Dolores O'Riordan:

Noel Hogan

Fergal Lawler

Full name:	Fergal Patrick Lawler
Born:	March 4, 1971, Limerick, Ireland
Marital status:	Married to Laurie Guerin on April 16, 1997
Siblings:	2 sisters
Strange fact:	Before becoming a full-time musician, Fergal worked as a hairdresser.
Instruments:	Drums, Percussion

Mike Hogan

Full name:	Michael Gerard Hogan
Born:	April 29, 1973, Limerick, Ireland
Marital status:	Married to Siobhan O'Carroll on July 6, 1998
Siblings:	Noel and a few others
Strange fact:	Before becoming a full-time musician, Mike was studying Electronics at YTS.
Instruments:	Bass Guitar

This is an extract from The Cranberries.net:

"OK boys, show us your stuff" - that was how Dolores O'Riordan introduced herself to the Cranberries in 1990. At the time, Noel and Mike Hogan (guitar and bass) and Fergal Lawler (percussion) had been looking around for a lead singer for their band, but this small and frail looking girl standing in front of them just didn't look the part. Noel played her a few chords he had been messing around with and Dolores went home that night and wrote a set of lyrics for them. She came back the next day with a song called Linger. They gave her the job.
Dolores wrote Linger about her first ever boyfriend, but when she sang it to the band for the first time, they weren't listening to the words, they were just wondering how something so small could sing so strongly - they were mightily impressed. The band were still working under the name The Cranberry Saw Us (the last two words sometimes hyphenated as a play on "cranberry sauce") which had been given to them by Niall Quinn, their first and very short-lived lead singer. Nobody really took Niall seriously, he used to write comedy songs like My Granny drowned in a Fountain in Lourdes, but now that they had Dolores on board, they decided to go into a studio in their native Limerick to record three songs. They pressed up 300 cassette copies of the songs, left them in local record shops and waited to see if they would sell. All 300 copies sold out within a matter of days. Boosted by this first reaction to their music, they shortened their name to The Cranberries, made a demo tape and sent it of to every record company they had heard of. Dolores was thrilled with her new band, all she ever wanted to do was sing in a rock band. "One of my earliest memories is being about 5", she says, "I was at school and the headmistress brought me out of my class and up into the 6th class where the 12 year old girls were. She sat me up on my teachers desk and told me to sing for them. I loved it, singing was something I had that could win people over, but I'm still very shy about singing, even now I'd rather die than sing in a pub."

As Dolores went through school, and kept on singing with her local church choir, a few miles away brothers Noel and Mike Hogan had been playing around with guitars since their early teenage years. Down the road, a young Fergal Lawler had just got a drum-kit and when he heard that the Hogan brothers were interested in forming a band, he went straight down to ask if he could play with them. When the band recorded their first demo tape, they were, on average, about the age of 19 and actually spelt their name The Cranberry's on the cover of the tape. The demo tape had five songs, including an early version of Linger, Dreams and Put Me Down, and once it had reached the desks of record companies in London, the chase was on to sign The Cranberries. The band continued playing around Limerick during this time but what people saw on stage then, is far removed from what you get now, as Dolores explains: "The performance of The Cranberries consisted of four timid little teenagers, with the front person standing sideways like a statue, afraid to budge in case she tripped and fell. We weren't performers at that stage, but I think it was the potential they saw." When the record company offers started flying in the door, the band eventually signed with Island Records. Everything was in place for The Cranberries but then things started to go wrong. The band's demo tape was released to journalists and it met with an ecstatic reaction. The band were described as the future of music and expectations were running high for their first ever single, called Uncertain which was released in 1991. After all the hype around the band, they went for a low-key single that came nowhere near the quality of the original demo tapes. The single was described in the press as a second-grade song and The Cranberries were beginning to learn about the fickle nature of the music industry. "That was an awful time for us when the debut single didn't do too well," remembers Dolores, "I still had faith in the band but I had no faith in the music industry and then I lost faith in the world. I was 18 and in home in Limerick and I got really depressed." To make their problems worse, the band were going through difficult and complex problems with their first manager and just as the band was about to go into the studio to record their first album, they were on the verge of breaking up. With all these problems in the background, and frustrated by the band's lack of progress, Dolores found herself at a gig in Limerick one night, watching from the audience as some local band went through their paces on stage. She turned to her friend and said "Everybody else is doing it, so why can't we?" The fight back began.

