For some people, a wall is a wall. Mark Sheehan from Irish trio The Script, however, sees doors where other people see walls. With tenacious ambition in his pocket – along with about £160 - and a firm belief in his musical abilities, Mark left Ireland in the late eighties with his songwriting partner, and now singer of The Script, Danny O’Donaghue, and headed over the Atlantic to the US, to track down some of their R&B musical heroes.
“Who would ever go down to Teddy Riley’s studio and knock on his door – personally I wouldn’t, but he did,” Danny says, crediting Mark’s gumption.
“There was no plan in place – we were just kids with blind ambition, and we had the instincts to follow our dream, and nothing was going to stand in our way. What’s the worst that could happen – they can only say no,” shrugs Mark. “I had nothing to lose – I went for it. The plan was just simply to play for somebody. I knew that if someone heard us, we’d be ok.”
And he was right. Not long after, they got their foot into the door with super-producer Teddy Riley (Guy, Bobby Brown and Jay-Z), but not before running into another couple of wannabe songwriter/producers who were hustling their wares in a parallel storyline.
“Once whilst we were waiting for Teddy Riley and trying to get some time with him to tell him about us, we came across Pharrell and Chad from The Neptunes,” explains Mark. “We had some mutual friends, in particular this artist named Kenna, and so anyway whilst we hanging out front of this hotel this little kid comes up, and he’s in all this denim gear ,and he hands us a tape and asks us to write some stuff to it. That was Pharrell. He and Chad were in the same boat as us and we kinda connected with them. Chad let us in the studio with them when they were recording 'Baby I Got Your Money' for ODB. It was great for us to see another set of upcoming producers at work in the studio.”
Whilst Mark and Danny were working for Teddy Riley as in-house producers and songwriters, working on new artist development and chipping in on sessions for the likes of Ricky Martin, Britney Spears, and N’Sync, before going on to develop their skills further with other behind-the-scenes legends like Dallas Austin (TLC, Michael Jackson), Rodney Jerkins (Janet Jackson, Pussycat Dolls) and Billy Steinberg (Celine Dion, Kylie Minogue).
For the next 6-8 years, the duo worked diligently behind the scenes in the US to make a name, and establish themselves as songwriters and producers – they even flew to Australia on the request of Sony Music to work on sessions for Shakaya, Delta Goodrem, Selwyn and Guy Sebastian (“he’s a fantastic singer – that guy’s amazing,” says Mark).
Despite these achievements, Mark and Danny started to feel frustrated and limited by their work opportunities, and began to put together some musical ideas that would soon become the foundation of a new band to be called The Script.
“Danny was getting a little frustrated through the process of doing this because he was a singer and he wanted to work on his own material too” says Mark. “I was getting frustrated at the different management that were working with us, and we just decided that it was time to move on because [they] weren’t really getting us and what we were trying to do. I was prepared to just produce and help write Danny’s record and stay in the background.
“I knew Glen (Power) from Ireland and he wanted to experience America and see what it was like out there as an Irish musician. To make a long story short, he came out to the States to join us. We all continued to work on Danny’s music together, and from there it all just seemed natural that the project evolved into a band set-up.”
Just as the band were beginning to find their feet, they faced a personal tragedy that saw them return to Ireland. Mark’s mum fell terminally ill and so for the next ten months they stayed close to their respective families, working on music in their spare time. Four month’s after mark’s mum passed away, Danny’s father also passed away.
“It was a dark period for the whole of the band, but we used all that force, all that passion and anger, all that pain and frustration, and just poured it into the songs for this album,” says Danny of the experience.
“Being back in Ireland was like a reawakening because we found ourselves submerged in Irish culture again," Mark continues. “We were back in our area, feeling what the people feel and listening to the same music people were listening to, and that just found itself back in the new music we starting to write.”
Representing a new Ireland
The self-titled album from The Script was recently released in the UK, debuting at #1 on the UK albums chart, spurred on by the two hit singles 'We Cry' and 'The Man Who Can’t Be Moved'. Untamed references and hyperbole have been wildly thrown at them suggesting that they sound like “Timbaland meets U2” and “Teddy Riley meets Van Morrison”. To their credit, The Script are more modest and realistic about these plaudits.
Drummer Glen says, “Look, we don’t think we sound like any of these artists particularly, even though we love them and it’s a huge compliment to us. I think what it is, is that there’s a broad scope of music that falls within those ranges… and we fall within those.”
The Script’s music is certainly pop/soul with immediacy and broad appeal. Fusing together melodic singing with a rap-style that they refer to as ‘folk-talking’, it’s wonder that the terms ‘Celtic-soul’ has been aptly coined by media – and their own record company - to describe the music on their debut release.
“The reference to Celtic-soul came from a journalist who saw one of our early shows,” explains Mark. “I think it refers to the fact that we represent a new Ireland –a young Irish generation who are into soul music. We are an Irish band who make soul music.”
“Mark said something which was great, when he was asked whether soul was inherently an Irish thing,” continues Danny. “He said that soul isn’t a black thing, it’s not a white thing, it’s a human thing. You don’t have to be a particular race to understand, or sing soul – it’s all about scraping the depth from within you, and expressing emotion.”
“For me Garth Brookes has soul,” Mark picks up again. “Chris Martin has soul, Bono has soul, and Kanye West has soul. It’s those artists who are exposing themselves completely and utterly for their music, who have soul to me.”
“If a song moves you, touches your heart, and makes you feel an emotion – which is what we aim for in our songs - then that’s soul music, right there,” adds Glen.
And it’s not just the public who’ve noticed the recent success of The Script. Enlisted to support N.E.R.D. on a recent tour, the band recently reconnected with one of their old acquaintances, and he was equally responsive to what the guys have to be up to of late.
“To be honest I was just hoping that this dude remembered us because otherwise it would have been dead embarrassing,” Mark says of Pharrell Williams, and their recent encounter. “He was so totally cool and he totally remembered the old days. He came over to the hotel room after the show as well and we swapped numbers. You never know what could happen next.”
Some people see doors, where others see walls.
The Script out now through SonyBMG.
