Handed by Paolo.
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INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
Sinéad O'Connor
The Irish Fireband Heats It Up All Over Again
By Hilton Als - Photographs by Todd Oldham

The brilliant, troubling, and enthralling Sinead O'Connor has a face born
out of pure romance. The eyes, the changeling's smile, the perfectly shaped
head and feet and hands, evoke movie dreams. Hers is a face meant to play on
the big screen of our imagination, the only contemporary star we have who
could carry a silent film on the strength of her expressive visage and
countenance.
But silence is not what O'Connor has been known for. Since the release of
her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, in 1987, she has become what we
thought Joan Baez and Odetta were the last of: a politically minded
troubadour. We were simultaneously amused and irritated by her public
pronouncements on serious matters such as abuse (emotional and physical),
and her feminism, largely because she contradicted what we wanted her to do,
which was to feed our imagination with her stoic prettiness. In album after
album, her themes ranged from racism to Catholicism to heartsick love (her
single and video for Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" set a standard). Each
stage of her life advances O'Connor's political commitment and personal
growth. Days after we met, she announced in the press that she had had
intimate relationships with both women and men, thereby adding another
dimension to her constantly evolving persona.
After five years more or less out of the public eye, O'Connor is back with
Faith and Courage (Atlantic), a more reasoned and better expressed musical
mosaic than her turbulent self has ever produced before.

HILTON ALS: It feels weird for me to interview you, because this work is so
autobiographical. It seems like listening to the album tells you all about
the singer.
SINEAD O'CONNOR: Well, yeah, although l always write in the first person,
and sometimes it's other people I'm writing about. So it's not always
autobiographical, although obviously a lot of my work is.

HA: Like the beautiful song, "Daddy I'm Fine." It's so touching.
SO: Yeah, well, that's the most autobiographical song on the album.

HA: It made me think of my father. I haven't spoken to him in years.
SO: The big forgiveness is important. The people in your life who you find
the hardest to forgive are the most important to forgive, really.

HA: Have you found that you haven't forgiven people?
SO: Well, I don't have the kind of relationship with my father that you do.
He was always very supportive of me wanting to be a singer. But obviously he
worried for me, because l was so young when I started. He is the kind of guy
who was old-fashioned and academic. He was just very worried 'cause l was
quite wayward.

HA: [laughs] How many children are there in your family'?
SO: My mother and father had four children, and then my father remarried. I'
m the third of my mother and father's children.

HA: And are your parents friends?
SO: My mother's dead.

HA: I'm sorry
SO: I'd say they probably weren't friends when they were alive. Although
they loved each other a lot. They're better friends now. [little laugh]

HA: Why haven't you released a full length album in five years?
SO: I've been shopping for a record deal for a while. EMI closed down ten
days after the  Gospel Oak EP came out.

HA: You're kidding me.
SO: It was awful. They knew they were going to close down. A number of us
had records come out and to this day EMI hasn't called us to tell us that
they're closed down. We found out through Variety. So I spent two years
looking for a record deal, 'cause it's like a marriage. I didn't want to
rush into it. Before I made this deal with Atlantic I instinctively realized
those other places were interested in signing me and other artists in order
to shut us up rather than to actually allow us freedom. To own us, corral us
all. It's quite sinister. Like record companies being owned by arms dealers.
Whiskey manufacturers. It wasn't likely such a company was going to promote
someone like me, who was a protest singer, see what I mean?

HA: And they feel they should be able to market you along with the liquor,
right?
SO: Exactly. I don't want to get on stage and have a Seagram's fucking malt
thing behind me. 'Cause I don't believe in alcohol. I'm a weed head. I'd get
up with a big weed leaf be- hind me. Like Cypress Hill.

HA: [laughs]  You feel Atlantic is a good place ta be?
SO: t just felt morally what Atlantic stood for was what I stood for as
wetl. It's a very secure ship. It doesn't feel like a forced marriage and I'
ll have to have sex with someone I don't want to have
sex with. [both laugh]

HA: One of the things about your music and this album is that it goes
directly to the soul.
SO: That was the object of the game, definitely. To make a soul record,
which discussed the issue of soul.

HA: What's different about this new one, in relation to the first three?
SO: Well, obviously, a person will grow to maturity. I guess there's more of
a sense of direction.

When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're
very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable.
But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have
more of a sense of direction. With this album, I could sit down and say to
myself, "Well, what do I want to achieve with this one?" When l was younger,
I wouldn't really have a plot or plan or sense of direction. Which I think
was also what was great about those records. They were kind of uncontained,
in a way. But there's something about Faith and Courage - it's a controlled
explosion. And implosion.