The band found a new manager, Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, and finished off their debut album, which was recorded in Dublin in 1992. By the time the album made it into the record shops in March 1993, The Cranberries found that they had to start their career all over again; even at this early stage they were being described as has-beens. The band took to the road on a vengeance in '93. They toured Britain (with Belly), Europe (with Hothouse Flowers) and America (with The The and Suede). "The strange thing about touring in America," says Dolores, "is that we were acting like tourists and having a great time, but in the background, the album was selling and selling. People would be telling us 'you've just sold another 70,000 records this week' and we'd be going 'is that good?'. People used to laugh at us because we had no idea of how well the album was doing." By the end of '93, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We had topped the million mark in America and the band returned home with a hero welcome in Ireland. "I went away a nobody and came home to people calling me a star" says Dolores. The album started to climb up the British charts and eventually took the number one spot. The band were thrilled with their success but very wary about being seen as one hit wonders. They went into the studio to record their follow up album, No Need To Argue, in March 94. The recording went well, so well in fact, that the band went off on a skiing holiday after it was finished. Dolores, her first time on the slopes, ended up falling badly and did serious damage to her knee. Just as the band was beginning to peak, they were forced to cancel all engagements until Dolores could walk again. One engagement she never missed, however, was her wedding to Don Burton (in Ireland in July 94). "I met my husband, who's Canadian, when we were touring with Duran Duran in America. He was their stage manager. We're very happy" says Dolores.

No Need to Argue was released in October 94 and proved to be an instant success, selling 1 million copies in its first three weeks of release. The first single off the album, Zombie, proved to be one of their most popular songs and although it was never released as a single in the US, it became the most-played song on alternative radio and the highlight of The Cranberries' live set. "Zombie was written about the same time of the Warrington bombing in Britain (the IRA bomb that killed two young children)," says Dolores, "it's not actually about the north of Ireland, it's about a child who died in England because of the situation in the north." The rest of No Need to Argue was written when the band were on tour in the US in '93. "Everybody else would be out in the front of the tour bus, but I would be in the back, trying to protect my singing voice" says Dolores, "I wrote all these songs about my life back in Limerick, and how much I missed my parents, that's what Ode To My Family is about. The only song on the album that reflects my new married life is Dreaming My Dreams." At the end of 1994, The Cranberries looked on as No Need To Argue became a huge worldwide seller. They went on the road in October 94 and continued touring all the way through 95. "The best thing about all of this is that we've answered our own question, the question that was the title of our first album" says Dolores, "We've proved it with the first album and we're going to prove it even more with the second album." And prove it they did. With more than 10 million album sales world-wide, No Need To Argue has already shown the world that they aren't just some one hit wonder band. In April of '96 they released their third album, To The Faithful Departed. Selling more than 3 million albums in just under 3 weeks, The Cranberries were set to tour once again. However, on June 8th, 1996, while touring Australia, the band's luck took a turn for the worse. Dolores re-injured her knee during a concert in Cairns. "When I jumped, I do remember thinking, 'shit', you know, but I was just like, 'nah', and went on with the adrenaline," says Dolores, "But I remember when I came offstage it was just going up like a balloon." The remaining Australian dates had to be cancelled, and the future of the tour looked bleak. After seeing a specialist, Dolores decided to go ahead with the remaining U.S. tour dates. Then, with only a handful of venues left to play, exhaustion and the flu caught up with Dolores. Doctors ordered O'Riordan to refrain from performing for 2 months.The band then cancelled the remaining 9 gigs in the U.S. leg of the tour. "We feel badly for the people who waited in lines to purchase tickets for the remaining shows," says Noel Hogan, "but the band is very supportive of Dolores." Then the real problems started. Rumors of an anorexic Dolores and that the band was on the verge of a break-up began. Doctors ordered Dolores to rest, so the band had to cancel the entire European tour. Their manager stated that the earliest they would tour again would be sometime in 1998. By that time, even more rumors were flying. Some thought that Dolores was about to launch a solo career. She flatly denied these allegations saying, "It's definitely not true. The band is still very much together." In the meantime, the remaining guys in the band have been married. Noel was already married to Catherine Nash in July of '96. Fergal tied the knot in April of '97, and Mike married his sweetheart of eight years, Siobhan O'Carroll, in June of '98.