Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody: ‘My dad died of dementia. This is what every son should know'

Telegraph

29-03-2025

'When someone that you've known your whole life starts to forget themselves, those around them and everything they've known – it's cruelty incarnate, really,' the Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody tells me. He's sitting in the living room of his apartment in Bangor, Northern Ireland, having just finished the UK leg of the band's latest tour.
His sister, Sarah, and niece, Honey, live across the hall and his mum, Lynne, lives in the next building where she lived with his dad Jack until he passed in December 2019.
'He was a giant in my life for such a long time,' Lightbody says. 'He was literally over six foot tall, imposing, but quite gentle really.' That's clear in his recollections of his dad, who was the one he called from outside a nightclub when he was dumped for the first time; and who asked the guitar player that visited his care home every week to play Chasing Cars – something Lightbody found out only after his death.
Lightbody wasn't aware of the early signs of his father's dementia. He recalls his sister calling him while he was on tour or living in Los Angeles, alerting him that something was wrong, but he dismissed the warning. 'I was away a lot,' he says.
'Eight or nine years before he passed, my sister and my mum were saying that he was starting to lose track of things, and maybe there's an issue there,' he says. But it took five years for him to be diagnosed with dementia. 'He just didn't want to go to the doctor to have it confirmed,' Lightbody says.
'My dad defied gravity, sanity, logic so many times,' he explains. At 59, and at that point a lifelong smoker, he was set to undergo a quadruple bypass (a form of open heart surgery). Three days beforehand, his friend died during the same procedure.
When he told the doctor he wouldn't be going ahead with the operation, he was given six months to live, 'and he lived for another 25 years', Lightbody says.
So, when it came to his memory difficulties, 'he was thinking: 'I'm fine, I don't see a problem. It was everyone else's problem',' Lightbody says. 'Part of the tragedy of dementia is that it really is a family illness, even if only one person has it.'
By the time he was diagnosed in 2015, his dementia had progressed too far for any treatments to be effective. 'But then, he defied the odds again and lived for four, five years,' Lightbody says.
Lynne cared for Jack at home until the final year of his life. 'My mum was incredible. She was determined she would look after him.' He only went into Oakmont Care Home in Bangor when he began to suffer falls more frequently. 'The staff were amazing. They loved him so much.' Jack died in the home, surrounded by his family. 'The staff all came to the funeral,' Lightbody says.
'I don't think you ever feel old enough, wise enough, strong enough to take over from [your father],' he says.
Having his final few years overshadowed by his dementia made things harder. 'I had spoken to friends about [family members suffering from dementia]. I think my empathy levels are pretty high but, at the same time, until these things happen to you, you can't have true knowledge of something,' Lightbody says.
'I wouldn't wish it on anybody,' he continues. Now, the hope is that a new class of drug can slow the progression of the illness and give families more time with their loved ones. 'We're probably on our way to having something that ameliorates the situation for people, at least giving people a better quality of life within the next decade,' he says. 'And I really hope so.'
After his death, Lightbody was overwhelmed with regret. 'I wish I knew more about him, about his life growing up. My dad was one of those secretly good at everything people,' excelling at cricket, football and rugby.
He's grown even closer to his family following their father's death. 'We've got a lot better at talking about serious or heavy things but we didn't talk in too much detail about it until quite recently,' he says.
Nature was also key in coping with grief. 'I've been cold water swimming for a long time now, years,' he says, pointing out his window to Belfast Lough. 'I go down to that little bay every day and swim in the cold. That place has been very healing for me, especially in the last few years.'
'I don't know what I would do without it. Obviously, we're on tour quite a lot and I'm not here. But when I'm here, I go in every day.'
As well as having some down time between shows, the 48-year-old is promoting his new book, The Forest is the Path. It shares how the band's latest album of the same name was made but, mainly, it is about the passing of Jack. It begins on December 20 2019, the day he died, and ends on a day around one year later (when Lightbody wrote the first song for the album, the first he'd written in more than a year).
He credits meditation with giving him the capacity to write his book. 'I'm glad that the first book that I wrote is something to do with not only my father, but [his Snow Patrol bandmates] Johnny and Nathan and myself and our adventures in music,' he says. 'It's been my whole adult life, since I was 18, and it's our 31st year together. I'm glad that it honours that as well as my dad.'
The trio are set to play Glastonbury this summer – their first time at the festival in 21 years after they called off their 2019 performance when bandmate Johnny McDaid broke his neck.
'I think that grief is completely unique for every single person. That's what makes it so frustrating. I don't think there's a prescribed way to get through it. There's people who get extremely emotional and distraught and I understand. There's people that go completely inward and are numb, which I experienced and very much understand. And there's everything in between and more besides.
'For me, it just felt so silent and isolated and I didn't know how to communicate it to anyone, so I just didn't. My advice [for grief] would be the same advice I give people for any mental or emotional health issues, and that's to not isolate yourself, to try and talk to friends or family or a therapist.'
In December 2024, to mark the five-year anniversary of his death, 'I went and I meditated, cross-legged, by his grave in the rain and had a moment of stillness with him, which meant a lot to me,' Lightbody says, his voice breaking slightly. 'He was probably looking up at me, rolling his eyes, to be honest.'