09-2002 / Teenage Fanclub - Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Six Seconds: A Short Cut to Teenage Fanclub (Jetset) inner notes / 2003

I first started meeting the future members of Teenage Fanclub around 1984-1985. At that time in Glasgow there was absolutely no infrastructure in place in order to sustain an interesting music scene. Naturally that created an unavoidable sense of being outside of everything, which was only heightened by the stupid groups that were getting signed up, and the hostility we all felt at badly run high profit-margin shows. Somehow, we started to realise that we had more in common with each other and could be stronger together than apart. So The Pastels and Primal Scream and Jesus And Mary Chain started to put on our own nights, developping a new audience which Norman and Raymond were part of.

Out of this coming together there was an incredible energy and a sense of seizing the moment everyone seemed to be putting out records or fanzines or just contributing something. But in the middle of this, Norman’s music always seemed slightly shadowy and althought he still held kudos, promised tapes were unforthcoming. Finally he had an actual group, the Boy Hairdressers, which came to feature Raymond and was like an idiosyncratic take on 1960s baroque pop, but with sleazy lyrics. As they developed, their live set became heavier and slightly straighter, and they really started to find the Teenage Fanclub sound with songs like Eternal Light. Unfortunately just as they were shaping up, on a general level the energy started going out of things, and it started to seem like they were too late.

I remember meeting Norman and Raymond in Hamilton probably in early 1988 and they were now talking enthusiastically of running their own recording studio, and had just been about grants. I don’t quite know what happened to that idea, because before too long the dream was back on and they’d change their name to Superdrug, and then maybe it was too trashy. Teengae Fanclub, I dont’t think they were playing live too much, but of course Gerard was on-board by then, and all through that summer I played their fantastic tape and tried my best to spread the word, until eventually it landed with two labels who really wanted them – Paperhouse and Matador.

Although I had absolutely no involvement in A Catholic Education, I felt really proud of the music because I knew it would not have come out the same if The Pastels had never existed, and that somehow they’d taken a small thing from us and focused it and made it better. Teenage Fanclub were intense sounding and what came across was an emotional honesty in the words and music, like this was to be their last chance, and they had to take it. To me, it was never ‘Belshill boys on the scam’ as some people saw it, more a group trying to root down with a sense of endeavour and musical integrity.

Maybe everyone’s first music has an innocence and truth about it but what makes Teenage Fanclub so great is the way that they’ve kept on making ‘first music’, not through wilful anti-progression but by always knowing their way back to the good places. The other day Gerard told me of his long-held suspicion that Raymond is the high-jumper in Gregory’s Girl. This is a perfect Teenage Fanclub story, normal but somehow magic. They sing as they live. I’ve sometimes thought that Teenage Fanclub’s music is exactly like the numbers the young lovers start reeling off at the end of the film.

Stephen Pastel, Glasgow G12. September 2002