The man who came in from the cold

Whether appearing on David Letterman, soundtracking the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy or celebrating number one albums, it’s been an amazing year for Snow Patrol and the fans who remember their humble – not to mention paralytically drunk – indie beginnings.
The gold disc/ego ratio normally being index-linked, you’d expect Gary Lightbody to have acquired a few airs and graces, but no, he’s as shocked as ever that people actually like his band.
Knowing how easily his flabber is gasted, hotpress has brought along an article from the super soaraway Hammonton Times, which recounts how 14-year-old Jackie Bertino, Ashley Brigani, Annette Lista and Frances Lionetti won gold recently in the 10th Annual Synchronized Swim & Water Gymnastics Show with their ‘Chasing Cars’-scored routine.
“Where’s Hammonton?” asks the newly short, back and sided singer.
Half-way between Philadelphia and Atlantic City in the State of New Jersey, we tell him.
“A synchronised swimming competition in Sopranoland – that’s fucking amazing!”
It is indeed. Currently outselling the likes of Justin Timberlake, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Killers in the States, ‘Chasing Cars’ looks like being an even bigger breakthrough tune than ‘Run’, which also ended up in some strange places.
“You know Denis Leary’s Rescue Me?” Gary resumes. “Well, they played pretty much all of ‘Run’ in the background as this paedophile priest was graphically beaten to death. Talk about a juxtaposition between lyrical content and usage! Oddest of all though was some Brazilian designer looping up the guitars from one of our old songs, ‘Black & Blue’, for a catwalk show in Rio. It was the same eight or nine seconds repeated for 15 minutes, which is Guantanamo Bay-style torture!”
Talking of terrorists – real or imagined – Snow Patrol are among those who’ve been affected by the latest international security alert.
“The day of the big scare we were supposed to be flying out to Seattle for this really cool radio festival with The Mars Volta, Eagles Of Death Metal and the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Gary rues. “Tom and Nathan, who were flying from different airports, made it over fine but the rest of us were stranded.
“When we eventually managed to leave, they made me put my phone, my laptop and my iPod into the hold, which is the last I saw of them. We had seven pieces of luggage go missing in all, which is a bummer ‘cos when you’re touring, your bag becomes your home.”
There were more Lightbodyian temper tantrums when another airline managed to mislay the flight-cases containing all their amps.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me,” he says, warming to the theme. “Rather than cancel, which we’ve done too much of recently, we played acoustically to 2,000 people in Oslo with Ken Stringfellow of REM fame accompanying us on piano, and to 10,000 in Belgium with just me and Nathan, who reckons it’s the most nervous he’s been in his entire life.
“While appreciating the need for security, there must be a way of arranging things so that it doesn’t take five hours to switch terminals at Heathrow.”
What about the suggestion that Tony and George have been over-playing the threat to justify their military adventures in the Middle East?
“I’m cynical, but not that cynical. (Pause) I hope the fuck not!”
Forget Wayne Rooney’s metatarsal, the summer’s big medical drama was the blisters, or, as we doctors call them, ‘polyps’ on Gary Lightbody’s vocal cords. Has he had things grow on him before?
“What a strange way of putting that,” he laughs. “I’ve had a few minor ailments in the past, but nothing that’s attached itself to my body and threatened to cause permanent damage. Having gone around for a couple of months with what I presumed to be laryngitis, my voice gave up entirely after a show I’d squeaked my way through in Dallas. I went to the same voice doctor that treats Celine Dion, had a long metal device stuck down my throat and was told I had two polypoid lesions on my left vocal cord, which weren’t going to go away unless I shut the fuck up for a month. So, with Eyes Open just starting to take off there, we had to cancel an entire American tour.”
The full recovery Gary’s since made has been at considerable cost to his social life.
“I’ve committed rock ‘n’ roll heresy and given up drinking before, during and after gigs,” he sighs. “I’ve also insisted on being given a private area where I can do warm-up exercises without the rest of the band laughing at me. I felt a bit of a wimp until somebody told me that even Johnny Rotten had a vocal coach when he was in the Sex Pistols. I’m keeping a record of how much booze I’m missing out on, and will be making good the shortfall when we come off the road in September 2007!”
Now that he’s not getting plastered every night, Gary could do something useful with his spare time, like learning Japanese.
“Funny you should mention that! Traveling has brought home to me how inarticulate I am in a global sense. I’m crap at languages, which is partly because my parents neglected to talk Chinese or Arabic to me as a child, and partly because the schooling system in Ireland and the UK is so inward looking. Learning a new alphabet is probably a bit beyond me at this stage, but I’d love to be able to do an interview in Dutch or Portuguese. You can get a Rosetta Stone language programme for your Mac – not that I own one anymore!”
Another language that would’ve come in handy this year is Korean.
“We’ve a policy of saying ‘yes’ to anything that’s in a country we’ve not been to before because, even if the gig goes tits up, it’s a free holiday,” Lightbody deadpans. “Not that the Pentaport Rock Festival in Inchon, west of Seoul was anything other than superbly run. It did, however, rain drops as big as your fist for three days solid. Combined with the 30?temperatures, it was like being in a giant outdoor power shower. This didn’t deter the kids though, who were rocking from start to finish. The biggest cheer of the day went to Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs whose mum’s Korean.
“We did another amazing one in Thailand – Bangkok 100 Rock – where the punters were out of their fucking minds with happiness. They’d never had anything like it before and just went for it.”
