Sinead O’Connor Remembered In This 2014 Interview

Sinead O’Connor passed away today at the age of 56. I was fortunate to interview O’Connor several times over her remarkable career. While that career was often overshadowed by controversy, which she addresses in this 2014 interview, she was deservedly recognized by her peers and critics as one of the most influential and important artists to emerge in the last 40 years.

The Irish singer/songwriter was a true artist, one who apologized to no one for fighting for her beliefs and principles. And make no mistake, O’Connor was a fighter. But mixed with that toughness and resolve was a charm, a humor and deep love of music, as she expressed in this 2014 conversation.

Do yourself a favor, sit down right now and listen to your favorite O’Connor album, for me, cliche as it might be, it will always be 1990’s brilliant I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, a perfect album start to finish. Sinead O’Connor was never given her proper due in her lifetime. Sadly that will likely come now that she is gone. But for those of us who knew, she was a true revelation, an iconic artist and person.

Steve Baltin: I love the line in “Take Me To Church,” “I’m the only one I should adore.” I definitely feel like people get more comfortable and secure as they get older. So what was the point where you realized you should adore yourself?

Sinead O’Connor: The album is very specifically romantic and it deals really with love songs and there are four female characters on the album and then there’s me. Beginning with my last album I began to change the platform from which I write songs. When I was younger I had things to get off my chest, much more personal things. I had grown up in a very abusive situation and so music became the platform for me to work things out. And then what happened with the last record is people had begun to give me movie scripts and I’d begun to write songs from the point of view of other characters. And I enjoyed that, so I started to do that with this record also. So there’s one central character that appears in this record quite a lot and what I wanted to get at with her was a series of songs, of which “Take Me To Church” is one and it’s really just her eureka moment. What I wanted to get at her is the thing that we all do, where we perhaps project certain longings onto people we think we’re in love with and we project a lot of longing onto people. And I wanted to really show that often underneath it all it’s ourselves that we’re longing for. And what happens with my central character on the record is that she writes a lot of songs previous to “Take Me To Church,” which are telling this man that she loves him and wants to be with him. Then what happens is she gets what she wants and she finds out in fact he’s quite a frightening person to her and that fear is what causes her to ask herself a whole lot of questions about how did she get herself into that situation. And she begins to assess what it was she was really longing for. She understands it was herself, so I suppose the turning point is really for the character and the fright she gets when she gets the guy, which is written about in the song “Where Have You Been?”

Baltin: Would you ever want to turn this into a play or movie?

O’Connor: No, it’s a bit of a play I suppose, but it’s in musical form. What I was trying to reference is I’m very interested in sequencing on albums and I was referencing the Aretha Franklin album I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You. I love that album. To me, it’s the greatest sequencing of an album of all time. And people know the songs from that album as being sort of separate songs, but actually when you listen to that album there’s very much the story of a journey of the female character through the relationship. And in fact the songs are all conversations that she’s having with this man that she’s in love with and the man is very present on the record by virtue of the fact it’s him she’s talking to. When you hear the songs you see him and I suppose I was trying to achieve the same type of feeling, that there’s a journey that goes on and really it’s about relationships and such. But you couldn’t, anymore than you could take I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You and turn that into a musical, because it is what it is, which is an album form I suppose.

Baltin: It’s so interesting you mention seeing the man in I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You because one of my all-time favorite songs of yours is “The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance,” and that is a song where you can picture the protagonists in the lawyer’s office. It is so visual. Was that imagery always important to you or were you building to the visualization on this album?

O’Connor: With songs like “The Last Day Of Our Acquaintance” they are very auto-biographical, so it’s a different approach to when you’re writing songs like on this album. I’ve deliberately, consciously written characters and I have more of a conscious plot. It is a bit like writing a play, I had a conscious plot and I needed a certain amount of songs to tell that story. But with songs like “The Last Day,” those are more auto-biographical, so it is more accidental that I painted the picture so clearly. It’s just that the thing so clearly happened.

Baltin: I remember an interview I did years ago with Jackson Browne that I go back to again and again and he spoke of how prophetic his songwriting was.

