And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 15: The Script

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

This band is undoubtedly one of biggest groups ever to rise out of Ireland. Ever since the 2008 release of their #1 self-titled debut album, featuring massive hit songs "Breakeven" and "The Man Who Can't Be Moved," they've gone on to sell out stadiums and arenas across the UK and much of Europe. They're well known in the community for their songwriting prowess, and especially for their earnestness in storytelling. And The Writers Are...Danny O'Donoghue and Mark Sheehan of The Script! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, this is, and the writer is. And I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of writers and artists over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life and the industry, politics, composition, whatever. If you ask me, songwriters are some of the most worldly and intelligent people I've ever come across. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs. And most importantly, who the people are who write songs.

write the songs. Now I'm co-producing this with my friend Joe London, who is nominated for a Grammy earlier this year for Best Country Song. He makes us sound like angels. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, go to Spotify and look up our playlist and The Writer Is, or go to our website www.com. Oh, and if you enjoy this podcast, please rate us on iTunes or whatever your preferred podcast listening site is. We really appreciate that effort. Okay, this week's guest is The Script. The script is one of the biggest bands in all the United Kingdom. In fact, they're probably the second biggest band to ever come out of Ireland next to you, too.

They sell out 80,000 seats in Dublin, and they sell out stadiums and arenas across Europe, South Africa, Australia. They are huge. And one of the best parts is that they've gotten huge because they talk about real things in their lives. So they start very small. When you start small and you're specific, then maybe then you can speak to the world. So I'm excited for you to meet Danny O'Donohue and Mark Sheehan, the main writers from the band. But first, a few notes behind this podcast. The third member, Glenn Power was not here.

He's not one of the main writers, but he's obviously essential to the band. We do talk about how he's influenced the sound of the script. We also talk about Doug Morris. Doug is the only executive to lead all three major labels. Atlantic and Warner Music from 1980 to 1994, Universal Music from 1995 to 2010, and Sony music since July 2011 through now. So without further ado,

here's the conversation we had with Danny O'Donohue and Mark Sheen from the script on Anne the Writer is... Welcome to Anne the Rite. writer is i am your host ross golan today's band can boast the following things they've released number one songs number one albums been nominated for brits they've opened for you too and this new kid paul mccartney they've had superstars like ferell open for them in front of a sold out croak park in dublin which is roughly 80,000 people yeah 82 000 here's count okay yeah right on the on the first day i'm at them, they reminded me that they're the second biggest band from Ireland.

And the writer is, are the most humble artist to ever headline stadiums, Danny O'Donohue, and Mark Sheean from The Script. Yay! Okay, so here we are in Santa Monica, California. Far from the island you started in. What's fascinating is how many of the English artists are inspired by American artists. artists are you know American artists inspired by English artists where did you start listening to Tribe Call Quest like who introduces you to that what happened was in Ireland we never had MTV

for a long time so I'd heard about MTV being an American anomaly in this thing that was happening in the in the in over here there's a long time going I mean you had a yo MTV wraps at this stage he had lots of big shows going and we'd only heard about we'd never been able to tune them in And what sort of happened after around 12 o'clock at night, one of the TV channels at home start to after 12 o'clock, you know the way it would go to sort of a test screen thing where they wouldn't show anything. It was like a fuzzy thing. MTV started coming through on their channel after 12 o'clock.

So all the kids started to go really staying up really late and tuning this music channel in. It was really, really, we were getting, we've seen all these like black kids dancing and colorful clothes and rapping and all the stuff. And it was like, oh, what the hell is going on here? This is a whole movement of music that wasn't reaching us. We just couldn't get it. So it created this real hunger. I started to go into this.

It was a place called Abbey Discs in Dublin, a record store, where they used to specialize in imported music. And I was a professional dancer at the time, so used to teach all people breakdancing, all the stuff. For real? Yeah, he was my student. That's how I met him. So that was what I was doing when I was a kid.

Is that real? Yeah, yeah. So that's what I was doing when I was a kid. I was into everything, singing, dancing, playing. I was doing all the stuff. Well, you said, you know, just to even just to paint the picture. Yeah. You know, you're telling me from the beginning about when we're talking about lyrics and what we're working on.

Yeah. So much of it has to be about the blue collar upbringing you guys had because that's really natural on where you're from. So this isn't, it's not like you're taking dance classes. Like if you tell somebody from the valley here that you were in dance classes, you're probably some rich kid who, like, who's doing. No, we're talking about, what I'm talking about here is I'm talking about hip hop dancing, break dancing just didn't exist in Ireland. Like I mean until literally this whole surge and wave of MTV and stuff started to happen, young kids start to freak out. So as we're importing all these records, everybody wants to do the same sort of dancing as going on in these

and breakdance was, where are you learning it from? The street. We used to roll out Lylolium on the ground and we'd all practice moves and full on break dance. So I was like the small kid amongst all the older boys and they used me to spin on their heads or to use me as like a prop and they'd throw me around the place because I was really athletic at the time. Were you guys doing it on the street? Yeah, on the street performers? Street performing, yeah, yeah. Were you making any money from it?

Kim was making bank. I'll just cut in here. I met him. I walked by this class. Obviously he'd started very small and then was like people really wanted to learn. So he'd got people throwing money at him. Can you teach me what to do what you're doing? Because he was really, like I'm underplaying.

It was really good dancer. So I was walking by class one day, and I just seen this one guy at the top of the class, and there's like 30 girls in awe at this one dude. I'm like, what the fuck am I doing playing soccer on the weekends? I got like 22 dudes running after a ball. This is like 20 girls running after two boys. Ginger balls at that. So I kind of switch teams, basically.

I was like, this is what I'm doing from now on. And that's how, to be honest, that's how I, um, started listening to kind of um ombi and hip-hop was through through dance classes and through like I said MTV and then just going down to him because whatever we were kind of playing commercially in the classes we were then like obviously going down you know

playing the hard of course stuff you know back in around it was honestly really just a way to earn money to pay for our studio time that's really what I was getting to when was it when was this uh I mean late 80s early 90s sort of yeah so I mean I had a friend who owned a recording studio but he never allowed me to use it for free.

I used to make you pay for it. So I would dance all day to make money and then I would pay for the studio to give me it from nighttime from like 9 o'clock at night. I could take the studio all the way through the night because his students and stuff weren't using the studio. So that's when I could get the studio time.

So really our only studio time was after I'd finished dance, after they'd finished their studio sessions. Then we get in and then we start to try make this music that we were hearing all the time. So you obviously played both of you guys must have been playing music your whole life. Yeah.

Well, he'd been, Daniel had grown up in a family of musicians, so he's the youngest of six. Right. So, yeah, they're all musicians. So from a spot. That must have been a very loud house. Yeah.

Yeah, what, it really was. I mean, we were chatting about it yesterday. We had, like, those two rooms downstairs. There was a front room, the back room. And the back room was called the music room. Long before I was born, they made a decision that anybody who walked into that room was able to write on the walls.

I don't know, before my mom came up with this, just let the kids be creative. So the first person wrote their name on the wall and the second and third and over the course of probably 20 years, anybody who'd walked into that room wrote their name on the wall or like a top 10 list or a, you know,

the same, you know, slagging people or whatever. So, but that ended up being my room. So I used to sleep on a mattress on the floor and this, what looked like, if anybody can picture, it's exactly what any shitty backstage looks like. Do you know what I mean? Like just names of bands and things and faces

and your best picture, you get all done in Sharpie and stuff. But this is the room I grew up in. But in that room there was a piano, a bass and a guitar. Because my brother played guitar. My other brother played bass. And my dad played piano. So if I was bored, there was no such thing as being bored in my house.

Some of my first memories are of me with my head, like, looking up and I have my head on the sustain pedal on the piano. And I'm just like plucking the strings, just listening to how long the sustain is on them. That's one of my first memories. I'm just like, bling, blon. here in harmony and just like spacing out and that stuff but it was a very loud household there was music 24 hours

were you writing music when you were born I was writing when I was born I came out like I mean I mean we were saying that yesterday that you guys probably are born and Rod Stewart's playing like a drum and there's like in the world I love you're rolling up my tongue yeah

sort of like your Lion King moment of like them lifting you up and they're like, sorry. There's not fiddlers and looking at him playing. My dad, he used to tell a story that when I was going to bed, he used to play Elton John. So we used to remember that. We had a reel-to-reel back in the day. For all you kids, just go and look that up on your, on the fizzy magic, the World Wide Web. But he remembers hearing, like, Daniel, my...

