PRIOR TO their return to home turf for a short Christmas break and their (subsequently re-scheduled) Irish dates, The Cranberries completed their first ever headline tour of America. The hectic, three-month-long US trek saw Limerick’s finest musical export since Richard Harris, take their jangly Celtic strains throughout the length and breadth of the country that gave them their initial breakthrough.

Noel Hogan, guitar player and co-songwriter with the band, spoke to Hot Press about their seemingly unstoppable ascent to the premier division of the US rock circuit as well as more important matters, like the creature-comforts success can bring to the drudgery of touring.

“The main difference now is that we have a bigger crew and we stay in much nicer hotels,” he laughs. “It’s also great being able to play in decent venues for a change, rather than some of the dodgy clubs we had to play on our first tour over there. We play in theatres mainly now and every venue on the tour was completely sold out – which was great for our first ever headliner. We’ve been supported by two American bands – Gigolo Aunts and MC 900.

“Apart from that it’s been pretty much all go,” he adds. “There wasn’t much spare time on the tour – when we weren’t playing, we were travelling so it’s nice to get home for a bit of a break, however short.”

Their current unscheduled layoff notwithstanding, The Cranberries have certainly been busy over the last six months. After a couple of summer festival dates in the US, including an appearance at Woodstock ’94, the band toured Europe in the Autumn and kicked off the US tour proper at the beginning of October. Their second album, No Need To Argue, already a multi-million seller, happily made an impact almost immediately – in stark contrast to the prolonged and anxious simmering period they experienced with Everybody Else Is Doing It. So Why Can’t We.

“It was a lot better the second time around,” says Hogan. “It meant that we didn’t have to tour for two years just to get the songs heard. Everybody knew who we were already, so it was just a matter of getting the songs out there. After we’d finished recording the first album, we had started writing songs straight away, so we had over two years to get them together and to try them out live.”

The American market, being notoriously regional, often means that a band can be huge in one city and almost unknown in another, but according to Hogan there aren’t too many parts of the USA which the Cranberries have yet to crack.

“We seem to be equally popular almost everywhere,” he says. “Although the big cities like Chicago and San Francisco are particularly mad when we play there and Atlanta is always good for us. We even got to do a gig in Mexico City, which was pretty amazing – they have a population of about 25 million, so it puts it all in context.”

Another recent development in the ’Berries camp concerned the band’s business affairs and their change of management from Metropolitan to Left Bank – a move which was seen by many as a sign of their increasing influence and muscle within the business. Hogan sees it more as a natural progression, consistent with their higher profile.

“We were moving on a bit from where we started and the truth was, we weren’t really happy with the way things were with Metropolitan. We didn’t have a binding contract or anything like that so it was a straightforward move to change over to Left Bank. It really only affects our management in the States anyway so it won’t make much difference to our European operation.”

Right now, it seems the band can’t do anything wrong commercially. The most successful Irish rock band since U2 – certainly in terms of initial record sales – The Cranberries’ enormous success still perplexes many observers in the business because of its sheer scale. There’ve been dozens of Irish bands over the past ten years with impeccable credentials, huge reputations and major record deals, yet none have hit paydirt in the way The Cranberries have. Hogan himself is at a loss to explain what his band have that makes them stand so far above the competition.

“No-one in America has been able to pinpoint exactly why we’re so popular over there,” he admits. “We seem to appeal to quite a wide audience which might surprise people who think of us as an indie-type guitar band. The age-range at concerts is from fifteen to fifty and you see whole families coming to the gigs together . . . it’s very strange!”

“Luck definitely played a big part in it,” he adds cautiously. “With us, it was a combination of things. Luck, the music, being in the right place at the right time. We just write songs that we like ourselves and if other people like them, fine. But if nobody had bought the album we’d still think they were good songs.”

Ironically, the crucial turning point in the band’s fortunes came at a time when the future looked decidedly uncertain, as he explains.

“We were on a tour of Europe with The Hothouse Flowers and we took a week off to do some gigs of our own in England. The album had been out for a while and there seemed to be no interest in it. We were getting really pissed off with our lack of progress. Then, out of the blue, we started getting these phone calls from the States telling us that the album was getting airplay and looked like taking off and asking us to go over there straight away. So we did and that was the start of it. We were playing small clubs at the start but they were sold-out and it just grew from that point onwards.”

Whatever about their popularity across the Atlantic, there is still a sense however that they have yet to prove themselves on the live front at home. Last years Féile appearance by the band received a mixed reception from the critics, with many feeling that they lacked somewhat in the energy department. On reflection, Noel Hogan feels that the band probably weren’t firing on all cylinders at the time.

“It was just OK,” he says. “It probably could have been a lot better. Féile was our first gig in about seven months – we hadn’t played since the previous Christmas and we were a bit out of practice. But we’re a lot tighter now and we’re looking forward to playing in Ireland again.”

On the question of the band’s immediate future, Dolores O’Riordan is on record as saying that she would like to take some time off to start a family, sooner rather than later. According to Noel Hogan, the band’s diary is full for most of 1995 and it will be late next year before they get a break.

“The way things are going, we’ll be touring for a long time to come,” he concludes. “After the Dublin shows we have the Royal Albert Hall in London, then it’s off to Europe, Japan and Australia. In the summer we’ll probably be doing the REM shows and there’s talk of doing some Rolling Stones dates in Europe, as well as a few of the big festivals.”

It’s a dirty job – but somebody’s gotta do it.