Sinead O'Connor's death was announced by her family on Wednesday night. We'd been to the cinema and came out into the July rain, the news coming through almost immediately onto our phones. Not long after a neighbour sent a message, a family photo of Sinead and Andy Rourke (with a guitar) smiling in the sunshine in Palma in the 90s (my neighbour's mum is friends with Andy's- both Andy and Sinead gone in a matter of months). Sinead's traumatic childhood, bumpy ride through the music industry in the aftermath of her massive fame in 1990 and struggles with her family, mental health and physical health are well documented. Last year her son Shane killed himself, aged seventeen. To lose a child is an awful, heartbreaking, lifechanging and catastrophic event for any parent, as we know too well. To lose a child to suicide is unimaginable.
I saw Sinead at Glastonbury in 1990, playing mid- afternoon, singing to 30, 000 people from the Pyramid stage, dressed in black biker jacket, circular shades and a Viz Fat Slags t- shirt. This song, The Emperor's New Clothes with former- Ant Marco Pirroni windmilling on guitar, was a highlight. It's a powerful song, Sinead dropping in lines about youth, fame and pregnancy and a partner who has misjudged her, got her wrong. In the end she decides, 'I will live by my own policies/ I will sleep with a clear conscience/ I will sleep in peace'.
Those lines are how she lived her life- singular, fearless, battling, courageous, unafraid. In 1987 I watched her on Top Of The Pops performing her single Mandinka. In denim and black boots and with her shaven head she looked amazing, a punk spirit making announcing her entry the world.
By this point she'd already sacked her producer and re- recorded her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra (an album that includes her debut single, the epic Troy, and the song I Want Your (Hands On Me) which was remixed with rapper MC Lyte and became big in the growing underground club culture).
Sinead took no prisoners in her songs, her brushes with her parents split as a child, trauma, abuse, eighteen months in the Irish care system and her mother's death in a car crash fuelling her fire. When her cover of Nothing Compares 2U went supernova she found herself at a level of fame that would have derailed even the most well adjusted person. She was badly treated by many people. The album Nothing Compares 2U came from, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, contains many great Sinead songs, not least this one which takes on new layers of meaning every time I play it, a 17th century poem sung over a Soul II Soul drum beat with a fiddle by a Waterboy arriving at the end as a final lament.
I posted the full version of this gig, a performance in Brussels in 1990, earlier this year as part of my Saturday Live series. In this excerpt from it, she sings I Am Stretched On Your Grave on her own on stage, one woman with a reel to reel tape recorder and an audience in the palm of her hands.
7 comments:
A brilliant post and the best Sinead eulogy I have read. Thanks for writing this.
As Martin said.
I'm with Martin and CC, beautifully put, Adam.
Weatherall Remix Friday is brilliant as always but as you say there's an added poignancy, a mixture of joy and heartbreak listening to these both today.
Brilliant piece of writing Adam, thank you. So many thought provoking and I found her voice so hauntingly beautiful..♥
Lovely words Adam. Still finding it difficult to believe she's gone. I thought she'd be kicking the hornet's nest in her 80s. A wonderful artist and a profoundly important figure here in Ireland for our emergence into a different and dare I say, a better world.
Thank you all.
Beautifully written, thank you.
Sinead's passing hit me very hard, and quite unexpectedly so. Her songs were part of the soundtrack of my youth, but not the ones you'd expect: I was born in 1990 and missed out on her global superstar era, and only knew Sinead as the enigmatic singer behind Moby's Harbour and Asiab Dub Foundation's 1000 Mirrors. Enigmatic because her voice was unlike anyone else's, and because I never heard any of her music on radio. Still, the voice stuck with me for the past 20 years. It's only recently that I learned of her hardships and struggles with mental health.
Ever since the news I've been obsessively catching up. The Lion and The Cobra is up there with some of the best albums of the late 20th century, her live performances can't be described in words, but it's her intelligence, sincerity, courage and integrity that impressed me the most. One of the most inspirational people I know of, honest to God. Absolute gem of a human being and a generational talent.
Bless you, Sinead, and thank you for everything you've done!
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