Going up, and I was like, obviously had heard it so much that I was standing up in the cotton, I was reefing the reel-to-reel. pulling it down but I got a really good education I think in music from everybody in my family having different genres of music my brother was into heavy metal

metallic my other brother was like Deep Purple Hoodoo gurus Did they look down on on this On the Hayden My brother

My brother Particularly my brother Darrah Because he was like Shredder Guitar Shreder Like Oh James Heffield And all these kind of people

He just absolutely I'd say despised pop he just hated anything to do that was like he deemed a little bit cheesy sure but he was just I mean looking back on it he was just too cool for his own you know for his own good because I remember the first time I heard smells like teen spirit I remember the street we were on we were on the Edens in Chicago driving north and we're in a car and on comes Kirk Cobain and I remember my sister

and my mom talking about how how loud and shitty it was and not like because if you grew up where they're singers then you know it's all the people who love the you know that beautiful tone you're like yeah that but that doesn't sell records and that isn't soulful and that's not that's not the same thing as what I want to do it was really interesting to be to to remember these people listening to some I know I guess I knew that I was on to something once I liked music that no one else in my family liked yeah that's exactly the same it was hard for me to kind of find a genre to kind of go right well this is me

this is my identity and I think I had a lot to do with it too because all the other genres were almost taken already in your household yeah you know what I'm saying yeah so you're trying to carve out a little area for yourself to have music in and not be like your brothers and sisters I think that's what you've always tried to do everybody tries to do a little bit

and by doing that you don't realize you're inadvertently learning all their stalls of music and things that they're listening to anyway so you're get a massive appreciation for singer-songwriters for rock and all this sort of stuff and you just know it you know from being around it all the time so when you guys are in dance class yeah or whatever was it is that what you would call it or it was just like no no it was you know what it was more um yeah well i was a teacher so right yeah yeah so you guys are there and then you guys are discussing like you know i play music i write and you're like yeah i play music i write so

let's let's just pool together some money and get in this video this is the funny story so Mark had an old Q-based system that he was selling and I was like I just finished out I got a Fostex 4 track and I was kind of learning how to bounce down tracks so it was like my first little recording little studio that I had

you know was literally this tape that you could bounce down from you know you had four tracks for those you didn't know you could record down three harmonies and then you would bounce in three harmonies and marry them onto the one but every time you bounce down it got a little bit less in quality or it was more of a hiss. So, because I used to love harmony, so I'd be doing, like,

trying to do boys to men style harmonies, just me on my own. You know, and bounce them all down. And then I had, like, this little Yamaha D-50 drum kit that I was, like, playing along to me singing. I was just really basic stuff. But he'd showed me, you know, Cubase. And I was like, this is, like, game changer. This is it.

You're just, hey, man, after class, come with me. I'm going to show you QBakes. Yeah, because, like, I'd been, I'd been hanging over this sort of friend of mine who is, like I said, a teacher in a sound school. So he was teaching me all night about how to be an engineer, how to program and how to produce and how to do all these things. So I've been learning all my money that I'm from dancing was paying this dude.

Is this in the city? Yeah, it's in Dublin City. Right in the heart of the city. Right in the heart of the Dublin. Yeah. So you had Dan come up and you wanted to buy my system. So I went up, he showed me, you know, the reins how to use it, everything. I bought it off him and he was a smart little fucker because probably about two or three weeks

anyway after that. I paid him already for the system, brought it to my house, figured out how to use it, was making tracks and he was like, do you want to come back down to house? We started writing together. So I basically brought his system that he had just sold me back down to his house and it was back where it was to was before.

So we were just down there. Sick move. We just started making music. We'll make you do it by the end of this interview. Welcome. I'm probably, yeah. Mark Sheenberg. Yeah, sheenberg. Yeah, sheenberg. Anyway.

I'm allowed to say that, guys. Okay, so is that how My Town starts? Yeah, it would have been. Yeah, we would have kicked that off right down and there. And I suppose that's where it all came from, that love of... Well, let's go back. My Town is your first band. Yeah.

So at this point, you take this system home, you figure out how to do it, you go back, and then it's like, let's see what happens if it's your first co-write then, right? Yeah, yeah, we just start to write songs together then. Yeah, so that becomes My Town, or do you start adding the other? their members and we're like, oh, let's start a band. Yeah, it's kind of, we just became sort of fast friends, sort of true songwriting. Actually, at the time, Daniel was doing his own thing and I was doing my own thing. So we were trying to get these two things off the ground and it wasn't really working.

And I'd come to America. There was a massive, it was called it the Emerging Artist Talent and Music Festival in Vegas, Edom Festival. Back in the day. And they were having about 180 bands all apply to go in and do it. So I applied. I just said, fuck it, you know. and more Irish, you want to go to Vegas. I'd never set foot in America before my life,

and I just wanted to do this. And our demo tape got passed around, passed around, past around, past, and I just got told it was too late. They closed all the... Just something the two of you guys had done? Yeah, just music. What was the song called? I don't remember, actually.

Time Will Tell? There was probably a song called Time Will Tell. There was... Was it good? It was pretty good. It was, like... Really poppy. Really poppy, but it was a good song.

You got the ears of people over here. Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, so then they hear the demo afterwards. They hear the demo after they closed all the, I guess, the applications and everything else. And it was actually the daughter of a very big lawyer over here, Ken Hertz. Oh, yeah. Music lawyer. And his daughter heard the song and said, you need to have these guys.

And a video as well. I was performing it and all the stuff. And he said, holy shit, hold on. So he called the guys up. He said, you know, you don't have a band like this on. Maybe you should have these guys on. They really want to do it. it and they'll flood themselves over and so they took us in told us we could do it so we get in

how do you fly yourselves over to Vegas yeah we were broke us hell like I mean I remember arriving to Vegas but about 180 dollars in my pocket and that's all I had we couldn't go anywhere we we just stayed at this one little motel and then entered this competition and everybody was so shitty to us I mean it was so bad because they were all what you were all rockers and yeah yeah they were really mean to us they were really mean to us they fucking hated us but so we won we come out of it as the the only bad to get a record offered record deal out this whole thing so no one else got it and yeah it was crazy so uh we got offered record deal uh as my town with universal music through doug morrison du maris signed us on like for one of the biggest deals in pop history yeah for a new signing

what yeah yeah so we got signed from from this Vegas competition yeah yeah so we got signed as was so he was there or was he somebody told him like he yeah people from from his from universal times there and this is at the time when doug morris was the most powerful man in the music industry He's been running Universal and it's a massive thing. And they flew us to New York. We showcased New York for him. For him, yeah. And the scientist on the spot.

At that point, had you flown back to Ireland. Yeah, we flew back to Ireland and then he flew his back over. We flew back to Ireland. Then we got wind that they're really interested in the deal. Basically, the deal closer would be you just come back over, go straight for the head. So he can go, yeah, sign off on it. And he brought a, and then he put the rest of the band members together? No, no, we already had the members, yeah.

at this point. Yeah, yeah. And he just, he showcased us and signed us on the spot and it was kind of welcome to the family. And suddenly Doug Morris was, what, I mean, what happens? How are you the, you know, when you get that contract, how is it that you don't, you know, what happened? Why don't I know my town? Why do I mean? Well, two years before that we'd been offered this contract with Universal for 250 pounds. And then two years later, we got offered by Doug Morris in New York City. We got offered for $15 million. dollars. So if you can imagine, it was the biggest signing in pop history for a new band to sign.

They signed this for seven albums. It was massive. And then it all went wrong. It all just fucking flopped. We made this massive record. We spent millions on the record, nearly $2 million on this record. We'd worked with Teddy Riley. We'd worked with Dallas Austin. We'd worked with...

Because you were doing... At this point, you're doing... I assume it's similar to the first album where there's a little bit of rap and the verse... Yeah, kind of. You know, like it... So it felt you know that kept it it was at that time I mean there weren't a lot of bands doing it yeah it was not saying it was a way ahead of its time

because if you listen to it now you kind of go okay well it seems like an old dated sound but at the time it was a little bit more street and a little bit more down the urban road than I guess our white counterparts were doing at the time that's who say I mean sometimes like you know yourself you know the actual amount of bands that get signed

is very very high but the amount of ones that actually stick their head above the clouds is so infatessing to be small. I mean, for us, that was at the time a massive failure because we'd like spend all our time and effort put into the band. We'd gone around the houses with all these different production teams. But the one thing that I have to say that the reason why we are where we are today is that when we were going around, we were writing with likes of Montel Jordan, and Billy Steinberg, who wrote, like, Falling Into You for Celine Dion,

and it drove all night, Roy Orbison. You're great, great lyricist. Like a Virgin for Madonna. These great lyrics, we literally just acted like sponges. You know, we knew we didn't really know too much, well, as much as everybody else as far as writing. So we just acted like sponges. We just sat in the back of the room,

shut the fuck up and learn your craft. Yeah. And that's what we did. It was like the best music college degree you could have gone. How old were you guys at the time? He was just turning 18. Yeah, and I was just leaving 19. So did you release the album?

