Rememberings

by Sinéad O'Connor

I never had or took the time to “find myself.” But I think you’ll see in this book a girl who does find herself, not by success in the music industry but by taking the opportunity to sensibly and truly lose her marbles. The thing being that after losing them, one finds them and plays the game better.

If I hope for anything as an artist, it’s that I inspire certain people to be who they really are. My audiences seem to be people who have been given a hard time for being who they are.

It said, A child shouldn’t know about war. It said, People don’t talk, so their feelings fly into musical things. It said, The ghosts are things people don’t want to remember.

When I asked him, my granddad said Scamp is my nickname because a scamp is a rascal, a bold thing, and I’m the boldest of all my mother’s children. But he threw his head back and cackled smokily after he said it. Looked like a big child himself, his eyes got so happy. He likes me for being bold. Maybe he was the boldest of his mother’s children.

my parents met on the same street they grew up on, just like my father’s parents did.

Lourdes

Young Sinéad asked for her family to take her on a pilgrimage of sorts to the French town of Lourdes in the Pyrenees for her birthday…and they did!

We’ve been alone in the house for almost the entire summer now without a soul checking on us since they took her to the hospital—not even the doctor, nobody. We’re having the time of our fucking little lives.

My brother played me a Bob Dylan song called “Idiot Wind.” It’s really angry and he says loads of mean things to someone. It’s really brave. He isn’t pretending to be nice all the time.

She also has a ton of records by the famed operatic Irish tenor John McCormack. She says when she hears him singing, she feels like she’s died and gone to heaven. I feel like I’m living in hell every time he opens his mouth.

🤣🤣

I love John Lennon too. I feel like he’s my brother. He’s been singing in my sitting room for as long as I can remember. His voice sounds like an angel’s. He’s bold as well, like me. And he’s angry, like me. I like his angry voice. He’s sad, too, and he’s brave

There are only four well-behaved people: my sister, my five-year-old half brother, my youngest stepsister, and my stepmother. The rest of us, including my father, are completely out of order.

an instrumental piece, played on a sort of high Irish whistle, that they said Finbar Furey, the lead singer, wrote when he was twelve. It was called “The Lonesome Boatman.” The most beautiful and haunting melody I’ve ever heard.

She was in Africa when she was a younger nun, for years. But when you’re a nun they tell you where to be, and they told her to come back to Ireland. When she talks about it, her eyes go navy with the effort of keeping in her tears. Her face turns to the window as if she’s searching for birds. Her job is to mind sad girls and she’s a sad girl herself.

one of my two favorite novels of all time, Redemption Falls (my second favorite is Mistaken, by Neil Jordan).

We really are a very messed-up family. We don’t even suit that word, family. It should be a comforting word. But it’s not. It’s a painful, stabbing word. Cuts the heart into pieces. And all the more because it’s too late to go back and do anything differently.

I’m lonely but I’m writing songs for my first album, and songs are a lonely person’s occupation; songs are ghosts. When my album comes out I’ll become a traveling “ghost delivery woman.” There’ll be a lifetime of goodbyes. I can’t have a problem with that.

He’s been playing me lots of the reggae singles that came out in the last year. I love the Barrington Levy one called “Here I Come,”

In Jamaica they do a brilliant thing—they release the backing track of records without any vocals so that people can sing along with it themselves, so when you buy the single with the vocal, you also get what’s called the “riddim” version as well. Sort of like karaoke, but Jamaican singers even write different lyrics and vocal melodies on the same riddim and all of them are smash hits.

“Why’ve yew dunnit?” “Because I wanna be me.” “Cawn’t yew be yew wiv’ ’ayah?” I said, “It’s you who needs hair, you baldy oul fecker, not me. Why don’t you let me help you find a doctor?”

got thrown out of an Italian café in Charing Cross last week by the old lady running the place because I had on, cut short so that my bump was exposed, a white T-shirt on which was printed ALWAYS USE A CONDOM. She wasn’t seeing the funny side.

