A career-crashing passion for activism
In the fall of 1987, I looked through a stack of promo copies of soonto-be-released albums, and selected one with a blue-toned photograph of a pensive, almost demure young woman with close-cropped hair on its cover. It was Sinead O’Connor’s debut album “The Lion and the Cobra,” and I’ve never forgotten my initial reaction to it.
I had been reviewing albums since the mid-’70s, when I freelanced for the alternative weekly The Scene in Cleveland. (My first effort concerned a Southern rock band called Grinderswitch, an Allman Bros.-like outfit from Macon, Ga., that never amounted to much). The gig didn’t pay much, but allowed for a significant increase in my record collection.
By the time “The Lion and the Cobra” came out, I was reviewing records for the Arkansas Gazette. I’d developed a system. When faced with a stack of 10 albums, mostly by artists nobody had ever heard of, and a fast-approaching deadline, my method was to give each of them a 17-second test. If, after that period of time, I didn’t hear anything of interest, I moved on to the next victim.
That didn’t happen with “The Lion and the Cobra.” Instead of lazily dusting the living room while sort of paying attention to the sound coming out of my halfway-decent Altec-Lansing speakers, I backed up and sat on my couch, totally focused, absolutely awed.
The opening song, “Jackie,” speaks of a woman’s refusal to believe her seafaring husband had been lost in the rain. I still get chills when I replay her response to a young shipmate who’s brought her the news: You’re all wrong, I said/And they stared at the sand/That man knows that sea/ Like the back of his hand/He’ll be back some time/Laughing at you.
Few of us can relate to losing a beloved sailor to the sea, but the fierce snarl with which O’Connor delivers those defiant phrases still give me chills. That such a howling, angry passion could be expressed by a short, slight, beautiful, head-shaved Irish woman is astonishing.
It helps to have a five-octave vocal range, shown off to fine advantage in other cuts like “Jerusalem,” Drink Before the War,” and “Just Like U Said It Would B,” a sensual, suggestive work that offers this intriguing phrase: When I lay down my head/ At the end of my day/Nothing would/ Nothing would please me better/Than I find that you’re there when I wake …
Although the album hints at O’Connor’s increasingly radical stances, it doesn’t come close to the lyrics found in her later work, such as “Black Boys on Mopeds,” which refers to a 1989 incident in England where police were pursuing a youth riding what they mistakenly thought was a stolen moped; it crashed in the chase, killing its young owner.
She became a pop star in an era when pop stars were consulted on their fashion preferences and vacation destinations rather than their political opinions. At first O’Connor was a curiosity in this regard. Then came her refusal to take the stage if “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played before her 1990 concert at the Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, N.Y.
Her reasoning, she told the Los Angeles Times: “I am concerned … because today, we’re seeing other artists arrested at their own concerts. There is a disturbing trend towards censorship of music and art in this country and people should be alarmed over that far more than my actions on Friday.” She was alluding to a recent arrest of rap group 2 Live Crew in Florida because their lyrics were allegedly obscene.
Americans didn’t see it that way. The backlash was swift and vicious, prompting radio blackouts and threats from Frank Sinatra; he took the stage at a concert hall in his home state of New Jersey and, in the middle of the show, said, “This must be one stupid broad. I’d kick her a** if she were a guy. She must beat her kids to stay in shape.”
Undeterred, O’Connor’s next move was her now-notorious “SNL” appearance in October 1992, which took place soon after reports of child abuse by the Catholic Church had recently broken, where she ripped up a photo of the pope on which she had written “evil,” announcing: “fight the real enemy.”
Her flustered publicist, who didn’t know it was coming, scurried backstage with O’Connor afterward and told her: “I can’t get you out of this.”
All this is chronicled in Showtime’s “Nothing Compares,” a documentary (taking its name from the megahit O’Connor had with Prince’s song, which was not allowed to be used in the film by Prince’s estate) directed by Belfast native Kathryn Ferguson that presents in exquisite detail her traumatic childhood, entry into pop music, meteoric rise to fame, and rapid fall from grace. It’s mesmerizing, until it’s not.
The film appears to be a collaborative effort with the artist and the director. It’s not a “this happened, then that happened” sort of production. Apparently O’Connor had reasons for steering clear of many later events in her life, such as her four marriages, her four children (her 17-year-old son died by suicide earlier this year), religion shifts (she converted to Islam in 2018), name changes (she changed her name to Magda Davitt in 2017 and to Shuhada Davitt in 2018), mental illness challenges, her best-selling 2021 memoir “Rememberings,” or anything about the last 11 albums she has produced.
It’s like the ending of “Thelma and Louise,” in which the heroines (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon) hold hands and plunge their blue 1966 Thunderbird into the Grand Canyon. That scene signaled the end of the story.
The conclusion of “Nothing Compares” leaves the door wide open to endless possibilities for its tantalizingly complex subject, who’s now 55. I hope another documentary takes on the challenge of continuing to chronicle her life, complete with, and in opposition of, ongoing myths and legends.