Yeah, it came out. It came out in America, he out rather than the world. It did okay. We start having massive issues where we'd release a song in the States and then maybe two weeks later it would be a weird article in Billboard,

which I still have at home saying, mysteriously, my talent song drops out of charts. They don't know why. We had a lot of internal battles going on inside the music industry. It was believing it was at a time when all the mergers were happening. Oh, right.

Everyone was... It's a terrible time to be. I was in a couple bands at a deals at the time and it was a tough time to just be in a band level. Yeah, and you put songs out, they were falling out

and all this stuff was happening. We were touring her asses off and nothing was really happening. So myself and Danny kind of lost heart and we just wanted to get out of it and just said we want to finish this. Was it hard for the rest of the band? Yeah, it was really tough on everybody.

And Dan just wanted to go and make music. I wanted to go my own way. I just, I was done with performing and doing that and I just didn't want to do it anymore. It was done. Yeah, you screwed that up, by the way. Yeah, I know. It all messed up.

Yeah. Well, I went back to Ireland and Dan wants to go make a solo record. So time passed and we realized that, well, we should be making a bit more music together. And a friend of ours called us in Orlando wanting us to go to Orlando and said, look, I know you're not in a deal anymore and I know you're not in your band anymore. But I've been offered to make a record. There was any chance you guys have come and make my record. my record with me because she loved

our style of writing and all that stuff. So we went to Orlando and was that cool to sort of get the phone call being like yeah it was awesome because I think for the most part we were in Ireland kind of licking our wounds a little bit we were like oh I don't really know if I'm cut out for this industry because this was like how could this have gone wrong? You know what I mean? How do you get another big chance like this

you know kind of these things only come across once? All my family had been in music The proper public failure, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, especially in this. I mean, we were saying that Ireland's, what, five million people. Yeah. And I imagine that in your communities, everyone knew you guys got the record deal. You've been flying back and forth.

It was on BBC News as breaking news as the biggest signing of pop history. You know, so people knew we had signed this massive. Were people hitting you guys up for cash? Yeah, you just suddenly had. That's what we said. It's like winning the lottery. I mean, you don't want other people to know too much. Yeah.

And you know, like we all say, where there's a will, there's a relative, you know. That's really funny. So it's kind of true. But like, it was, yeah, it was amazing to get the call. And we kind of, we just literally took over like a, do you remember the old rack mount Trinity, the Trinity, core Trinity? So we had one rack amount Trinity, a keyboard, a guitar. And that was it. And we just literally packed a bike.

We, you know, fuck all money. They were paying the tickets over. They were going to, and we ended up staying in the person's house that we were producing with. So it wasn't like a big money thing. We're like coming over, I was sleeping on the couch again, you know, kind of scenario. But we just wanted to put our head down. Did she have a deal? Yeah, she had a deal at the time.

Who was it? Can I ask? I actually married her, so to my wife, weirdly enough. What? Yeah. Well, Rina, yeah, she was signed to Johnny Wright. Yeah, of course. She was on to her with Britney Spears and, uh,

You know, she kind of grew up with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, all those guys, all in the same sort of camp as those guys. And her whole life is just being entertainment. And she just sort of cold calls you? Or did you know her from touring? No one of from touring here or there and gotten to know her and she just said, look. Was she your girlfriend at the time? Not really, no. We kind of had seen each other, met each other, kind of, I guess became friends, but not.

And then she hits you up and she's like, come to. Yeah, you need to come over and let's do this. Yeah. And you guys were both probably, this is great. you know her. It's not like a random person. No, no. So, yeah.

Yeah, we did it. And Johnny Wright then gave us his studio time. And then we started working. Great in, though. I mean, just to show John, I mean, for Johnny Wright was managing the biggest. Exactly. And we ended at the time getting a remix for NSYNC. We ended up doing a bunch of different things that were starting to start to make sense.

As producers. As producers and writers. Yeah. And that's how the Ricky Martin story came in because we ended up working a local producer there who says, Ricky Martin's looking for music. Brittany's looking for music. So suddenly we were in that world where we were throwing shopping songs out

and trying to get, we were signed to Zamba again. And suddenly we were like, well, what are you? How fast was it from, hey, will you come to Orlando to here's a deal from Zamba? Probably about maybe a year. Yeah, probably a year of the. So we were in Orlando and like, you know, if you invite Irish people in, it's always like, be careful who you let in the door. Because we will come in and take over.

I act like I'm sitting at the back mind of my own business. but I'm working the whole place out and I'm going to be sitting at that desk writing the song, kicking you out of your room in a while. But we've always had this mentality so getting into the studio we just got in there,

you know, as much as you can, we ended up knowing, trying to, like, hanging out with mixers and producers, just trying to get in anywhere we could. And we met a great production team actually called Rip Rock and Alex G who ended up,

they did like eight songs on the first InSync record and six songs in a second, like they were right in there. And they kind of, they were almost like our doors into Zamba, because we were the only people at the time doing two-step and they're not American two-step. Yeah, can you explain what that is?

Yeah, it's like artful dodger. You remember Craig David? Like Craig David, two-step, like, it's like kind of English garage kind of style. And we were the only, let's say, two white guys in the whole of America doing this type of music. If you wanted a remix, you maybe had to send it back to the UK. So we ended up doing, we did a load of remixes,

with the biggest one being the Justin Timberlake songs. gone. And then that got the perk the ears up of Zamba. So they sent down a really cool guy actually called Eric Bale. And Eric Bale just like listened through our catalog was like, awesome. That's a sign of deal. So we'd gone from like, we were back starving again. You know, we had, at that particular time, we were living in a house. We had the electricity had gone in the house. We'd stole ice from the front of the gap. We'd stole a bunch of ice because our electricity had gone. so all the food in the fridge was going to go off. So we stole ice from the local gas station.

You know, like it was all out in front. In Orlando? Yeah. Yeah. So we stole ice, brought it bent to the house, took it all out, put it in the bath, put all the food in the thing. That's the time that it was, you know? We were living in a rat infested house.

No, your parents at the time are... Oh, no, they think we're living in like, you know, they're doing very well for themselves. Mid-2000s, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they're thinking... 2003, four, maybe.

Okay, so they think that you're... you're living the dream and you're like kind of yeah we're in america yeah we're just lying about it we're i think that's if people don't realize that just because you're in the studio it doesn't mean you're making money you're only making money yeah and the thing was we were being booked out like um i could program so i was being hired out as just the programmer danmer dan was doing vocal production and sort of sometimes just playing guitar so you guys are a proper production team yeah yeah yeah yeah we really were um your did you have a name as a production mean mark and danny mad and we are mad, but we are mad notes productions

and we still carry that name today that's what we started out doing and right in front of people and getting brought into all these situations where what explains, you know, a lot of times artists are listed as producers on their albums but they're not necessarily that much involved and it makes a lot of sense

why your identity can be seemingly organic for through all of your albums. Yes. Because you have a certain flavor as a corruption to you. We produced basically every song even for the script that we'd ever done, has to, and always had to start with us. The whole point of it was that it was stories derived from our lives like a diary.

And that was the whole point. And we just wanted to be kind of a funky pop band that people could, if they walked into a pub and we were playing in the corner, they'd go, you know, I love their take on music. I love their interesting stories and I love that. And that was really all it was. it just so happened that the band started here in Los Angeles didn't you know we were we moved all our production team we moved it to Los Angeles from Orlando from Orlando yeah we came here

who pays for you to get over here no we did ourselves did you drive yeah I drove a U-Haul truck all the way from Orlando with my gear in the back and drove here you just say on the 10 freeway which ends literally a block south of where we are right now that was that was what was funny and then we arrived here it's such a big country I don't think people realize that from from L.A. to El Paso is the same distance from El Paso to Austin. When you're 40 and hours... You're 40 and hours driving in Texas and we're still in Texas? Texas is crazy.

It's crazy. Yeah. So yeah, we came here. We moved here. Were you both in the U-Haul? No. Not him and his wife. I just got the plane. So were you married in Florida?

No. No. I got married in Mexico actually years later. But no, at this time we weren't. Oh, not your wife yet. No. And we came here and we set up shop. We got a little apartment here and Danny end up moving in with some friends on Venice Beach. And his friend there was a mixer who had a studio. So he let us use that studio. He used to work in this place down on, oh God, what was it called? Cloud 9. Cloud 19. Cloud 19 and it was a DVD authoring facility. So during the day, they used to like, basically my job during the day was to like watch. Oh, I'll explain what they used to do. So they used to, take old videos, so all like Betamax and video, and transfer

them onto DVD. So what they used to do then was I had to watch the movie, segregate the movie into like 18 different scenes, name the scenes, like as in like, you know, at Heroes Return. Right. You know, like King Solomon, you know,

King Solomon's minds. So he does that. I did that. I did that. I did that. I did that. I'm like over 200 bloody titles. Yeah. So so we used to do that. And also the You know, like, when you're, you know, when you're so hammered drunk, you come home and watch a DVD, and then they have, like, this 30 second piece of music, which is like, do you do, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and it starts again. It's ready to play. It's so annoying.

