They have more gold and platinum albums than band members, but The Script will be the first to tell you their success is down to old fashioned hard work. After lead singer Danny O’Donoghue left his post as a judge on BBC’s The Voice to concentrate on the band, the group has continued going from strength to strength with no sign of stopping.

Your Move spoke to Danny ahead of the band’s ‘No Sound Without Silence’ tour about graveyards, space and rescuing fans.

 

You’re back in the UK to tour your fourth album, ‘No Sound Without Silence’. Do you still get nervous?

Yeah but you only get nervous because you care. It’s a different kind of nerves as well. There’s always nerves of ‘am I going to forget the lyrics’ but now it’s nerves such as ‘am I going to do a great show’. This could be the seventh time we’re seeing a lot of these people and I always hope that by the end of the night they’re not bored with us.

 

Do you have any rituals before you go on stage?

Other people on the tour have a lot of excitable energy and when you’re around that you tend to get incredibly nervous. We kick everyone out of the room and do a special secret ritual just before we go on stage, but no one knows what it is.

 

You were in Japan earlier this year, what’s it like performing there?

That was incredible; it was our third time in Japan. We played a huge show which was great, and it’s good to know the love is still there. We’re looking to do a festival over there so we’ll be back in the summer and I can’t wait.

Japanese crowds are really interesting. When you start a song they’re all on their feet going crazy but in between the songs, there is a real respect and they want to hear what you have to say as opposed to over here, where everyone is just screaming their heads off.

 

You’re coming to Liverpool in March. Do you get to explore the cities you visit?

Liverpool is actually one of my favourite cities; this may sound weird but it has really nice churches and graveyards. I took up photography a few years back and churches and graveyards have a great atmosphere for taking photographs. I like going to local markets and walking around the cities taking photographs with a disguise on. It’s my way of finding out about the city, but also having a good diary of where I’ve been to. Being in a band, you tend to drink a lot and forget what you did the week before, but its good having photographic proof and knowing I was there.

 

Aside from rescuing a woman from her car on the motorway, what’s the most unusual thing that’s happened to you on tour?

I don’t think anything has happened that was crazier than that. We were on our way to a show in Manchester, and then we saw the car spinning out. We saw the girl was in a lot of trouble, we saw the crash and then we dialed 999 straight away. Mark [Sheehan, vocals and guitar] and I ran over to the car first and we had to stop the traffic so that we could get her out to the side of the road to wait for the emergency services to arrive.

It took her about 20 minutes to work out who we were. She was like ‘I know you from somewhere’, then she said ‘oh my god, you’re The Script!’. We took a selfie with her and then she got carted off in an ambulance to the hospital. During her ride over, she called the radio station who we were playing for that night because she hadn’t thanked us and was like ‘The Script, you saved my life!’.

 

The Script was the first band to perform at the legendary Queen Vic pub in Eastenders as part of BBC’s Children in Need. If you could perform anywhere in the world, where would you still like to play?

Performing at the Queen Vic was really incredible. We’re getting to see and perform in a lot of different places now, but I think performing in space would be really cool. I haven’t had the call from Richard Branson yet, just waiting for that to happen!

We did get to play at a place in Colorado called Red Rocks. It’s a huge amphitheatre made of giant red stones, it’s fantastic. It looked like Mars because of the red rocks, so that was almost like being in space.

 

There are rumours that you’re free around Glastonbury weekend. Would you like to play the Worthy Farm festival?

This year we’re doing every festival other than Glastonbury, so we scheduled that in as a weekend off. I want to go to Glastonbury, I don’t want to play Glastonbury. Not a lot of people know that I’m a genuine lover of music. I love going to festivals; I love getting all muddy and staying in a tent, I get a real kick out of that.

My favourite festival I’ve ever been to is V Festival. Glastonbury is great but it has a lot of rock acts, whereas at V, it goes half rock and half pop so I really enjoy the mix. My manager has a lot to do with V so I always get treated like royalty there.

 

You and Mark from The Script have been best friends since you were 12. Looking back, did you ever think you’d reach this level of success?

No. The funny thing is though, back then we were sure something was going to happen. We kept the dream alive for long enough; everyone has that dream of what they want to do and maybe you never reach it but at least you’re trying to get there. Along the journey we realised ‘we have a really good shot at this’ so we kept our heads down and kept working at the music. We didn’t come off a reality show, none of our brothers or sisters are famous, and we had to do it show after show, gig after gig in the old fashioned way. We’re really proud of that.

It’s really mad how far we’ve come. For instance last year we sold out Croke Park in Dublin, the same place where we supported U2 in our first year, and it was just amazing. [It’s been] an incredible journey.

 

The Script will perform at Echo Arena Liverpool on 5 March. For tickets and tour details, visit www.thescriptmusic.com