Once You Pop You Just Can't Stop

Danny O’Donoghue, Mark Sheehan and Glen Power, a.k.a. chart conquering Irish pop behemoths The Script, are looking on nervously as a bunch of scurvy hacks listen to a pre-release playback of their new album in the control room at Windmill Lane Studios.

Not afraid to display their inner Mrs. Doyles, the lads hand out tea ‘n’ sarnies while journalistic heads nod and feet tap in all the right places.
Like its two million-selling predecessor, Science & Faith is a record blessed from start (‘You Won’t Feel A Thing’) to finish (‘Exit Wounds’) with songs that you just know will be keeping Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Kanye, Kylie et al company for the next couple of years on top 40 radio.
Given the plaudits The Script got last year when they opened for Take That, U2 and Paul McCartney – more of whom anon – on their ginormodome tours, they’re also likely to be reverberating round a good few stadiums as well.
Not, we hasten to add, that the lads are taking anything for granted.
“Some bands have a couple of hits and think, ‘job done’, but just because your first album sold ‘x’ copies it doesn’t automatically mean your second one’s going to do the same,” Danny O’Donoghue reflects between mouthfuls of the one ham sanger that’s escaped the voracious press-pack. “We may have achieved a degree of success, but we’re still going to go back and talk to the same local radio stations and newspapers that supported us when we were starting out.”
It’s a savvy attitude reminiscent of U2 when they were taking their first teetering steps towards megastardom.
“They’re a perfect example of a band who still go the extra yard,” Danny resumes. “When No Line On The Horizon came out they were everywhere doing interviews and playing little launch gigs. 35 years into their career and they’re still willing to graft for their success. When we did those 360 Tour dates with them as well, the work-rate and attention to detail was phenomenal. You can’t help but be inspired by that.”
Cut To The Last Week In August

There are no tea ‘n’ sarnies this time – boo! – but The Script are still up for the fight as we reconvene for a proper chinwag in Sony Music’s Ballsbridge headquarters. All the signs are positive. Where the new record is concerned, there is what everyone in the industry craves: a buzz.
“There seems to be a massive, massive flood of support,” Danny enthuses. “BBC Radio One are all over ‘For The First Time’, Capital Radio have just added it to their A-List and Sony have just put us on their ‘World Priority’ list again, which means – whether they like it or not – every country has to release you.”
Danny and Glen are sunk into the sort of sofa you only find in plush record company offices, while Mark is on speaker-phone from London where his wife is about to go into labour with their second child.
“She’s waiting to be induced,” explains the guitarist who’s since welcomed daughter Lilá into the world. “Your readers are going to think I’m a right bastard doing this interview rather than being there holding the wife’s hand, but she’s delighted not to have me fussing over her for a while!”
During the Windmill Lane playback, Sheehan talked about how when they returned home last Christmas The Script had needed “to take stock” – both professionally and personally. What did he mean by that?
“We’d hoped after 18 months away that we’d be able to share that little bit of success we’ve had with our mates – ‘Yeah, man, you’ve just supported U2, what are you drinking?’ The reality though is that a lot of our friends and their families had been stripped of everything they’d gained during the Celtic Tiger. You can hardly stand up, look a man in the eye and say, ‘I’ve supported Paul McCartney!’ when they’ve just lost their job. That stark reality really set the tone lyrically for this album.”
While stopping short of Manic Street Preachers-style polemics, Science & Faith contains couplets like “I got a new job now on the unemployment line/ We don’t know how we got into this mess, it’s God’s test” and “I’ve got all the baggage/ The drink, the pills” that you definitely wouldn’t find on a Westzone record.
“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.”
The Script’s trans-Atlantic cause was done a power of good recently when John Mayer, a man who routinely tops the American chart, tweeted their praises.
“He said – and very sadly I can give you the exact quote – ‘Every band with a single this year has a mission: beat ‘Breakeven’ by The Script’,” Glen beams. “I’m not just saying this because he bigged us up, but me and Mark met him backstage at his gig in the London O2 and he’s a really, really nice guy. He was very interested in knowing who the song’s about because apparently he tells his exes: ‘You might have split up with me, but I’ll get my own back when you’re pushing your trolley around the supermarket and my song comes on!’ He waits ‘til he has a new record out to get his own back!”
If Mayer’s ringing endorsement left them feeling chuffed, The Script damn near fainted when Paul McCartney asked them the same question.
“Honest to God, I had to calm myself down or otherwise I’d have started hyperventilating,” Danny admits. “We supported him last summer when he opened Citi Fields, which is this huge 60,000-capacity stadium belonging to the New York Mets baseball team. I was resigned to the fact that management had arranged it without him even listening to our CD, but how wrong was I? He knew our songs, our history, everything. It was actually very embarrassing because when he walked into our dressing-room I was psyching myself up for going on, by doing my Mick Jagger moves. I was like, ‘Oh my fuck, it’s Paul!’ He just sat down and went ‘How’s it going lads?’ We were amazed at how down to earth the guy was.”
Did Macca impart any fatherly words of wisdom?
“He spent a good 35-minutes in there with us, which he absolutely didn’t have to do,” Glen picks up. “I remember him saying, ‘I understand you guys have gone from playing those tiny, tiny places to these massive stages. How does it feel?’ and then adding ‘‘cause when we did it…’ That ‘we’ obviously being The Beatles!
“I know now why all the big bands continue to do it, which is how it feels on the stage. It never gets old, it’s different every time and as the shows get bigger so does the payback from the audience. There’s a moment of timelessness, of Zen, when you’re out there and make a spiritual connection with those people.”
Is it better than sex?
“Maybe not better, but as good as!” Danny laughs. “Paul gave me a really good bit of advice, which is ‘make everybody in the audience feel like they’re literally on the stage there beside you. Tell them the real, honest story behind the song. That’s how you get them hooked'. He proved his theory later on when he introduced a song as being ‘what I’d say to John if he was still alive'. With that one sentence he’d reeled everybody in. Bono does the same thing – he’s honest with an audience and they react.”