And you just, like, wake up in the morning. You're so hung over, and it's like the same piece of music going again and again. Well, that was me. I used to create those little 30 second pieces of music to wreck your head. And then, like, then, did Zamba publish that? No, no, no. Listen, as much as it's nice... You're just doing that on the side.

It's nice to have a publishing company, but the money runs out. You know what I'm saying? There's only so much you can kind of ask them for. Can you pay for this? Can you pay for that? And then the rest of you're on your own. So I was hustling during the day. I was doing that.

They all left at 6 o'clock. Boom. I had the studio from 6 till whenever just like to do whatever I wanted to do. So it was always a good trail. I'm sure everybody listening to this right now has that same thing. They got to, you know, they got to take. a few to give a few, I suppose. So when did you guys then start writing again for yourself?

Well, he was doing a solo record, and I come over to help him with a solo record, because again, I'm still in the mind frame of I don't want to go near the industry again. I was only interested in writing songs at this point. I figured I could just come in, be ambiguous and just laying in the background and just help him make music and get him out there.

But it wasn't going great for him, and that's why he had interest, and it was going, you know, but I think the music, music was probably wrong at the time. And we just said, let's... Were you shopping him? It's sort of like, ah, these are...

Yeah. Are not my... It's not right for me as an artist, so let's try to... Well, no, it was more shopping him as an artist, trying to get a record deal as an artist, yeah. And then we made... We decided to write these few songs,

and our drummer now, Glenn, happened to come over. I met him in Dublin. I said, well, he's a struggling musician. Why don't you come over? And he was like a prodigy on drums. He's the kids unbelievable. But he never... owned a drum kit in his life. He only, he used to make his own drum kit. This is a guy who's like

one of the best drummers you've ever seen in your life. And I went to see him and he had CDs, which he stuck to things. And he put, he made his own virtue of a V drum kit. If you can imagine so, he made, he made beaters and stuff of that that would pick up middy and he played out. And I went to see him and I was like, what the fuck is this guy playing? It was like, it was the worst thing I've ever seen. He's playing these CDs and he's hitting these things. It was like held together by duct tape and all. stuff. And I says, dude, come on to the States at me. And we come over here and we used to do this thing every Friday night here in Venice Beach where all these musicians would come in the room

and everybody would just throw down. We'd all just hang on Friday nights in Venice and everybody different guitars go with different vocalists. It was like an open mic night, but just all friends. So we'd have a barbecue and just all hang. And I said to him, come to that, you'll have fun because the mic is just I would jump up just freestyle, do whatever, and he'd jump up and play and there were just tons of musicians and Glenn got on a real kit and I thought let's see how good he is and I thought he might sink

or he might swim but the motherfucker was surfing and everyone in the room all these players wouldn't and they didn't get him off the kit for the whole night they wanted to play all that drumming from nine inch nails

and stuff was there they're all just like jaw drop low play so the drum for nine inch nails actually let him use the drum kit so he gave him the drum kit so we took the drum kit and another guy offered a studio time

but Malibu this rich guy had his studio at his house I forget the guy's name, but he let us go in there for the day. A friend of a friend. Yeah, well, for two days he let us have the studio, maybe three days. And we went in and we recorded about five songs together, just myself, Danny and Glenn. The first album? Yeah, yeah, there is.

Before the worst, which was off the first record, we cry, we all, there were a first. That's the first single, right? Yeah, that was like one of the first songs we wrote as a band. So the weird thing was we wrote those songs here in Malibu, and then, um, I'd so. said, well, look, I know these guys who just started a record label, which is Steve Kippner and Andrew Frampton, and they'd just start in phonogenic records and had a massive hit. Give a little background of who those guys.

So Steve Kipner had written Physical for Olivia Newton-John. He'd also written Jeannie in a Bottle, Kristen Aguilera. He'd written... He's written... Hard, Harbour to Break for Chicago. I mean, we're talking about it's superstar. He's had hits in every decade, basically. And then...

And Andrew... Brampton, who was a rising producer at the time, who had done massive pop things in the UK, and was starting to make some big round over here as well. How did you know them? We knew Steve. We known Steve because back in the Mytown deal, it was one of the producers. We'd work with it and actually just became friends with him. So I said, let me call Steve up.

I think Steve will have a listen to this music and at least guide us. If there's anything they'll do, they'll tell us where to take this music. And at the time, me and Glenn, the drummer, were just thinking we're playing on. Danny's solo record. That's all we're thinking here. And we went up and played the music for Steve and Andrew and they're freaking the hell out. And they're like, who's the band?

And we're like, what do you mean? And they said, who's the band? And we're like, okay, it's not a band. And we're like, okay, it is a band. Because we're all broke. It's not a band. And they said, um, it is a band. So we had a back down thinking.

I think they really liked that. but I think they really, they really want this as a band. Yeah, they wanted to be a band. Yeah, and then they called us later on. They said, look, what's the band called? And I said, the script.

And I was writing the name, the script on a piece of paper next to the phone because I was in Hollywood and I was thinking, all the people are talking about the next big thing here, all the time, there's always a script, right? And then it was always the thing that people would say to each other

when we're over here, is, what's the script, dude, what's happening? You know, what's up? And we were like, well, we're what's happening. So I thought, I just think about the script, so just threw that name out, and that was, stuck. Did you have to go to the people in your life and say, hey, we're getting, when you say,

we got a new record deal, I assume that that then happened really quick. But when you go and you tell your family, I got a new record deal or your future wife or whatever, did they, um, did they understand how incredible that was again? Or were they like, oh, well, that's a death sentence. It hit. Well, they, yeah, they were coming off our bad experience before. So that was a tough one. We'd agreed to me. I'd had all the studios laid out in L.A. where we were going to record, where we were going to write the record,

and we had that whole record plan and what we were going to do, the sound of the record. We knew exactly what we wanted to do. We're about to fly Glenn over, and my mom fell terminally ill in hospital. So I get a call, like 8 o'clock at night. I was on a plane, maybe 5 a.m. the next morning,

rushing my way to Ireland to see my mother. And maybe a week or two later, Danny and my wife, Frina, they packed up all the stuff and they just they pretty much left everything going on and they flew to Ireland too and just said look let's make the record here like we haven't been in Ireland years let's just make one here you're next to your mom you have a studio at the back of my house the whole the hospital is literally wrapped around where the state where the studio is so I could just climb over the wall every day visit my mom come back over and write songs not known that every day my mom is getting

slow and slowly worse and I'm writing all these lyrics and thoughts and ideas next to my mom's deathbed and I'm coming home into Danny in the studio and I'm just spilling my guts out and we're just writing all this music and it's so supercharged that we don't know what to do with it we're just we're just laying all these songs down right and it's just just going like that's where you know break even would come from that's where you know man it can't be moved comes from and all from these sessions and and uh and about 10 months later my mom had passed away and it was obviously a bad time for me and I just wanted to say throwing the towel and fuck this industry again.

I don't really want anything to do with it. Yeah, put the perspective. Yeah, and then you suddenly think, well, you know, you've got to get your ass in and right because it's what my mother would want, right? She'd want me just to make a thing of this, try and make it happen because I'm broke. There's nothing happened from me.

I'm also now 30 years old. It's not, you know, it's not going to happen for me. I'm really at the end of my chances here of things kick off. And I was starting to snow in London when then we're just finishing off a session. And we're like, we're constantly in the studio, we're constantly working. We have no fucking social life.

We've no friends anymore. It's just getting, let's just go home. What are we doing here? So we just jumped the plane and decided to, it was late. It was like maybe 8 o'clock. He might have landed at, maybe landed about 10 o'clock in Dublin. And maybe around 12 o'clock I got a call from Dan saying his father passed away suddenly. Oh, wow.

