The Script Biography/History
It is a heart-rending drama
of tragedy and triumph, love and loss, struggle and survival, the epic
journey of three young Dublin boys from the wrong side of the tracks who
risk everything for a dream.
This is THE SCRIPT. But the ending is not yet written.
Dramatis Personae:
Danny O'Donoghue (25): Raven haired, handsome, sensitive keyboard player
with the vocal flexibility and technical range of an American soul
legend. "The truth is, I spent a lot of my childhood singing when the
other kids were outside playing football and getting into trouble."
Mark Sheehan (27): Shaven headed production whizz and guitarist. "I'm
not trying to romanticise it, where we grew up was a shit hole, it was
stealing cars, all the usual bollocks, but music gave me a sense that I
could break away. I know it sounds like a cliche, but to me, as a kid,
that was my way out."
Glen Power (28): Taciturn drummer and multi-instrumentalist, the
funkiest white man in Dublin. "My mother always said to find one thing
in life that you're good at and the day I picked up the sticks I found
it."
The Script are an Irish trio whose music boasts the kind of artful
twists sure to turn all preconceptions on their head. This is a whole
new brand of Celtic Soul, blending hip hop lyrical flow with pop
melodiousness, state-of-the-art R'n'B production with anthemic rock
dynamics, classic song construction with gritty contemporary narratives.
It's got all the emotion and passion you would expect from across the
Irish sea, but it is glittering in its modernity, universal in its
singalong addictiveness and global in its syncopation, music for the
feet, heart and head. Think U2 versus Timbaland, Van Morrison remixed by
Teddy Riley. "Irish people have soul," according to Danny. "It comes
from generations of pain, and generations of understanding emotion to be
able to physically get that in a solid sound."
"Soul is not a black thing or a white thing, it’s a human thing,"
insists Mark.
"The true vision is to hit people in the heart," declares Glen.
Danny and Mark met in their early teens in the run down James Street
area of Dublin, near the Guinness brewery, gravitating to each other
through a shared obsession with music, and in particular a love of
American black music. "At that time, MTV only came on in Dublin after
midnight, it was the fuzzy channel, and for my generation black culture
was just a wave through us all," explains Mark. "It wasn't about gangs
and guns; it was fashion and fun, singing and dancing."
"One day I heard
Stevie Wonder singing and the hairs on the back of my neck
went up," says Danny. "I didn't even know people could sing like that,
I'd never heard the acrobatics of it before." He spent years in his
bedroom, practising vocal licks. "I'd try and emulate all those records,
even down to string arrangements. Some of the best singers have emulated
a musical instrument -
Amy Winehouse is a saxophone - but the
violin is the one for me, the vibrato, you can bring so much heartfelt
emotion in."
"There is something about the way a voice encapsulates a person," says
Mark. "The way Danny sings, the raw emotion, when you hear it in front
of you, you cannot deny the power."
Striking up a songwriting and production partnership, Danny and Mark's
exceptional talent was recognised early, and, to their astonishment,
they found themselves invited to the States to collaborate with some of
their production heroes, including such legends of modern R'n'B as
Dallas Austin, Teddy Riley, The Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins. "It was a
wonderful opportunity to see how these guys build songs," admits Mark,
who always carried a little computer drive around and charmed his heroes
into swapping libraries of sounds and samples.
Danny and Mark started as a backroom team, making demos for other
artists, but when they met fellow Dublin drummer Glen, the dynamic
shifted. Although they had never actually heard him play, such was the
connection they made that Mark invited Glen on a working holiday to LA.
"He just whipped the ass off all these LA session musos," enthuses Mark.
"He is the funkiest drummer around with real energy and swing but Glen
is also a fantastic guitarist, a fantastic keyboard player and he sings
his ass off too."
Something of a prodigy on the Dublin scene, Glen had been playing
sessions from fifteen years old, using the money to work on a solo
project in his home studio. But that went on hold when his collaboration
with Mark and Danny produced three songs in one week. "It was like I
found my home playing with these guys," says Glen. "I had never had a
chance with any other band to express myself with such freedom."
"Individually, we all had our own talents, but together it just went to
another level," according to Danny. And so The Script went into
production. But it has not all been happy ever after. When Mark's mother
became terminally ill, the trio returned to Dublin so that he could
spend time with her, recording in his old home studio in James Street.
"That was pulling on my heart strings in a big way," admits Danny.
"Lyrically it was pouring out of me." After ten months, Mark's mother
passed away. Four months later, Danny's father, also a professional
musician, died unexpectedly of a heart attack. "I came home so that Mark
could spend time with his mum, little did I know that I was actually
getting to spend that precious time with my dad," reveals Danny. "But
then amidst all this travesty and disaster, these songs have risen out
of it. That was the time when it finally came home to me how important
music was to me, cos in my darkest moments that's what got me through."
Their debut album is something very special: "There is a whole lifetime
in these songs," says Mark. "We don't write them in ten minutes. A song
takes nurturing, it is an evolving thing. This is a journey, we are in
constant change, constant motion. I can't ever put my finger on what
exactly The Script is, I don't even think I should, all I know is that
it is something that touches me deep inside, and seems to touch other
people when we play."
Here is the tracklist:
We Cry
Before the Worst
Talk You Down
The Man Who Can’t Be Moved
Break Even
Rusty Halo
The End Where I Begin
Fall For Anything
If You See Kay
I’m Yours
Anybody There
It is time to flip The Script.
Bio courtesy
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