Embrace frontman Danny McNamara is set to talk about his 30-year music career at an audience with fans in Darlington. He spoke to Andrew White about Taylor Swift, drunken nights – and parmos!
Danny McNamara is in a good place.
After 30-odd years of making music with Embrace – which has seen huge commercial success, sold-out tours and critical acclaim – the singer says that right now is about the happiest he’s been with the band.
Soon to release Embrace’s ninth studio album and ahead of spilling the beans on his career at an evening with fans in Darlington, Danny appears content with his lot.
But it hasn’t always been like that.
He tells me: „We were doing our best commercially after our fifth album, This New Day, Nature’s Law (the album’s first single) went to number two – almost made number one – it was our third number one album and we were playing arenas.
„But ironically, that was when maybe I was the least happy.
„Now I would say maybe I’m the most happy I’ve been and maybe we’re the most happy as a band.
„We really enjoy what we’re doing, and we really appreciate the love and support we get from the fans.“
„I know Taylor Swift always says she has the best fans – but that’s just because she doesn’t know Embrace fans.“
Embrace has been part of Danny’s life ever since he started pestering his brother, Richard, when he was trying to start a band at the bottom of the garden in their West Yorkshire home in 1990.
„There were various different band members and I used to go down there and make cups of tea and boss them all around,“ says Danny.
„Eventually, everybody got fed up of being bossed around, so in the end it was just me and our Rick. So we had to try to find the rest of the people. It took a while, but eventually we got Mike (Heaton) and Mick (Dale) and Steve (Firth).
And the band, essentially, has stayed the same since those early days, which Danny says „is pretty amazing really.“
„Obviously I’ve got older, hopefully a little bit wiser, but it’s the same DNA running through the chemistry of the band, it hasn’t really changed that much.“
In the early days, Embrace’s sound was influenced by goth and new wave bands like Echo and The Bunnymen, The Cure, U2, and The Smiths.
„It wasn’t until I wrote a song called Retread, where we eventually found our voice and we sounded like Embrace and not like anybody else,“ says Danny.
But those early influences never really left them. And in fact, says Danny, they went back to them on their sixth album, titled Embrace.
„There’s a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Cure and all that influence on that album, definitely,“ he says.
„Everything goes into it now, I’m a bit of a musical nerd. Everything from Bessie Smith and old blues stuff right up to brand new artists today.
„But I think that stuff that you love when you first get into music, around 14 or 15, is the thing that’s written through you like Blackpool rock, and I think I’ll always go back to that.“
The band is presently putting the finishing touches to their ninth studio album – and Danny is happy with the way it is coming together.
„The theme of the album is ‚it has to be magical‘ – it can be a great song but if it doesn’t have something magical about it, it won’t be included, so it’s everything that has that sense of wonder and magic about it.
„It’s going to be as good as any we’ve done. We’ve had albums that haven’t been as good as others. I’m not as fond of the third album or the third album, but recently, we’ve been cooking on gas and I’m really pleased with how it’s going.“
Before then, Embrace fans in Darlington are in for a treat, in an intimate evening with the singer, something he started as a one-off but which has developed into a full-blown tour.
Danny says fans can expect plenty of anecdotes from how Coldplay’s Chris Martin wrote one of their biggest hits, Gravity, to meeting U2 and „all sorts of crazy stuff that happens on the road“.
„It’s a lot of fun, talking about my 30 years in Embrace,“ he says.
„There’s a lot of stories, some of it’s pretty near the knuckle, some of it’s really funny, and at the end we have a Q&A where people get to ask whatever they want.
„I’ve been travelling the country and meeting people – a lot of them have loved the band for nearly three decades so for them to meet me and chat to me can be really moving.“
Fans have a lot of questions, but he picks out one from a show in Halifax, with his mum and dad in the audience, when he was asked about something that had happened on tour.
„I could see my dad going bright red as I was explaining about this drunken night in this Hell’s Angels hotel and how I ended up in the basement, in the nightclub, in my underpants, sleepwalking and drunk and almost got kicked out,“ he explains.
„There’s a lot of stories like that. But you know, there’s only 100 or 150 people there each night, and they’re people who have loved the band for 30 years. I think they deserve to know those stories.“
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Although he doesn’t recall being in Darlington before, Danny has fond memories of playing other venues in the North East, recalling one particularly memorable night in Middlesbrough.
„I remember my mate said to me ‚just ask on stage, can anybody tell me where to get a really good parmo?‘
„So I did and the audience went absolutely mad, way more than I was expecting for just talking about a foodstuff. It seems it’s really beloved up there.“
An Evening With Danny McNamara is at The Forum Music Centre, in Borough Road, Darlington, on Thursday, May 8 from 7pm. Tickets, priced £20, and further information is available from theforumonline.co.uk
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From underpants to parmos: Embrace frontman lifts the lid on his 30-year music career – The Northern Echo
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