s played on the records, and he’s kind of like one of the gang, he’s been around the band for years. We’ve toured together, he knows our aesthetic, he’s a really cool guy and easy to get along with. And so we approached Euros and asked if he would be up for playing keyboards, and he said yes. And he’s also a great singer. So it didn’t feel like someone was replacing Gerry, because Dave was moving around to bass, you know? It kind of softened the blow of that. And in terms of songs, we’ve got lots of songs, we’ve got 10 albums worth of songs. We’re trying to look at the positives, and say, “OK, this gives us the opportunity to sort of rejig what we do, reinvigorate what we’re doing.” We’ve just been recording in Hamburg, we’ve got some new songs, we’re working on a new record.

Things change — when Brendan left the band, he was such a big part of the band way back in the early days, I mean I don’t know if you saw the band back then — well, Paul was playing drums for the Radiohead stuff — but Brendan, our first drummer, was kind of insane. He was absolutely off his head. And he was such a ball of energy when we played shows, so when he left — well, we kind of fell out with him, we’re all good friends now — but when Brendan was replaced by Paul, the whole dynamic and the aesthetic changed. So that happens in bands, things change. But I think our default position is, it’s only a band, you know? [Laughs] There are much more important things than bands in the world. So it’s different, but we’re excited and looking forward to playing. It’s still a thrill, it’s still very enjoyable.

It’s been a few years since Here came out — how have the new tracks evolved from that album? 

Well, I think that probably, they’re not off on a crazy tangent, you know? There’s not a techno or a house guy doing remixes or anything like that. But on the new records Dave’s on bass, so that’s different, any group of musicians will make a different sound. So it’s pretty much ours, it still sounds like Teenage Fanclub, but with Dave and Euros playing, so they bring their thing to it. I think the plan is to work on an album and get stuff coming out, and just keep working, We’re really happy with the things we got. We were in Hamburg two weeks ago, rehearsing last week, and on the road tomorrow, so it’s all happening.

Before I let you go, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask about your second home in Canada — do you notice any similarities between Canada and Scotland?

For sure, I meet lots of people who go, “Oh, my granddad’s from Scotland!” But it’s amazing, I’ve been in Canada for almost eight years, I’m down in Kitchener, so not far from Toronto. And yeah, it’s home, I really like it. I have lots of friends there, I’ve got to know quite a few local musicians, and people around there. Ron Sexsmith is a pal of mine, Ron has moved to Stratford recently, so he’s not too far away from me, so we hang out a bit. He’s a great guy. I know some of the Broken Social Scene people, so I’ve gotten to know people, you know?

After the tour, I think we finish down in North Carolina, after that the other guys will fly back to the UK, and I’ll fly home to Pearson Airport and back home to Kitchener. It’s been eight years, and I generally enjoy life in Canada, it’s been great.

Teenage Fanclub play Montreal’s Petit Campus on March 9, 2019. Tickets are available here. For all tour dates, and to order the recent vinyl reissues, head to the band’s official site.