The Irish Times, June 9, 1995


   STOP everything here's Norman Blake from  Teenage Fanclub.  After lifting us
higher with Bandwagonesque, they let us down with Thirteen but they're back
with more than a bang with Grand Prix, an album which one critic said was
"better than sex". Sad, or what?

   Anyway, here's Norman: "Yeh, Thirteen was not a good album. After all the
acclaim for the first we were out on the road for over a year and we rushed it
with Thirteen, they were really just bits of songs, although we still play a few
of them live.

   Tell us the Beach Boys story. "Oh that. We were over in 1:05 Angeles working
on this album and Alex Chilton from Big Star, who we really admire rang us up
and told us about a secret Brian Wilson gig, so we went down and he came out on
stage and sang God Only Knows. It was incredible." Do you know Paul McCartney
describes God Only Knows as the best song ever written? "No." Do you know that
when the song charted, it was the first time the word "God" made it into the
singles chart? "No." Sorry, it's just that I'm researching an article for the
30th anniversary of the release of Pet Sounds and I'm full of these sort of
facts. "That's OK."