The Tallaght-born-but-Sligo-raised-since-age-six Gerry Norman didn’t always foresee himself becoming a musician in his childhood. “I got into music because I didn’t have a passion in life outside of football, and it was very worrying for my parents!” laughs Gerry when talking to Post-Burnout.

Gerry’s interest in music was sparked when his dad discarded an unwanted CD onto him. “I remember my dad bought [Radiohead’s] OK Computer by mistake because he thought it had ‘Creep’ on it,” he says. “And he was like, ‘This is shit; I don’t want it.’ And I remember having a CD Walkman – fuck me! – and we were going to Dublin, on one of our many trips to Tallaght – in the early years, we would go home a lot more often to see the family – and I remember, headphones, looking out the car, in the drive from Sligo to Dublin, listening to OK Computer, going, ‘What the fuck…?!’

“‘This is not Westlife, this is not…’ The Beatles were probably the coolest band I listened to back then, because my sister listened to The Beatles, but in my house, it was Garth Brooks… – you know, typical Irish fucking house – it was Garth Brooks, Oasis, Westlife, Celine Dion, that was pretty much it, with the odd Michael Jackson thing or something.”

Through this introduction to what music could offer, Gerry began hanging out with what he affectionally calls the “freaks and weirdos” in school, who introduced him to acts like R.E.M., Nirvana, and Alanis Morisette, which, according to Gerry, “blew [his] tiny little mind.” While admitting that it was dominated by trad and jazz, he found Sligo still had a great scene for alternative music, from seeing touring acts play intimate shows at McGarrigle’s to buying CDs at The Record Room.

With this adolescent interest in music, it may come as a surprise to learn that Gerry didn’t have a desire to play. “I wasn’t really into music when I was in school,” he says. “And I definitely wasn’t playing music; I only got my first guitar when I was 18. I was into art and design, and I was in a design college in Sligo, and that’s when I got my first guitar.” Still, there were no aspirations beyond simply learning to play, until he realised how magical it could be. “I never thought I’d join a band,” he continues. “I just got an acoustic guitar for Christmas, and about three months later, I was able to play ‘Good Riddance’ by Green Day, and I was like, ‘Holy shit! I’m actually making music!’”

From there, Gerry began performing at a local open mic night. “I got into it after that,” he says. “It didn’t take me long; I was only playing for about three or four months, and I was like, ‘This is it. I’m the next Damien Rice.’” From these open mic nights, Gerry would meet a future bandmate, who asked him to jam with him and then asked him to join a band he was starting. This band would enjoy some local success before splitting up when Gerry and his then-girlfriend (now wife) moved to Edinburgh and his bandmate moved to Belfast.

In the mid-2000s, on his bandmate’s hype of the city and the scene, Gerry moved to Belfast, which is where he has called home for nearly twenty years. From there, he was a member of several successful bands, including A Plastic Rose and Tour Alaska, and even worked as a solo artist. “I was releasing music as a solo artist for years, but it’s just a different vibe,” he says. “Like, you cannot beat that full band. My voice really suits the rock, and my songwriting suits the rock stuff, and the singer-songwriter is just something I do for a bit of fun.”

The desire to perform in bands again is where his new anthemic rock project, PiNKSLiPS, was born. “I was in a band called A Plastic Rose for years,” Gerry says. “And we did some albums, and tours, and festivals, and we split up. The band went their separate ways, and we were toying with the idea of me starting it up again, with a couple of new members, because I had kind of written enough of the songs that I could be the frontman and keep writing.

“It was just because I was desperate to be in a rock band again, you know what I mean? Because I’m a songwriter, I’m always writing songs, so once we broke up, I started doing solo, acoustic stuff because why not? I had nothing else to do, I didn’t have a band. So, I did a couple of albums as a solo artist. But I was dying to get back to being in a rock band again, but, you know, a few years out of the game, we realised that we just kind of slipped into our old habits, and it just wasn’t working.

“But one of the guys who came in to replace one of the other guys is Dave [McGaughey] from PiNKSLiPS, and we hit it off really, really well. He’s just the nicest guy in the world and an unbelievable musician. So, he plays lead guitar and backing vocals, and he’s gifted in both areas, so he’s a two-for-one in the band, he really is. So, given enough time, we thought, ‘Right, well the songs that we have are pretty good, but we know that if we want to do this, we can just start a new band and write new songs.’”

Eventually, they completed their new line-up with the additions of bassist Carl Gilmore and drummer Shane Watters. On the band’s mission statement, Gerry says, “We were all in previous bands who were quite well-known in the scene, but we’re literally just starting from scratch; we’re not trying to continue that, at all. It’s like, ‘Right, that’s all in the past. We did some great things, but this is a brand-new band.’”

He continues, “I’m very confident with this band and these songs. I wouldn’t have started this band if I didn’t think it was going to be better than anything I’ve done before. Why would I do that? That doesn’t make sense to me. After all we’ve been through, I’m going to start a band that I think is not quite as good as the old band? That’s crazy. And once these songs have come along, I was like, ‘OK, this is good.’ And the feedback I’ve got from a few people, they’ve all said, ‘Yeah, this is the strongest stuff you’ve ever been a part of.’”

PiNKSLiPS set their musical precedent today with the release of their debut single, “Young Blood.” “It’s kind of got a bit of everything in it, in three-and-a-half minutes,” says Gerry on choosing it as their first single. “Straightaway, from the get-go, it’s big, it’s heavy but it’s melodic, straightaway. The lyrics, I feel, are quite strong; I’m painting a picture as I go along, lyrically.

“I don’t like to talk too much about line-to-line, what every lyric means, because I don’t want to take anything away from the listener, because I want them to draw their own connections to the lyrics, but they’re good, I like them. They come from a good place. The chorus is massive, it’s a huge anthemic cho…that’s what we do; we do big choruses. It’s not too heavy, it’s not too light, because we have heavier songs and we’ve got lighter songs, so it’s just somewhere in the middle.”

In 2024, the band plans on releasing more singles, cracking away at an album at Badland Studios, playing festivals, and touring. “We’re not deluded; we know the first one’s going to be small, but we just want to get out,” says Gerry of next year’s touring prospects. With their seasoned experience, Gerry feels that PiNKSLiPS have different expectations than their younger counterparts. “I think the advantage you have when you’re a bit older, starting a band, is that you don’t have the idea of just taking over the world, which we all did in our previous bands,” he says. “But that takes the pressure off, and you can just enjoy the journey a bit more.”

PiNKSLiPS’ new single, “Young Blood,” is available to stream from today. Keep up to date with the band’s music, live dates, and social media accounts here. Check out our full interview with Gerry on today’s episode of POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… at 14:00 (IST).

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.