The Script play emotional set at Electric Picnic as they devote song ...
It was a night of great expectations and big emotions. Tonight, at the third and final night of the Electric Picnic festival, the biggest emotions came from Danny O’Donoghue and Glen Power of Dublin rock band The Script.
They played their first gig since their friend, Mark Sheehan, who co-founded the group in 2001, died last April at the age of 46.
It was also an emotional night for their thousands of devoted fans who turned out on the night.
The fans were processing their grief at Sheehan’s tragic passing by watching frontman O’Donoghue and drummer Power perform – as much as the band members were by playing the great songs they wrote with Sheehan.
Sometimes, so much emotion doesn’t make for brilliant shows. Tonight in Stradbally, however, was an exception.
Coming on at 8.45pm to deafening applause and a huge amount of confetti exploding above the stage and the crowd, they opened with Superheroes.
They then proceeded to play an hour-long set.
At times, the ground in county Laois seemed to be shaking; such was the reaction from the 50,000 fans present. “Everybody ,hands up,” O’Donoghue said. Cue 50,000 pairs of hands going up in the air.
“Electric Picnic, we are The Script from Dublin.”
They then did Rain and the crowd went even wilder.
“Are we only the second song in?” O’Donoghue asked before telling the crowd that this was the band’s last gig of the year.
He added that he was “going to get totally f***ed up on Guinness later.”
He also asked would someone go to the bar and get him a pint.
He then burst into The Man Who Can’t Be Moved.
He waved his hands in front of his heart to applaud the crowd and then someone appeared from the stage with a pint of the black stuff, which he downed in one and put the empty pint plastic glass on his head proudly.
The crowd then sang, “Ole, Ole, Ole.”
There were green balloons released as The Script launched into Paint The Town Green, a song that Danny called the band’s national anthem.
He then asked for someone’s phone from the crowd and rang the fan’s boyfriend. “Everyone say hello to Pat,” he told the crowd. Everyone said hello to Pat, especially when he came on FaceTime on the huge screen at either side of the stage.
It was not hard to imagine the depth of feeling that O’Donoghue was going through as he sang songs that he wrote with Sheehan, who he grew up with and had been best friends since the age of 12.
“This gig is bittersweet for us. Earlier on we lost a brother and a best mate, Mark,” he said.
“It is mad. It makes me want to live life to the full. He was dying to do Electric Picnic. Music is my only religion. Mark really wanted to play Electric Picnic. This song is for Mark.”
They then played a heart-breaking version of If You Could See me Now.
“Mark Sheehan, I’m missing you now,” O’Donoghue sang. “That was harder than I thought it was going to be,” he said when the song was over.
County Laois was crackling with poignancy and sadness as The Script performed We Cry and of course Break Even, with that heart-rending couplet: “I’m still alive but I’m barely breathing / Just prayed to a God that I don’t believe in.”
Sheehan’s death gave those songs an extra layer of emotion and power.
Hearing O’Donoghue sing Break Even evoked a keen sense of sadness.
That’s the power that great songs have: to remind us how short, and cruel and unpredictable, life can be.
That’s the power that a great Irish band like The Script has – to bring healing as well as joy to 70,000 people singing and dancing in a muddy field under a moonlit sky in Stradbally.
There was, of course, no shortage of emotional performances at Electric Picnic over the weekend.
On Friday night, Westmeath’s finest Niall Horan played Nothing Compares 2 U as a tribute to the late Sinéad O’Connor; Billie Eilish, on the same night, introduced her big brother Finneas to the crowd and then played perhaps the greatest headline set Electric Picnic has ever seen. On Saturday night in the Electric Arena Johnny Marr played a moving version of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out from his former band The Smiths’ classic 1986 album The Queen Is Dead.
In the same venue later, Inhaler gave one of the performances of the weekend, with frontman Elijah Hewson, bassist Robert Keating, guitarist Josh Jenkinson and drummer Ryan McMahon at the top of their game after a long American tour.
The young Dublin band had the crowd in the palm of their hands from the get-go. Hewson, whose dad is the singer in another well-known Dublin band, U2, sang in a voice more akin to a gnarly, post-punk Bruce Springsteen.
