A Catholic Education was recorded in seven days on a $3,000 budget
and released in the U.S. on indie label Matador. The single "Everything Flows"
cracked the indie Top 15 and the album made the Top Three. With its first
London gig at the University of London Union, Teenage Fanclub became a musical
sensation. New York and the New Music Seminar in the summer of 1990 were next.
At CBGB's, the band played its first big U.S. show to critical adulation and
also met ex-Dinosaur Jr. member and current Gumball leader Don Fleming. With
him, the band recorded "God Knows It's True" b/w "So Far Gone" and its
demolition derby version of "The Ballad Of John And Yoko." Released that
winter in the U.K., the single won rave reviews and a #1 slot atop the indie
charts.
In 1991, the band signed to DGC and recorded Bandwagonesque in
Liverpool, with Fleming once again manning the boards. The single "Starsign"
b/w "Heavy Metal 6" (or, on some, Madonna's "Like A Virgin") went Top 40 and
Teenage Fanclub performed at the Reading Festival followed by a tour of the
U.K. In America, the album, which Spin called "the best record white people
have made this year," rose high on the alternative charts.
Then came Thirteen. Love believes the album was too adventurous.
The bandmembers were fatigued from touring, and recording in Glasgow didn't
help either--"we were too close to our own beds. Instead of it being 'let's
make a record,' it became 'well, we have to finish what we started."
With the end of the tour, O'Hare exited. Enter Quinn. Actually he
wasn't new to them. He'd briefly been a member of the Boy Hairdressers and had
known Blake since they were 13 years old--and McGinley nearly as long. For the
past five years, he'd been playing with another band quite unlike Teenage
Fanclub. "There was a lot of programming and sequencers used live," says
Quinn. "That's one thing that always struck me about Teenage Fanclub when I
wasn't in the band: the honesty in the songwriting."
Because he came from the same neighborhood and was already familiar to
the other members, no period of adjustment was required. "Everybody's focused
and we all get on with each other. It's a good feeling to know that four
people from the working class are still friends and making music together."
In many ways, Teenage Fanclub is as simple as that. As they sing on
Grand Prix:
I don't need an attitude
Rebellion is platitude
I only hope the verse is good
I hate verisimilitude.