So. Yeah, I got home. I got home and there was an ambulance outside the house. Literally, I don't know why we decided to go home. It was weird. It was just so weird. otherwise I would have never got to potentially say goodbye to my dad

but he was there fine in the morning by night time he was gone he had a stomach aneurysm which ended up leading to heart failure but yeah it was crazy right smack bang like we were just finishing the record so I played him he'd got to hear like break even

he did he definitely yeah he got to hear break even did he I mean I can't imagine a father especially a songwriter as well A song or like, yeah, hearing that song, I mean, we were saying the other day that if there's one lyric that people ask me to write more in a session, it's like people, oh, we need to, you know, because when a heartbreak, no, it don't break even is the line that everybody says, oh, how can we get a song, a line like that? I mean, when you played that for him, I imagine his response was. It was, it seemed, to be honest, it seemed a lot deeper than it normally was, but I think to a musician, even my first song to him

sounded like break-even. Yeah. If you know what I mean, like in a probably pride kind of a way, because he always just wanted one of us to kind of do what he did because he was quite a prominent songwriter in Ireland. He'd had a number one

with another big act years ago. He was in show bands. He'd kind of got to the point where we were at where we had a record. He had a publishing company with the Beatles, publishing, um, sorry,

publishing deal with the Beatles, publishing company. at the time. So he'd gotten to a certain level, but then life takes over. You got six kids. You got to put food on the table. So he ended up going into kind of industry. First off, he managed a few clubs around town, this place called the system. McGonagall's actually was originally. And then ended up kind of going in entertainment, went into managing the golf course, which was right beside where our house was. So every Friday night, a few drinks, fucking straight on the piano. You know, everybody in the pub back to the head.

house you know you know he's still he's still that guy um so to kind of for one of us to have finally done what let's say had been almost in a generation in the making you know that that's kind of the bittersweet of i think for me making it i wouldn't be where i am today without my father doing what he had done but it's also like with mark's mother as well it's also i guess extremely frustrating that he hadn't seen any of it you know my dad used to he used to sell sandwiches in a pram outside Crow Park you know the place we just play is 80,000 people in Crow Park

he like when he grew up you know he was outside with his pram just trying to make ends meet you know his mother passed away when he was very young so he was just trying to make ends meet as well for him not to see that as like kills me every day but at the same time you know if any part of this had it been changed

the first record wouldn't have been I guess so emotionally electric you know that's what weirdly enough When we did, when he went through the death of his father, then it was almost he wanted to throw on the towel. And then it took obviously a grace period of the two of us to come back. And the music's what brought us sort of back and gone,

these songs, though, you know, we have to let people hear these songs, is what we have to do. So the deal was that if we get a song on radio, we'd be happy. If we end up just playing a couple of pubs and a couple, let's just do it for the love of music. And let's just, that's what we do. Because it's always been a punch bag for us. Music is always a way that while someone,

else was out there stealing cars or putting graffiti all over walls our way of being creative was to write songs and stay in a room and just you know jam out and that was what we did so we said look that's it's good for us let's just complete this um this mission this mission let's do it so we did it when the album came out it was if i can't even tell you how fast it hit it hit so fast it went it was number one worldwide yeah worldwide it was number one in every country it was I mean, the songs were number one. We had like seven singles off that first record. It was just flying.

I mean, I guess the two, you had so many singles on that album. But, you know, the man who can't be moved and break even seemed to be the biggest. Yeah, yeah, that would be. And I guess what was the moment when you realized how massive it is? Because it's one thing, when you're listening to a song, you hear a song on radio, it's really a cool experience. Yeah. but you don't really understand it until you see other humans that you've never met singing it

or when you're like standing on a sidewalk and a car drives by and they're playing the song or it's in a store and you see other people singing along to it. It's those moments where you're like, oh, this is bigger than us in a studio. We started to get booked on all these massive shows. So in Ireland there was one called, as a festival called Oxygen, for example.

And Oasis are on the main bill. And here we are a new band and we're playing the next night on the same time slot as Oasis. And they had something like 60,000 people. And as we're walking up on stage, I never forget. It's only months after a record out, and I'm thinking, we're not ready for this. This is like the biggest thing.

I mean, we shouldn't be this big, this quick. It's really was a worry for us. We only had like a 40 minutes set. Yeah, we didn't have one album. We don't. What are we going to play? I mean, and then I got really nervous. I was thinking, there's no one out there.

no one's going to show. What are they doing even putting us on this slot? I don't know. I had this madness. And I remember only now when I look back, they were filming us backstage talking about this. But we didn't know they were showing this to the whole fucking crowd. And we didn't know this.

I'm literally like, yeah. Yeah, we're stressing out like what? They probably thought it was like a show because they think people think of, I mean, we'll get to superheroes later, but people think that that, you know, artists are superheroes. If you're a fan of somebody, they're larger than life.

And here you are backstage, we're dying. We're dying. We're dying. And not known that it's on the big screens too. It was only later we walked out and there was 75,000 people for us. So we had an increase in any band that was playing in the whole festival. And it was just, I can't even, it was one of the, we won an award that year for the show because it was like one of the biggest and best shows.

It was almost like it felt like the band's coming of age, you know. It was crazy. You two come back from America. after conquering, you know, America. That's got to be the moment. I think that was the moment. You're on that stage. You're like, oh.

Now I get why I was stealing ice and putting it in a bathtub. Yeah. You know, that there was a reason for the struggle. Yeah. I think there's a magic moment. I mean, there's the reason why I'm in the industry. And I've only after really realizing that since being in the band and having having the songs that you write, you know,

like if you get songs cut by other bands it's almost like they're trying to interpret your emotion and what you meant then they're singing to their audience do they really get what they mean are they invested in the song do they know what that lyric meant

how hard it was to maybe get that feeling out of me onto someone else to purge it because that's what a lot of our songs are we're purging our fear or anxiety our pain everything so to be able to purge what feels like your whole life

like your parents passing away, the struggles that you've been, the fact that you've been sleeping on couch, starving, you know, all these things for a dream, for a song, for something that doesn't exist, for like, you know, for the song that, I think inevitably we're all pretty much trying to write the song that either number one changed the world

or change your life at least, you know. But to have that moment on stage where you're singing something so deep about your parents or a loved one gone or whatever, to have the amount of people out there. Because we wrote these songs in our deepest, darkest moments on our own, in our bedrooms,

like, you know, when you're so close to the edge. But then to see these people singing it, when you don't have the voice to sing, when you don't have the gusto to get up there and perform, the crowd are just like, it just raises you up so,

it's like a spiritual thing for me. To hear the crowd singing those lyrics, number one I can't imagine what it would be like if they were singing back someone else's lyrics if I'd never had anything to do with the songs I'm not knocking anybody who doesn't write their own material but I am saying that if you don't write your own material please do because the feeling that you get

oh my god it elevates you so much music is a diary for us and that's all it was so we didn't know other than the expression of opening yourself up so much you know did it make you I mean I feel like if in front of 75,000 people, which is now happened a couple times for you guys, maybe more than that. Does it, how

do you not cry when you're seeing this? I come close to it. You know, there's a part, you know, we're very grateful to be where we are, where we are. I as a lead singer and I, as a person, as a, as a, as a front man of a band,

it's all, like, the pain never goes away. It's always just there at the surface. I may do a good job at, like, hiding it and smiling, but the performance of the song to me when you come and see us perform, we are the living embodiment of those songs. I'm not just walking through break even when I sing it. I'm trying to get back to that same moments and I do. Because you know what? It's that fresh. You know what I mean? If you're not trying to get over something that was fresh, you're looking back on it. The song every time

you sing it has a different connotation, but it still always hurts no matter what when I sing it or if it's in the morning time seven in the morning or I mean you're a playwright who's who's also the lead actor in that show. Yeah, absolutely. That's a difference. Like, you don't knock actors, you don't write the play. No. And you don't knock playwrights, you don't act.

But, you know, if you're able to believe in the writing and then perform it, you know, there are a few people who can. Like I said, it's a same one-man show kind of thing, where if you write your own thing, you perform it. Like, the sense of achievement you get from it being applauded at the end of like, oh my god i just full circle i know what this whole thing is yeah that was really a shocking i hadn't been performing in a long time it's like well but that thing started from bedrooms and to see that same thing to go bedrooms to where it is now but that's that's a different human story um but it's not totally different anyway a couple other questions for you these aren't really questions that's a conversation yeah conversation of love um okay so uh

For the first time. 50-50 co-write. Yeah. That's like, that's a massive achievement. I think one thing is also, it's like when we talk about all those other co-writes that have so many different writers. Yeah. And then here, now probably 10 years after you guys started writing together, you're still writing songs.

And that, you know, I don't know if that's your biggest record out here. One of them. One of. Yeah. Yeah. And it's still something where, you know, at that point in your career, are you realizing how I don't know

there's like a new achievement whenever you can prove longevity yeah and to be like we're doing this together like our second record let's say amongst critics and stuff was like they they smashed it out of the ballpark because there's always a thing of like this

you know the difficult second record but we've been writing for such a long time this isn't our second record this is like our it could be our 20th record you know we're not nervous writers you know what I mean like we're we're now about a month away from release and we're still like well what's it which one we pick is a single we're not like we know we can do the job so when it came to that you can tell you can tell that in a session you guys have enough confidence

that it's like that um you can tell you guys have been collaborating with people yeah yeah and we get it and we understand it and and more than anything we have loads of fun doing it I think for us that was it I think when when it came to for the first time we've gone back to Dublin after the first record and the recession had hit Ireland really badly and people were losing their jobs and it was getting really bad and here we are at the height of our success and our fame. We had our own personal recession for so many years where we were broke musicians and when you go to pub people had to buy you a drink and look after you and here we are the other way around. For once in our lives we're going to Dublin and we have money in our pockets and we have a success

story and Dan went off, hung out. his family, I went off to hang out with my family. And we booked this studio. It was over the Christmas period, and we just booked this studio in Dublin. And we just said, well, let's meet up and just write a song because that's what we do, you know? Just leave the families for him and go in,

spend a couple of hours together just come up with something. I remember sitting down with him and he was like, what are we going to work on? I was like, well, what's going on? What's been happening for you? And Dublin, he's like, dude, I feel so fucking bad. I mean, I feel like now that I've got a bit of money and nobody else I'm meeting has lost their jobs.

or some terrible shit is happening. And I said, the same thing for me. I was in my local pub last night, and it was just, it was nothing about horror stories all night. And I felt guilty about being successful. So I finally have the one thing I wanted to have, and I feel guilty for it. It was a horrible feeling.

