{"id":80365,"date":"2025-08-20T14:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80365\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T14:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T14:44:08","slug":"zombie-overshadowed-everything-we-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/80365\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Zombie overshadowed everything we did\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt was kind of bittersweet, to be honest, listening back to old outtakes,\u201d says The Cranberries<\/a> drummer Fergal Lawler. He\u2019s talking about delving into the band\u2019s archives to find material for the new extensive reissue of 1994 album, No Need to Argue. \u201cDolores is speaking in between takes. And it was hard. There\u2019s lots of fond memories from that time. But I maybe didn\u2019t expect that to be as difficult as it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cranberries story \u2013 the Limerick underdogs who sold more than 40 million albums thanks to timeless international hits like \u201cLinger\u201d and \u201cZombie\u201d \u2013 is permanently underlined by the tragic death of singer Dolores O\u2019Riordan<\/a>, who on 15 January 2018 accidentally drowned in the bath tub of a London hotel due to alcohol intoxication.<\/p>\n

But O\u2019Riordan\u2019s rare star quality, unique, soprano-meets-Irish-lilted yodel of a voice, heart-on-sleeve lyricism and fearless personality endures. The extended 40-track No Need to Argue, which originally sold 17 million copies, allows fans a deeper dive into the creative process, with unheard demos and live cuts, as well as remixes from Chvrches\u2019 Iain Cook. \u201cIt\u2019s a lovely legacy to have these albums,\u201d guitarist Noel Hogan says. \u201cI do look at them as a celebration of someone\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Written and demoed on the road in America and produced by Stephen Street, No Need to Argue was the opposite of a difficult second album (Photo: Andy Earl)<\/p>\n

By 1994, The Cranberries were already huge. After initially flopping, 1993 debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can\u2019t We? shifted seven million copies after hits \u201cLinger\u201d and \u201cDreams\u201d got heavy rotation on US college radio and MTV, with success in America \u2013 where Irish ties are strong \u2013 boomeranging back to the UK.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Riordan had written \u201cLinger\u201d a week after she first auditioned for the band (whose lineup included Lawler, Hogan and the latter\u2019s brother Mike Hogan on bass) as a shy kid from County Limerick\u2019s Ballybricken. \u201cOur very first gigs, Dolores would stand sideways to sing as she was really nervous,\u201d Lawler says. But by the time it came to record No Need To Argue, she had grown into a star. \u201cShe was a lot more confident,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cNothing seemed to faze her. It turned out she was literally born to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written and demoed on the road in America and produced by Stephen Street, No Need to Argue was the opposite of a difficult second album. With the UK fixated on Britpop and deeming The Cranberries uncool \u2013 \u201cyou felt like you were a bit on the outside,\u201d Hogan says \u2013 the band simply got on with writing what Hogan calls \u201csimple songs\u201d that didn\u2019t chase trends and have stood the test of time.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Riordan, who by then had met her future husband, Canadian music manager Don Burton, was writing more personally introspective and emotive songs: beautiful lovestruck ballad \u201cDreaming My Dreams\u201d sat alongside the gorgeous, heart-tugging \u201cOde to My Family\u201d, a lament about missing home on tour. Written in hospital after a skiing accident, the closing title track, about moving on from her previous relationship, saw O\u2019Riordan play the organ, an instrument she performed in church as a child.<\/p>\n

\"TheFergal Lawler, Mike Hogan, Dolores O\u2019Riordan and Noel Hogan of The Cranberries (Photo: Andy Earl)<\/p>\n

But one song, an outlier in the band\u2019s canon, took them stratospheric. \u201cDolores came in one day and said, \u2018I have an idea for a song, but it needs to be really angry\u2019,\u201d Lawler says. \u201c\u2019Have you got any distortion pedals?\u2019\u201d That song became \u201cZombie\u201d, a worldwide smash hit that was written in response to the IRA\u2019s bombing of Warrington in 1993, which killed two children, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry.<\/p>\n

The label, wary of the controversial lyrics, had to be convinced it was a single, yet it grew into something bigger than even the band themselves. The Ireland national rugby team recently adopted it as their anthem. \u201cThat\u2019s bizarre,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cI guess I\u2019ve mixed feelings about \u2018Zombie\u2019. We have a lot to be grateful for. But it\u2019s overshadowed everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the only contentious topic O\u2019Riordan covered on the album. \u201cThe Icicle Melts\u201d was a response to the murder of toddler James Bulger in Liverpool in 1993. Did the band ever discuss lyrics with O\u2019Riordan? \u201cNever,\u201d Lawler says. \u201cThat was her thing. She never told me what to play. I never told her what to say. If something affected her, she\u2019d write about it. She never thought about the consequences. It was like, this is my emotion. I want to express it.\u201d <\/p>\n

