Flashback. It's early 1997. Daragh O'Toole is so broke he's rolling his own cigarettes from "Rizla papers and bits of butts from ashtrays". Actually, he's not that impoverished but has pumped every penny into funding a demo of his own songs. Even though this means selling "all my equipment, bar one keyboard". Daragh's folks also lend him "about a grand" to help pay the studio bill of £5,500. It's door-die time for O'Toole.
Fast forward three years. "Dara" is currently involved in a mini-tour of Ireland, about to launch his first single, The Way, and set to release his debut album, which he co-produced with Manic Street Preachers producer, Mike Hedges, this summer. At a cost of £200,000. In fact, the album could have been released a year ago but Sony Records wanted, Dara says, "to make me part of the new century, not the last".
And if you think that's a bit of a fairy tale, how about this? Dara has been a Beatles freak since he was a kid. Where do you think he did the final mix of his album? Abbey Road. Who do you think walked in during the sessions? "Paul McCartney! What happened was, we had the orchestra in and I was working with them really intensely and then said `I'm knackered, I'm going out for 10 minutes'. And one minute after I left, McCartney walks in. I legged it back, but barely got time to shake his hand, say hello. He'd been in the studio telling Beatles stories and I missed it. That killed me, because I didn't listen to anything other than The Beatles from, say, the age of 14 to 17. My Dad's records. And even then I saw McCartney as the real power behind the band. As a composer. His sense of melody in songs like For No One and Eleanor Rigby is amazing."
Dara's own greatest strength as a composer is his melodic inventiveness. For once the record company hype is right. The "startling thing" about the "intricacy" of his arrangements is that Dara is "completely self taught". Well, not completely. O'Toole, born in Dublin in 1972, may have started out "doodling" on the piano at the age of 10, but he also received a "classical music training" from 13 to 16, before deciding to "study" music by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel and U2. All of whom he cites as influences, as well as the classical composers he later returned to, "especially Beethoven", and movie music writers such as Enrico Morricone.
"Sometimes I even feel that in my own work the importance of the music almost over-rides the importance of the lyrics. The music very often comes first. 2000 Years, for example, was originally a piece I'd written for a friend of mine who was making a movie. But the movie fell through," Dara says, adding that he "just added lyrics" and "a drum track" - the latter the least of the track's attractions as far as this critic is concerned.
"Maybe in places it is too driving, but I still think it works. The point about the first album is that I'm being careful not to push things too far. I, personally, would have gone for even more orchestral, longer songs but I had to discipline myself into the verse/chorus/bridge idea to get things rolling in my career. There was that pressure from the record company. Yet I'm really happy with the way this album, overall, has turned out. But I will push things further next time round."
Fighting talk from a neophyte pop star. But Dara knows, of course, that even though Sony has taken an option on his first six albums, there may be no "next time round" if his first album is a flop. But then Mike Hedges was brought on board to try to ensure it won't be. Dara, having studied music production at Dublin's Advanced Technical College in the early 1990s and produced the aforementioned demo, believed he was more than capable of producing his debut album; Sony "insisted" otherwise.
"They wanted me to work with a seasoned producer," he says. "Not so much, I think, out of a lack of faith in me but in terms of DJs, radio play, the `cred factor'. But The Way, for example, is exactly what I'd already done. The keyboard parts come from the actual demo. In fact, musically, everything was done before we went into Mike's studio. All the arrangements. And this is something that always bothered me. Not that I'm going mad for credit. But the notion of what a producer is has become corrupted because of manufactured boy bands and girl bands. Where, say, Ray Hedges is almost the `voice' of bands like Boyzone.
"But I see a producer more as someone who accommodates a band's musical vision, who is there to keep things on track, tell you if you're singing horrendously out of tune, or to go for another take. And Mike is very band-friendly in that sense, while adding that extra sheen that makes a song radio-friendly. That's the real difference between the album and my demo. Sometimes Mike made things a little more glossy than I might have done."
Dara may not be "going mad" for credit but he is, he admits, "a control freak", and a formalist to his soul. Orchestrating his music to such a "rigid degree" that he hates to hear "even a few bass notes out of place". No doubt if Dara does finally fail as a pop star - though that's unlikely - his future is assured in the area of composing movie soundtracks.
So, after years of playing in various bands both here and in the US, often with guitarist Andy Colbert, how did Dara finally get his break? "Actually, in New York, I also worked at `day jobs' in Sach's of Fifth Avenue and as a busboy in a strip club! But I still ended up homeless, walkin' round all day, kippin' in Central Park at night," he recalls, adding that though he never lost faith in his own abilities as a musician, he did wonder if he'd ever make it.
"Then I came back here, Christmas 1995, totally deflated, after five years of messing around, having left my apprenticeship in Graphic Reproduction. And I got a gig playing keyboards for Jack L. That, let's just say, ended explosively and as a bit of a disaster, which left me in a do-or-die situation in terms of my own music.
`So I bought a book on orchestration, locked myself in my flat for two or three months and wrote the first album. On my own. That's when I was living on 20 quid a week. Then I made that demo. But I had 300 quid left so I flew to MIDEM and though I'd nowhere to stay and no showcase gigs set up, I did manage to meet James Wolsey and he said he'd represent me free of charge till I got a deal."
Quite a coup, given that Wolsey is one of the top music publishers in Britain. As for the man Dara then appointed as his manager, well, some might say that the same level of expertise and experience is not necessarily part of the CV of Lord Henry Mount Charles. Or that he might view Dara as a lucrative sideline. "That's crap, though I know some people might think along those lines," Dara says. "The first thing about Henry is that he is absolutely passionate about music.
"He's also hooked into the music industry and has proven himself to be a good businessman at that level. But at first I just met him in Lillie's Bordello, and was asking his advice about managers in general and after he heard my tape Henry said he, himself, would like to manage me. Even though, over the years, he'd turned down many offers to manage acts. He really, really is into my music. As for the money? Well, Henry's been due a return on a couple of occasions but he just says `hold on to it, we'll need it later'. So, as far as I'm concerned, he's as dedicated to all this as anyone in the band is."
But, given this Mount Charles connection, one question remains. Will Dara be featuring on the bill at Slane this year as a Special Guest? "I would certainly never open Slane!" he says, laughing. "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy! The only way we'd play Slane this year is if it was later on the bill and we had earned it. If the single and album are a success I'd love to do it - but only on the right terms. Even Henry says he wouldn't let me play Slane if it wasn't right. So let's wait and see!"
Dara plays the Empire, Belfast, February 3rd; Roisin Dubh, Galway, February 9th; Whelan's, Dublin, February 10th; Roxy, Waterford, February 12th, and University College, Galway, February 29th.