And we just started talking about it, and for the first time, happened to be this little loop we had, which we started weirdly in L.A. about two years previously. I said, well, I have this little loop still that we'd never done that, went. It was just this guitar. Jing, ding, ding, ding, Jing, ding.

Or you pull out like the old Q base here. Yeah. You're like way back. Yeah. We still have the tapes here. Yeah. Those things. But yeah,

I pulled out this little loop that I just, I looped over and said, look, we had a bit of a start in this. It was a bit of a verse starting. And then we just wrote for the first time in about two hours. And it flew out with some. That's the thing, though.

It happens when you write actual honest music. Yeah. It tends to flow out differently. It tends to flow out. And there was kind of like in songs like that, let's say the more emotionally charged songs I have this thing of like if someone says the lyric and it's the right lyric

I choke up because I can't like it's like it's almost like that's what I wanted to say even if I'm saying it you know there's another song we have on I can't even say the lyric now because it's on the new record it's quite an uptempo song but when I was saying the actual lyric when I was saying I was like

you know when you're just like forming it in your head and I got really emotional and choked up And that's personally for me, that's my divine rod. If I'm like a bit choked up on something, then I know for a fact other people are going to get choked up in it. For a fact. So that was a song, I sang close to tears. I was nearly, I cried, probably the last take I took,

I cried from the first chorus on it. But I also sang it with a SM 58 in the room. Yeah. With this, you know, sometimes with the, speakers on sometimes with the speakers off. So it's on the, you know, Spike's stand was like, dude, I took him four days to get the vocal sound from the records. It was the worst

vocal take. It was the worst vocal take. It was terrible. Let's say produced vocal take, but it was the best vocal. Right. You know, and that's had all the heart and all the feeling that we were looking for, so we didn't want to redo it or that was where the song came about. It feels different when you cut

vocals in a room with everybody else. When you're in that booth, yeah, it's this introspection. I quated with my own mind. It's my own mind, and I don't like it there. Yeah, it's kind of, it's not as real as when you guys started writing songs with each other in the room. Why would you then separate that? And then all of a sudden it's like, let's put you in an unnatural setting to cut this vocal. Yeah.

It's a strange thing. And that song, that song ended up being a bit like that because you're in the room recorded. We've done everything inside the room. And then the song came out. We decided that was the song we wanted to lead the campaign with and we put it out. And it became the recession song, weirdly enough. It became the song that everybody. added to, because at the time the recession was the thing that was on everyone's lips and it was the biggest thing.

And that became the kind of recession song. So every time the news talked about recession or every time there was a big march in Ireland about the recession, that was the song they wore like a badge, you know. It was really strange. So we became the working man's recession band all of a sudden. And we transitioned from being probably the forelong heart, broken band from what we'd been through on the first record to then being almost slightly fixed. Is that why Hall of Fame and Superheroes become your sort of next big record? I don't know that there's a huge space in between all that, but it starts to be like, oh yeah, we're representing something different now. I think so, yeah.

I mean, you know, when you get to, let's say, both of both those records went number one. When we're on our third record, we were like, you know what? Because we've performed these songs every day, is there the belief that people, people might be thinking that we just, we're always trying to be like, you know, the poppers like, oh,

we're down here, but we're doing okay kind of thing. And we were like, no, we're actually fucking really proud of what we've achieved now, you know? No matter what,

at the end of the day, even if it stopped after that second record, I'd still be chewing on that as an old man, 60 years old as sitting at the bar going, we made a dint in the industry. Well, like you said in the beginning, people chose to spend that money from their wallet on your ticket.

Yeah, you know, and especially in a recession. Yeah. That's how bad, you know, that's how much it was impactful. Yeah. Big time, absolutely. I wrote down that if you could see me now is probably your most important song.

I would say so, yeah. You know? Yeah, it was the first time we got to talk about publicly what happened with our parents. Why hadn't you talked about it publicly before? I guess it was just tough because... I guess in a song. Yeah. I mean, we got asked a little bit about it in interviews and stuff,

and I guess a lot of people knew, but I think a lot of people were, you know, as anything like with a death of parents and stuff, some people skirt around or are afraid to hit it straight on. And I suppose dealing with it meant, particularly for me, meant admitting that, you know, my parents was really gone. I suppose you have this weird thing in your head

that when you turn and travel. I can still sort of pretend that she's at home and it's all good. Do they see you now? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, I believe so. And I hope so, because that's, that's all we've got in a way because now it's, you know, I know my mom is never going to see the big shows. She's never going to see the successful part of my life. She's always going

to know the unsuccessful part of my life. And I suppose that's the struggle. So that song kind of represented that moment. I guess we had to get real with yourself and say, well, hopefully she can see me. Sure. You know, then she'll see me on a stage doing well. But at the same time, being your parent, she'll say, stop smoking so much, stop drinking so much, because that's what she'll say, She won't care of it all about the show. No, she won't say well done. Good job. She's going to care about the fact that you're actually a good dad.

Yeah, or I'm being unhealthy or, you know. Yeah, for sure. So that's what it became about if she could see me now, would she pat me on the back or would she criticize me, what would happen and that's the way. And that's what became the fourth thing. And to be honest, oh, you got really weird. I didn't want to perform a song.

Didn't want to release the song. And everyone else around me was kind of like we should do it. You kind of have to. And we did it. I just didn't want to be on like a breakfast television show at 7 a.m. singing that song like you know it just didn't feel right oh and you know tell us made your dad dead again and after the break yeah you know i'm gonna cut to the guy here making for waffles you know so you know but i will say right and the new waffle yeah but i think that's what's so important though is

that you're by you guys being honest writers yeah that's why you guys have this career that's why you're on the fifth album for this group why you're on is because you have the balls to say it is i need to say this because my you know you're not here if it's not for your parents support at some point i remember going and not and deciding not to play at some nights and they go not you know we literally do you know in the moment where between songs it goes dark and you can't as a musician on stage nobody knows that you're fumbling your way around trying to find your way around the stage well we'd find each other on stage in the dark in front of 60,000 people 70 people like are we playing this song or not how do you feel you want to do it i mean this is the way it would go on people would think it was a plan no we

We'd be in the dark discussing whether we were going to perform that song or not. And then we'd turn out the ball and go, let's do it or don't do it. And that was the call right there and there. Go at our feeling. And there was times I said, no, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I just wouldn't do it.

Some festivals and stuff like that's just maybe it feels inappropriate. It feels like drunk and doing it and saying, it's like, you know, let's just jump to the next song. We jump to the next song, whatever. But I realized we're not doing it that the amount of fans came to me. You know, you don't understand that I've been through that too. And I want to hear that song. song. So I realized after a while your song stops becoming your song. Yes. It becomes everybody else's

song and that actually helped me to do it every time. So for now on, I don't mind now doing the song. I'm happy to do the song wherever, whenever, because I've realized that, you know, people take ownership over the song and where that song I need to hear it. And if it means me singing a song, make myself feel uncomfortable, but it's going to make them feel a bit comfortable, then let's do it. Sure. To lighten it up a little bit. Yeah. I'm going to just, just list a couple names and just tell me the first thing that you think of. Here we go, quick fire. Will I am.

What do I think of? Flaky motherfucker. And I'm allowed to say that. He'll tell himself. I was like, dude, you're late to everything. He's like, late, motherfucker, I invented late. That's awesome. Will I am.

To be honest, he's like silent genius. He's like, he is, sometimes I can't stand them because he really has ADD. he'll tell you himself he's like he's so hard to pin down to do stuff like we had him oh god because for those he did i don't know i was on the show the voice so it was like the two of us were coaching together on the voice and he was he he had heard the song hall of fame we recorded hall of fame literally a few weeks before the voice was due to um go to air and i played it to will and will he was just like yo i went the song i was like what do you mean what the song is like i want to cut the song. I was like, you're not cutting the song. It's going to be our first single.

