Tag: sinead o’connor

Gone but not forgotten

Jam Session

Craig McAllister

I’ve a songwriter friend who once found themselves at a songwriters’ retreat somewhere in Ireland. Above the room where the musicians shared their songs and swapped ideas, someone who was connected to Sinead O’Connor listened intently to the tunes as they filtered up and through the floorboards.

The next morning, this person sought out my pal. “Can you play that song for me?” he asked. “I think Sinead would really like it and I can help you get it to her.”

A few days later they were in Sinead’s house.

“She’s sleeping just now, but when she comes down, you can’t mention the song. It must be her idea to record it. If she thinks I or you had the idea, it’ll never happen. She knows who you are, so if you’re patient the talk will get around to song writing anyway.”

By all accounts Sinead was normal and homely and chatty, a partner and a mum who just happened to be dynamite at the job she was best-known for. She and my pal went bramble picking in the hedgerows around her house. When they returned, the songwriter watched as Sinead emptied their spoils from two Mace plastic bags, boiled the gathered fruits and made them into jam. There was, and never would be, any talk about Sinead recording a version of my pal’s (brilliant, as it happens) song. C’est la vie etc etc.

I’ve long-loved Sinead’s vocal contribution to Jah Wobble‘s Visions Of You.

Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart – Visions Of You

It’s Wobble’s bass of course that captures the ear first. A tune within a tune, it’s an elasticated and twangy groovy rumble that plays high up the frets. Indeed, it sounds like it might’ve wafted itself straight offa the grooves of the Dub Symphony version of Higher Than The Sun on Screamadelica – y’know, the album that, with more than a little help from their friends, took Primal Scream from an Asda-priced Guns ‘n Roses tribute act to the lysergically-kissed Mercury-winning last gang in town. Need a dubby, ever-playing and never-ending bassline to expand the senses? Want it to unravel for at least eight mind-melting minutes? Would you like it lightly toasted and mantra-inducing, sir? Forged by punk and steeped in roots reggae, Jah Wobble’s yr man.

Sinead O’Connor’s vocals are ace. Crystalline, calming and as clear as her emerald green eyes, they’re wafty and ethereal, her adlibbing ‘ah-uhs’ throughout it taking the track further east and further out there.

Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart – Visions Of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny mix)

Eastern sounding minor chords. Highly strung one chord strums. Snaking melodies. Tablas and twang. Sitars and psychedelics. Dub-inflected desert blues. Sinead adlibbing somewhere in the background as the melody unspools. A cat dancing willy nilly across the keys of a hot to trot hammond organ and then, with a military shuffle of the snare, the drop.

And the bass.

The lovely bass.

Noodling and hypnotic and utterly magic.

Oh yeah.

On the single cut, Wobble’s vocals are cowboy-like (hence that appropriately-named Weatherall remix above), a pub singer whose real talent lies between his fingers and those four thick strings, a voice out of place yet perfect for the track’s multi-cultural ethos and vibe. On the stretched out Weatherall reworking, Wobble’s vocals are almost non existent, replaced instead by all manner of instrumentation, random movie samples, ricocheting drum breaks and fancy augmentation. It’s a beauty, obviously.

I want visions of you…L-S-D.

Has there ever been a better misheard lyric?! I thought for years that Sinead O’Connor was singing about acid, about expanding the mind, opening up the possibilities of the cosmos and all that jazz. It’s a lyric that’s arguably more fitting and better than the one Sinead employed (she sings ‘end-less-ly‘). My misheard line would’ve slotted nicely into the track’s trippy, dubby ambience and stratospheric cosmicness.

A jam of a whole different kind, Visions Of You still has the power to thrill and surprise in equal measure.

 

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Live!

Everyone Wants A Pop Star But I Am A Protest Singer

Craig McAllister

“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career. It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl. The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed to act.

My tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”

I thought about not posting this. There’s been a flood of Sinéad O’Connor posts since the middle of last week, and the internet probably doesn’t need another one. But her sudden death had me scrambling back to Rememberings, her fascinating and brilliantly-written autobiography, and, by association, to some of her greatest music; the time-stopping Thank You For Hearing Me, the Thatcher-baiting Black Boys On Mopeds, the dubby majesty of her collaboration with Jah Wobble on Visions Of You. Social media threw up many others – deep cuts, as they say nowadays – that shone new light on under-appreciated songs sung by an under-appreciated artist. Morrissey, so often the bigmouth who strikes again, seemingly got it right with the statement he released the following day. I could have picked any of those tunes and pulled together a decent blog post, but the book had me scurrying around for unforgotten yet buried video footage that, coupled with Sinead’s written account of the events became the only thing worthy of my words.

