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Le texte original de la biographie officiel des Cranberries. Pour voir
ma traduction, cliquez ici.
'OK boys, show us your stuff' - that was how Dolores O'Riordan introduced
herself to the Cranberries in 1990. At the time, Noel and Mike Hogan (guitar
and bass) and Feargal Lawler (drums) had been looking around for a lead
singer for their band, but this small and frail looking girl standing in
front of them just didn't look the part. Noel played her a few chords he
had been messing around with and Dolores went home that night and wrote
a set of lyrics for them. She came back the next day with a song called
'Linger'. They gave her the job. Dolores wrote 'Linger' about her first
ever boyfriend, but when she sang it to the band for the first time, they
weren't listening to the words, they were just wondering how something so
small could sing so strongly - they were mightily impressed. The band were
still working under the name 'The Cranberry saw us' (say the last two words
quickly and you'll understand the poor Thanksgiving pun) which had been
given to them by Niall, their first and very short-lived lead singer. Nobody
really took Niall seriously, he used to write comedy songs like 'My Granny
drowned in a Fountain in Lourdes,' but now that they had Dolores on board,
they decided to go into a studio in their native Limerick to record three
songs. They pressed up 300 cassette copies of the songs, left them in local
record shops and waited to see if they would sell. All 300 copies sold
out within a matter of days. Boosted by this first reaction to their music,
they shortened their name down to The Cranberries, made a demo tape and
sent it of to every record company they had heard of. Dolores was thrilled
with her new band, all she ever wanted to do was sing in a rock band. 'one
of my earliest memories is being about 5', she says,' I was at school and
the headmistress brought me out of my class and up into the 6th class where
the 12 year old girls were. She sat me up on my teachers desk and told
me to sing for them. I loved it, singing was something I had that could
win people over, but I'm still very shy about singing, even now I'd rather
die than sing in a pub'. As Dolores went through school, and kept on
singing with her local church choir, a few miles away brothers Noel and
Mike Hogan had been playing around with guitars since their early teenage
years. Down the road, a young Feargal Lawler had just got a drum-kit and
when he heard that the Hogan brothers were interested in forming a band,
he went straight down to ask if he could play with them. When the band
recorded their first demo tape, they had an average age of 19 and actually
spelt their name 'The Cranberry's' on the cover of the tape. The demo tape
had five songs, including an early version of Linger, Dreams and Put Me
Down, and once it had reached the desks of record companies in London,
the chase was on to sign The Cranberries. The band continued playing
around Limerick during this time but what people saw on stage then, is far
removed from what you get now, as Dolores explains : 'the performance of
The Cranberries consisted of four timid little teenagers, with the front
person standing sideways like a statue, afraid to budge in case she tripped
and fell. We weren't performers at that stage, but I think it was the potential
they saw'. When the record company offers started flying in the door, the
band eventually signed to Island Records. Everything was in place for The
Cranberries but then things started to go wrong. The bands demo tape
was released to journalists and it met with an ecstatic reaction. The band
were described as 'the future' and expectations were running high for their
first ever single, called Uncertain which was released in 1991. After all
the hype around the band, the band went for a 'low-key' single that came
nowhere near the quality of the original demo tapes. The single was described
in the press as a 'second-grade' song and The Cranberries were beginning
to learn about the fickle nature of the music industry. 'That was an awful
time for us when the debut single didn't do too well' remembers Dolores,
'I still had faith in the band but I had no faith in the music industry
and then I lost faith in the world. I was 18 and in home in Limerick and
I got really depressed'. To make their problems worse, the band were going
through difficult and complex problems with their first manager and just
as the band was about to go into the studio to record their first album,
they were on the verge of breaking up. With all these problems in the
background, and frustrated by the bands lack of progress, Dolores found
herself at a gig in Limerick one night, watching from the audience as some
local band went through their paces on stage. She turned to her friend
and said 'everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?'. The fight back
began. The band found a new manager, Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records,
and finished off their debut album, which was recorded in Dublin in 1992.
By the time the album made it into the record shops in March 1993, The
Cranberries found that they had to start their career all over again; even
at this early stage they were being described as 'has-beens'. The band
took to the road on a vengeance in '93. They toured Britain (with Belly),
Europe (with Hothouse Flowers) and America (with The The and Suede). 'The
strange thing about touring in America' says Dolores,'is that we were acting
like tourists and having a great time, but in the background, the album
was selling and selling. People would be telling us 'you've just sold another
70,000 records this week' and we'd be going 'is that good?'. People used
to laugh at us because we had no idea of how well the album was doing'.
By the end of 93, Everybody Else... had topped the million mark in America
and the band returned home with a hero welcome in Ireland. 'I went away
as a nobody and came home to people calling me a 'star'' says Dolores on
the back of the bands American success, the album started to climb up the
British charts and eventually took the number one spot. The band were thrilled
with their success but were wary about being seen as one hit wonders .
They went into the studio to record their follow up album, No Need To Argue,
in March 94. The recording went well, so well in fact, that the band went
off on a skiing holiday after it was finished. Dolores, her first time
on the slopes, ended up falling badly and did serious damage to her knee.
Just as the band was beginning to peak, they were forced to cancel all
engagements until Dolores could walk again. One engagement she never
missed was her wedding in Ireland in July 94 to Don Burton. 'I met my husband,
who's Canadian, when we were touring with Duran Duran in America, he was
their stage manager. 'we're very happy' says Dolores. No Need to Argue
was released in October 94 and proved to be an instant success, selling
1 million copies in its first three weeks of release. The first single of
the album, Zombie, proved to be one of their most popular songs and although
it was never released as a single in the US, it became the most-played
song on alternative radio and the highlight of The Cranberries' live set.
'Zombie was written about the same time of the Warrington bombing in Britain
(the IRA bomb that killed two young children)'says Dolores,'it's not actually
about the north of Ireland, it's about a child who died in England because
of the situation in the north'. The rest of No Need to Argue was written
when the band were on tour in the US in '93. 'Everybody else would be out
in the front of the tour bus, but I would be in the back, trying to protect
my singing voice' says Dolores,'I wrote all these songs about my life back
in Limerick, and how much I missed my parents, that's what Ode to My Family
is about. The only song on the album that reflects my new married life
is 'Dreaming my Dreams'. At the end of 1994, The Cranberries looked on
as No Need To Argue became a huge worldwide seller. They went on the road
in October 94 and will be touring all the way through 95. 'The best thing
about all of this is that we've answered our own question, the question
that was the title of our first album' says Dolores, 'we proved it with
the first album and we're now going to prove it even more with the second
album'.