WHEATUS leader Brendan B Brown has teamed up with boy band One Direction — but don’t fret the New York pop punkster, who stops off in Blackburn with his band next month, is not hanging up his studded leather jacket just yet.

A decade and a half after Wheatus slayed the charts with their catchy anthem, ‘Teenage Dirtbag’, One Direction have produced a rather tamer, but oddly catchy cover version of the fiery single that made Wheatus the darlings of the MTV generation.

“One Direction have introduced the Teenage Dirtbag tune to a new generation of 13 and 14 year-olds, and I think it is brilliant,” said Brown.

“I’ve started a side project with One Direction, we wrote a few songs together when they were in America recently.”

Their hit single might have been a one hit wonder, but Wheatus’ song of teenage angst sold millions of records worldwide and they arrive at Blackburn with a hatful of new songs to promote, plus all the favourites.

“Teenage Dirtbag is the track everybody associates with us and always will, but I’ve never felt weighed down by it,” added Brown.

“I’m intensely proud of the song – it created a legacy – and it represents our era.”

Wheatus now release their music on line, where fans can pay as much (or little) as they want to download the material.

So how did Wheatus climb back into the limelight fifteen years later with six studio albums and their foot stomping sound still intact.

“A very important record executive lost his cool with me in a meeting and threatened to drop us, so I took him up on it.

“We’ve released 60 songs and things have changed massively in that time. We were going to be ourselves at all costs, because we don’t have a manager or a record label and that gives us total freedom.

“I’ve as much energy for what I’m doing now as when I had the air sucked out of me when I heard Metallica, Queens of the Stone Age or the opening chords of Highway to Hell for the first time.

“I never wanted to take over the world or be a millionaire, so….I’m still doing what I want to do.”

  • Wheatus, Blakey’s at Blackburn King George’s Hall, October 20. Phone 0844 847 1664.