May 1997: Tony Blair’s New Labour have just been elected to government. Blair, John Prescott, Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown are doing the ‘uncle dance’ at an election party in London.
Their campaign tune, D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ is blasting from the speakers. Britain is changing. Across the city, Peter Cunnah is settling into life after rehab. His pop star rollercoaster has come to an end. D:Ream are finished. A flop second album and the departure of co-founder Al Mackenzie, two years previous, waved in the mourners. Cunnah’s persistent drug abuse, and the self-destruction which ensued, merely sealed the casket. Things, he may be thinking, can only get better.
Nine years on and Derry born Cunnah is giving one of his first interviews in an age. It’s been 12 years since ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ reached number one and became the biggest selling single of 1994. Five top 20 singles and two top 10 albums followed before D:Ream were relegated into pop’s annals as a naff mid-90s dance crossover act. Perhaps understandably, history has been far from kind. Cunnah however is happy to revisit his past, if only because “the 24-year-old who was off his tits on E has paid for my house”. He’s aware of the cringeworthiness of parts of his past. Of his Tony Blair association he reflects on “another great mistake”, a phrase he widely uses when discussing D:Ream.
“D:Ream,” he says, “only made sense when it was in the clubs, and not this commercial beast. It only made sense in context.”
And context is crucial when assessing Cunnah’s return to the musical limelight.
After a decade of writing “meaningless pop by numbers for Steps and A1 purely for the money” Cunnah is returning to the musical limelight with Shane, a rock band much in the vein of early U2. Were it not for Cunnah’s pre-D:Ream roots, Shane’s credibility may have been easily dismissed. Signed to U2’s Mother Records in the late 80s, Cunnah played lead guitar with much admired Belfast based outfit Tie The Boy.
“Paul McGuinness and Larry Mullen came to watch us one night in Dublin and really liked what they saw,” he recalls. “Before that we were broke and had no money to record. U2 stepped into the fray and they gave us a hand up, which I really respected them for. That’s what got us to London before the deal turned sour and the band split. Within six months I’d started going clubbing and discovered this really exciting new world. Dance music was being born and that’s what led me to D:Ream, who started as a really big underground sensation.”
Late last year Peter picked up a guitar for the first time in ten years and the songs “just poured out”.
“They just came really quickly,” he enthuses. “Looking back I think, after rebuilding my life, my family and giving up drugs, I was finally able to confront myself and write honestly rather then the hollow pop writing I’d been doing for various pop tarts.”
He doesn’t expect Shane’s excellent debut single to chart. This group is not about that.
“It’s about making music for the love of it and playing live,” he says. “I just want to get this band out there and get these songs out there. Ultimately, I want to make the album I feel I’ve never made. That’s our simple aim.”