The Men Who Can’t Be Moved

“They say bad things happen for a reason”

Of course, so do good things when it comes to The Script.

Relatively young in the music industry, the London-based pop rock trio brings their schmaltzy love songs to Fort Canning Park at Singapore on Apr 12 in response to overwhelming requests by local fans via their website.

The band, fresh from touring England, home ground Ireland and Australia, were psyched to see their fans in Singapore. The best part about touring? “Seeing all of the new places, meeting new people, trying out new food, you just get to see the world” proclaimed drummer Glen Power, “And you get to do it while you’re doing what you love, play for different audiences and see how different each country is and how the reaction is like.”

Made famous by singles such as ‘We Cry’, ‘The Man Who Can’t Be Moved’ and platinum single ‘Breakeven’, the band from Dublin has opened for acts from many parts of the world including rock band, U2, which is one of their major sound influences.

The 3, namely frontman and songwriter Danny O’Donoghue,  guitarist Mark Sheehan and Glen Power, make music that tells stories mostly revolving around themes of love and heartbreak, much of them being heard in popular TV series such as 90210, Ghost Whisperer, The Hills, Waterloo Road, Eastenders and The Vampire Diaries.

Drummer Glen Power of the trio tells us more about the band at Hotel Fort Canning before their concert later that night.

How do you find Singapore so far?

“I love it! I think it’s very hot and sticky (laughs) I’ve been out to the pool outside, I got (sun)burnt by the pool. We got here last night and we were really tired and we didn’t sleep, the flight was 8 hours from Australia, we had food along the way, which was really good. Everybody’s really friendly, people couldn’t be any more helpful, judging from that I think it’s a great place and people seem very open with us. For me the real judge of it all will be going on stage tonight and seeing what the love is going to be like and the reactions from the audience, that’s when I get a good feel from a place then.”

Did you choose to come to Singapore for your tour?

“Yes, we’re very much in touch with our online activity, with our Twitter and Myspace so we actually saw a lot of activity online from Singapore asking us to come here. Then our management came and said, ‘Look, you’ve been asked to go, will you guys do it?’ and we were like, ‘Absolutely!’ We just came from a very long tour of Ireland, England and Australia, and at the end of it we were going to take some time off and go back home, but we were asked to come here and do the 3 shows and we were like, ‘Bring it on!’ So this is our first time here as a band to play the full show so we’re very excited.”

What was your main inspiration for Science and Faith?

“I suppose it would be the Yin and Yang of relationships, the push and pull, the struggle between male and female, male and male, female and female, the whole album is kind of based around that. It’s put onto the umbrella of Science and Faith, it’s about the individuality between 2 people in a relationship and how they try to adjust to each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”

What’s your favourite song from the album?

“‘You Won’t Feel A Thing’. It’s our opening song and it was the first song that we wrote for the album in America. We were in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and when we started to work on it and it just sounded great straightaway and there and then I knew this is going to be the opening song of our next tour because it just sounds like that. “

How do you guys come up with the songs?

“It could be anything. Sometimes we could be sitting in a bar and someone might say one thing and you’ll hear them and you’ll go, ‘Oh!’ and you’ll get a pen down and write it down or you could be having a row with somebody and they would say something back to you and you go, ‘There’s a line!’ It can come from anywhere, we don’t have a formula, there’s not one person in the band that has one particular role that does the main writing, but we chop and change all the time. Sometimes Mark tries out the drum kit, I play the beat and then we’ll use that or I’ll sit down then do what he’s doing, if I want to play the guitar with him then he has to learn it, or I’ll go, ‘Listen to this!’ We don’t have any rules. If it sounds good, we chase it down.”

What’s the biggest challenge for The Script so far?

“I think adjusting to this lifestyle has been the biggest challenge so far. To go from wondering what’s going to happen, to literally wondering when you’re going to get a day off, that’s a challenge, and to be away from your family all the time, to tour as heavily as we do, to try and keep a healthy lifestyle around it all. Because at the start we were all, ‘This is great,’ we’re drinking lots of beer and all that, then you start to get a bit sick and a bit tired and you have to kind of be careful with that, so I think the biggest challenge is finding balance amidst this tornado that we’re in.”

Do you guys still get nervous on stage?

“Yes! Before we go on, we get a bit nervous, when you’re out there, not so much. Also, it depends on what it is that you’re doing and who’s in the audience. You can sometimes be a little open in your head and psych yourself out and get very nervous, which I did when we supported U2. They are like heroes of mine, and to go on their stage thinking – Are they in the building? Are they watching us right now? That’s the most nervous I’ve ever been, but generally, you’ll always get a little bit nervous and I think you need that to do a good show. If you don’t get nervous, you don’t really care. We’re always eager to entertain and put on a great show for fans and stuff, so yes, we do get nervous. It takes one song and then you kind of settle back down, and then you’re in performance mode, and then it all comes naturally then.

