Translated from Portuguese by Cranspektrum
In interview to ‘Estado’, Noel Hogan says that the biggest irish band after the U2 is more mature.
Many people have them like “the second great band of Ireland”, behind just of U2 of Bono Vox. Healthy boys of Limerick, a small irish city which they never separated themselves enough, The Cranberries won the world in 1993 with the album “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” and the diaphanous voice of Dolores O’Riordan, their blonde vocalist. In 1996, they did an abominable album, “To The Faithful Departed”, and what seemed a gold story came to brass’ dust.
But here they’re back, in December, after an absence of three years. And they came back in great style, singing for the concert for the delivery of Nobel Peace prize, is Oslo, in Norway. They brought in baggage a new album, “Bury The Hatchet”, and a new hit, “Promises”. They came back to the tours and they have marked dates until the next year.
“It’s interesting to be back in the game and, still better, playing our new songs”, said the guitarist Noel Hogan, in interview to ‘Estado’ by telephone, in the Sunday’s afternoon. When found the band, in 1990, still like The Cranberries Saw Us, Noel Hogan had 20 years old and believed that everything would be easy and fast. “We learnt to play better and to know better ourselves and we are more mature”, said Hogan.
The maturity is what come to deny comparisons of their band with others, things that came a kind of common sport between English critics – specially with Sinead O’Connor, Everything But The Girl and till 10.000 Maniacs and Sugarcubes.
“They are several songs, about many personal things and I sincerely don’t know what it sounds like this or what it sounds like that”, explains the guitarist, who learnt to play the instrument hearing his idols (almost all of 80’s): Johnny Marr, Robert Smith and The Edge, among others. “The name of the album sum up what we search now, that is to leave the past behind, to look for what we are today”, says the musician.
Besides of Noel Hogan, The Cranberries are formed by Dolores Mary O’Riordan Burton (vocals, keyboards, guitars), Fergal Patrick Lawler (drums and percussion) and Michael Gerard Hogan (bass), all born in Limerick. The new CD of the band was produced by Benedict Fenner (David Bowie, Brian Eno, U2 and Elvis Costello, among others) and the cover was conceived by the graphic artist Storm Thorgeson – not by chance it reminds those new age’s travels of the covers of Pink Floyd, of Alan Parsons and of Yes. Thorgeson worked with all this workers.
“I wouldn’t know if the 60’s generation and of 70’s were better or worse, if was heroical or not, but it’s right that there are a lot of differences”, observes Hogan. “However, I don’t judge my friends and myself with basis on that, because the things we live today and which we believe are different”, ponders the guitarist.
Noel Hogan and Dolores O’Riordan keep a tuned partner in the compositions of the group, almost all signed by the pair. She, singer since her 3 years old, was the last to join in the band, taking the place of the singer of the first phase, Niall. After four weeks of rehearsals, Dolores and the group tuned up themselves perfectly and recorded the first tapes of demonstration.
In 1993, they recorded “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?”, which kept them more than two years in the Billboard’s top and it sold more than 5 million of copies. The next album, “No Need To Argue”, sold even more – 11 million of copies and gold and platinum discs in more than 25 countries over the world.
Exhausted and then without the initial enthusiasm, they recorded in 1996 “To The Faithful Departed” and cancelled numberless concerts in United States. They went in holidays, what for many seemed the end of the group. But here is that they returned now.
Noel relates his wife keep till today a restaurant in Limerick, Ireland, wherever he goes occasionally. A restaurant of international food. “It can be there are Brazilian food in the bill of fare, maybe?”, he says. “I don’t know if we will go to Brazil neither in the next year, we don’t have dates for nothing”, says Hogan.