As she notes in Rememberings, there were two Sinéad O’Connors. The almond-eyed suedehead who cried real-time tears in the video for her definitive version of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U and the one who came after that; the misunderstood protestor who fought a tough war against the wrongs of the world and was condemned to hell for it.

It’s 1992 and down near the Bowery, where New York’s Avenue A meets St Mark’s Place, O’Connor frequents a ‘juice bar’ and has befriended its Rasta owner. Over time they become close enough friends that the night before Sinéad will be filming for an appearance on Saturday Night Live, he confides in her that his life will end abruptly and soon. He’s been running guns and drugs, using school kids as mules and moved his young couriers into a rival’s patch. Sinéad is horrified. “The fucking treacherous bastard,” she seethes. She draws parallels with Pope John Paul II, a far more prominenent figurehead than her Rasta pal, but one who also appears to condone the abuse of children. She thinks back to Bob Geldof ripping the poster of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John live on Top of the Pops when the Boomtown Rats finally topple their reign with Rat Trap, and how she has always intended carrying out the same act with her mother’s photo of the pope, a photo that’s hung in the family home since John Paul’s visit to Ireland in 1982.

“(The photo) represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who keep these things were devils like my mother. I never knew when or where I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came.”

For her Saturday Night Live performance, she’s wearing a dress that once belonged to Sade. It hangs ladylike, “a dress for women to behave badly in.” She hasn’t told anyone, but she’s going to change the words to Bob Marley’s War, dropping some of the lines – taken from a United Nations speech given by Haile Selassie – and replacing them with some lines of her own.

“It would be a declaration of war against child abuse. Because I’m pissed at Terry (her Rasta friend) for what he told me last night. I’m pissed he’s been using kids to run drugs. And I’m pissed he’s gonna be dead on Monday. I’m also pissed that I’ve been finding brief articles buried in the back pages of Irish newspapers about children being ravaged by priests but whose stories are not believed by the police or the bishops their parents report it to. So I’ve been thinking even more of destroying my mother’s photo of John Paul II.

And I decide tonight is the night. I bring the photo to the NBC studio and hide it in the dressing room. At the rehearsal, when I finish singing ‘War’, I hold up a photo of a Brazilian street kid who was killed by cops. I ask the cameraman to zoom in on the photo during the actual show. I don’t tell him what I have in mind for later on. Everyone’s happy. A dead child far away is no one’s problem.”

Maybe now you can appreciate what was firing through her mind in the run up to the show. Clever and calculated and willfully confrontational, this wasn’t a spontaneous act. This was years of built-up rage – rage at the Catholic church, at her own mother, at authority who ignored the cold truth – and she was using her status to highlight it.

“I know if I do this there’ll be war. But I don’t care.”

Afterwards: “Total stunned silence in the audience. And when I walk backstage, literally not a human being is in sight. All doors have closed. Everyone has vanished. Including my own manager, who locks himself in his room for three days and unplugs his phone. Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer.”

Two weeks later, Sinéad is booked to appear at New York’s Madison Square Garden, just one singer in a dazzling array of stars who will be gathered to celebrate her hero Bob Dylan’s 30 years in music. This time, she’s wearing a dress that she hates (‘bouffant, shoulder pads, Dynasty…I look ridiculous and underweight.‘) Introduced by Kris Kristofferson, the crowd turns an ugly shade of redneck, booing her from the moment her name is announced.

“I actually think it’s the outfit, because in my excitement at being part of the show, I’ve forgotten about the pope-photo incident on SNL.

Then the other half of the audience begins cheering to fight off the booers. And there ensues a noise the likes of which I have never heard and can’t describe other than to say it’s like a thunderclap that never ends. The loudest noise I’ve ever heard. Like a sonic riot, as if the sky is ripping apart. It makes me feel nauseous and almost bursts my eardrums. And for a minute or two I’m not sure the audience members aren’t going to actually riot. They’re clashing so badly already with their voices. How do I know what else might happen?”

She’d planned to sing an arrangement of Dylan’s I Believe In You – a song that means the world to her – and on more than one occasion, her band (assorted Booker T/MGs) attempts to strike up the opening notes and lead her into it, but the ferocity of the ugly crowd in front of her has forced Sinéad to stare them out defiantly instead, arms by her side, doe eyes blinking into the vast arena, a waif-like David against the ugly Goliath of the Garden masses.

“I look at Booker T’s beautiful face. He’s mouthing the words ‘Sing the song’, but I don’t. I pace awhile onstage. I realise that if I start the song, I’m fucked, because the vocal is so whispered, both sides of the audience’s battle are going to drown me out. And I can’t afford not to be heard; the booers will take it as victory.”