Who Owns This Script Anyway?

For all of this talk of achieving pop Zen, The Script are anything but hippies when it comes to their business dealings.
“Rule one of being in a band – know where the money trail goes,” Danny states. “I’ve heard too many horror stories down through the years not to want to know everything that’s being done in our name. People assume because we’re number whatever in the American chart that we’re millionaires – far from it! The first album’s sold close to two million, but you’ve got your management, your publishers and everyone else taking a cut off that.
“When we signed to Sony we decided that instead of splitting the money three-ways and buying ourselves Rolexes, we’d put it into a bank account and pay ourselves a weekly wage ‘cause the money soon disappears. I never realised until reading the Bono On Bono book how close U2 were to bankruptcy during the ‘80s and into the ‘90s. It was because of that desire to do things bigger and better than anyone else.”
You can just imagine Paul McGuinness going, 'Oh fuck, they’re asking for a 100-foot cocktail stick now!'
“Well, it’s Paul’s willingness to follow that vision, which has made U2 leaders in the field,” Danny reckons. “‘You want a 100-foot cocktail stick? Well, how about a giant lemon to go with it?’ We’re trying to have that same ambition, albeit minus the fruit!”
Talking of U2 and money, where do The Script stand on them moving their corporate affairs to Amsterdam and the broader Irish artists’ exemption debate, which was reignited recently when Van Morrison revealed that he’s never availed of the scheme?
“It’s a difficult one,” Mark acknowledges. “In terms of the tax exemption scheme, the current cut-off point is €250,000, which is a hell of a lot of money. As an artist you’ve got to really say to yourself: ‘At what point does it become too much?’ Just because in the past Bono was getting €2 or €3 million for his work doesn’t mean in this current climate that I should be getting the same. I actually quite enjoy having to graft for my money. At the end of the day it’s that, which is making me a better and a more grounded artist. If our last record had come out in 1998 rather than 2008, we’d probably have sold five million copies, which would have made us millionaires. How hungry would we be now if we had all that money sitting in the bank? There’s a real danger when an artist gets too much, too soon of it killing their creativity.”
Also causing a shitstorm a few weeks ago was Arcade Fire charging what many people claimed was excessive amounts for their O2 shows. Some of the fiercest criticism came from the same people who believe artists and record companies are being heavy-handed in their pursuit of illegal file-sharers.
“It’s a bit wanting to have it both ways, isn’t it?” Mark reflects. “It’s inevitable that if record sales go down there’ll be an attempt to push ticket prices up in order to balance the books. My take on it is that you’ve got these huge artists like Madonna, U2 and the Rolling Stones who are able to charge up to two hundred and fifty quid for the best seats at a concert. Once they’ve paid to see their favourites, the average person who spends €30 or €40 a month on music and media simply can’t afford to go and check out new artists. That’s the cause and effect of the industry as it is now.”
Ultimately, Sheehan believes it’s the artists’ responsibility to strike deals that are equitable for both themselves and their fans.
“I don’t ever want to sign over to somebody like Live Nation who give you a lump sum of money, and then dictate where you play and for how much. They also do things like meet & greets where you’re paying two grand, or whatever it might be, to shake hands and have your picture taken with some band who are already multi, multi, multi, multi-millionaires. I went to see Boyz II Men recently with my wife for nostalgic reasons and they had these big banners up on either side of the stage saying ‘Come meet the band’, but omitting the fact that when you got up there it was twenty-five quid or something. I just think that’s terrible. We’re a working-class band who always want to be accessible to our fans.”
The Script also had to stand their ground when it came to the recording and release of Science & Faith.
“We made it clear to Sony from the start that we weren’t going to go the outside producer and guest artist route, and to be fair they were cool with that,” Danny explains. “We just want to write and record with each other.”
Adds Glen: “We’ve got a good thing going between the three of us, so why dilute it by riding on somebody else’s coattails? If the right collaboration comes along, fair enough, but we’re not going to work with some rapper or teen sensation just because it might help us flog a few more records.
“With ‘Breakeven’ just recently making it into the American chart, and ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ looking now like it’s going to follow it, Sony would probably have preferred Science & Faith to come out next February or March, but we were like, ‘No, if we leave it ‘til then people in Ireland and the UK are going to think we’ve abandoned them'. We want to crack the States, but not at the expense of the countries that made us in the first place.”
In his recent Hot Press interview, Jake Shears rued the Scissor Sisters taking time out because it allowed Lady Gaga to nip in and steal their perv-pop thunder. In The Script’s case, what was it like coming home after six months in the States and seeing Jedward’s mugs everywhere?
“The motherfuckers stole my haircut!” Danny deadpans.
“And improved on it!” Glen chides. “Sorry, but I just don’t get Jedward.”
“I’d like to dip ‘em in a pot of Dulux and paint a wall with that hair!” is Mark’s verdict. “I’m all for anybody who’s out there trying to make things happen, but musically I can’t stand them. My 10-year-old son seems to think they’re all right though.”
“So does my girlfriend’s little daughter,” Danny resumes. “Look, Jedward are aimed at a different demographic who don’t give a flying fuck if they’re ‘credible’ or not. They’re not out there cursing or taking drugs, so good luck to ‘em.”
On a slightly more serious pop tack, have the chaps worked out why they’ve cracked the States while the likes of Westlife and Boyzone have failed to make any impression there?
“For either of those groups to break America, they’d have to spend a year or more gigging in shitty little venues, which they’re not going to do when they’re filling Croke Park and the O2 back home,” Danny ventures. “Why would they want to go back to basics and strip it all down? We’ve been unsuccessful for far longer than we’ve been successful, so we don’t mind playing to 20 people in a bar.”
The Official Guide To Rock And/Or Pop Stardom lists “going to the V.I.P. section at Lillie’s and getting ripped” as the preferred method of celebrating your first number one, but Glen chose instead to return to his old school.
“Yeah, I went back there seven months ago to give a signed CD to the teacher who told me that pursuing a career in music was unrealistic, and that I needed an academic job to fall back on,” he smiles. “Sadly he’s not there anymore, but I sent him a note saying: ‘Dear Mr. So-And-So, thanks for your advice. Glad I never took it, Glen from The Script.’ That was a great feeling! The new careers guidance teacher wrote that up in the Yearbook because he wanted to let the pupils who are into art know that it is possible if you believe in it. What we do is a vocation; it’s not a job. It’s just something you’re born to do. If you’re cut from that cloth you’ll adjust to the touring, you’ll adjust to being away from your family. We had to take that leap of faith and get on the train and here we are.”

