The Script star Danny O'Donoghue on playing without late bandmate Mark Sheehan: "I know he would push us on"
The Script will be heading on the road this November with their Satellites World Tour.
The Script star Danny O’Donoghue has said it was a difficult decision to continue with the band after the death of bandmate Mark Sheehan.
The guitarist, who was one of the founding members of the band alongside O’Donoghue and drummer Glen Power, died in April last year following a short illness.
O’Donoghue and Power continued with the band, and they were later joined by musicians Ben Sargeant and Ben Weaver.
Appearing on The One Show to discuss the band's new album Satellites, their first since the death of Sheehan, and a global tour, O’Donoghue was asked by host Alex Jones whether it had been a hard decision to go on with the band following Sheehan’s death.
"Yeah, such devastating news like that, when that happens you have to reevaluate your whole life and myself and Glen just sat around thinking well, what would Mark do?" he said.
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"And I know he would push us on, he was always like the driving force of the band, very charismatic guy… We were lost without him in those first few months. The decision we made was, we didn’t want to replace him in the band, we wanted to start a new chapter. So what we wanted to do was, instead of it being the three piece we went with a four piece."
He continued: "We engaged with our fans, we engaged with everybody just to see if this was the right thing to do. Our gut instinct was, that music has helped me through literally every dark moment in my life and I was hearing Mark in my ear, being like: 'Finish what we both started.'"
O'Donoghue has previously opened up about drinking and smoking heavily in the wake of Sheehan’s death.
Speaking on Lorraine at the start of 2024, he said: "Around Christmas-time, I went off the rails after Mark passed away. Like everybody does. Drinking, smoking, everything.
"I went on a mental block – I had a writers' block for a long time last year."
He went on to say that it was only when he thought of the lyric "a shooting star across the sky" that he was able to break through the block and work on the band’s new material.
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"It was the first time I was really able to articulate what I thought about the situation and the floodgates really opened then, as far as being creative [went]," he said.
"I want to face the grief stone cold sober," he added. "If you don’t, you’re only kicking it down the street."
Satellites will be released on 16th August. The Script will embark on a world tour following the release of the album, beginning in Cardiff on 18th November.
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