Gary Lightbody was ready to “throw in the towel” before ‘Run’ became a huge hit.
The singer’s band Snow Patrol had been striving for success for over a decade when their 2004 track hit the top five and he admitted before its release he and the rest of the group had started to doubt whether “it” would ever “happen” for them.
He admitted to Big Issue magazine: “Before I wrote ‘Run’, I definitely had the conversation about throwing in the towel. Especially with my parents who were like, seriously, what are you doing?
“People kept telling me it was going to happen but we were a little wary by that stage in our career. It had been so long.”
But Gary didn’t know “how to do anything else” so was determined to persevere.
He admitted: “We had enough belligerence not to give up. It was like, well, I don’t know how to do anything else. This is the only thing I ever wanted to do.
“So I’m just gonna keep doing it until somebody literally tells me to put my guitar away and never bring it back out again.”
Producer Garrett Lee aka Jacknife Lee gave Gary some valuable advice when he first heard ‘Run’.
The singer recalled: “He said we’d included all these clever, complex chords and we should drop them.
“He said, ‘You’ve written a big song – just let it be a big song.’
“And I felt like it was maybe the permission I needed to just be like, OK, I don’t care what anybody else thinks about it. I can just write what I genuinely feel and it doesn’t matter whether it’s cool. Just write what’s in your heart.
“I never forgot that from then on. Then Jo Whiley played all six minutes of it on Radio 1 daytime and that’s what changed everything.”
