Irish band The Script book return to Australia after shock death of guitarist Mark Sheehan
The Script frontman Danny O’Donoghue has revealed how he forged ahead after losing his best friend and bandmate, ahead of the band’s return to Australia.
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The Script frontman Danny O’Donoghue was flying high, exhilarated and terrified as he tried out P!nk’s famous aerial rig for the fun of it before that night’s show in Stockholm.
Bouncing around in the rafters of the arena, the rocker was a long way from rock bottom where he dwelled for months last year after the sudden death of his best mate and band co-founder Mark Sheehan from an unspecified brief illness. He was just 46.
“Last year I went down a hole, drinking and smoking and eating … and everything else. It’s a tough place to be, man, just trying to look for things (to fill) every silent moment, something that will make you feel better,” he says.
“The washing machine (in your head) starts to go and dealing with something this heavy, I know from other people, my family and friends, is that you need to deal with all of this stuff stone cold sober.”
On December 27 last year, eight months after Sheehan’s death, O’Donoghue gave up drinking, smoking and caffeine.
He had decisions to make that would not only determine his own future but that of his bandmate Glen Power and the team behind The Script, many of whom have been “family” for the past 15 years.
“I had to make some really important decisions that would affect me for the rest of my life and would affect the band and all the family we’ve built up over the years … and I just wanted to do right by what we’ve done,” he says.
“I’m the singer of the band, the face of the band but Mark would have been the leader of the band, so I’ve doubled the work I do now that we used to do together.”
His first decision – to continue or not – was the toughest. O’Donoghue and Sheehan had been best friends since they were 12. After the dissolution of their first group, an ill-fated boy band called MyTown, the pair left Dublin to base themselves in Los Angeles as a songwriting and production partnership.
Having honed their studio skills writing and recording for artists including Britney Spears and TLC, the men returned to Dublin to form The Script, enlisting Power as their drummer.
The Irish trio made an instant impact with their big-hearted, well-crafted pop rock songs Breakeven and The Man Who Can’t Be Moved in 2008, maintaining their ride to the top with For The First Time and Nothing before exploding into the streaming stratosphere – and as the soundtrack to every sports broadcast on the planet – with Hall of Fame and Superheroes.
So writing another Script song without the man he had bounced off every idea and who had challenged him to write a better lyric, to sing a better melody, was not going to be easy.
When O’Donoghue got sober, his writer’s block finally dissipated and Sheehan’s ghost and the constant consideration of “what would Mark do?” drove him to keep going on new works that would become the band’s seventh record Satellites.
“He’s definitely present on the record because it’s so fresh; the feeling of him, and his ghost, were definitely around and I had him on my mind or on my shoulder because we recorded a lot of these songs in the same room, on the same machines,” O’Donoghue says.
“I even used his beautiful Firebird guitar when I was writing some of the songs.”
With longtime touring bassist Ben Sargent and new guitarist Ben Weaver on board, the first taste of The Script 2.0 came with the single Both Ways, with an upbeat swagger and groove – and irresistible whistled melody- you might associate with Maroon 5 or OneRepublic.
The anthemic At Your Feet was the next single and shares its DNA with U2 and Coldplay.
The song O’Donoghue wrote in tribute to his late mate, Gone, is the centrepiece of the new record.
He wrestled for months about what to write about Sheehan’s passing. It couldn’t be a mournful ballad; his mate would have hated that.
And then one day, like all good songs do, a lyric just popped into his head: “Like a shooting star across the sky, In a second you were gone. Why do stars that light up twice as bright, Only burn for half as long?”
That encapsulated that angry edge of his grief, shared with Sheehan’s family and the band’s fans, that the musician had been taken way too soon.
“He is that guy to his family and friends, he is that guy to Ireland, the f---ing shooting star,” O’Donoghue said.
“What a life he had, the rags to riches story, and a beautiful life to have lived. And why do they always take the f---ing good ones too soon? The longer time moves past what actually happened, past dealing with the shock of it, I just can’t believe how young he was. That’s the mad part of it.”
After wrapping their duties as openers for the European leg of P!nk’s Summer Carnival world tour, the band head back out with the So What singer for her final shows in the US.
And then they do that lap all over again for their own Satellites headlining tour before returning to Australia for A Day On The Green and arena shows in January and February.
Satellites is released on August 16. A Frontier Member presale for their Australian shows opens at 10am local time on August 6, with general tickets on sale from noon local time on August 9. All ticket details via frontiertouring.com/thescript
Satellites world tour Australian shows
Bimbadgen Estate, Hunter Valley – January 25
Sirromet Wines, Mount Cotton – January 26
WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong – January 28
ICC Sydney Theatre January 30
Mt Duneed Estate, Geelong – February 1
Peter Lehmann Wines, Barossa Valley – February 2
Burswood Park, Perth – February 5
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