The Hawks Well Theatre plays a big part in my story and that of Westlife, explains Mark. I had front-row tickets to a production of Grease – my first musical – with my mum, her sister and her kids. These cousins, the Normans, were all really talented actresses, so they loved going to the theatre. This first time I went along I was so excited, and as soon as I saw the stage itself, I wanted to be on it.
Then the musical started and out walked this tiny fucking pip-squeak followed by a slightly less tiny but greasier bastard with long grungy hair. It was Shane and Kian.
They were the T- Birds and I couldn’t believe how good they were. I was mesmerized by Shane’s voice. He sang ‘We Go Together’ and it was incredible. I actually knew of him from school. He had a floppy haircut and all the girls fancied him. We weren’t close mates, yet somehow that made it all the more amazing – this kid from school who could sing like this. Even back in the day, he had that perfect voice. The dance moves were also perfectly done. He was a natural. I was blown away, basically. When I saw Shane out there on the stage, for me that was the start of Westlife.
Kian was the rock child, the grungy one with the long hair, the edge. He had long brown hair all over his face, even though he was in Grease. But he had a real presence, a real charm about him. The girls all fancied him too. The two of them were brilliant and that night, that performance, made me want to be on stage for life.
There were only really two little parts in Grease for me and Kian, says Shane. Mary had pretty much made the roles for us. She knew we had talent and that we were up for a challenge. As I said, I was Danny Zuko’s younger brother, and she put us two on stage for this one little song. On the first night, I was very nervous, but after that it was just like, Oh my God, I love this! We came on and it was all very cute. You could see people thinking, Ah, look at the two little lads. But we were deadly serious. That was my first big moment on stage and I remember absolutely loving it. There were 400 people there and, for me, this was the big time.
After seeing Shane and Kian in Grease, I was desperate to get my own first role, continues Mark. There was a classifieds section in the local paper called ‘Bits and Pieces’ that listed anything from ‘Happy 40th Birthday, Kaye, from the boys,’ to notices of weddings and adverts for auditions. I would literally scan this section every week, all excited, hoping to find something I could audition for. That shows how little I knew about the business – getting a part in one of these musicals seemed so distant, so impossible. Yet, looking back, all I needed to do was walk into the foyer of the theatre, find out the director and ask for a part.
I never had any formal training, I just learned by listening and singing. It was just a pure, bare love of singing. My parents didn’t push me and they didn’t pull me back, either. They just catered for the fact that I was banging on about singing 24/7 – talked about it and lived it and breathed it even back then. I was infatuated by it. I do have a tendency to latch on to things in life, especially if I find something that I love or someone who perhaps can say things I’m struggling to articulate, and that’s what singing did fo rme.
The first real musical opportunity was the school production of Annie Get your Gun. I went to the auditions for that and sang a few tunes, and the teacher just nodded and said, ‘Fine, Feehily, you’re in.’
Simple as that.
He had to get through like 200 students, but he probably had an inkling I had a bit of a voice – or maybe he was only doing it to keep out the people who were really, really bad. But I felt like I was being offered a place in some big drama school or something. It felt like a huge step up.
Shane was in the same musical, playing a woman called Jessie. So was Kian. Because it was an all-boys school, you had all these burly Irish teenagers in drag.
Initially, I was too shy to go up and talk to him. Shane and Kian were quite cool at school. Shane was popular with the guys and the girls. Kian used to get in a bit of trouble with the guys because all their girlfriends fancied him, while Shane somehow managed to be cool with the guys and the girls. Eventually I plucked up the courage to speak to him.
I’d seen Mark in a couple of talent shows and I knew he was amazing, remembers Shane. He more or less had a black person’s soul voice, like. He had this R&B soulful tone. He stood out like a sore thumb.
We quickly realized how much we both liked singing, continues Mark, and I think we respected each other as a result. We started hanging out away from school. We’d often go down town to get a takeaway and share a large curry with, like, ten people. Then one day Shane said, ‘Why don’t you come over to my house on Saturday?’ and we started forming a friendship between just the two of us.
I started doing musicals, some with Shane and some without. I really enjoyed the camaraderie backstage and the way everyone knew each other. Living in the country like I did, I used to spend a fair bit of time by myself – not so much when I got home, but on the long walk back from school down the lanes, thinking. The musicals were brilliant because they were so lively and there always someone who would stay behind after the show or go out. You never had to be by yourself. I used to love that element of it. Everyone was friends with everyone, it was an amazingly pure and enjoyable atmosphere.
Plus, when you performed, no one was reviewing you or criticizing you. It was a small town musical and everyone wanted it to be perfect, but at the same time you weren’t being scrutinized. Even when they handed out the lead roles, people who’d hoped to get that part but hadn’t weren’t bitchy or nasty, they were pleased for the other person. There was a certain innocence to it, it was all purely for fun and enjoyment, and we always seemed to get applauded.
I was the lead a few times, though I wasn’t so good when it came to acting. In fact I used to curl up and die when I had to act – still do, sometimes, when I’m on telly. But if it was singing, I loved it.
My biggest role so far, explains Shane, came as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, another school production. The Dodger is such a great part and it was the first time I had to act and sing and I loved it, I loved learning the script and trying all the accents, the whole shebang. Kian was in that too. There was no happier place to be…not school, football, rugby. None of it came within a whisker of being on stage.
I started to build my confidence and the girls seemed to like my performances, but I knew I must be getting quite good when a few of the lads came up to me and said, ‘Shane, that was dead good, fella.’
There was a TV show in Ireland, says Mark, called Go for It, and they had a sort of ‘Name That Tune’ segment. At the end, a random member of the public got up and sang a song, sometimes with celebrities. It was brilliant.
I was walking along the street one day with Shane, talking about the show, and I said, ‘If they asked us, if our numbers came up, would you go for it with me?’
‘Absolutely, I would,’ he replied.
At that precise moment, I realized that here was a kid in my neighbourhood who loved singing as much as me and would, given half a chance, literally go for it, and with me. I remember walking beside him thinking, He’s cool, everyone likes him, he’s an amazing singer and he wants to do something with the singing with me…
We’d done Grease at the college, recalls Shane, and then Mary wanted to put on a bigger version in the town. This was a mixed production, so she was able to bring in girls to sing alongside myself and Kian. She gave Kian and me the role of the T-Birds.
We did our thing and it went down a storm. Everyone was talking about the T-Birds – people proper loved it! So Mary decided to put Grease back on in the New Year.
I was doing all these shows, recalls Kian, like Grease, Annie Get Your Gun and Oliver, as well as still playing in rock bands and doing the poetry competitions. It wasn’t sneered at for boys to sing in our area, or in Ireland generally. The mixture of Irish musical culture and Sligo’s own musical scene meant there were singers everywhere. It was OK for boys to sing.
And