There is consensus that the band\u2019s third album, 1996\u2019s For the Faithful Departed, was when things started to go wrong. \u201cEverything was good up until then,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cThen the chickens came home to roost.\u201d They both agree the album suffered from being rushed amid label pressure to get another money-making record out, while the sheer level of fame \u2013 the band were still in their early 20s \u2013 was taking a toll.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started having panic attacks through that third album, which is something I never had before or since,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cBut the pressure was on big time for Dolores far more than the rest of us. She couldn\u2019t go anywhere, do anything. Even in Dublin she would be hounded everywhere she went.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LONDON,Singer and guitarist Dolores O\u2019Riordan, who died in 2018, struggled with depression and anorexia in the late 90s (Photo: Pete Still\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

By the late 90s, Riordan was struggling with depression and anorexia. \u201cWe did an MTV awards thing,\u201d Hogan says, \u201cand you see on YouTube how emaciated Dolores is in it. She\u2019s extremely thin. And I didn\u2019t even notice at the time. You\u2019re not noticing what\u2019s happening to the others. I\u2019m over here with my panic attacks, Dolores is over there with her demons. I\u2019m sure the two boys had their own things going on as well. You\u2019re almost on autopilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Riordan eventually escaped to Canada with Burton and their three young children to a remote town outside of Toronto. But even that didn\u2019t halt sexist coverage from the press. \u201cIn some ways it was like the dark ages,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cI know it used to piss her off, and rightly so. She used to get that thing, \u2018What\u2019s it like being the only girl in a boy band?\u2019 And she\u2019d say, \u2018You can ask them what it\u2019s like to be in my band\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawler tells a story that O\u2019Riordan once turned up to a photoshoot and was expected to strip naked and jump out from inside a cardboard box. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018What the fuck is that about? I\u2019m not doing that.\u2019 That\u2019s when bad press then comes in: \u2018Oh, she\u2019s really difficult, she\u2019s really awkward\u2019. And it\u2019s like, no, she actually just stands up for what she believes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she did the best she could with it,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cBut she was happiest away from it, just being normal Dolores, not the superstar.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Riordan revealed her demons publicly in 2013, when she told the Irish Independent that she had been sexually abused between the ages of eight and 12 by a family friend, and revealed she had attempted suicide. The band had no idea until just before she went public. \u201cShe never gave any indication of any of that ever \u2013 you could have knocked me over,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cNot even in the songs, which were her release valve. But then that answers a lot of those questions of why and how we got to the place we ended up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public reveal coincided with a troubling period for O\u2019Riordan, who, post-split from Burton, was arrested in 2014 after a manic episode mid-flight from New York, during which she assaulted cabin crew. But by the start of 2018, O\u2019Riordan was happy and settled as the band worked on new music. \u201cShe was in good form,\u201d Lawler says. \u201cShe was looking forward to getting new music out.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TheThe band got the blessing of Dolores O\u2019Riordan\u2019s family, and set about completing their final album, In The End, in the immediate weeks after her death (Photo: Andy Earl)<\/p>\n

It made the shock of her death all the more difficult to comprehend. \u201cThat was one of the harder things to deal with, because I felt that the old Dolores had come back,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cThere was a few years in there where even her and I fell out for a while. A lot of it was to do with alcohol and the behaviour around that. But we patched that up. And she\u2019d met a guy who was really good for her, really nice, and he dealt with all her demons.\u201d <\/p>\n

The band were in talks to do a tour of China. \u201cThen the day before she passed away she texted me about songs that we\u2019ve been working on,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cIt [her death] was the biggest shock of my life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still some days I wake up and expect to see an email popping in from her, or get a call,\u201d Lawler says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s something I\u2019ll ever actually get over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having got the blessing of O\u2019Riordan\u2019s family, the band set about completing their final album In the End in the immediate weeks after her death. \u201cOh Christ, it was one of the most difficult things I\u2019ve ever done in my life,\u201d Lawler says. \u201cIt was crazy, but I\u2019m glad we did it. I\u2019m really proud of that album.\u201d <\/p>\n

Stephen Street had encouraged the band to do it. \u201cHe said, \u2018Your emotions are going to be really raw. You\u2019re going to do your best, and if you wait then you might never do it. And she wouldn\u2019t want that. She wanted to be heard.\u2019 And he was right.\u201d\u00a0But it was a tough process. \u201cDolores used to come in the evening and do her vocals, and when we finished up at the end of the day, we were looking down the hall almost expecting her to walk in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the boys would agree that the hardest day was the last day,\u201d Hogan says. \u201cBecause we knew the three of us \u2013 this is the last time we\u2019d all be in the studio together as The Cranberries.\u201d<\/p>\n

It proved a critically acclaimed full stop for the band, worthy of O\u2019Riordan\u2019s memory. How do they view her legacy? \u201cI mean, she was born with that voice, right?\u201d Hogan says. \u201cAnd she genuinely didn\u2019t care what people thought. That filter wasn\u2019t there. We\u2019d all love to be that carefree.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the other stuff that happened through all the years, it fades into the background,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s the songs people will remember Dolores for.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Need to Argue 30th Anniversary edition is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was kind of bittersweet, to be honest, listening back to old outtakes,\u201d says The Cranberries drummer Fergal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,2580,128,14809,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-80365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-interviews","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-music-interviews","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}