The Script: "We Really Feed Off The Audience"

"I've actually just arrived at the O2!" laughs Mark Sheehan, The Script's straight-shooting guitarist. "So the adrenaline literally just kicked in!"

The band have just returned from a "bizarre" trip to Dubai and are ready for some big homecoming shows.

First up, it's three dates with Dublin. They kick things off tonight in the O2 Arena, as Sheehan admits that "we really do love coming home" and that it is only now that they feel completely comfortable in arena-sized venues. People can expect a show that is as intimate as possible. "We have this policy," Sheehan notes. "'You don't walk away whistling a light show'!"

On Monday, they play Belfast's Odyssey, performing a further three dates March 4-6.

Ahead of that, Sheehan caught up with our own Craig Fitzpatrick for a lengthy chat. Here's the first part, dealing with the big gigs at hand.

Stay with Hot Press for an extended, wide-ranging and typically forthright interview coming very soon...

HP: I was wondering what mood I'd find you in. Jet-lagged, grumpy, hopefully upbeat...

Mark Sheehan: I was definitely sleepy when I got here but it's been woken up by the shock!

And just back from playing Dubai?

Just back from Dubai. We went out there to do one show – literally two nights, in and out.

It was a jazz festival with Deep Purple. It does sound vaguely Spinal Tapesque!

It had every hallmark of Spinal Tap to be honest. Everything about it, everything surrounding it was like Tap. Everything but the show itself! That was phenomenal. Around 14,000 people showed up for us, which was their biggest ticket seller of the whole festival. It was amazing and we were really thrilled with that. The Stone Roses were playing before and there were just tonnes of bands coming in and out, playing all week. It's unbelievable that they call it a jazz festival because I didn't see one jazz band!

Are the acts like ships passing in the night or do you bump into people from time to time? Hanging around with Ian Gillan backstage or 'go in, do your thing, get out'?

Well it was a nightly thing, you see. So unfortunately we didn't see them at all.

Dubai as a concept seems slightly surreal to me, as someone who has never visited. How have you found it?

I think it's a bizarre place to be, to be honest! Everything's completely 'made up', in the middle of a desert. It's totally obvious that everything's brand new, there's no expense spared in the place. Not an ounce of trash or dirt on the ground. Just a bizarre place. I felt like I was in The Truman Show. I was waiting for a studio light to fall from the sky, I didn't know what was happening!

And then the culture. You find you really have to respect their culture. For example, quite a lot of our show is us drinking on the show. Always bloody cursing and everything else. It's just us up there onstage being ourselves.

But over there, you're warned going up that there's to be no bad language, no alcohol onstage. I was like, that's our show fucked! What are we gonna do?!
That was a bit bizarre. It's a bit mad that a couple couldn't be sitting there having a little kiss either without someone complaining about you.

It is a different world, isn't it?

It's a different world entirely.

Well you're back in Dublin now, so the drinking can commence...

Yes, and the bad language! It'll be ramped up now!

Do you still get a kick from playing these homecoming shows? You are in a peculiar position where, after the Aviva, the O2 is almost an intimate venue for you guys.

I know! But no, we really do love coming home. To be honest, the bigger gigs that they throw at us tend to be... I thought it was quite early in our career to be doing things like that. But at the same time there was a demand there, so you have to do it. We were kinda on the fence as to whether we should. I feel we're only just at the point now – with the way we feel, the way we act onstage, that we don't feel it's huge. This venue is now the perfect size, where before it was like wearing clothes that are too big for you.

I feel like I'm fitting it. When you start stretching to something bigger than the O2, your mind starts going 'wow'. I'd rather we sustain that, maybe we fluctuate far too much. We can be playing a 5000 seater and then have 30,000 people the next night. It fluctuates so much, you'd want to be on a stadium run doing those size venues all the time to get used to it I think.

Production-wise you've probably had to mix it up then, by necessity. And I know talking to Danny [O'Donoghue] before Christmas, he was in two minds as to whether you should go the big 'spectacle' route or keep things intimate and simple. He'd just seen The Stones and was blown away by how stripped down they were, getting to see Keith up close with his guitar.

What happens is... well, we're called The Script for God's sake! Our music is quite literal, each song is almost like a little mini-movie. We do want to put visuals to that. I find when I go to these venues that you're looking at a bunch of ants. You can't really see them when you're stuck up the back and you've paid good money to see the bloody band.

So what we've decided to do is make it as inclusive as possible this time around. So even if people are at the back, we try to pull them all in so they get value for their money. Let them all feel like they're in the gig. So we've just done simple things. We've put a giant screen behind us for example, just to make sure whatever we're doing they're picking up. Little tricks like that, but it doesn't look that spectacular. It's just little tricks to how we're using it versus the lights and stuff. We have this policy: 'you don't walk away whistling a light show'!

We like to create moments with music. We've really worked hard on the music side of things for this show and we really feel that... it's weird because as producers as well, remember that we've written these albums over the course of five years. We've done so much over the years that when we go to the live show we want everything to stand up against each other, we don't want any holes musically. We do get a bit mental about it.

Tweaking away, trying to create this flowing set.

Exactly. What you're trying to do is take everybody for a ride and try and get them to a climax. And we want to do that musically and sonically rather than visually. So that's what the show this time around is really designed for. The best sound experience we can possibly give them from us.

Can you detach yourself during the set, checking sound levels, focussing on the technical stuff or are their moments when you still lose it?

Yeah you do. It's a very weird state of affairs. It's almost a meditative state. When your body's doing everything – your fingers are playing, your mouth's shooting out lyrics, I'm staying in tune somehow – you end up jumping up and down thinking, 'did I leave the oven on?'! You know what I mean?! You're so relaxed that you're not thinking about the gig. You're thinking about what yer woman's saying to yer over there, what he's doing over there...

Playing's almost like a reflex. It's your natural state now.

Yeah, and I feel that we've now gotten to a point as a band where we're really bad if the audience is really bad and we're really, really good if the audience is really, really good! It's a direct reflection on each other. We really feed off the audience, even down to how hard we hit the instruments, how loud we sing. Everything is dictated by them, it's mad.