Talking of going for it, Gary has already started working on the follow-up to Eyes Open, an album that as of this week has shifted 55,000 copies in Ireland, 500,000 in North America and 750,000 in Blighty.
“I’ve been writing a lot of songs recently,” he reveals, “which is a first for me in terms of being able to do it while we’re on the road. It’s not as natural as it would be at home when you’re just lying about the house and pick up the guitar. You have to make time and go to your hotel room or the bus and set the computer up.”
Is there a danger that he’ll end up writing what Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries describes as a ‘CNN record’?
“Influenced by what’s on the hotel TV rather than personal stuff? I tend not to write lyrics until the music’s finished, which I can’t see happening until we’ve stopped touring and everyone’s pitched in with ideas like on Final Straw and Eyes Open. What I do write on an almost daily basis is prose. If it’s a diary it’s like the one in the film Se7en, which has no dates or anything. Though hopefully I’m not such a big danger to society!”
Is there a book in him?
“I imagine not, because I don’t have the discipline,” Gary confesses. “In order to finish his novel the friend of mine who wrote the Reindeer Section short stories, Andrew Meehan, had to lock himself away in a house on the Aran Islands for four months. I’m not sure I could handle the isolation or the getting-up at half-five every morning he did. I’d also have a problem with the big, bushy beard you’d have because you don’t have time to shave.”
Quite. When Snow Patrol return to the studio, it’ll be in the company again of Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee who’s currently working with a bunch of young hopefuls called U2.
“He’s done the new Bloc Party album as well which is astounding,” Gary divulges. “The bits I’ve heard are so different to Silent Alarm it almost sounds like a different band – but in an entirely good way. He’s also going in next week to do the Editors record, which from the songs I’ve snuck a listen to is going to be another belter. I fell in love with that band 18 months ago when we were traveling by bus from Washington D.C. to New York, and I played a demo version of ‘Bullets’ that somebody had got off the ‘net 20 times – at least! It’s a classic British anthem that’ll still be played in 30 or 40 years time.
“Going back to Garret, part of the reason we clicked straight away is that he was in bands – Thee Amazing Colossal Men, Compulsion and a few others – himself. He works with you rather than against you, which isn’t always the case with producers. Technically, there isn’t a piece of new digital or old analogue equipment he doesn’t know inside out. Add in his intelligence, affability, sense of humour and sense of strangeness and...I want to marry him! No, those qualities make him the perfect person to make records with.”
Was the love affair instant?
“Partly. It was chocolates, flowers and romance straight away as a person, but it took us a bit longer to become attuned to his methods, because prior to Final Straw we’d never had a producer or even realised what one did. We weren’t prepared for what is essentially an extra band member, but now we’d be lost without his input.”
Come next February, we wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if Eyes Open earns Lee another Grammy to add to the two he’s already got for How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. There could be some silverware in it for Snow Patrol too, with ‘Chasing Cars’ described recently by Rolling Stone as “the best song to have come out of Ireland since U2’s ‘One’.”
“Having never in the olden days been able to afford them, there are currently three videos for ‘Chasing Cars’ floating around,” Gary resumes. “The original – and best – is the Arni & Kinski one in which they do their best to drown me. They used to be in the Icelandic band Gus Gus and have also done videos for Dave Gahan and Sigur Ros. Anyway, that was deemed too arty for America, so they got a guy who’s worked before with Michael Jackson and Moby, Nick Brandt, to do another. The third is an in-house production ABC have done using clips from Grey’s Anatomy.”
Completists should note the inclusion of a live, acoustic ‘Chasing Cars’ on Grey’s Anatomy: Soundtrack Volume 2, which hits the racks Stateside on September 12. Snow Patrol aren’t the sole Irish representatives, with Foy Vance’s ‘Homebird’ and The Chalets’ ‘Sexy Mistake’ also likely to be in several million American homes before Christmas.
So what’s the best thing about being famous?
“Being asked profound questions on the nature of fame. No, getting to play at the Celebrity – if I can use the term very loosely – Soccer Sixes in Reading’s Madejski Stadium, and meeting the Northern Ireland manager Lawrie Sanchez. Despite wearing green shirts, none of us were asked if we were available for the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign, which was a bit hurtful seeing as there are Cheltenham Town players in the Northern Ireland squad. I used to play in goal for the Dundee University Sunday League team, but prefer playing upfront or in midfield.”
As a good few hotpress readers will have witnessed first-hand, Snow Patrol celebrated their outrageously good 2006 last week with sell-out Dublin and Belfast gigs. While the crowd numbers spoke for themselves – 20,000 in Marlay Park, 12,000 in the Botanic Gardens – it was noticeable that they’ve managed to hang on to the air of underdogs, which deserted Coldplay about five seconds after ‘Yellow’ got into the charts.
True to his word, half-an-hour before showtime found Mr. Lightbody nipping off to do his preventative la-la-la-ing. The backstage atmosphere was particularly convivial in Belfast, with Editors, Duke Special, Ed Harcourt, Republic Of Loose, Director and the Patrol all popping in and out of each other’s dressing-rooms, and Gary, Jonny and Nathan’s extended family joining them post-encore for a good old-fashioned Norn Iron knees-up.
“This tonight and Dublin on Saturday have been fucking amazing,” enthuses Gary, assorted nieces and nephews hanging off him. “Being able to play shows like these in our home town and our deputy home town is something I never thought we’d be able to do. Happy days!”
Pics: Graham Keogh