By Joanna Orland & Isla MC
If you haven’t heard of Snow Patrol then I’ve no idea where you’ve been for the last eighteen months or so. They burst onto the UK music scene last year with the single ‘Run’, on a wave of commercial support from Radio One and XFM, and enjoyed immediate success and popularity. Often referred to in the same breath as Keane and Elbow, their thing is anthemic indie guitar ballads. Joanna saw them at Glastonbury last year, and was pretty impressed. The whole crowd sang along to ‘Run’ in a show of support that brought frontman and songwriter Gary Lightbody to tears.
We caught up with the man Lightbody backstage at Get Loaded In The Park after the band’s DJ set, in which they played classics from the Jackson Five, Dusty Springfield and the like. Here are some things we learnt about Gary and Snow Patrol that day (although our audio from the interview is A.W.F.U.L. so I might not be able to glean much!):
“I don’t know if you’ve come across the phrase reverse polarity? I’ve got it. If I touch anything with wires or computer chips then I short circuit it. I bust the kit today after we played our first record. There was a whole minute of silence while they brought out Paul Oakenfold’s DJ rig.”
“We’ve been doing this band for years. Then when people finally started listening to us, the media said we were part of some movement we’d never even heard of, alongside Keane and everyone.”
“Sometimes it’s very difficult to communicate with the people you love. Songwriting can be a way of saying things that you’re too scared to say.”
“In the UK, it’s restricted to one or two major radio stations. It makes it so much harder for new bands to be heard because it’s all about playlists.”
Their one word is ‘Belligerent.” Although I don’t know if this is strictly true. Lightbody didn’t seem very aggressive to me. More like a chirpy but intense Irish fella.
This audio’s fookin’ shite. Fifteen minutes of interview audio and this is all I got! Oops. Oh well, that’s all folks.