Anniversary release is just what the Doctors ordered!

A limited print of 500 vinyl albums is current being pressed, as sleeve notes and lyric sheets are updated – all behind the seminal cover of If This is Rock ‘n’ Roll I Want My Old Job Back.

That featured the band’s original line-up on the back – and their fathers, as leather-clad rock stars, in the front, on stage at the old Warwick Hotel where their sons had enjoyed some of their greatest nights.

“I don’t know whether it was Davy or Leo that came up with it, but I do remember that – at the time – the Rolling Stones were on a world tour. And we worked out that they were older than the dads,” recalls their manager Ollie Jennings.

That line-up of Davy Carton, Leo Moran, Pearse Doherty, Johnny Donnelly and John ‘Turps’ Burke were riding the crest of a wave after I Useta Lover had hit the top of the singles charts in September 1990 – and stayed there for the next nine weeks.

It wasn’t the band’s first single, but N17’s initial release had bombed – despite the fact that it was produced by Mike Scott of the Waterboys. And given that the band’s deal with Solid Records was just for two singles, it might have been all over before it began, if I Useta Lover hadn’t hit a rich vein.

That in turn led to the re-release of N17 and, by Christmas 1990, it was at number two in the Irish charts just ahead of I Useta Lover at number three.

All of that meant that an album was very much back on the cards – and the lads were able to fill it with songs that have stood them in such stead to this day.

See the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download our digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie