Danny McNamara is the founder and lead singer of the group Embrace, who wrote and performed some of the most iconic songs of the Britpop era. Their debut album, ‘The Good Will Out’, was released in 1998 and became one of the fastest-selling debut albums by a British artist. The band has had three number one albums and six top 10 singles, including ‘All You Good Good People’, ‘Come Back to What You Know’, ‘Nature’s Law’ and ‘Gravity’.
Danny’s upcoming spoken word tour coincides with the release of ‘Good Good People’, a companion book packed with the stories, struggles and determination that powered the band’s last 30 years.
Danny said: “From running from the police in Leicester Square to breaking into the Big Brother house, from making one of the fastest selling debut albums of all time to owing our record company four million quid. This is the first book we’ve ever made in all our 30 years as a band, and it covers everything from our childhoods right up to the day we got the phone call from Hut telling us we were dropped. Through it all we’ve been the same five people since the start, so we must have been doing something right.”
“I’m so excited to be going on the road and telling all of these stories,” he adds. “I think I’ve realised it’s the ride and not the destination that’s important. That first album went to number one, but we were sort of expecting it to, so we didn’t really celebrate it at the time, which is a real shame. We were always chasing the next thing. Now we enjoy every minute of it.”
Embrace’s story began in 1990, when Danny and his brother Richard McNamara started experimenting with songs, before eventually completing the lineup with keyboardist Mickey Dale, drummer Mike Heaton and bassist Steve Firth.
After decades of platinum albums, setbacks, reinventions and survival, Embrace are still standing, not through luck, but through persistence, ambition and brotherhood. And as Danny prepares to take these stories out on the road, he’s finally allowing himself to enjoy the ride: “You can come and hear all about it when I do my spoken word. Come and say hello, I’ll be signing copies of the book after every show.”
Danny McNamara is at The Apex on Saturday 12 September at 7.30pm. See www.theapex.co.uk or ring 01284 758000 for tickets. Or visit The Apex box office in Charter Square Bury St Edmunds
