The Voice judge on his journey from Dublin boy in
hand-me-downs to frontman of the Script… and now Saturday night talent show
judge. And all without being remotely cool…
Danny O'Donoghue would like to make it clear that he doesn't
consider himself to be cool. "No fucking way," he says, waving the
thought aside. It's as though I've just asked if he plucks his own nasal hair.
And yet, sitting in a white armchair in his dressing room in Elstree studios,
he has many of the attributes of coolness: the black skinny jeans, the Irish
accent, the tattoos snaking up each arm. At 31, he is a professional rock star,
arguably the coolest job in the world and, as frontman of the Script, has sold
almost 4m albums.
The band – known for catchy, soft-rock hits such as The Man
Who Can't Be Moved and For the First Time – has had two No 1 albums, and
tickets to the Script's British tour last year sold out in 48 hours. Now
O'Donoghue is appearing on Saturday-night television as a coach in the UK
version of talent show The Voice, the BBC's answer to The X Factor, in which
O'Donoghue mentors aspiring musicians alongside will.i.am, Jessie J and Sir Tom
Jones. All of which should make him cool, shouldn't it? O'Donoghue shakes his
head. His gelled-up quiff remains stiffly in place. "No, man. Bono or
Sting – they're cool." Er, really? "Listen, nobody gives Bono the
plaudits he deserves… Sting, he talks about feelings and emotions." Point
taken. No one who was trying to be cool would pick Bono and Sting as their
musical idols.
But what O'Donoghue lacks in coolness he makes up for in
sincerity. On The Voice he insists on saying constructive and supportive things
to each contestant, flying in the face of the talent-show tradition for
Cowell-esque sarcasm and barbed putdowns. But this approach has won him a loyal
following on Twitter. "In four weeks I've got over 300,000
followers," he says, amazed. "Every second one is 'Danny, will you
marry me?' or 'Danny, I had a dream about you last night'. It's really
confusing. What do you do with that? They all know I have a girlfriend
[O'Donoghue has been dating Lithuanian model Irma Mali for four years]. I think
it's just an outpouring of affection. I think I come across as loving music to
the core."
The other night Ricky Gervais knocked on his dressing-room
door. "It was mad!" O'Donoghue says, bouncing up and down in his
chair. "He said he was a fan of the show and the style of judging."
In person, O'Donoghue is good company: engaging,
self-deprecating and thrillingly sweary (every second sentence contains an
F-word, which I hadn't expected from seeing him on pre-watershed TV). He is
open and, unlike many celebrities, refreshingly unconcerned with his own image.
He says that the Script made a conscious decision "never to put ourselves
on poster campaigns or album covers. We don't want to be all about 'a look'.
It's just about the music."
Although he has a stylist for his appearances on The Voice,
you get the impression that he has been wearing the same blokey clothes for
years: shirts, jeans, boots and some crucifix-themed beaded necklaces that
wouldn't have looked out of place in the men's section of River Island circa
1998. Was he offended when Jessie J took him to task on screen for wearing
"double denim"? "Fuck, no," he says, resting one foot
against his knee and jiggling it manically. "Have you seen what she wears?
She's classed her own fashion as 'experimental'. Are you going to trust someone
who sings a song called Price Tag and then wears all that jewellery?"
I get the impression he's not that close to Jessie J. The
nicest thing he says about her is that his girlfriend's nine-year-old daughter
is a fan.
O'Donoghue was not well known in the UK until agreeing to do
The Voice. The producers had signed up Will Young before a last-minute change
of heart (the rumour is they wanted someone more edgy), and for weeks on social
networking sites the Script frontman was referred to as Danny
O'Dunno-who-he-is. But in Ireland – and, crucially, in America – the Script are
big news. Their single Breakeven reached the top of the US Billboard adult pop
and contemporary charts in 2009. The same year, Paul McCartney ("Just a
lovely, lovely man," says O'Donoghue) invited them to support him on tour
in America. The band, comprising O'Donoghue, guitarist Mark Sheehan (the two
have been best friends since the age of 12) and drummer Glen Power, specialise
in anthemic rock. Fans say their music is lyrically driven, incorporating
R&B harmonies and hip-hop rhythms that lift it above run-of-the-mill chart
music. Critics call it middle-of-the-road soft rock.
O'Donoghue speaks of "being honest… the song is
key". Fans turn up backstage with his lyrics written on their arms, he
says. One man came up to him in the street and told him that The Man Who Can't
Be Moved (a song O'Donoghue wrote about returning to the same street corner
each day in the hopes of rekindling a past relationship) had inspired him to
get back in touch with his sister, who had been given up for adoption when they
were children. "They found each other again after 25 years," says
O'Donoghue, "and the first thing he handed her was a copy of that song!
