Times Newspapers Limited, May 21, 1995 HEADLINE: Teenage Fanclub pop till they drop BYLINE: Paul Coia BODY: Paul Coia tells how the Bellshill band put every last ounce of energy into their comeback album. TEENAGE FANCLUB have bumped up against the fickleness of today's music business. After a deserved, if surprising, reaction to their 1991 album Bandwagonesque, the Bellshill lads were catapulted to fame by a music press dripping epithets that made record company hype seem like understatement. They picked up album of the year awards from every publication except Barbershop Monthly and then disappeared in '92 to write the follow up, Thirteen. When we chatted before its release the following year, the band were very positive, but a few jaded interviews later they let slip the songs had taken too long to record. ''We meant that after eight months in the studio, the earlier stuff had evolved a bit,'' says founder member Norman Blake. ''That came out in print as us not liking the album, and suddenly everyone had a go at us. We should have shut up, I suppose, but you never stop learning.'' As a result, the new album Grand Prix will be perceived in some quarters as starting again, an attempt to win back respect. At the moment, the band are in danger of being perceived as a quirky Scottish group who once wrote a great album, but Grand Prix is a determined attempt to prove otherwise. ''This time we treated the recordings as a job of work,'' says Blake. ''We rehearsed five days a week for five months before we went near the recording studio. For the first time, we tried to get our guitars to complement each other and tried to grow up a bit. We have no gimmicks, just good, classic songs.'' Brendan O'Hare, the band's one-time drummer, is not part of the gang this time rund, and the response from Blake would turn a diplomatic corps examiner purple. ''Brendan was sacked,'' says the founder member emphatically. He didn't leave us because of musical differences or other projects, but was fired, because we didn't think he was committed enough.'' Further probing explains Blake's candour. ''We all thought we'd done the right thing by telling people it was his idea to leave, but he's told us that what hurt most was we'd not explained, in public, that he was sacked. He wants people to know he didn't want to go.'' The new sound of Teenage Fanclub is less complicated than last time round. A new line-up Paul Quinn replaced O'Hare has kept things simple. Gone are the short musical references to T Rex and the ''in'' jokes, although song titles such as Mellow Doubt, and even Grand Prix, still prove you cannot beat a good play on words. Some of the songs on the album are intensely personal and one, called Tears, is about the band's record boss, Alan McGee. A Glaswegian, McGee started Creation Records after moving to London but, following the sale of his controlling interest in the company for several millions, he seems to have a few of his friends worried. In Tears, Blake pleads: 'You're no sucker, so don't blow it'. ''Alan had a nervous breakdown because of all the drugs he was doing,'' he amplifies. ''I wanted to be supportive and tell him we hoped he'd sort himself out. He was quite touched by the song, but I wasn't just trying to sook up to the boss. Honest!'' If Grand Prix makes money, Blake would like to organise a tour featuring all the eulogised bands from Bellshill, such as Eugenius and the BMX Bandits, as he feels it is long overdue. With one hit single already from the collection, and another on the way, he just might get his wish. Grand Prix is released on May 29. Teenage Fanclub play Aberdeen on June 14; Edinburgh, June 15; Glasgow, June 16.