Latest news with #Lightbody
The Courier
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Snow Patrol star recalls playing Muppets theme tune to 50 people at Kirkcaldy fete
Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody has recalled playing the Muppets theme tune to just 50 people in Kirkcaldy. The 48-year-old says his performance at a fete in the Fife town was 'one of the most hilarious and tragic events I've ever had'. Speaking to comedian Shane Todd on his Tea With Me podcast, the Northern Irishman told of the horror gig in the band's early days. He said: 'We played this show in Kirkcaldy at a fete in Fife, it was set up for 2,000 people and 50 people showed up. 'We were playing and people were just not digging it. 'Mark, our bass player at the time, broke a bass string so we had to stop the show. 'We had Mick Cooke from Belle and Sebastian playing guitar… Mick had this trumpet so he started playing the theme song from the Muppets. 'This sent the crowd wild; everybody was up, they were dancing and singing along.' Lightbody said once the bass string was fixed he told the crowd they were going to play another song. This was met with a chorus of boos. A short time later, on the advice of Mick Brennan, their sound engineer at the time, the band called it quits. However, things went from bad to worse for Snow Patrol. On leaving the venue, Lighbody realised he hadn't closed the back of their van properly and all the band's equipment had fallen out. He added: 'There were people grabbing our guitars and running off into hedges; [but] nobody touched the merch! 'It's burned into my memory as one of the most hilarious and tragic events that I've ever had.' When two members quit the band in 2023, Lightbody recalled a near-death experience in Perth. Snow Patrol began when Lightbody linked up with Michael Morrison and Mark McClelland while attending the University of Dundee in 1994. During the singer-songwriter's time in Tayside, he also met their future keyboardist Tom Simpson, who is from Monifieth and quit the band in 2013. Speaking five years later on a visit to the City of Discovery, Lightbody said: 'I love Dundee, Dundee gave us a lot.'
Associated Press
08-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Truework Appoints Randy Lightbody as Head of Mortgage to Advance Next-Generation Verification Solutions for Lenders
Industry veteran brings over 35 years of expertise to accelerate Truework's mission of transforming income and employment verification SAN FRANCISCO, April 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Truework, a leading provider of income and employment verification technology, today announced the appointment of Randy Lightbody as Head of Mortgage. With more than 35 years of experience spanning mortgage banking and financial technology, Lightbody brings a unique blend of lender and vendor expertise. Lightbody joins at a pivotal time as Truework continues to expand its intelligent orchestration capabilities, delivering a fully automated and comprehensive verification experience that eliminates the need for costly vendor waterfalls. As Head of Mortgage, he will drive strategic initiatives, deepen client partnerships, and further establish Truework as the preferred verification solution for the nation's top lenders. 'We are thrilled to welcome Randy to the Truework team,' said Ethan Winchell, President and Co-Founder of Truework. 'His proven track record of driving revenue growth and transforming organizations aligns with our mission to reinvent how consumer data is verified. Randy's leadership will accelerate our ability to deliver unmatched value to lenders.' Lightbody's career is marked by transformative leadership at major financial institutions and fintech companies. Most recently, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Computershare Loan Services, where he grew revenue significantly in five years, playing a key role in the company's recent sale. He co-founded Candor, an AI-powered mortgage underwriting system that revolutionized origination processes, and held the role of Managing Director at Accenture, where he expanded the mortgage outsourcing business. 'Truework's commitment to solving real pain points for lenders with an innovative platform is what excites me about this role,' said Randy Lightbody, Head of Mortgage at Truework. 'Having seen the inefficiencies of traditional verification methods firsthand, I'm eager to lead Truework's efforts in providing lenders with a verification solution that delivers tangible results in reducing the cost of loan origination.' About Truework Truework is the leading platform that solves income and employment verification pain points for mortgage lenders and property management companies. Powered by automation and machine learning, Truework removes the complexities of managing multiple verification vendors in-house by replacing traditional and manual efforts and delivering comprehensive, vetted, and accurate verification reports. To learn more, visit
Telegraph
29-03-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody: ‘My dad died of dementia. This is what every son should know'
'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.'
BBC News
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Gary Lightbody was 'broken' by father's death
Snow Patrol star Gary Lightbody has said he felt broken by the death of his father Jack and that writing about it was father, who had dementia, died in a nursing home in December frontman, whose hits include Chasing Cars and Run, was speaking ahead of the release of his book, The Forest is the said he was "numb for a year" following his father's death, but hopes the book will help other people who are grieving. "I wasn't writing it thinking people were ever going to read it, I was writing it for myself," he told BBC News NI."When I finished it I sent it to a few friends, and then started having discussions with close friends about their own grief, and their own process that they went through, and finding out that everybody's is different." However, the Bangor singer said love connects all grief."You can't grieve someone's passing without having loved them in the first place," he said."I guess when I got to the end of the book, I was like just in case somebody else has gone through this, and felt like I did, like I was broken, I wanted to put it out there into the world even if it was just on an extended inlay card." Lightbody writes of his memories of the day his father died, his love for his father, and his guilt "at being absent for so much of what had passed these last years of your cognitive decline and illness".The singer said his father's death had taught him "to get through anything"."I never imagined, you don't imagine that happening, a parent passing," he said."So I never thought about it, even when he had dementia, I was refusing to believe it and perhaps that's what caused the numbness in the first place."But you have to get on with things as well."In the book, talking about the immediate things that need to be attended to straight after a death."I felt like a torch had been passed and I was the man of the family now – I was having to stand up and be that." 'Version of myself' Lightbody has previously opened up about his struggle with depression, saying he reached a turning point in 2016, when he was diagnosed with infections in his sinuses, eyes and ears - a result of sustained drug and alcohol sober then compelled him to focus on his mental said he felt "less fragile now" and was determined not to waste any days."A lot of the times I am writing in the book about a version of myself that is now extinct," he said."But it is a version that did exist, it was a me that interacted with the world that was drunk or on drugs or in some kind of fugue state and now I feel that I am awake and present and feel much stronger for it."The book is a companion to the Snow Patrol album, also entitled The Forest is the Path, which was released last writes of the connection between the two: "While you don't have to read this book to understand the album, a listen to the album might help some parts of this book make sense."
