It's bio-pic material all right: the story of four, young country people (straw in their hair, optional) who recorded a few songs, thought nothing of it but soon found themselves on a rock 'n' roll roller-coaster which, in the space of four short years, saw them sell a staggering 32 million albums and become one of the biggest rock acts in the world. But just before someone shouted "that's a wrap", it all went a bit noir.
As one of Polygram's biggest selling acts - after U2 - there was pressure on them to tour, tour and tour again (three times around the world in as many years); pressure for more "product" (an album which was churned out in five weeks and mauled by the press); stories of inter-band friction - travelling on separate tour buses and drink-fuelled tantrums, complaints of press intrusion and persistent rumours of anorexia and mental illness, exclusively directed at Dolores. In the final scene The Cranberries have decided to break up and go home to Limerick to lick their wounds after being eaten up and spat out by the music industry. There was to be no sequel.
"It was the worst time of my life, I was underweight, drinking too much and very depressed," says Dolores O'Riordan, of the period two years ago when the band decided to cancel a world tour half-way through and take a possibly permanent break from the music world. "What happened was the culmination of a number of things: after fighting to get recognised for our first album, Every- body Else, and eventually breaking the US, we had toured all over the place and then toured again for another year and a half after bringing out the second, No Need To Argue. We were spending all our time living in tour buses and hotel rooms and this had been going on for four years. Then after just finishing one world tour, we were in the studio to record another album, Faithful Departed, and then back out on another one-and-a-half-year world tour. I was just so stressed out it made me sick."
For someone who always treated the media with equal parts suspicion and hostility, Dolores just couldn't get her head around the press interest in her life and for a while thought that everyone was looking at her, talking about her and spreading malicious rumours about what illnesses she might or might not have. "There were things like I'd have photographers following me around the supermarket," she says, "and having people taking photographs of me when I was at my grandmother's funeral. It was on the front cover of some newspaper the next day, me at the funeral with my grandmother laid out . . ."
The band finally took the decision to cancel the tour and walk away from music for as long as it took, after Dolores' health deteriorated. "My basic functions started to go," she says, "I couldn't sleep at all and hadn't done so properly for three months. I thought about taking sleeping pills but I was just so freaked out by those stories about Elvis Presley and sleeping pills that I couldn't, so I drank instead. I'd come off stage and have a few glasses of wine and then a half bottle of port. All my drinking was done on the quiet because I had no interest in socialising or clubbing. I had given up eating because I wasn't interested and just drank coffee and smoked. I was down to six-and-a-half-stone, not because I was anorexic or anything, but because I wasn't eating.
"There were also problems with the press because I had walked out of one interview and people started to think I was this colossal bitch. Then I just said `I'm not doing any press again' so I didn't have an opportunity to explain why I walked out of an interview and when you don't do press, the rumours just start flying. People used to go on about my money (she's worth a conservative £30 million) all the time, and where I was living and what I wore."
When the time came to call halt, the band found it wasn't as easy to get themselves out of their tour as they had thought: "It was so frightening" she says, "we had signed so many contracts to go to certain countries and do certain shows and people were going `you can't cancel the tour' and I was going `Oh, but I haven't slept for three months and I can't eat'. So I had to go to all these doctors and I'd have to stand in a room full of four male doctors which was very intimidating. I just kept thinking `I'm not in control any more'. I wanted to go somewhere where people didn't give a toss about who I was. I felt like a puppet, an object and I was being told to go on stage again and to travel around again when I was really sick and screwed up. It was even more serious than I thought. I ended up going to see a shrink and as it turned out he was a really nice man and it was a really nice thing."
Dolores found herself back in Ireland and decided the band would have to go. "I just vowed never to sing again, I had no interest at all. Luckily I had people around me who were very supportive of the decision the band took to stop and they were saying `It's OK, we understand', so I took an extended break." The other three members of the band, brothers Noel and Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawlor, were in a similar state to Dolores and all had individually thought about breaking up the band but were waiting for someone else to make the first move. They had been worried about Dolores' weight loss and their own descent into rock 'n' roll mayhem. "It was on my mind all the time and I just wanted the whole thing to stop," says guitarist Noel Hogan, "but none of us wanted to be the first to speak up and stop all the madness, so we were relieved when Dolores made the first move."
Back in Limerick, where all the band still live, Dolores vowed never to sing again - "I associated it with being sick and depressed".
Well over a year passed before things levelled out and the band felt like reuniting. In the meantime two of the band, Mike and Fergal had got married and Dolores had her first baby, Taylor, with her Canadian husband, Don Burton. While she was pregnant, she had got back in touch with song-writing partner, Noel, and the band had gone into the studio to demo some new songs.
"I think with the last album, Faithful Departed, it had been quite serious and all about death and dying," she says. "It was very intense and dark and heavy and with the new songs we wanted to bring a sort of fun to them. We spent over six months on the album, in different studios in Canada and France working on it - which is a real luxury for us and we had this new producer, Ben Fenner, who had previously worked with Brian Eno and James and he had such a good sense of humour, sometimes I'd have to do six or seven takes of a vocal just because I'd be laughing so much. We decided to call the album, Bury The Hatchet because it referred to how we felt as a band, about how we were going to split and all the ups and downs we had been through. It was a case of getting over the past and moving on."
Certainly a lighter affair than the over-wrought last album, the band themselves are very pleased with the work, so much so that they've agreed to go back out on tour. "I think it's going to be different this time though, we're just going to do six weeks then take three weeks off" says Dolores. "We actually did our first gig in years a while back at the Nobel Peace Prize presentation in Oslo and it felt great to be back - even if we were playing in front of an audience of dickie bows. The last few years have been an amazing learning experience and I now know that I have to look after myself and stop trying to please everybody. It's sure going to be different this time around . . ."
The Cranberries' new album, Bury the Hatchet (Island) will be released on April 19th. They begin their new tour in the Shepherd's Bush Empire, London on Monday, April 12th and hope to play Ireland later in the year