HA: Growing older, you can see other points of view.
SO: Yes. You learn that the fucking hard way. [laughs]

HA: Well, life kicks your ass.
SO: Yeah, and you really learn, Well, OK, if I want to be heard, perhaps it'
s best I whisper.

HA: There's always been a certain amount of controversy surrounding your
career. The pope thing, and so on. I always felt all those extreme gestures
were quite deliberate and the actions of a conscious person as opposed to
the lunatic you've been painted as. Why would people think that you were
this out-of-control politico?
SO: I think it was youngism. People talk about all kinds of isms, but they
forget there's an attitude toward youth, like, "how dare you!" Also, when t
first started out, I was talking about issues that were challenging at the
time, tike child abuse. In those days, everyone who ever talked about that
on telly would be blacked out. Then I came along, and I began to tatk about
these very touchy subjects without being shaded out. Also, I was coming from
an upbringing of extreme abuse. Therefore, I was an angry person talking
about anger-making things. I had a lot to get off my chest. That's what I
was doing musically. Me and a bunch of other people - like NWA - we weren't
dealing with the kind of Alanis Morissette fake anger here.

HA: There's anger on this album, too, but not a lot of rage.
SO: Well, when I was fourteen, 1 was sent to re- form school for two years.
That can piss you off.

HA: Why were you sent there?
SO: Stealing. Not going to school.

HA: Why were you stealing?
SO: For most kids, it an emotional want of attention. You almost want to get
caught as well. Want someone to take care of you. Being noticed, being
noticed that you need help. At reform school, in the mornings they taught
you classes, math and English, and in the afternoons you'd learn to be a
secretary. And in the song, "No Man's Woman," I wanted to say, I wasn't born
for no secretarying, but l didn't want to insult secretaries. So I said
marrying, just as a symbol, for not wanting to be what some fucking guy says
I ought to be. Just because I'm not in the square box. Especially in
Ireland, which is very homophobic, quite racist. So a girl like me was in
big trouble in Ireland, basically.

HA: When did you leave?
SO: I left Ireland when I was seventeen. In 1985. But I've moved back in the
last six months. To Dublin.

HA: And you have a child.
SO: I have two children. l have a thirteen-year- old boy and a four-year-old
girl.

HA: He's thirteen now
SO: He's huge!

HA: It's quite extraordinary. The relationship between mother and son.
SO: It is. It's really beautiful, quite magical. He's much bigger than me. I
always wanted to be one of those little old ladies you see walking down the
road with their big sons.

HA: Are you friendly with either of your children's fathers?
SO: Yes. My son's father is one of my best friends. My daughter's father and
I have gone through our shit. I'm lucky. I don't hate my children's fathers.
I love them. When I look at my children, I see them.

HA: What do you hope for your children?
SO: Be really, absolutely happy. And do something soulful.

HA: Tell me about your spiritual journey.
SO: l grew up in Ireland, a Catholic, which means I grew up in the church.
The entire country was like a church. It was very closed when I was growing
up. It was considered a sin to walk into the car park of a Protestant
church.

HA: My God. [laughs]
SO: Very early on, though, I knew the difference between God and religion.
My father went to Mass. I would go with him and be very bored, but my ears
would prick up when I heard something that rang true. I wouldn't take in
everything, but there were phrases that rang true and also gave me a code
for life. And one idea was turning the other cheek. I was getting the shit
kicked out of me regularly at home... My mother was the abuser. To help me
cope with the violence at home, l separated the sin from the sinner. And
that helped me in terms of relating to my mother. There was something wrong
with her. And the thing that profoundly affected me was Jesus saying that he
would come back as just another beggar on the street. And that really struck
me: Jesus embodying every person. I love Rastafarian culture for that
reason. The idea of "I" and "l." I never felt fucked up by religion.

HA: Tell me, when did you find your voice as a singer?
SO: When I was fourteen. l was always singing.

HA: In church?
SO: In school and choirs and all that. I always thought i'd be a writer. But
when l was about fourteen, I got offered my first job as a singer, with an
Irish band. When I was in reform school, I'd run away from the school and do
talent com- petitions. I'd sing songs like "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," and
win five quid. So I realized I could make a living out of this.

HA: When you first started finding your voice as a singer, who did you
listen to?
SO: Well, Bob Dylan saved my life. Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand.

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