A Quote by Dolores O'Riordan
When I was about 14, I got a tacky keyboard for 250 pounds and put on a drum machine and found I could write a song.
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I did a smaller gig with an acoustic guitar and a drum machine. In one song, something wrong happened with the drum machine. I tried to cover up the mistake by playing faster and improvising a new song but it became crazy, and I had to admit it was all a mess.
I released that side of things really as kind of an introduction to where I came from musically, back in the day when all I had was a keyboard, a drum machine, and a four-track. So I was doing these little synth-pop ditties, and it's how I learned to write.
I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah...
I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.
Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.
The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me.
So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
My place in Scotland is in the middle of nowhere, so you've just got a keyboard, guitar, a little drum machine and you know if you can work stuff out like that, if you can hammer out songs that sound good just with those three things and a voice, you're on your way.
I could not extrapolate some emotion from any song after 1997 so I bought a drum machine and popped pills. The pink ones make me funny like elephants!
When you're young you want to show people what you can do, no matter what the cost. Whereas when you're older, and you realise that maybe a drum machine is better than you playing, then use the drum machine.
I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.
I'm not musically trained and I'm not all these other things. I'm creative with a keyboard and a drum machine, but I can't really make these perfect minimal musical executions - all the things that would be nice with all these refined poems.
I get an abundance of e-mail every day, some say 'dear Richard, can you call my husband, he weighs 400 pounds...' or 'my 14-year-old is 200 pounds...' or 'I just got divorced, no one wants me, I am 500 pounds.' So I pick up the phone and I call people.
When I realized I could write lyrics and let someone that I knew listen to them, but not know that the song was about them - say it was a girl. I could write this song about how I feel about this girl, I could play it to them. I just loved it, because all of the words would speak to them. I could see them slowly falling in love with me.
At the beginning of this album I discovered the computer and had great fun playing with the thing. And I realized that, not being a good keyboard player, I could write things in very small sections, give them a certain feel and mess about with bends on the keyboard.
If I found out some gal was trying to steal my guy, I'd want to give her a black eye! Instead, I wrote this song. At the time I was writing each song [on this album], you could figure out the frame of mind I was in by listening closely. With every song I've ever recorded, I'm in it. I wouldn't write about it if I wasn't in it.
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