'IT'S RAW'
‘We’ve had hardest of years in losing Mark but we’re trying to forge a future,’ says The Script’s Danny O’Donoghue
The Script’s Danny opens up about grief, faith, and creating music after a year of unimaginable loss
IT’S late afternoon and Danny O’Donoghue is in a reflective mood thinking about the passing of much-loved guitarist, Mark Sheehan, last year.
“The Script is the story of two best mates who had a dream that came true. It’s a rags to riches story — we worked our arses off since we were kids to get to where we are.
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“And now I’m living our dream and he’s not here, so I’m trying my best to forge whatever type of future we have after the hardest of years.”
O’Donoghue, 43, is recalling the difficult year he has faced without his childhood friend, and how he came to make new album Satellites and return to touring without Sheehan.
“It’s raw and only happened just over a year ago — I don’t even think I’ve entered the grief period, really,” he admits.
“But I don’t want to remember him and be sad, as he wasn’t a sad person. If he saw everyone moping around, he’d be the first person to say, ‘I am f***ing out of there’.”
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Sheehan, who co-founded the band with O’Donoghue, died last April age 46 following a brief illness. “His death hit me emotionally and physically, it affected everything. After Mark passed, I went up and down and left and right,” O’Donoghue recalls.
“I just feel like I needed to be grounded. Because I felt like a f***ing balloon in a storm. That I’ll just blow away.”
Grounding himself included stopping drinking and finding religion to help him through his dark days.
O’Donoghue, who has lost both his parents, says: “Going back to Dublin at Christmas was really triggering and a huge shock. Going back to my childhood home, there’s every single memory of my mam, me, dad and also Mark. I had a whiskey, then two, then it all started coming in on top of me. And so I spent most of Christmas drunk.
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“And everyone wants to pay their respects and show you how much you’re in their thoughts and prayers.
I went back to London and said, ‘That’s it. Done. I’m finished drinking and smoking’, and started working out again and started going to church again
“But they’re just reminding you every time. You don’t get any respite.
Guitarist Mark Sheehan performs in The Script's 2014 hit Superheroes
“So I went back to London and said, ‘That’s it. Done. I’m finished drinking and smoking’, and started working out again and started going to church again.
“It was a real overhaul of life. And I feel great, considering the circumstances. I feel the best I have ever felt in a long time.
“And the album is the most meaningful thing to have come out of what happened last year.”
Stunning ballad about loss
O’Donoghue says he and bandmate, drummer Glen Power, went from thinking they’d never make music again to making one of their most important albums of The Script’s career.
“I poured my heart and soul into music when my dad and mum passed away. It’s my religion, my therapy, my everything and it’s my way to relate to people.
“I usually write every day, regardless of whether I have an album or not, but I’d had writer’s block for a while and, after about six months, I hadn’t written anything. But then this song, Gone, came along.”
Gone is central to Satellites, a stunning ballad about the loss of their friend, and O’Donoghue says it’s been cathartic to write.
Everyone sees me as the figurehead of The Script, but he was the leader of the band and I still hear him
“It was after I’d finished that song that I really opened up,” he reveals. “I listened to it once and started crying on the way home. It was quite close to where we had the funeral.
“That song was the first time I asked, ‘Why are all the best people gone? Why are some people here for a short time, a good time?’. That was the first time I was ever able to articulate what Mark meant to me.
“He was like a shooting star across the sky — not just to me, but to a lot of people’s lives. The amount of lives that guy touched was incredible. He was the leader of the band and he had the drive.
“Everyone sees me as the figurehead of The Script, but he was the leader of the band and I still hear him. If I have a song, I still have him in my head going, ‘That’s not f***ing good enough’.
“So I have some big shoes to fill and I need people around me. Glen has stepped up as we made the decision to move forward.
“Before The Script, we were writing and producing for other people. We wrote for Picture This, Calum Scott, Britney, TLC and Justin Timberlake. And I want to continue doing that as well. It was a massive passion of Mark’s and mine.”