Those are the people who matter to me. I don't care to be the toast of the
town, musically. Who cares if you get no-star reviews in the NME?" There
is a pause. "Not that we have, by the way," he grins.
O'Donoghue was the youngest of six children, born and raised
in the suburb of Ballinteer on the south side of Dublin. "Yeah, you do
become Paddy Last," he says. "You're last at the table, you get
everybody's hand-me-downs." His father, Shay O'Donoghue, was keyboard
player with the successful Irish showband the Dreams, and music ran in the
family. "They were all singers and dancers with big personalities. You had
to find yourself among that – it was quite hard."
For a while the young Danny fought against becoming a
musician – "I'd seen how much Mum missed my dad and my brothers when they
were on the road touring" – but at school he couldn't concentrate on
anything other than songwriting. In the end he dropped out before completing
his leaving certificate. "I idolised my dad," he says. "I would
always bring my songs home to him like a paycheck. We'd talk about it, the
chorus or whatever, and he was really encouraging. My mum now says my dad swore
he knew all of this was going to happen [for me]… He had blind faith."
Danny and best friend Mark were in a boyband called Mytown
which had moderate success in Ireland in the 90s. In search of the big time
they moved to Los Angeles and grafted for the best part of a decade, writing
songs and producing for other artists including Britney Spears, Boyz II Men and
TLC. They got by on little more than Irish chutzpah and "the gift of the
gab". "We'd grown up in a place in Dublin where you had to fight for
everything you had," he says. "Mark and I were little
wheeler-dealers, like Del Boy and Rodney. I was Rodney, the plonker. We'd remix
one song for Justin Timberlake and then say, 'Oh yeah, we made the whole
album'. You big yourself up, you make your name."
O'Donoghue turned up to a meeting wearing a borrowed (but
broken) Rolex and shoes with holes in their soles. He persuaded a mate with a
flash car to drive him there just to make the right impression – and for a time
it worked. They scraped together a living but: "It was really hard. Ask
anyone who goes to LA with no money. It's a great place to live if you're
loaded."
When they couldn't pay the electricity bill they would steal
bags of ice from petrol-station forecourts. "We were these two Irish guys,
running down the street with bags of ice! We'd put it in the bath to keep the
food cold for a few days. We didn't have a pot to piss in but we were smiling
the whole way."
After 10 years the pleasure of writing "mediocre pop
songs" for other artists began to pall and they started working on their
own material, along with drummer Power, a session musician. They called
themselves the Script in honour of their movie-town experience, but the trio
moved back to Ireland to record their eponymous first album when Sheehan's
mother became ill with cancer in 2008. She died 10 months after her diagnosis.
Their music, says O'Donoghue, became "a proper fucking punchbag".
Then O'Donoghue's father dropped dead of a stomach aneurysm
at 63. He died on Valentine's Day; the big rose tattoo on O'Donoghue's left arm
is to commemorate the date.
"He was talking to me in the morning and he was dead by
night-time. You don't even have time to say, 'That's bullshit.' I didn't
realise that I was getting precious time with my dad. I'd been away for 10
years. I got to know my father as a man. It was: 'I know that he loves me but
does he like me?'"
Afterwards, O'Donoghue took refuge in music. "It got me
through… Everything he'd taught me went into the album… every piece of that
pain and hurt. The only justification there is for pain is art." At the
funeral the entire family got up to perform. But his father's death made him
question his faith. "I find it hard sometimes, in my deepest, darkest
moments, to believe." He tilts his head to one side, squints his eyes.
"Really, did you have to take my dad away?" he asks no one in
particular. Yet he feels that by pouring his heart into the Script's first
album he was able "to make the pain into something totally different.
Something that was horrible for you can help somebody else."
Not surprisingly, then, O'Donoghue is unmoved by the
preponderance of manufactured music. He says he's baffled at the popularity of
Justin Bieber. "A lot of new music is light entertainment. I'd rather
listen to Dylan because he tells me something about myself. Aware he might be
sounding pompous he adds: "I see there's a below-20 age group that doesn't
want to be singing about my dead father."
How does he square this with his participation in The Voice?
"It's an undeniable platform. You'd be stupid to think this isn't a great
way of showcasing talent. All of my acts I'd work with outside this. They are
such nice and talented people."
He means it. He is quite possibly one of the most genuine
celebrities I've ever met. "I'm lucky," he says of his success.
"There should be a big 'L' over my head." He looks momentarily
worried. "Not L for Loser," he clarifies. "For Luck."
Source: Guardian
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