I’ve had the absolute funniest times of my life with John and I’ve never laughed so much with any other human being. Nor farted out loud as much. John is a legendary farter-out-loud. And it’s catching.

Another night I had a terrible nightmare that I left Jake with my mother to mind him while I went shopping. Never had such a frightening dream in my life. Woke up sweating and feeling for Jake in the low light to make sure it wasn’t true.

Crying-laughing is the greatest feeling ever and the funniest thing to watch.

It’s so lovely when people like Andy or Mike or John Reynolds or John Keogh or John Maybury’s gang don’t treat me any differently because I’m a girl. Except in nice ways, like when Maybury, the video director, gets someone to put makeup on me and keeps telling me I’m pretty. He’s gay as Christmas so it’s even nicer than when a straight man says it because straight men all say it to get laid. John Maybury and all his friends say it because they love girls. They make me feel really nice about being a girl. But I like to look like a boy. They’ve never blinked an eye about it.

INSIDE ME, WHILE FACHTNA spoke each word on the phone—“You’ve been nominated for a Grammy”—I saw my life roll up as if it were a blanket and vanish. Quick as a flash, like I was a dying person. I’ve never told anyone. I’m like Stevie Nicks. She keeps her visions to herself.

The man is such an (oxy)moron. How can a song be too personal? I imagined slapping him lightly about the temples with a large raw fish. That’s the only thing to do to stupid people.

But the bosses liked the “demure” look of the one where I’m looking at the floor and my mouth is shut. Apparently females seeming angry doesn’t “shift units.” And they’re already handicapped by my hair.

The people who run the music industry aren’t punk at all. They’re a bunch of frightened people. But frightened of the wrong thing—namely, music. Hence in 1991, there was a rap category at the Grammys, but they didn’t televise the award. So there was a boycott amongst the rap community. Hence I once had Public Enemy’s logo shaved and dyed onto the side of my head so it would be seen on telly all around the world.

Showbiz just got real interesting. The kids are beginning to revolt (and no one has been revolt...

We sat in the middle of the third row during rehearsal as Sarah Vaughan coughed her way through the song “So Many Stars.” I was impressed. That was her warm-up. After she’d coughed and sung it three times, her voice was perfect. Clear, smokeless, and beautiful.

Dizzy Gillespie’s cheeks blew out like balloons as he rehearsed. I wanted to kiss them, he looked so cute.

For the show, I wore a short top and a pair of jeans. I stuck the arms of Jake’s sleep suit through the belt loops at the back so that it hung down my arse. Later, when I got home to Ireland, I put it on my mother’s grave. It’s still there, though much more frail. It is sunken into the mud and rocks. It used to be blue and white. Now it’s yellow, like someone soaked it in chamomile tea. My older brother was angry that I put it there. He found it an upsetting image. He thought it a messed-up thing to do. But I meant it as a souvenir for her from the Grammys. Because all the time I was there, I was thinking how she would have loved to be there too. And she was never gonna meet her grandson. I wanted to give her something of him.

I make plain as I’m refusing awards and award shows that I am doing so in order to draw attention to the issue of child abuse. And that I’m a punk, not a pop star. And that awards make some people feel more than and some people feel less than. And that music shouldn’t be such a competition. There is outrage at me throughout the industry. In England, the Brit Awards are hosted by Jonathan King, a hugely popular television DJ. For some reason he spends ten minutes viciously attacking me for my stance. It’s quite baffling. His eyes are bulging and his mouth is foaming, he’s so angry. How dare the little Irish upstart associate music with child abuse? (Not too many years later when he’s convicted and jailed for repeated acts of pedophilia, his rage makes sense.)

