Norman Blake remembers the night he first met Kurt Cobain in Edinburgh.
Kurt Cobain once described Teenage Fanclub as “the best band in the world”. His love of Scottish bands is well documented. Over Zoom, Norman Blake explains that he first met the Nirvana frontman in Edinburgh in October 1990 when the band performed at Calton Studios.
It is one of those stories that has become part of the city’s musical folklore. Cobain had asked The Vaselines to reform for the show, with Eugene Kelly among the support acts that night. Blake remembers being in the dressing room, having tagged along, when Cobain first met Kelly.
“Kurt, wearing heavy eye makeup, met Eugene and said, ‘Oh wow, Eugene Kelly, I can’t believe I’m meeting Eugene Kelly!’ It was an incredible moment to witness.”
It was one of those brief encounters that captures something about the alternative music culture of the early 1990s, when the distance between Scotland and Seattle seemed lessened by the underground connections of the era.
For nearly four decades, Teenage Fanclub have remained one of Scotland’s most loved bands. Norman Blake, one of the founding members, has recently returned to Scotland after years of moving between here and Canada, settling once again in the Clyde Valley. Their 13th album, Do Not Dare to Dream, takes its name from Blake’s track I Do Not Dare to Dream.
“The song is probably 70% autobiographical. I moved back here after a breakup, and it was really about me re-establishing myself in a new place, in a new environment, and ruminating on that and the changes. The title sort of came from that. I’d also just been thinking about that sign you sometimes see in an office saying: ‘Dare to dream’, that’s supposed to motivate people working there, and how that is sort of applicable in the real world. Life doesn’t work that way. If only it did! So it’s just a little play on that. It’s a bit of tongue in cheek cynicism.”
There is a cathartic quality to the album, which continues Teenage Fanclub’s tradition of drawing on the landscape of American rock, country, psychedelia and harmony pop.
“We’ve always been a song based harmony band,” Blake says, reflecting on the current incarnation of the band. “So it feels very fresh and settled.”
The new album was recorded at Black Bay Studio on the Isle of Lewis, a considerable distance from the band’s Glasgow beginnings.
“Raymond (McGinley) found Black Bay Studio, which is really remote. It was a drive from Glasgow to Ullapool, a ferry to Stornoway, and another 90-minute drive into the middle of nowhere near the Callanish Stones. It was just us, two studio staff, and sheep.”
They allowed the surroundings to have an influence, with the remote setting providing a different kind of space for the music. “When we make a record, we want the environment to sort of inform it in some way. We don’t really do any pre-production. So we didn’t run through the songs. We basically turned up at the studio; Raymond and myself did some song ideas over the course of a couple of hours, we would get some kind of structure and form, and then a couple hours later, we would record it and the song would be pretty much done other than putting down the lead vocals.”
On tracks such as Over and Over, the vocal harmonies recall Crosby, Stills & Nash, another strand in the musical history that has always run through Teenage Fanclub with significant influences such as Love and The Byrds.
“It’s probably the three-part harmony thing; it’s quite choral in a way to do a three-part harmony all the way through a song. With Euros (Childs) in the band, he can take care of the really high harmony parts, and I’ve sort of found myself going slightly lower, and Raymond takes that lower register.”
That sense of continuity has survived changes in the band’s lineup. Since Gerard Love’s departure, Blake and Raymond McGinley have written the songs for the last three records. Dave McGowan moved from keyboards to bass after 20 years in that role, while Euros Childs joined on keyboards. The personnel may have changed, but the central idea of a band built around well-crafted songs with affecting melodies and harmonies remains.
Blake was at Murrayfield last year to see his old Creation Records label mates Oasis. Another famous accolade came from Liam Gallagher, who once described Teenage Fanclub as the second best band in the world.
“I thought it was fantastic,” Blake says of last year’s gigs. “I was so pleased for Gem, Andy, and Bonehead.” For Blake, the significance of a band reaching that scale is not simply measured in ticket sales. “When a band becomes that big, their songs become part of the furniture of people’s lives.”
The connection with Oasis has continued in less expected ways. Blake was recently in Dublin playing shows with The Big Star Quintet. During the first soundcheck, a woman from the venue approached him.
“She says, ‘Norman?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ She says, ‘Bonehead from Oasis is here; he wants to say hello to you.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I was just walking past; I saw your name on the poster.’ It was bizarre! So I said, ‘Do you want to come to the gig?’ And there he was a few hours later.”
When Blake returned to Scotland, he began to dig out memorabilia from the band’s early days. Among the things he recently rediscovered was a huge Nirvana poster from the Nevermind tour when Teenage Fanclub provided support.
“I’ve been good at keeping those things after a show, and you just file them away. One morning I was going through things, and I found a huge Nirvana poster from when we opened for them at an arena near the Real Madrid stadium; it was wild.”
Over the last 40 years Teenage Fanclub have played a variety of venues around Edinburgh, but next month they will perform at La Belle Angele for the first time.
“We’ve never played La Belle Angele; it’s always great playing in Edinburgh, we’ve got loads of friends there, and we’re looking forward to playing a new venue for us as well, just to add to our collection.”
Do Not Dare to Dream is released on October 9; Teenage Fanclub play La Belle Angele on November 15
