| Jimmy Nail isn't the only musician from this side of the Atlantic |
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who will benefit from the forthcoming movie Evita. Andrea Corr, lead singer
of Ireland's The Corrs, plays Juan Peron's lover in the film - and, along with a high-profile tour with Celine Dion, that is set to provide the latest big boost for the Celtic pop act.
They can also thank the movie world for their initial breakthrough. The Dundalk band's first serious step in the music industry came after a chance meeting in 1991 with John Hughes,
who was working with Alan Parker as musical advisor on The Commitments. He immediately suggested the band audition for roles.
"Our first stage performance was in front of Alan Parker, which was very nerve wracking,
but it worked out amazingly well," says Jim Corr.
The four were subsequently all offered parts in the movie, while Hughes agreed to remain as their manager after filming wrapped.
Fate intervened again when they were invited to play at a gig in Boston in December 1994 by the US ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, who had seen them play at Whelan's in Dublin. Hughes took the
unsigned band onto New York where he turned up unannounced at the door of Atlantic Records and requested a meeting with head of A&R Jason Lom.
"I got a call saying, 'There's a band downstairs from Ireland and they want to see you'," says Lom. "If someone travels all that distance, I think it's only fair to see them. They marched in, dressed in their stage gear, looking fantastic, and the tape they played me was super."
Together with Hughes, the quartet gatecrashed a Michael Jackson recording session at the Hit Factory where Grammy award-winning house producer David Foster agreed to watch them perform. Within days The Corrs had signed to Lom's Atlantic subsidiary Lava and Foster's 143 Records imprint.
It's a classic record business story, but why go to all this trouble when they could have landed a deal with a major label in Ireland given Hughes' contacts?
"The problem with Ireland was that, although there was a lot of interest, there's not enough independence for people there to make decisions. Plus the sort of money that was on offer wasn't enough for us to launch us on an international scale, so we held out for a US deal," says Corr.
It proved the right decision: their Foster-produced album Forgiven Not Forgotten, has sold more than 1.4m units worldwide, including 500,000 in the US, since its release in March. The album has also been Top 20 in Australia, gold in Japan and Canada and six-times platinum in Ireland.
Lom believes this is only the tip of the iceberg. He says. "I think we have the potential to sell several million copies of this album and build an incredible career." |
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