And he's like, I need to be on that song. Let me on that song. So I was like, well, what do you want to do? He's like, let's do a duet. I was like, what? With the peas? He's like, no, we just do it with me and me and the script. So he said, he was so on for it. He was like, unbelievable he on for it. And he's like, cool, I'll come down to studio on the Friday. So we'd set up everything in the, you know, I was coming down in the usual. She'd get catering in, get everything in that we normally don't have because the big fucking stars coming down. And we're there like, you know, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock he's like, fuck him, he's not

coming down, you're not doing the song. And I was like, no, dude, you don't understand. He will, I promise he he will do it. We just need to, like, just be cool. Corral him into it. So I became really good friends with his manager, Seth at the time. I was like, Seth, what's the deal?

He's like, just wait. He is into the song. He will stop, but just may be four in the morning. Exactly. So we set that up. We told him the fuck off this first time, the second time, set it up again. Again, he let us down.

So I'm talking the next day, I'm like, dude we're in the studio at a hotel like he can't do that to you to people and he's like oh I'm so sorry I was at dinner I was like who he had dinner he's like Bill Clinton I was like well that's okay him yeah we got trough for Bill Clint you know that's all right anyway but like I said I'm a hustler so I don't give a shit I'm gonna knock on your door I don't care what you're what's going on so I just uh knocking his door I said what are you doing right now he said I'm not doing nothing is uh you want to record the song now he's like right now I was like yeah so I just I stayed in his room yeah exactly I got in the car with him we went to his hotel I called Mark from

the car and I was like dude I'm on his way over there he's like cool I'm doing the cab so he's like frown like 30 minutes later we're both at Will's hotel room I went the session on the drive with the original cubis yeah yeah the original cubis just won't let a guy so he's uh

so we went into his room and he has like the whole kind of top floor this beautiful swanky hotel in London he's on hemorrhaging money while he's on the voice you know yeah so we went up there like literally took 30 minutes for him and record his verse and then you know the genius that he we didn't have the part you can be your champion you

can be your champion like a great bee hook and all great writers do they come in they add something that wasn't there before um the weird because before that that part wasn't the song and now that part's in the song i can't imagine the song without that part you know i can't imagine song without will to be honest and it was almost like you know it was like we did a heist that night you know yeah when i got will when will finally did the vocals and hand me the drive i took the drive really smooth but protect it like someone was going to rob me and then suddenly was like

let's get out of here quickly so when we got out of room we were high-fiving each other in the elevator and the way down like silently like you know let's do not like a high-foy don't act excited

because you lose your cool right so we got down to the hotel bar and I remember sitting down the bar just because we needed to have a drink before we left and I just put the drive on the bar so we could see it and have a drink

we're sitting there watching the drive in case somebody fucking magically come in and took on us. Because, you know, that was goal to us at that time. We really wanted Will. It was really a big help to get Will I am on a song with that. We really needed somebody to help us at that point. I suppose just to justify the script doing a song like that. Yeah, exactly. We were these guys who, like we wear a heart in her sleeve, we write prolific stuff, but it's all about our lives. And here we are writing probably the most positive motivational

song we've ever written. Which weirdly enough came about because there was the London marathon was on and it was just for normal people. It was a run or cancer run. And all these people, these weren't athletes. They're just normal people, firemen, doctors, husbands, wives all running in this marathon. Because my wife is running it and I decided to go and wait at the finish line. I'm expecting all these fit motherfuckers to come running across, but people who are just struggling. I'm thinking there's no Hall of Fame for people like this. There's only Hall of Fame for rockers and people. There's no Hall of Fame for doctors. There's no Hall of Fame for doctors. There's no of fame for nurses and there's no holiday.

So we went back to the studio and they were working this idea and we started talking about this and that's why, you know, that song became important to us because we wanted to create a song that kind of made normal everyday people feel powerful and feel just like beating their fucking chests and feel great. That first verse was just, it was literally a rap off the top of my head. I went in something like this, you can be the greatest, you can be the best, you can be the king con banging on your chest. And it was like just mess lyric.

and it ended up just been like, can't change anything. They're just so, King Kong banging out in chest, like, why has he even got to do with anything, you know? But it just sticks out as a really kind of cool lyric. But since then, like, I say, you know, Will's a flaky guy in Jess

because he's obviously a very, very good friend. Sure, of course. There's four times a year where he'll just, out of the blues, be like, dude, I need a P single, or, dude, I need a Britney song. So we, like, I'll write something in the morning. Me and him, like, hung over.

Like, all right, cool. Send it off. And, like, next thing we know, it's like cut with David Guetta and Brittany and stuff and then we'll like we do something else to do like what a weird life you lead it's strange a couple others real quick

I know you guys have good stories Bono Bono is a funny one because when we originally in my town we told this story we were our managers were you two's managers so they were looking after us as well so we had met

Bono earlier on where we were brought to a Christmas pardon you can tell us time and we were got a little bit drunk but he got Dan got really drunk and

I was ossified I had no dinner I was so nervous and they put free wine in front of me yeah right free wine when you're you know what's shocking

is when you're really broke and you're stealing ice there's still beer there yeah why is that like you have no money but there's always beer there's always alcohol

there's always survive it's so fucked up always so real it always survives that was probably the drunkest. But that doesn't make sense

because I don't know how I don't know. But other people are happy to get you drunk too. It's funny. Right. They recognize. Misery needs company, I think. That's what's up.

So you're at the Christmas party. Christmas party. And there we are. And the way they worked seating arrangements was they sat me right in front of Edge. And then Dan was sitting at some random table somewhere else.

So I had Edge's ear so I'm thinking, I'm going to ask about mic techniques. I'm going to be asking about lyrics with that. You know, I'm just going to bleed the man dry.

That's all I'm thinking. But obviously I want to be cool. so I can't have just to scare him off either. And then I noticed he's getting pissed off across the room because he's thinking, motherfucker's talking to Edge. He should be talking to Edge. I should be talking to Edge. So he come walking across the room to talk to Edge

and thought he saw a chair and went to sit in the invisible chair and then fell right over on his ass. So me and Edge were just looking at this. Sorry, before that you missed out. I had asked the Edge, do you want you on some wine? And I poured some in his glass, but I poured it in his Mrs. Glass while I was asking him.

something and I totally overflowed his girlfriend's glass. It was an absolute mess. He went to fall all over the place and then we just decided we were going to get out of there and get him home because he's going to be fucking embarrasses. He's going to embarrass you more. More. So I kind of link him on and when he did it a lad to link him and then he goes

and just decides to fall down all the stairs in front of everybody. He said, on his knees. And suddenly we're all looking. So our exit from the party was Danny falling down. like maybe 12 or 15 steps drunk falling out. I look around

all my band all your idols are all like ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I'm like that was the original Bono story so I don't know

if Bono ever wanted us to see us again after that right when you guys were opening for them did you remind them of the story hell no no no it was a different person

right to pretend now we are photoshopped and everything you don't you won't recognize us Of course. Totally different people. So it wasn't like they saw you and like, you're the kid who fell down this.

No. I think they knew, but didn't know. They told that story also a lot. They probably have. I'd like to think somewhere right now, you two are telling that same story, but I don't think so. How about Paul McCartney?

That was a strange one because when, right in the first album, when things were going crazy, we got really worried about everybody wanting us to play these massive arenas and stuff. So we decided to know in London, we didn't want a play arena. We wanted to just have what was called

a five-night stand where we played to the equivalent of the same amount of people, but we played five nights in a smaller venue. And we felt we didn't want to grow too quick and have people, you know, seeing us in those big venues and then suddenly someone bursts our bubble and we fail. And we didn't know, but Paul McCartney heard about the five-night stand and sent someone down to watch us play and check us out. And without us known, they came, they checked us out. And then we get a call saying Sir Paul is inviting us to come on tour with him.

And we were like, what hell? What year is that? So that was the... In 2009, probably, the end of 2009. So it was the first time Paul had come back to play the Beatles catalogue. So he was now... It wasn't playing just Paul McCartney songs. He was playing the old Beatles stuff.

And he was opening up Shea Stadium. Which is obviously they had opened up Shea Stadium. The Beatles before. What are you guys doing opening for Paul McCartney? So actually, in Shays Stadium... In trivia land, the actual... We got asked this. We're now part of trivia, which is who's the first band to open since the Beatles of Chase Stadium?

We are, because we played before Paul. So obviously we actually open up Chase Stadium. I mean, that's just so crazy. I mean, I assume at, I mean, I was saying to Mark while you were recording vocals, I swear I was focusing on you, but I wasn't. I was trying to Mark. And I said when I die and the most impressive thing that I'll ever be said on my tombstone would be shook hands with Paul McCartney.

