Canadian producer stunned by singer’s death
Dan Brodbeck and Delores O’Riordan worked on numerous songs together
Canadian music producer Dan Brodbeck had collaborated on dozens of songs with Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan and was looking forward to even more in the years ahead.
As recently as a few days ago, the singer was debating whether songs they had worked on together would work better for a solo album or for her chart-topping band, which had a string of huge hits in the 1990s including “Dreams,” “Linger” and “Zombie.”
Then on Monday, he received the stunning news that the beloved singer was found dead in a London hotel. British police say her death is not being treated as suspicious, meaning that they found no evidence of foul play. The case will be passed to a coroner to determine the cause of death.
“Financially she didn’t need to (continue writing),” Brodbeck said Tuesday of O’Riordan’s insatiable appetite for making music.
He figures they worked together on roughly 80 songs since first teaming up on her first solo album, “Are You Listening?” Brodbeck won a Juno Award for recording engineer of the year for his work on the songs “Apple of My Eye” and “Be Careful” off the 2009 album.
Their partnership began nearly 15 years ago when Brodbeck and his wife were invited to make an hours-long drive into the wilderness of Ontario cottage country for dinner with O’Riordan at the home she shared with her family.
A mutual friend had recommended the London, Ont.-based producer to O’Riordan as she searched for potential collaborators for what would become “Are You Listening?”
This was an audition of sorts, Brodbeck thought, but to his surprise there was hardly any music involved.
“It was 100 per cent based on personalities clicking,” he said on Tuesday, as he remembered his friendship with the Irish singer.
“It had nothing to do with music.”
Over a lobster dinner they discussed life, their musical tastes and their families. Before long the evening had melted away. The singer bid the couple farewell with more lobster to go. She also gave Brodbeck her seal of approval.
About a week later, he was delivered another surprise in the studio. O’Riordan tossed him a few chords and a piano medley before quickly leaving the room to work on another song. Brodbeck was sitting alone with little guidance, which he now thinks was O’Riordan’s way of seeing what he could come up with.
When she returned a couple of hours later, O’Riordan was impressed with the results, he said. She picked up a microphone and started to sing lyrics off the top of her head.
“It was always spur-of-themoment, gut reaction stuff,” Brodbeck said.
“She knew how to deliver a lyric, so if she came up with it on the spot, she would easily be able to convey what she wanted.”
Denny DeMarchi, a Mississauga, Ont.-based musician who played keyboards and guitars for O’Riordan in the early 2000s, said she was a perfectionist on tour. Occasionally during the show she’d turn to her bandmates and nix a particular track in the moment.
“As much as that frustrated everybody in the technical crew because they had to make all kinds of changes to make that change, she was emotionally not able to go there,” he said.
“For her, singing wasn’t just something to deliver... so to speak, it was a real experience.”
O’Riordan is survived by her Canadian ex-husband, the former Duran Duran tour manager Don Burton, and their three children.