O’Connor: Yeah, songs come very true in your life. That’s what my character is talking about in “Take Me To Church.” She is talking about she understands that she has written a ton of songs that then came true, she got what she wanted, which was the man, only that it turned out he was very frightening. So she then is declaring about in “Take Me To Church” she is going to be very careful about the type of songs she writes in future because songs come true in your life and they make things happen. And then it is very true you have to be careful what you write because, the songs will happen in your life.

Baltin: Are there songs of yours that you can think of that you’ve written and then had them come true?

O’Connor: I’m sure there are, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. But I think more of other artists like Amy Winehouse, “Back To Black.” She made that video where she saw herself buried in the grave, next thing it happened. Kurt Cobain used to talk and sing a lot about death and being shot, next thing it happens. A lot of artists will tell you songs they’ve written have happened. Mine certainly have, I can’t quite think of the names off the top of my head. But I would be very careful of what I write and if I want a particular thing to happen in my life I would write about it and write about it happening so it does happen.

Baltin: Why do you think this happens?

O’Connor: There is that old saying, I think, therefore I am. What you think is what you create. Your feelings are directly associated with your thoughts, what you think is what causes you to feel whatever way you feel. And what you think is what you create. Words are dreadfully powerful and words uttered are ten times more powerful. The spoken word is the science on which the entire universe is built. Spoken words are dreadfully powerful. And I think songwriters have an understanding of the power of the spoken word and possibly we find it out the hard way, by things coming true and then we start to be careful what we write. There’s the famous story of Jim Carrey, when he was young he sent himself a letter saying, “Ten years from now I’m going to be the biggest comedy actor of all time, I’m going to have ten million dollars,” and it came true. Bruce Lee did the same. Bruce Lee sent himself a letter saying, “Ten years from now I’m going to be the biggest martial arts movie star,” and he was. So there are people who have a conscious understanding of words and how they work and how intention works. Songwriters are people who deal with intention, that’s what we do. I could stand on the stage and sing the “A,B,C,” but it’s the intention behind it. If I want to make you stop in your tracks I can, it’s not about the words, it’s about my intention.

Baltin: If you were to write yourself a letter for ten years from now, what would it say?

O’Connor: It would say that I am going to be writing songs for many other artists and that I’m going to leave a legacy of fantastic songwriting and not just for myself, but lots of other people. I’m also going to marry Robert Downey Jr. and Dave Chapelle.

Baltin: Both of them?

Together.

Baltin: Why the two of them?

O’Connor: Robert Downey Jr just because he’s gorgeous. And Dave Chapelle is somebody I really idolize and admire and love. It’s not just lust with Dave, I love Dave. I really admire him because of his principles, the fact that he walked away from all of the temptations of show biz that would have in fact disguised important truths of his and important truths of the stories he was dealing with, the African-American experience if you like. And he walked away from what he knew would dilute truths and stories and he got crazied for doing that. And I can identify with that because I in ripping up the Pope’s picture was pretty much doing the same thing and I got crazied for that. And I suppose I identify with Dave Chappelle from that point of view. And I just really admire him, not just because he is funny and extremely good looking but that he is a man of enormous spiritual principle.

Baltin: Are there artists in other fields you have that kinship with?

O’Connor: I have obviously idols and heroes. The first person that sprang to my mind when you started speaking there was Muhammad Ali. He would be one of my biggest heroes since I was a child. Why I admired him is really he was a rule breaker and he was ahead of his time in terms of things of affirmations, jumping around, saying, “I am the greatest, I am the most beautiful,” which were forbidden things to say. And I admired also John Lennon. Muhammad Ali I admired of course really because he walked away from war, the fact that he risked everything and lost everything in order to stand for principle, he was the true heavyweight champion of the world. He would not put his might behind an unfair fight, and he walked away from service in the army and he had everything taken away from him because of it. And really the symbolism in everything he did was so inspiring to people like me. He was able to reach across the world into the sitting rooms of tiny girls in Ireland and change their lives just by being principled. And John Lennon obviously I admire because he used his platform as much as he could for things he believed in.