Same book, but a new chapter
With their return, The Script have gained two new members — Ben Weaver on lead guitar and Ben Sargeant, who has been a touring member of the band since 2007, on bass, as they felt being a trio “would never be the same”.
“We’re never trying to replace Mark. We wanted to pay respect and never try and replicate what we had before. That was a moment in time,” says O’Donoghue.
“It’s The Script, it’s the same book, but a new chapter. Ben had been in the band for a while, so we officially made him a member. And then we’ve got a new guitarist who’s an incredible guy, a great guitarist and a great songwriter and producer.
Although this album is very much grief orientated as we are sad and have those devastated feelings, we are celebrating someone
“He’s had a No1 with Take That — he co-wrote These Days and Giants — and so there’s a new energy there that hasn’t been there before.
“And it’s important that people know that, although this album is very much grief orientated as we are sad and have those devastated feelings, we are celebrating someone and continuing Mark’s legacy.
“So there are up-tempo, feel-good songs about his life too.
“There is an ebb and flow to the album. It’s a journey, like life is.
“Yes, I want him here and me, his wife, his family are all missing him.
“But let’s celebrate what a f***ing life he had. He was a great man, husband, dad and friend. To be able to articulate what he meant pulled an emotional thorn out of my heart.”
O’Donoghue explains that once he wrote the song Gone, “the tap turned on”. He says: “Satellites was another song that I thought was important lyrically.
“I worked on it with a friend, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, and we called it Satellites because, at the end of the day, we are all just pieces of dust floating through space.
“It became the perfect name for the album. Satellites give you an overview of what is going on above the world.
“And the album cover is silhouettes of me, Glen and Ben Sargeant — there’s a hooded silhouette on there which represents Mark, as he will always be with us. It’s a bit of not forgetting our past but looking ahead to the future.”
The Script hadn’t worked with outside writers before, but O’Donoghue decided to try it out on this seventh studio album.
Olly Murs and One Direction collaborator Wayne Hector worked with O’Donoghue on an idea that became standout track, Both Ways.
He says: “All these people that I’ve gone into the rooms with, they know that you are down a man because they are big-time fans of The Script. And they are also holding me to the same standards that Mark would. Because they know the level and quality of the songs. There’s no way I am disappointing them.”
At Your Feet, Falling Flying, Inside Out and One Thing I Got Right are all album standouts, as is Home Is Where The Hurt Is, an autobiographical song.
Tough times
O’Donoghue adds: “I just love the song. It’s about growing up, having a past and the good and the bad that you take from it.
“The most important lyric is the things that break us that make us.
“It’s about accepting how some things from the past I want to change, but one tiny change will lead to a different path.”
I don’t give a sh*t about people who don’t like us
The Script have been supporting Pink on her Summer Carnival tour, and O’Donoghue says playing live helped the band move forward. He reveals: “Pink came down and was so good. She said, ‘I know how incredibly hard this is for you guys and I appreciate you are coming on tour’.
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“It was really important for us to sing (2012 song) If You Can See Me Now and dedicate that song to Mark.
“We played everywhere, from the Olympic Stadium, in Berlin, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Hyde Park, and I thought, ‘Mark, you are not going to get a better send off than all these people singing the words that you wrote’.
“It’s been tough at times, but we will always play a tribute to him.
“As Mark’s funeral was private for family and close friends, it was important that fans and the public got a chance to grieve, too.
“And now we just want the music to be out there for Mark. We can’t be pigeon-holed, we are a mixture of different styles. Sometimes it’s rock, sometimes it’s pop, so we have carved a beautiful lane for ourselves.
“In the past, I’ve taken bad reviews or criticism to heart, but now I just want to play as I know there is a huge love for us.
“I don’t give a sh*t about people who don’t like us. What are you possibly going to say to me or in a review that is going to make me feel any worse than I have over the past year? Nothing.
“Starting with this album coming out, it’s all up from now.”
- The album Satellites is out today.
The Script
Satellites
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