Once You Pop You Just Can't Stop
Tete-at-tetes with Paul McCartney, praise from John Mayer, support slots with U2 and Take That... it’s been a whirlwind two years for THE SCRIPT. But, with a new album that confronts weighty subjects such as the recession, it’s clear these three Dublin lads still have their feet firmly on the ground. They talk about channelling their inner Manic Street Preacher, and explain why, despite their success, they won’t be splashing out on Rolexes. words Stuart Clark
Stuart Clark, 13 Oct 2010
“Did you know that we share the same management as the Manics?” Mark asks.
I can’t say I did.
“Yeah, we’ve got this brotherly hate thing going on. They slag us all the time and we slag them all the time back… the wankers!” he jokes. “We’re going to arrange a Ron Burgundy-style showdown in a car-park and sort ‘em out!”
Given Nicky Wire’s dickey back, my money’s on the Dublin boys to win by two falls and a submission.
“The Manics are nice… but intense!” Danny joins in. “And, Jesus, you can understand why with their history. There’s an honesty and, well, a stubbornness about them that I really admire. They’ve had so much shit thrown at them and yet they’re still going.
“We’re not a political band like the Manics, but what we can write about, and know about, is the emotion behind a situation. What angers me isn’t this politician or that banker, but the overall greedy mindset that’s fucked this country up. A lyric I keep quoting from the album because it resonates with me is: ‘We’ve been together all these years/ We’re smiling but we’re close to tears/ We just now got the feeling that we’re meeting for the first time.’ I don’t think having money suited us as a nation. We were so obsessed during the Celtic boom with money that we lost sight of what’s really important – which is each other. That’s the glue which sticks us together… or should do.”
Was Danny aware of how badly the arse had fallen out of things here while The Script were running round America?
“We got it in an almost Match Of The Day highlights – or lowlights – sort of a way. I’d be sitting around the kitchen-table with my family and they’d say, ‘So-and-sos after dying; so-and-sos after committing suicide because he’s lost his business; so-and-sos after losing their job but they’re okay'.”
He actually knows someone who’s killed themselves because of the recession?
“Money alone’s not going to pull you over the edge but, yeah, it does seem to be part of why they did it. A pop song in the grand scheme of things is pretty inconsequential, but sometimes it’s realising that somebody has been there before you, which pulls you through. I remember after one particularly difficult break-up obsessively listening to ‘Fix You’ by Coldplay. ‘The lights will guide you home/ And ignite your bones/ And I will try to fix you'. I didn’t know what it was about or who that person was, but it really gave me hope. What completely blows me away is having people come up and say that a song of ours like ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ and ‘Breakeven’ had the same effect on them. You can’t pay a songwriter any greater compliment than that.”
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