Usually what we do is we have a thing called ‘Cheekier’. Which is basically we have a little shot of Grey Goose vodka, so everybody does one of those and then we jump on the spot, we stretch a little bit, I’ve got drumsticks which I have on the pad, I warm up a little bit and stuff, but usually when I’m walking up to the stage I’m not that nervous. It’s only when the lights go down and you hear everybody screaming, you get an adrenaline shot in your belly that just goes ‘pooof’ and it goes all around you and you get adrenalized very quickly, and then I just walk out and go for it, you know? (laughs) Because you’ve got to just try and keep yourself calm. Like I said, first song is usually the place where the nerves are high and you’re just trying to keep it together and make sure you don’t make a mistake.”

So which country do you guys wish to play at the most?

“Every country! That’s my goal, definitely. Before I die I’d like to say that I’ve played everywhere, I’ve played in the biggest places, and all of the places in the world, that’s the dream. And if I even fall short just slightly of that, it’s still a good target to try and aim for.”

What’s your most memorable experience on stage?

“That’s a hard one! I suppose, the gig with U2 was a very memorable one, going out there in front of 82,000 people. Yeah, and we walked down onto there and we’re an Irish band as well so they are all Irish people (Well, most of them) and when we played, they were all singing along to the words of the song. I have never forgotten what that felt like, to look at that many people, and we played for Paul McCartney in New York at Shea Stadium and that was even more… I think 93,000 people? And to walk out to that stage and look at that many people, it’s like, ‘Wow!’ you know? So that’s 2 big memories that I have for me that I will never forget.:

When was the first time you heard your song on the radio?

“First song would be ‘We Cry’. We were in a little small van, and we were going to do a festival and we were all cramped into the van and it came on the radio. There was a DJ called Jo Whiley over in England that played it, she was the first one in England to play it, and we told our driver to pull over because we couldn’t hear it properly and we said, ‘Stop the van!’ and we pulled over on the other side to listen to it. It was the first time hearing it through speakers in a car, because we always hear it in the studios, this was our first real experience of hearing it on the radio. It was a very amazing feeling to hear yourself being played over radio and know that everybody’s listening to it and that’s you playing there, you know? That was the first time, and we’d always remember that one.”

So what do you expect of tonight’s show?

“I’d expect people are going to be shocked by what they’re going to see, because we’re going to put on a great show. We’ve been waiting to do this for a while and I’m so glad that at the end of that tour we’ve decided to come here. I think I’d expect a lot of screaming? (laughs) I’d expect a lot of people are going to get very excited when we walk out to play the first song and then it’s just going to be non-stop. We’ve toured for the last 5 years and we’ve really got ourselves to a point where we have a great show, I think people are going to see a show that they haven’t seen before with any other band and they’ll see our sincerity and our performance and how much we want people to enjoy it. When we get out there, we really give it everything we have, and a little bit more.”

Is there anything different with tonight’s concert with any other shows?

“This is the first one over here (in Asia) so I think we’re really going to go for it tonight. You can do a 10-day tour and do 2 nights that are magical and you spend the other 8 nights trying to get that back. I’m hoping tonight will be one of those nights.”

What do you miss most when you’re on tour?

“Myfamily! Family and friends, and then after that would be home-cooked food (laughs)! Thank god for the internet, Skype, things like that, we get to use our laptops and call home, it’s tricky though with the time differences because it’s only daytime there when it’s night-time here, I’d end up staying up late here and I’d be tired the next day because I’m ringing my friends and my family back home.”

Do you have any advice for young budding musicians?

“You need to … have a dream in your head and you need to have a goal of where you’d want to go. Even if you’re not sure how to get there, you need to know – You’d want to be like this person that you see doing it already, or like a band you see doing it already, you need to really have a picture in your mind of where it is you want to go to, otherwise you’re like a guy with a bow and arrow in the forest, with a blindfold on, trying to hit trees. You can’t see them! And that’s what somebody without a goal and a dream is like. They’re just shooting arrows and trying to wait for one to fall or hit something. You need to take the blindfold off and see the tree and go “I want that” and then climb over everything to get there, that’s kind of the advice I would give. If someone says no to you, just go and ask somebody else, wait until you get a ‘Yes’, just keep, keep going. And always practice and practice and try to get better, you know, never take it for granted.”

What is The Script’s main goal?

“Our main goal is to be the biggest band that we can be, and I think we’re not the biggest band we can be yet, I think we’re on the way to it. I think we’re not even halfway there yet, I think we’re a quarter of the way. I think we’re going to be quite big, I believe that. My biggest dream? To play stadiums all around the world, everywhere I go, for everyone to know, who the band is, and who we are as a band.”

Do you guys ever get sick of playing the popular songs?

“No, never ever, that’s the funny thing! I’ve played in bands before this band, playing cover songs for years and go, “Not this song again!” and you’d be bored. Not with us because, each night is a different challenge.”

Any last words to your fans in Singapore?

“Yeah! Thank you for having us here, thanks for buying tickets to our shows, and you know, hope you enjoy tonight and we’re so grateful that we’re here. We’re so grateful that our fans here have shared our music with other fans and told it to other people because our fans are our number one weapon out in the world that we have, they tell the people about us, so without our fans we wouldn’t have our jobs, so thank you for giving us this job.”

Check out The Script’s concert review here.

Photo courtesy of: Ling Tay, Klix Photography
Acknowledgements to Sony Music.