The words overnight and success do not feature in the Snow Patrol biography. After nine years in the indie wasteland, the Belfast boys fastened their seatbelts and watched as their album, Final Straw, went stratospheric. They've sold out Down Under, gone big in Japan and are on their way to cracking the US. But Ireland and Scotland, where it all began, still matter most to them, lead singer Gary Lightbody tells Brian Boyd
If a week is a long time in politics, try nine years in an indie wasteland. Belfast's Snow Patrol were going down the up escalator after their first two albums threatened but didn't deliver. After parting company with a small label which was "too poor to promote them", the doors of the Last Chance Saloon would swing wide open whenever they passed. Stubbornly, they self-financed a bunch of demos and got picked up by a major. On January 23th of this year, one of the demos was aired as their new single on the radio. A shimmering, lighters-in-the-air indie anthem, Run accomplished more in its four minutes than anything they had done over the past nine years.
The single charted, as did the resultant album, Final Straw. The live shows went from clubs to theatres to arenas; they toured the United States five times; sold out in Japan and Australia; they were a wow at Glastonbury, Oxegen and T in the Park. More singles followed; the album wouldn't budge from the upper reaches of the chart; they were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize; went multi-platinum and less than a year on from the first playing of Run, they find themselves headlining an RDS show on December 29th.
"It shouldn't have happened," says lead singer Gary Lightbody, catching his breath in between two jammed Olympia Theatre gigs in Dublin last week. "We were bloody minded about continuing even though every signal screamed out 'Stop!'. But a combination of self-belief and just sheer belligerence forced us into making
Final Straw - at the time it was more to prove to everyone that we had another album in us. We started it with no label. I remember the first week in the studio we were just really terrified, thinking we were going to have to put the album out ourselves and not knowing how to go about doing that. For us, it used to be all about just getting our records into the shops. To put all this in perspective, our first two albums sold about 7,000 copies each; this one has sold over one million."
To put it in another perspective, this kind of progress is usually only associated with Olympic athletes who have been jacking-up Grade A pharmaceuticals. Have Snow Patrol been taking songwriting-enhancing drugs? Will their gold discs be taken off them? The investigation begins in the unlikely surrounds of Dundee University in 1994 where Lightbody, a philosophy student, bumped into guitarist and fellow Belfast native Mark McClelland. "Our eyes met across the crowded dance floor," he says. "I knew he was the one for me - musically. We liked the same bands and decided to form one of our own. That was the beginning of Snow Patrol, or rather Polar Bear as we were known then."
It's difficult now to think of a Stiff Little Fingers/Therapy/Ash/Polar Bear axis of Belfast (and environs) musical talent, but thankfully the bass player from Jane's Addiction had first claim on the awful Polar Bear band name, so keeping on a northern trip, the band became Snow Patrol.
"It's strange with the Belfast thing - and I'm actually from Bangor just outside Belfast - but the band I really worshipped growing up were The Undertones," says Lightbody. "Of course I was aware of Belfast's heritage, but it was really The Undertones who gave me my teenage kicks, so to speak."
Signed to Glasgow label, Jeepster (home to Belle and Sebastian), Snow Patrol had been formed in the white heat of Seattle grunge and it showed.
"It was all American rock back then - we were listening to The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Soundgarden and Nirvana - but also My Bloody Valentine and the Super Furry Animals. For a long time it was anything that sounded like it had 30 guitars on it, but I remember the year we formed was the same year that Jeff Buckley released Grace and from that we got into Tim Buckley."
Their first album, Songs For Polar Bears (1998) barely registered on the radar screens and the second, When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up (album titles you will have gathered are not their strong point - excluding the quite literal Final Straw) similarly stalled. They made a few waves in Belfast and Glasgow, but with their label apparently spending all their time and energy on Belle and Sebastian, opportunity wasn't knocking.
"With Jeepster, there was one last throw of the dice - it was at the time that garage rock was really happening and there were suggestions that maybe we should change our name to 'The' something, but we didn't want to change our name and still be playing Snow Patrol songs," he says.
Parted from Jeepster and stuck in a studio demo-ing the third album, even their "belligerence and bloody mindness" were running thin when a succession of industry breaks turned everything around. First they got picked up by an offshoot of Polydor called Black Lion and then producer Garrett Lee entered stage left. "Of course we were wary about signing to a major when Polydor made an offer, because we're all dyed-in-the-wool indie kids," says Lightbody. "But it turned out Polydor would just be doing the promotion and radio and the Black Lion label is basically just three guys who sit in a small corner of Polydor - three guys who are very passionate about music and have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything.
"The second thing was Garrett Lee - a Dublin guy who used to be in a band called Compulsion but has been working as a producer for the last few years - he's worked with acts such as Basement Jaxx and has done mixes for Eminem and Run DMC. On paper, it seemed like this really odd combination, but Garrett was the final piece in the jigsaw. We bonded over punk rock, Sly Stone and Californian pop. I think now looking back, if any of these elements were wrong, it just wouldn't have happened". As Jacknife Lee, Garrett Lee went on to help produce the new U2 album.
While everyone concerned with the album believed Run to be the single, the band themselves demured. "That's just our stubborness again," he says. "The song did stand out, but just to spite people we went to great lengths to make it six minutes long. Finally, people managed to bash it down to single length, even though we were adamant that the song wasn't to be the centrepiece of the album - and the fact that subsequent singles from the album (Spitting Games, Chocolate) have done well also justifies our approach."
It also helped the album's case that the band were working from a far broader canvas, as Lightbody admits: "I think it's the first time I've written about something
other than my own life, so much more went into this album. It was a really scary time when we were making it and the horror of the Iraq war impacted on the album. There are still the usual Snow Patrol themes on there, but I do think we accomplished more than usual."
Since January, with the band spending so much time in the US where they are making a considerable dent in the charts, the success of the album came as a surprise. They knew it was selling, and a lot, but it was only when they started touring in Ireland and Britain that they realised the full extent of their new arena rock status.
"It does creep up on you," he says. "Obviously we were used to a very different type of crowd with previous albums, but when you've been away for a while and then suddenly find yourselves in the charts, there's a big change. I remember coming back from the US, not long after Run was released and playing the Mandela Hall in Belfast. The people were just amazing and we were just completely blown away by their reaction. Even though we're based in Glasgow, we're an Irish band and the shows in Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow have always been extra special for us. For us, it's like we have twohomes - Ireland and Scotland."
Eleven months on and Lightbody still can't figure out what the highlight of his year has been. "There've been so many, we've been to places we never thought we'd get to and the very fact that we've done five US tours over the past year is, I suppose, a highlight in itself. There's things like doing the David Letterman show; playing this festival in Byron Bay in Australia, that gig in Japan, or how we went down at Oxegen or T in the Park - all really special moments, but, at a push, I'd say the Belfast Mandela Hall gig was the highlight."
Determined to take the first half of next year off to begin work on the follow-up album - "I'm not going to be pressurised into making a quick follow-up just to please the record company," he says. Lightbody reflects on the sardonic title of the band's breakthrough album: "I wish people knew just how literally we meant that title. And the feeling now just is hey, we're back from the brink."
Snow Patrol play the Ulster Hall, Belfast on December 22nd and 23rd and the RDS Main Hall on December 29th
