Gerry Love: Part Two

In part two of our exclusive interview with former Teenage Fannie Gerry Love, the mild-mannered bassist talks about his final shows with the band he had been part of for almost thirty years.

With accidentally fortuitous timing, Gerry bowed out on a 2018 UK tour celebrating the legacy of the band’s years on Creation Records and those classic albums they released through the 90s, from Bandwagonesqueto Songs from Northern Britain– shows which also featured guest appearances by two key players in the Fanclub story, former drummers Brendan O’Hare and Paul Quinn.

Those shows were good. It was the perfect ending, if you could ever choose it. All of us together again for a brief moment. I didn’t like the dramatic idea that they were my last shows. I just couldn’t engage with that because I was engaged too much with the job in hand – it was quite a lot to learn, and even working with Brendan and Paul again was great. It’s one thing to meet an ex-associate in the pub and having a drink, but to engage in the way you engaged with them in the first place there’s something much stronger about that and it makes everyone feel like they are in the gang again so that was really good.

There was drama involved in that – trying to trap Brendan in a rehearsal room and get him to concentrate for long enough to get it down, but the good thing about Brendan is when it comes to the gig he’s on. Brendan’s a joker and a surrealist so the sideshow of Brendan’s dealings with his rehearsal schedule created light relief.

I didn’t feel emotional about the shows at all – this was not me saying ‘farewell, I love you all’. People were saying to me ‘don’t leave’, and I was thinking ‘I’m not going anywhere’. It was a strange one. When you exist in your own little sphere and you saw how people reacted, especially on social media, I really didn’t expect that it meant as much to people.

I didn’t have to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. I felt an energy from it. When I came off that tour I was bursting with new ideas and that carried me through to the new year. I really love my routine in Glasgow and the thing about travelling as a career is it breaks your routine and sometimes that can be exciting but it can be disorienting as well. Maybe the older I get I like the simple things in life and I like being close to my family and doing my thing.

The final part of this interview will run on Thursday