Dolores O’riordan
Lead singer of Irish group the Cranberries whose plangent tones were heard on hits such as Linger
DOLORES O’RIORDAN, who has died suddenly aged 46, was the lead singer of the Cranberries, the Irish alternative rock band which enjoyed huge success in the 1990s, selling 40 million albums worldwide and scoring hits evocative of the era such as Linger and Zombie.
The group formed in Limerick in 1989. The lead guitarist Noel Hogan, his brother Mike, who played bass, and drummer Fergal Lawler (then a hairdresser), inspired initially by the break dancing craze, had started the band the year before as The Cranberry Saw Us.
Having lost their first singer, they auditioned for another and were struck by the 18-year-old Dolores O’riordan’s plangent voice, which retained a strong trace of her native accent. She proved to have been writing songs since she was 12, and after taking away four chords provided by Noel Hogan returned with Linger. Its lyrics were inspired by being dumped by her boyfriend at a disco.
A first EP, Uncertain (1990), attracted little attention, however, and though a change of management and of producer revived their hopes, their breathy first single Dreams (1992) made scant headway in the UK charts, then dominated by Britpop.
The initial release of the album Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993), which chronicled a girl’s coming of age, also caused no stir. Disconsolate, the group set off on a US tour as support to the band Suede.
There their fortunes changed when they were spotted by an MTV executive. The lilt and strings of Linger were given heavy rotation on the music channel and they made their breakthrough. Their previous releases gained a second wind in Britain, where they reached the Top 20, and the album went to No 1. Yet it was in America that they were to have their greatest successes, chiefly with their second LP, No Need to Argue (1994).
Noticeably more strident and sombre in tone, and fronted by the grungy anthem Zombie, which made reference to the Troubles, the album went on to sell seven million copies in the US. As a woman fronting a rock group, Dolores O’riordan inevitably became the focus of attention, noted for her banshee voice (which was not unlike that of Sinead O’connor), cropped hair and stage presence, despite her diminutive stature. Only U2 could now rival them for status in Ireland.
Yet this took its toll on a person who had been so shy and unsophisticated that she first performed with her back to the audience. No doubt as a form of protection, she developed a reputation for being stroppy with the press, who now characterised her songwriting as portentous.
Dissent within the band became more apparent during an exhausting world tour, at the end of which Dolores O’riordan said she experienced a “meltdown”, weighed six-and-a-half stone and was a “basket-case”.
Three more albums followed, to less acclaim, before a greatest hits LP,
Stars, preceded an agreement to put the band into hiatus in 2003. By then, Dolores O’riordan was said to be one of the 10 richest women in Ireland, but her apparently idyllic life in Limerick masked much distress. Subsequently, she revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child, leading to anorexia, the overuse of alcohol, manic depression and suicidal thoughts.
In 1994 she had married Don Burton, a Canadian who was Duran Duran’s tour manager, but after having three children, and moving to Ontario, they divorced in 2014. Later that year, Dolores O’riordan was arrested after an air rage incident on a flight to Shannon, which culminated in her headbutting a garda and shouting: “I’m the Queen of Limerick!”
In 2012 she reflected: “Anyone who gets famous so quickly and so young, you’re bound to be a bit of a casualty in some fashion.” She was found dead in a London hotel on Monday; the cause of death is as yet unknown.
The youngest of nine children, of whom two died in infancy, Dolores O’riordan was born on September 6 1971 and grew up at Ballybricken, a farming community outside Limerick in the west of Ireland.
Her father had suffered an accident and could not work, so the family was sustained by her mother Eileen, a school caterer. Dolores herself went to Laurel Hill School in Limerick, where she was taught in Irish. Having five older brothers made her a tomboy and she developed a reputation for being rebellious and pushy.
In the mid-2000s, she released two solo albums before reuniting with the Cranberries at the end of the decade. Two more albums followed, including last year the orchestral retrospective Something Else. There was also an LP with the trio D.A.R.K, featuring the Smiths’ Andy Rourke, and she had performed at the Vatican. But plans to tour with the Cranberries were abruptly shelved; ill health was cited.
Dolores O’riordan is survived by her son and two daughters.
Dolores O’riordan, born September 6 1971, died January 15 2018