ith The Script’s debut album rapidlyclosing in on a phenomenal 1.5 millionsales since its release last August,you could be forgiven for seeing the groupas some kind of overnight success. After all,even people in the know hadn’t heard muchof this Dublin-born trio prior to the releaseof their first record. But the truth is that TheScript’s extraordinary story has been over adecade in the making. Indeed their path tofame has been so littered with booby traps,and so thoroughly fraught, that it’s a miraclethey managed to finish their album, let aloneturn it into a million-selling chart-topper.“It’s a crazy, crazy story,” DannyO’Donoghue acknowledges, settling into aleather seat in the private function roomupstairs in the Spring and Airbrake club inBelfast. “Literally, it happened against all theodds.”He offers the kind of pensive smile that hashad girls swooning all over the world. As thefrontman in the band, he’s also the residentheart-throb, the one who’s always to thefore in the pictures and whose face adornsbedroom walls and computer wallpaper(s)alike.It’s a little over an hour before the groupare due to play downstairs in front of apacked venue, but already we can see a queueof impatient fans spilling around the block.We’d planned to do the interview in theband’s dressing room. However, we’ve hadto move upstairs in order to be able to hearone another over the screaming teenage girlscongregating at the emergency exit doors.It’s quieter here, and the mood encouragesreflection. During the time we’re together,Danny will revisit his childhood and onoccasion peer through the looking glassdarkly, calling up memories usuallyleft dormant.

They came out of nowhere to top the charts in Irelandand the UK, selling well in excess of a million recordsin the process. But since fortune first began to smileon them, when they signed their record deal in the USA,acclaimed Dublin outfit

THE SCRIPT

have been plungedinto an extraordinary saga of injury, death, personalloss and heartbreak, so strange and terrifying that ifyou put it in a movie, no one would believe it.

WORDS

Jason O’Toole

PHOTOS

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YOU COULDN'TMAKE IT UP

enice Beach LA. This was where The Scriptintended to record their first album, inDanny’s own home studio, close to the sea.It was hard to believe. He and Mark Sheehan, themain songwriter in the band, had been living inthe States for over five years. That’s how long it hadtaken them to secure a recording deal for The Script.Five whole years. But they had the contract now.Plus they knew a drummer, Glen Power, back inDublin itching for an escape route after a lifetime onthe covers band circuit. When they were preparingthe demos they’d given him a call and he was on theearliest flight he could find. This was going to bean adventure. Glen felt it in his bones and he wasright. He just didn’t know how awfully big it wouldbecome.What happened in the ensuing months, however,was so far removed from the rising sense of anticipation it was impossible to comprehend.Within weeks of getting a deal signed, The Scriptwere plunged into a nightmare. A complicated,prolonged nightmare.“We’d recorded just scraps and ideas in the studioin my house and we were kind of coming to termswith what type of album this was going to be,”Danny says before pausing... “And – bang! – right inthe middle of that Mark’s mother became terminallyill. We were going through what felt like the most joyous fucking days of our lives and we now had thisto deal with. She had cancer and there was no hope.It was a kick in the fucking teeth. We were at acrossroads. So we asked Mark, ‘Are you willing to bein America while your mum’s slowly passing awayin Ireland?’ And he was like, ‘No, I’m not’.”Danny knew he’d have reacted in the same way.The band decided to return to Dublin and to workon the album in the recording studio Mark had built– with the help of Danny – in his mother’s backgarden. The studio was situated at the rear of St James’ Hospital. You could look over the wall and seethe ambulances wheeling in and out. Mark’s motherhad been taken there. They already knew it was onlya matter of time.“During the day Mark was in with us writingaway,” Danny recalls. “We were really just usingthe studio as a punch bag – he was so pent up withemotion that he’d come in and write shite one dayand the next day he’d come in with a fucking gemof really truthful, honest stuff. It was hard, man. Itwas hard for him. But it was hard for us too – to seeyour best mate going through something like that.Behind it all, you really want him to have his headclear for the big prospect of the first album. We wereproducing and writing it – we had enough rope tohang ourselves here. And his mother kept gettingprogressively worse and worse.”The songwriting became far darker and edgier thanmight have been anticipated.“Out of that period songs like ‘The End Where IBegin’ started to crop up,” Danny says. “These oneline phrases that we felt were so important like

'Sometimes tears say all there is to say.'

That was just a lineyou’d put a full stop on, and move onto the nextstatement.

'Sometimes your first scars won’t ever fade away.'

A lot of times people would listen to the likes of ‘TheMan Who Can’t Be Moved’ or ‘Talk You Down’ andprobably think it was about the end of a relationship– it is in a way, but it’s about that mother-sonrelationship, it’s about that father-daughterrelationship, it’s about that relationship betweenpeople in a family and when one person dies.”For Mark, this was second time around. He’d seenthe grim reaper in action before.“His father died at a very young age,” Dannyexplains. “‘The End Where I Begin’ is about thattime where it could have been the end of him as aperson. It was a very impressionable age for Mark.So his mother was the umbilical cord to where he’dcome from. So when she finally passed away thatwas gone. She’d heard a lot of the songs, which wasgood. She felt the head of steam that was buildingup and it was just a joy for her to get to see Markhappy. He was married now to someone he reallyloved...”If there was comfort in knowing all of that, theband’s equilibrium didn’t last for long. Withinfour months of Mark’s mother’s death, the triofaced another crisis when Danny’s own father diedsuddenly.“I’d been in the States for about seven or eightyears,” Danny reflects. “Coming back really sparkedup the relationship with my dad again. Little did Iknow that, the time Mark was spending with hismother, I didn’t have long left with my own dadeither. It happened out of the blue. One day he camehome from work with stomach pains...”Talking about it isn’t easy. Danny takes a deep gulpof the Belfast air and carries on.“He was dead by 12 o’clock that night. He hada stomach aneurysm that went unchecked for along time. From the slow death of Mark’s mother,we went to this, just four months later,” he says,clicking his finger. “My dad was here one day, gonethe next. Right in the middle of our first album.Hard to believe.”He shakes his head.“You don’t know where the fuck you’re at. Youkind of think, ‘Right, I’m after holding it togetherwith my friend going though it’ – and here I wasnow, going through it myself. It was a very, veryemotional time for the band. Who knows? Whoknows what way the album would’ve gone if thathadn’t happened. What we went through definitelypoured out, and into the album. It was like hammerblow after hammer blow. We actually sat around as aband and went, ‘Are we up to this task?’ Then, whenit was all over, we came out of that time with gunsa-blazing.”Their bad luck hadn’t run out yet. Their single‘We Cry’ – which ultimately went top ten in Irelandand top twenty in the UK – was starting to pick upairplay. They were about to kick off their first majorBritish tour. And then they were hit with anotherhammer blow.“I woke up with a pain in my side,” Danny says.“It was, ‘What the fuck is that? Jaysus!’ I got up outof bed and went down to have breakfast but it feltlike somebody was fucking pulling my lung fromone side.”Danny staggered across the road to his local GP,who dropped a bombshell.“He said, ‘You need to go to the hospital straightaway, kiddo, your lung’s collapsed!’”Danny shakes his head, again in disbelief.At St. Vincent’s Hospital, he remembers beinggreeted by a nurse.“Oh, good Jaysus,” she said. He can still hear hervoice now, the panic in it. He was rushed to theoperating theatre. In minutes the surgeon was there