I first crossed paths with Sinéad at some point in 1985, when she had just collaborated with The Edge from U2 on a song called Heroine. She came to a party at his house and when she walked into the room, wearing this long cape, it was like a beautiful apparition. Everything stopped. She had a presence that was not just about her beauty. It was deeper than that. And then I heard her sing and it was like: “Wow!”
I didn’t see her for a good while after that. Then, in 1993, I was working with the director Jim Sheridan on the soundtrack for his film about the Guildford Four, In the Name of the Father. Both myself and Bono had recorded versions of the song You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart for the film, but Jim thought they were both too dark. He decided he wanted a woman to sing it and I suggested Sinéad.
I showed her a rough cut of the film and that was that: she was absolutely up for doing the song. We recorded it in a small demo studio in Temple Bar in Dublin. Sinéad arrived dressed all in denim with a baby doll under her arm. You couldn’t tell if she was play-acting for effect or what. I asked her what was going on with the doll and she said: “It’s my doll – I didn’t have one as a kid and I have one now. She’s called Sinéad.” That was a room-clearer – the musician and producer immediately legged it.
I remember she spent a serious amount of time preparing for the session. She had a big bag full of candles and she positioned them all around the small studio. Before we began, she said she’d like to go for a drink with me to discuss the lyrics, so we went around the corner to the bar in the Clarence hotel. She asked for a pint of Guinness and, after just a few sips, asked for another one. I didn’t know what was going on, but I went and ordered her a second pint. When I brought it back to the table, she picked it up, walked over to a corner alcove and poured it slowly over the head of a well-known Irish tabloid journalist as she screamed at him never to write anything about her family ever again.
It was pretty wild – like Bambi had suddenly turned into Darth Vader. Then she came back over, sat down and started asking me about the lyrics to the song. What I remember is the laser intensity of her anger and, at the same time, the calmness of purpose.
We walked back to the studio at about 10 o’clock and she nailed the vocal by midnight. Some warm-ups, two full takes and that was it. Perfection. Then she was gone. That was the start of our friendship. The song was nominated for a Golden Globe, but at that point, which was just months after she tore up the pope’s photo on Saturday Night Live, her records were not even being played on the radio, especially in America.
Sinéad moved back to Ireland around 2006 or so and I began to see more of her. She bought a house in Bray and I’d meet her in Ragazzi’s pizza restaurant in Dalkey village, where she’d drink pints of Coca-Cola and chat about her kids. I had this almost paternal relationship with her. My instinct was to look out for her and I think she picked up on that and responded to it.
When I released an album, Catholic, in 2011, she gave out to me for not asking her to sing on it. We did a few gigs together at the Olympia in Dublin and it was amazing. I remember her kids were running around the stage at the sound check and I had to ask her to stop them, because nobody else would. Her reputation preceded her. She could turn in a heartbeat from calm to confrontational, but not with me. It was a very easy relationship we had.
When Sinéad was struggling over the past few years, it was hard to contact her as she kept changing her number and her email. I got some random messages now and again and then nothing. After her son Shane died, I tried to make contact through various people but I couldn’t reach her. That was the most terrible thing and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t see how she could recover from it.
I was listening to an arts programme on the radio around 7pm when they announced her death. I cried when I heard. I remember the radio stations cancelled all their scheduled programmes and just played her music. I went out for a walk and heard her songs coming out of people’s open windows. It was a collective living wake. Spontaneous.
I think that Sinéad became famous too young and it was a burden, but, at the same time, she needed to see herself in a headline. It was complicated but I was angry with the Irish tabloids, who portrayed Sinéad as a mad woman, and then suddenly tried to turned her into Diana, Princess of Wales when she died.
I agreed with about 90% of everything she said about the world and particularly about Ireland. I kicked hard against the Catholic church myself when I was younger, but she had the fame and the platform – and the courage – to do it more effectively. As an activist, she was ahead of her time. For me, it was the ordinary women who turned out on the streets for her funeral that were the real testament to her importance. Many of them had silently gone through terrible stuff in Catholic Ireland. You could see how much she meant to them.
The thing that stays with me now is the wildness of her organic talent as a singer. When she chose someone else’s song to sing, she didn’t just cover it, she possessed it. Listen to her version of Nirvana’s All Apologies, the purity of her voice and the way she reaches deep into herself to inhabit the song. The only thing that kept her grounded was the music, but it couldn’t save her.
