from=RTE GUIDE,JANUARY 26, 1996
By Paddy Kehoe
Hailing from Dundalk, and still in their twenties, the Corrs are strongly tipped to be the next Irish act to make it big in the US. Paddy Kehoe met the family band whose single, Runaway, caught the public imagination
Take this for an itinery, a few routine days and nights in the hectic life of the Corrs, just a page torn out from last November's diary. To begin the whirlwind, they play a gig at the point, as the opening act for Celine Dion, for whom they are opening throughout her European tour. The next morning they fly to Los Angeles to appear in an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, due for transmission in America this month. They duly arrive on the Beverly Hills set at 7am. At 8pm that evening they leave the set for the 'red-eye' flight to New York, and go straight to CBS television studios there, to appear on their morning show. Then they fly back to LA, to appear at a Billboard convention. It's only after all this that they finally get to bed.
This is jet-setting with a purpose, and it appears to be paying off for the Corrs. In the first four days after it's release last year, some 160 radio stations across the US had played the single Runaway, which statistic itself broke the record for a debut single from an Atlantic label. The song subsequently went to number 73 in the Billboard charts, no mean feat for a debut single. While the push from Atlantic was no small factor in this initial success, the Corrs were working hard, visiting major radio stations to play the song acoustically, before such stations got the single at all. "We played in their lunch times, in their meeting rooms, in their lobbies: we played anywhere possible," Sharon recalls. On the back of the success of Runaway, the band undertake a proper acoustic tour of smallish , 400-seater venues across the US in March, corresponding with a new single/video release there. (There have already been a number of sell-out gigs in American cities such as Boston.) Irish fans can look forward to April dates.
The decision to mix traditional music with their own brand of slick, mainstream pop wasn't something the band apologised about when it came to the orienation of their album, Forgiven Not Forgotten. It's second nature to them- their mother is from Donegal, and hails from a family who are steeped in traditional music, and there were regular traditional sessions in their aunts pub in Dundalk. Lead singer Andrea also plays the tin whistle. "We wanted the Irish music in because it's us, it's what we're about," she states. "We've got particularly great Irish traditional players in Dundalk, like Gerry O'Connor and Eithne Ni Uallachain, and there are so many great players and great sessions going on in pubs," she enthuses. Sharon is the classically-trained fiddle-player who admits to being influenced by (County) Clare fiddler Martin Hayes. "I like the way he slides and I like his approach which is so soft and so crystal-clear," she notes. "He's got such beautiful nuances, so lazy and so easy." Jim, who plays guitar and keyboards, recalls a televised concert by Paul Brady and Andy Irvine as one of his first introductions to traditional music. (Interestingly, the Corrs feature on Brady's current album Spirits Colliding.)
A gig at Whelans made a huge impression on one Jason Flom from Atlantic Records, in which he saw the band mix songs like Love to Love You and Someday with traditional favourites such as Toss the Feathers and The Carraroe jig. "He came to hear us and saw the crowd jumping up and dowm, and going mad," recalls Andrea. Before signing the Corrs, Flom was particularly eager that the band should meet much sought-after Canadian producer David Foster. In recent times, Foster has worked with Madonna and was producing Michael Jackson's History album in New York's Hit Factory at the time. The Corrs had been invited to Boston for a World Cup celebration gig by Jean Kennedy Smith, and were literally on their last day in New York. "We happened to be doing a showcase for RCA and when we finished it, John Hughes, our manager, suggested that we just go there," recalls Andrea. At the Hit Factory, the Corrs were able to inviegle their way past security, complete with instruments. "I don't know whether it was Irish luck or that we looked kind of dramatic, all dressed in black, maybe we just looked like we should be there," recalls Caroline, drummer and bodhran player. The band played acoustically for Foster who gave them a "ten plus". He was even heard to say: 'I'd really love Michael Jackson to hear this.' The next day, they received a phone call from Flom, who told them to go out and have a meal on him, as Atlantic records had taken them on board.
In January 1995 the Corrs duly went to Malibu to record their debut album over a period of five months at Fosters studio, which they describe as 'a haven of music'. Was there pressure on the band to make a completely mainstream pop album, with no traditional component? "No, it was actually quite the opposite," says Jim. "What Foster was afraid of was that he would take it far too much down his road and turn it into an American sound. But he'd asked me to co-produce, which allayed all our fears, because we knew then that we had a certain amount of control on the sound."
The Corrs are touchingly honest about California. "In Ireland you're used to walking around to the corner shop and getting whatever you need," Sharon recalls. "In LA you have to drive for an hour before you get anywhere, and none of us liked that. Then if you went out you had to go in numbers because Los Angeles is a dangerous city - you can be in a really good area, and walk around the block and be in the worst area possible. Some parts of California are beautiful, but it definately isn't a patch on Ireland. The climate is wonderful if you like getting a sun tan, but when you've constant sun, it's very boring. You need weather changes in order to pep you up and take you down. It's very hard to find people on your wavelength," she notes. "There's a constant need to promote yourself when you're in LA, because you never know that the person you're talking to could be a movie producer or a great actor, or could have connections for you. So waitresses and waitors working in restaurants are constantly promoting themselves, and you get their life story within two seconds. It's draining because you feel you're being dragged out all the time, and you never give anything to the conversation at all."
"LA is not America, it's got this very unreal thing about it, it's very flaky, very superficial," Caroline says. However both agree that they met genuinely nice people and were made (to) feel very comfortable.
While they may be poised for greater things now, Jim Corr recalls some of the dissapointments which the band encountered during the past five years. "Thanks be to God we were turned down by one or two record companies who had given us great hopes and had more or less said that we were practically signed. Things like that have happened and people have flown over to see us, to no avail. Other people have said that they just can't hear what's in our music, but thanks to God that happened, because now we're signed with the number one record company in the world."