There's just one brief interaction. It doesn't matter what I've achieved in my life. That's the fucking mom. I'm telling my kids. Do you know what I mean? I imagine that, and maybe this is just me projecting, but I imagine that even as big as you too is, which is also kind of incredible,

especially in Ireland, I imagine that that sort of puts, you know, the period on anybody who's ever questioned whether you guys are going to make it. That is the top drum card for any of the coolest people in the world who were like, well, what's your band done? If you pull out the poll cards, it top trumps every... It's literally levels of, like, coolness, a hundred.

Like, how sick is that, a hundred? It's like, there's not another top trump thing. He was beyond, and he was beyond awesome. I mean, even from the first time, we'd all heard when we were going on the tour that, you know, he walks the halls and, you know, he may pop in to your dressing room, and we were all okay. So it got to our dressing. him in this moment and addressing which I'll never forget

and if you talk with his moment. I'm in full lead singer modes. We're all getting ready for, we're all getting ready to go on stage and we're all just talking and we're kind of going to, what are we going to address Paul McCarney? Do you call him Paul? He's a musician, maybe he wants to be called, do you call him Sir Paul? Yeah. He call him Macca? Like, what do you call it?

Well, I've got, like, I'm just after finding I'm after asking the whole, no, American flag. Oh, yeah. I have to ask him the whole of Shea Stadium. I need an American flag for when I get out on stage. I want to get everybody behind me. So I saw a whole, What way am I going to do this? So we found, it was the American flag

that's on the top of Shay's stated, they pulled it down to give me so I could hold it up during the show. So I'm practicing, I'm like, like singing hero, because we were singing David Bowie's heroes. We did a cover at the time. And I've like this flag up,

and I'm going through the verse and I'm like shaking it up like this. I just see, I have my back to the door and I just see everybody's face drop. Right, and I'm like, ah, I will be king. And I'm like, oh, that's Paul McCarney. Oh, yeah, and he just come in like a normal guy

and kind of demystified everything in the sense of all the kind of the things you have him in your head as and he's just a normal, normal guy but the whole time he was talking to us, I have, you know, an out-a-buddy experience because I'm talking to Paul freaking McCartney and I'm thinking, I've just got this narrator going on to my head going, that's Paul McCartney from the Beatles.

And then he'll say, whoa, how me and John used to record and the narrator go, that's John Lennon. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And just constantly this narrator in my head was reminding me about the situation I'm in. So much so that, you know, when he left the room,

we were all kind of scratching our heads. I was just crazy. And we'd done our show and we come off the show and it was just a crazy thing. And he walked back over to say, well done, great show. He'd watch the show and we're like, shit, this is just crazy.

And I closed the door. And then I hear Hey Jude being playing on an acoustic acoustic guitarist. There's acoustic version. Hey Jude. And I'm thinking, man, this is just coming through the speakers of the venue. This is awesome. They're playing like an acoustic version of hold the fuck up. And I opened the door.

And there's Paul McCartney sitting on the back of a golf cart, getting ready to go to stage. Warming up. Just warming up. And he's singing, Hey, Jude. And here's me watching Paul McCartney sing one of my favorite songs, Hey Jude, on his own. He goes, he winked on me. He goes, hey, Mark, kind of thing. And he's singing the song.

And I think, here's me and Paul having this moment and not realizing I looked over my shoulder that 12 other guys from the dressing room was all having the same moment. Because that's the story of Paul's life, of course. While I think I'm the only person that man is singing the song to there's all everyone else is the... Even at his age,

we were doing things like, he's like, so what do you guys do before you go on stage? It's like, oh, we normally have maybe a shot of whiskey. He's like, do you want to do one now? And we're like, okay. Yeah? Yeah. So we're like, it's all cracked out like whiskey

and we're doing shots of Paul McCarney and he's going on. stage, what's going on here? My only moment with him is, it was the daft punk after party after they won the Grammys. Right. And my friend is throwing the party,

and he actually says, he gives me the VIP pass. And I'm in this VIP section, which is maybe, you know, six feet deep and 20 feet long. Yeah. And I see Scrillix, who I had met a couple times,

so I went up to say hi, and he was, signed to Farrell, who you guys obviously know also. And then Madonna came over. So I'm starting to talk to them. This is crazy. I look back. I see my wife and she's like, I don't know, shrugging her shoulder. I can't believe this is happening. And this is crazy. And then I look over to her behind her shoulder and there's Jay Z and Beyonce. So I like walk back to her and I'm like, hey, there's Jay Z and Beyonce. She goes, look behind you. There was Johnny Depp walking with Paul McCartney. And this is like for real. I mean, the name droppiest moment of my life.

And I just, and I was like, Paul, congratulations, because he won a Grammy. He goes, grabs my hand, goes, congratulations to you too. But I didn't win a Grammy. But it was really cool that he said, I mean, so that was my moment with him. And I just feel like I had to say that. So it's on the record that it actually happened. You actually did touch his hand. I did touch, I touched his hand.

I don't know why, but for some reason. Look, it's a cool thing. And it's like those things when you have, they say don't meet your heroes. Yeah. Because you will be disappointed. But actually, we found. the bigger the star, the nicer they are. Because I don't think you can have a career like Paul McCartney has had

without having long-term crew around you there, a crew around him 20, 30 years. The managers are all still the same people, all the business people, all are still the same people because they all fucking like him and he's a likable, lovely person. And actually, it's nice to hear when you walk up, Meshukhtam's hand that he actually said what he said to you

because it just proves that. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of the big stars will be slapping your hand out of the way. Yeah. You know? Get off me. Get off me. Not yours.

No, especially mine. Well, on that note, because I know I had like 20 million things I could ask you. I'm glad we went in the direction we did. But, you know, I think, like you said, I think what's really nice is that you guys come in the studio and it instantly felt like home. And that says a lot about the fact that not only do you write lyrics about still. being true to being from a blue collar area or still having to struggle your way up, but you still are that.

And I think it really helps, failure really helps in somebody's life to recognize how fortunate they are to be successful. But you guys are proving that you can be successful and still be a real human. And you put that across in your lyrics and I'm happy that we're friends. Thanks, brother. And I think we're going to be friends for a lot. long time because you're not a bad songwriter yourself, my funny. So yeah, and we love you. We love what you do. So we're really excited about working with you

and obviously continuing that on. Like I was saying to yesterday, we build relationships and friendships. So hopefully we can continue writing. And in saying that, we're late for the studio. Let's go. Yeah, no, exactly. All right. Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist. list or visit our website at and the writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter.

And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsmah, and published by Big Deal music. A special thanks to Jeff Sparger, David Silberstein from Mega House Music, and Michael White. Here's a sneak peek of next week's, And The Writer is. all the time, man. I mean, my first run here was, my first run was getting coffee for Shug Night. For Shug Night? Yeah, it was like, it was Twilight Zone

because I was like this silly putty Denver kid, you know. Sure. And, I mean, even now, bro, there's a lot more poppin than Denver musically or has been with Luminaires, et cetera, you know, the last decade than there was when I lived there, you know, 2004 and earlier.

So it was like, there was just nothing going on. When I moved to L.A., it was just a huge eye opener, right? So Shug Knight goes and turns to you and says, I don't want to coffee? Oh, man, I can't, I don't want to tell that story. Well, you kind of have to. I guarantee he's not listening to this podcast from his prison cell. Okay, so it has, so I can't exactly, you know, this is all, you know, I'm going to paraphrase, and I don't remember it.

This is all just off memory, but it happens something like this. I pull up the guy that owns the village is, is, you run to tight ship, Jeff. And I love him, man. Yeah. And I mean, that's part of the reason why I'm here now is because they're so excellent to their clients. Not always the greatest guy to work for just because he's a, you know, he's a ball buster. Yeah. And I'll, I wrote my little Honda Civic, you know what I mean?

And I rolled up and the first thing Jeff said to me was just like, don't fuck the so. You know, one of those. And so Shug wanted, it was like a tall cappuccino from Starbucks with eight splendas in it. Eight. Eight Splendos? So I raced to Starbucks. It was my first thing, you know, and I throw the Splendez in the coffee, and I didn't stir it. So I, but I, so I, I came back, man, and I remember pulling in, and, like, Shug was, it was, like, nine in the morning, okay?

And he had been, you know, all-night Bender, you know, and he's standing in the parking lot, like, on the phone. And, uh, I pull up and Jeff's standing there, and he's like, did you, you know, you better not have fuck this up or something like that, man. And I had Jeff the coffee, and he gives it to Shug. Shook takes a sip and he's like, there's no Splenda in here. Because I guess he probably tasted the foam on the top, right? Yeah. So I'll never forget Jeff was just like, go put fucking eight splendid in there. And I'm like, I did.

He's like, go put another eight. So I went and put like eight more splendid in this fucking cappuccino, man. And he just pounded it. And I was like, this is great. Until next time, this is Ross Golden.