A Suitable Ending

There’s a famous story about Swedish popsters ABBA being handed a five-year schedule with things like “January to April 1973: opportunity to have a baby” written on it. How meticulously are the boys’ lives mapped out these days?
“Not quite as rigidly as that, but our diary’s full for the next 18 months,” Mark reveals. “Because we’re on Sony’s World Priority list, every territory needs to request the promo they need you to do, which is then booked in. Any subsequent deviation from that plan is likely to cause a major international incident!”
It can’t be easy saying “goodbye” to the wife and kids for that length of time.
“I’ve been a broke musician for way longer than I’ve been a successful one, so I appreciate that the work’s got to be done. It’s a little bit like an army fella going off on a tour of duty, although obviously your family don’t have the additional worry of you being blown up or shot at.”
Well, not unless your live show really sucks. The last word, as is normally the case with The Script, goes to Danny O’Donoghue.
“You saying I’m mouthy?” he says feigning indignation. “Cheeky bastard! We wrote this music in a tiny shed in James’ Street and there’s Paul McCartney asking us how we feel going from places like the Sugar Club to Shea Stadium where The Beatles played their first American gig! This has become bigger and taken us far, far further than we ever could have dreamed. It’s unbelievable! Anyone who’s seen or read an article about us has to know and believe that they’re able to do it themselves. There’s nothing special about us – we’re songwriters, we’re musicians, we’re shams. If we can luck our way into this, anybody can!”

Science & Faith is out now on Sony Music. They’re due to announce dates in the Dublin O2, Belfast Odyssey and Killarney INEC imminently