As I’m figuring out what to wear one midweek morning, the phone rings in my room. An effeminate but irritated male voice asks, “Is that Shine-head O’Kahn-er?” I say, “No, this is Sinéad O’Connor,” just to wind him up. Then I ask him who he is. He says he’s Prince. Says he wants to send a car down for me later, and let’s hang out.

My intention had always been to destroy my mother’s photo of the pope. It represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother. I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came. And with that in mind, I carefully brought it everywhere I lived from that day forward. Because nobody ever gave a shit about the children of Ireland.

Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame. In fact, that’s why I chose the first song. “Success” was making a failure of my life. Because everyone was already calling me crazy for not acting like a pop star. For not worshipping fame. And I understand I’ve torn up the dreams of those around me. But those aren’t my dreams. No one ever asked me what my dreams were; they just got mad at me for not being who they wanted me to be. My own dream is only to keep the contract I made with God before I ever made one with the music business.

A LOT OF PEOPLE say or think that tearing up the pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it. I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track. I had to make my living performing live again. And that’s what I was born for. I wasn’t born to be a pop star. You have to be a good girl for that. Not be too troubled.

I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then. I don’t need to be number one. I don’t need to be liked. I don’t need to be welcome at the AMAs. I just need to pay my yearly overheads, get shit off my chest, and not compromise or prostitute myself spiritually. So no. It wasn’t derailed. It was re-railed. And I feel I’ve been extremely successful as a single mother providing for her children.

And he did what I thought was the most incredible thing for a human being to do. He came back into the restaurant, stood about six feet inside, opened up his arms, and said, “Can I get a hug? Can I just get a hug?” Genius, I thought. And I ran up to him and leaped on him like a monkey.

I’M SO EXCITED. I get to sing at the Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Bob Dylan’s recording career. I think I’ve been asked because I’ve said in every interview I’ve ever done that he’s been a huge influence on me, spiritually speaking. His song “Gotta Serve Somebody” is my road map for what kind of artist I want to be—not just an entertainer but an activist.

I see Kristofferson walking up to me. I’m thinking, I don’t need a man to rescue me, thanks. It’s so embarrassing. “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” he says into my mike. And we go offstage and I almost barf on him as he gives me a hug.

it is also the case that if anyone wants to truly know me, the best way is through my songs. There is nothing I could write in this book or tell you that would help you get to know me. It is all in the songs.

I guess my father had a very sad singing voice too and he used to make me sad, the same way it made my daughter sad when I sang to her when she was little. When she heard my songs on the radio she’d say, “Too sad, turn it off, turn it off.”

FAITH AND COURAGE contains some of the best singing I ever did in my life. But the next album, Sean-Nós Nua—“old style new” in Gaelic—contains the very best singing that I ever did in my life.

These are sad songs, of course, because nobody in Ireland ever writes a happy fucking song. However, the songs and the album are very beautiful. It was produced by Dónal Lunny, as was my third child, Shane; if we had not made this album, we would not have made our beautiful son.

“Peggy Gordon” is the most gorgeous of the songs; we deliberately set the key very high so that it would sound even more yearning. And no one ever sang a finer version of “The Moorlough Shore,” “Molly Malone,” or “The Singing Bird.” I know it’s an awful sin and I’ll probably burn in hell for boasting, but it’s a very, very good album.

My favorite song on Throw Down Your Arms is “Prophet Has Arise,” which was written by the great Jamaican reggae trio Israel Vibration; it gets me off the floor no matter how miserable I am.

Did a lot of songs by the Jamaican roots musician Burning Spear, too, on Throw Down Your Arms because I love that man so much. I also learned an important lesson: never leave your weed in the dressing room when there is a band of Rastas there; it will be gone when you return.

I love performing these songs live. And as I said, if I go out in a coffin, it’s the only record that I’m bringing with me to heaven in the hope that it will make up for what a complete piece of shit I am the rest of the time.

“Back Where You Belong” was a song for The Water Horse, the kids’ film about the Loch Ness Monster starring Emily Watson.