Kris Kristofferson arrives by her side. He’s been told to get her off the stage, but looking at the film of it, you wouldn’t know. “I don’t need a man to rescue me, thanks.” As he returns empty handed, Sinéad gets her instruction instead from God. With her voice wavering then settling into something strong and powerful, she yanks out her in-ear monitors and rages once again – “the biggest rage I can muster“- into an aggressive and impassioned version of War, emphasising her own fingerpointing lines about child abuse.

She leaves, only after the briefest of defiant, eyeballing glances at the audience, her sharp exit a metaphor for what would follow, Stateside at least. It’s an astonishing, powerful, uncomfortable event, captured forever on this outtake from the official film of the concert. Outtake? There was no way this was going on the official release.

Afterwards, her father (he’d been in the audience) suggests she rethink her career prospects as she’s just destroyed the one she has. And she feels let down by Dylan. It should have been him, not Kristofferson, she reasons, who came out and told the audience to let her sing. So she gives Bob the evil eye as he sits in the wings. Bob stares back, baffled and handsome. Sinéad calls it ‘the weirdest thirty seconds of my life.’ Quite the claim in a life packed with incidents and accidents, rage and regret.

Now go and read the book. It’s fantastic.

Sinéad O’Connor. A true one-off.

Cover Versions, demo, Gone but not forgotten

Moz ‘n Rockers

Craig McAllister

The Hand The Rocks The Cradle was the first track Morrissey and Marr composed together, not long after Johnny “with my hair like a loaf of French bread” knocked on Morrissey’s door and suggested they try and write some songs. What the legend doesn’t say is that Johnny was accompanied by a pal to keep him company on his walk across Stretford, but three’s a crowd in romantic stories, and so Johnny’s pal was quickly written out of the fairy tale.

Anyway.

Johnny presented Morrissey with a looping instrumental motif with shaky origins in Patti Smith’s Kimberly and the singer surprised the guitarist by producing a set of fully formed lyrics and mumbling quietly to himself while the mercurial Marr sketched out the basis of what would become one of the key tracks on The Smiths’ debut album, still a twinkle in its fathers’ eyes and a good 17 months from its February ’84 release. Those words of Morrissey’s had been written a couple of years previously, biding their time until fate intervened and a delighted Morrissey twisted his initial melody to fit Johnny’s guitar part – a move that would prove to be something of a feature throughout The Smiths.

The version of the track which closes the first side of that debut album sparkles with woven multilayers of spring rain guitar and overdubbed acoustics, the track chrome-polished, light and airy and at odds with the heaviness of the lyric. The version you really want to hear though is this early John Porter mix from October 1983.

The Smiths – The Hand The Rocks The Cradle (John Porter monitor mix, 1983)

It’s dense and atmospheric, Marr’s 12 string Rickenbacker rarely straying from the 5th fret, his arpeggiated A chord and ringing open-strings splashing occasional light on the otherwise gothic ambience. Andy Rourke, playing foil on the bass guitar, has the space to move the root notes through the chords with typical melodic aplomb, playing his trademark hiccupping half notes between the beat yet keeping the groove steady and in time to Mike Joyce’s heavily reverbed snare drum. It takes real discipline to keep this up for nearly five minutes and resist the urge to break out a solo or rest for a bar to change the dynamics. On this track, the three musicians are locked in and playing tightly for one another, an early signpost of how great The Smiths would become.

The first thing you notice about the John Porter version above though is, unlike 99% of The Smiths’ catalogue, not the usual dazzling array of guitars but the voice. Lone and mournful yet confidently soulful, it’s the sound of Morrissey coming out of his shell with a sympathetic producer on coaxing duties. He’s great here, is Morrissey. There’s no chorus, no melodic hook, no repeated refrain, yet he draws you in, has you zooming in on those words he carefully sculpted as a teenage bedroom hermit, the group almost (almost) not mattering for the moment. Heavy on poetic cadence and alliteration – ‘a piano plays in an empty room‘, ‘ceiling shadows shimmy by‘, ‘tease, torment, tantalize‘ – the song’s title was the initial working name for the debut LP, dropped possibly only after the song’s message of protective fatherhood and adult/child relationship was open to skewed accusations of paedophilia. All nonsense of course. Much has been said of Morrissey in recent times, but not even he is capable of such horrific ideas.

*Bonus Track

Sinead O’Connor– The Hand The Rocks The Cradle (venue, date unknown)

As this piece went to (cough) press, the death of Sinead O’Connor began to filter through. In the aftermath of The Smiths, Rourke and Joyce provided Sinead with a rhythm section for a handful of shows, where they played a nice arrangement of The Hand The Rocks The Cradle in the encores, closing the show with Sinead’s favourite Smiths track. Typically, I can’t track down a version with Rourke and Joyce backing Sinead, but I did find this solo version, Sinead playing straightforward open chords to give the whole thing the feel of some ancient Irish folk song, something I imagine The Smiths, with strong familial roots in Ireland, would approve of.