All in The Script

HAVING just announced a debut headline tour to the MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle, for March next year, The Script frontman and co-founder Danny O’Donoghue admits that he’d begun to think that a successful music career had passed him by.

He says: “Approaching 30, like all artists out there you’re aware that most people have made it when they’re young, but then bands like Coldplay make it when they’re the far side of twenty. We’re not up there with a dance routine and not up there to be in the club and the VIP area and I think there’s an age limit when you stop going for the kids.

“What a band like us says to a lot of people is that the music industry isn’t as bad as people think. And when I say bands like us I mean bands that play instruments. They can get a lot of heart from what has happened to us.”

O’Donoghue and Mark Sheehan were members of the ill-fated Dublin boyband Mytown who failed to make the big time having signed a $15m deal with Universal Records. It took a period of reinvention and record producing in the US, and the arrival of Glen Power as drummer, to propel The Script into the charts with single We Cry followed by the band’s debut album. That went to number one in the UK and latest album, Science and Faith, followed suit when released last week.

O’Donoghue modestly dismisses the success of the first album as “a fluke” in the way that the ten-track release produced five hit singles and, all-importantly sold well in the US.

“It was ten years of trying. But after all those years of trying we’re just getting it right. I think what we’ve begun to understand is what it takes to create a great song.”

“With the Universal Records thing it was for something like seven albums, but we were only kids and like everyone else were prepared to try anything to make it. And there was a lot of hype surrounding us. But if you have a song out and it doesn’t work, then bang you’re dropped. All the hype in the world can still end in heartbreak,” explains O’Donoghue who feels it was still a great start in the industry because he and Sheehan continued to produce and write.

“The charm of the Irish, or whatever you call it, opened so many doors and here we are, ten years later, saying ‘bingo’,” he laughs.

“As a writer you’re always trying to write the perfect pop song, and I think that Breakeven (the third single from their 2008 album) was the one. It’s not one that people pick up on immediately, but after three or four listens we feel it really covers the issues of love and hearkbreak or loss.

The trick is trying to find something that hasn’t been said before. Our productions skills really kind of came to the fore on that one with the melody and taglines and chorus, added to the skills we’d already learned, produced this song at a special time for us,” O’Donoghue says.

HE claims he hasn’t got a clue where his voice comes from. “I grew up listening to the likes of Stevie Wonder and James Taylor and heard some very different stuff to what I sing today. I grew up trying to emulate a singer like Conner Reeves, who isn’t well known outside Ireland, because he was a white guy who sounded like a black guy. I’ve sung so many demos over the years that you kinda know your own voice,”

O’Donoghue says.

He also puts it down to the two other The Script members having a similar energy and life force and spurring him on to sing higher and with more emotion.

“For me the voice is nothing without great lyrics and a great melody… and in my opinion you won’t find a dud lyric on The Script albums. If it doesn’t make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, then there’s nothing going on,” he says. Reflecting on the demands of the tour, O’Donoghue feels that reproducing The Script’s sound live on stage is a vital part of what the band does.

“The CD is a moment in time but when you come and see us live that’s when a lot of the things we do make sense. Nine times out of ten, the fans say ‘you sound better than you do on CD’. And I think this comes from the crowd who bring their own energy ready to join in with me on the choruses. It’s a big time family affair.”

The Script were recently personally picked out by Paul McCartney to tour with him and the Irish performer says of the experience: “In the industry people have support acts they don’t even know. I was fully prepared for that but Paul knew everything about us and he had a copy of his album and had sent ten people to check out our act.

“He said ‘I picked you guys out because I’ve been hearing so much about you. I’ve got a new album coming out, have you heard anything about it?’ Come on! How down to earth is that. And then we opened at the Shea Stadium (now called Citi Field) with him in the US. Just us and him. I knew I’d be happy if I died the next day.”

■ The Script, Saturday, March 19, MetroRadio Arena, Newcastle.

Tickets at £25 go on sale tomorrow at 9.30am. gigsandtours.com and ticketmaster.co.uk 24-hour credit card hotline 0844-811-0051 or 0844- 826-2826 or the arena itself on 0844- 493-6666