Sinéad O’Connor: In Conversation 2007

Interview by Dave Schulps

As I started listening to it, I immediately wondered whether, in some way, Theology was sort of a follow-up to the last album [Throw Down Your Arms, 2005]. Not musically, but in intent.

Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I would’ve been vastly inspired over the years by the Rasta movement and by the particular way in which they use music as a priesthood, if you like. And I was always planning on making a record that was inspired by what they do, but didn’t necessarily sound exactly like what they do. Yeah. But I had to make the Rasta record first in order to be able to even write these songs. You know?

So just to get into the mind frame of the sort of spirituality that they’re in.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

The initial idea, I read an interview from a couple of years ago, was to do just an acoustic album. How did that expand?

Oh, kind of by accident, because the guy who produced the London end of the record, Ron Tom, I didn’t know him. And at one point he tracked me down and called me and asked me would I go to London to work with him. And so I said I would go just to see how he got on in the studio, but the only songs I had was some of the songs from Theology. So we just messed about in the studio with him.

But then I had started recording the acoustic album, and I told him that I just wanted to do it acoustically and I wanted to work on a future record with him. And he was devastated, really upset. I really wanted to make this album, so I didn’t want to stop the acoustic one either. So, I just said, “Okay, we’ll do both.” So it was a happy accident.

So, it didn’t have anything really to do with maybe it being a harder sell to do an acoustic album or anything like that?

No. As it happens now, but yeah, it’s a good thing we did do it. Cause it does mean you’d maybe get on the radio more than you would with just an acoustic record or whatever.

So, the Dublin sessions, were they completely done by the time you went?

No, they were kind of halfway through by the time we started the London one, and the guys in Dublin didn’t know about the London one at all, and the guy in London, I never played him any of the Dublin ones, so that they were totally not influenced by each other at all.

How did they finally find out, and what was the reaction when the Dublin crew found out?

They were fine. I was very nervous about telling them, ‘cause I thought they’d go mad, and in particular because the guy who was producing the double one had wanted to produce it a bit more. I bring in other musicians, but I was very strictly, “No, no, no, just guitar and voice.” I knew about the other one. And so we had argued about it and had words and everything. When it came time to tell him that the reason why I was fighting about it was cause I knew about the other record or whatever, I was kind of nervous, but he took it very well. There were a few expletives exchanged, but he took it very well. So it’s fine.

I mean, I think once they heard the London version, they were relaxed. They were worried about comparison, would they match up to it? But it was good that they were so vastly different, that it wasn’t about that. You know what I mean? Once they heard it, they were kind of relieved in a way.

Once you did the London versions, did it change your perceptions of the songs in any way?

No. I like that they’re very different reads, though. And it was more the other way round. Some of the songs, “Watcher of Man” and “Whomsoever Dwells” and “The Glory of Jah” and “Psalm 33” came about in the opposite way. Most of the songs came about acoustically, but those songs are the songs… The ones that came about acoustically are the ones I wrote on my own. The others are the songs that I wrote with Ron Tom.

And how they came about was he gave me backing tracks that he had made just for fun, like with no vocals or song on them. And I liked working on that, and then bringing those back and doing those acoustically, of course, I had to lie to everyone about where they came from. Do you know what I mean? It was terrible.

You know, there’s a woman called Anaïs Nin. Did you ever hear of her?

Sure, yeah.

She apparently had loads, thousands of affairs during her life, but she apparently kept a filing cabinet full of lies so she could remember which lies she had given to each lover or whatever. So I was a bit like that, making this record.

So I guess you don’t believe a lie is a mortal sin?

Well, sometimes you have to lie to protect yourself. White lies. I mean, you’ve got to ‘fess up at some point, obviously, but you know, got to protect yourself too.

So, everybody ended up happy.

Everyone was cool in the end. Cause at the end of the day, it’s good business for everyone. Do you know what I mean? The acoustic guys are not stupid either, and they know that the other version is going to get them on the radio, and therefore they’re going to get paid. Do you know what I mean? So at the end of the day, everyone really only cares about the record, actually. Do you know what I mean? And we’re all really good mates, so that’s cool.

The idea of turning around on the acoustic sessions, the Psalm or where it comes from in the Bible is sort of the title, and then a line from it usually is the title on the electric versions. Why did you do that?

Well, I guess I had been under a certain pressure all round. It’s funny because it’s only myself and Steve Cooney, who’s the producer of the acoustic side, who had any belief in God or anything like that. Everybody else, including Ron Tom working on the record, were atheists, serious atheists who mounted a massive campaign. They didn’t want me to call the record Theology or tell anyone that there were religious songs. So there was a certain amount of pressure. I wanted to call the songs just the titles of the books that they were from. But there was a certain amount of pressure not to.

So in the end, what I did really was just opt for both. Do you know what I mean? Just to make everybody happy kind of thing. So I didn’t want to believe it or be dishonest about what the record is. It would be ludicrous. Like I say, a lot of pressure was there for me also not to say to anyone that it was a religious record, which would’ve involved a whole lot of lying. Do you know, even I’m not up to that. Do you know what I mean? I couldn’t find the intelligence to try to disguise what it really is. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, that was just a way of compromising. Do you know what I mean? That I could get what I wanted and at the same time shut everybody up.

I know exactly what you’re saying, and anybody who listens to it will get what it is.

Well, yeah, it would be stupid trying to hide it. It’d be like the pink elephant in the corner. But also, I suppose I could see their point in one way, which was, if I just had “Jeremiah,” “Isaiah,” “Job,” “Psalm 31” that could be off-putting to some people who… The people you’re trying to reach are the ones who actually have a prejudice about religious things or anything to do with that. So you don’t want to put them off or make them think that all it is as a religious record, or do you know what I mean as such? Because not that simple. Do you know what I mean?

The whole history of rock and pop music is so intertwined with gospel music.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

In a way, you really can’t pull it all the way out anyway.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

A number of years ago, you retired and took a few years off and came back, and I don’t know if it’s the right word, but disowned the earlier part of your career. Would you agree that’s the right word, or maybe not?

I wouldn’t say that I disowned it, certainly not musically, but I would say that I was finding it hard to carry the kind of weight of prejudice that was out there about me, basically about what I call Sinéad O’Connor in inverted commas. There was an awful lot of prejudice, and the way the media had this particular attitude toward me, and that was actually affecting my life in very negative ways. People in one’s lives start to treat one in a particular way based on what they read in the papers. Do you know what I mean? And that can really damage you.

And it got to a point which I found just difficult to carry any further. So I was kind of spiritually exhausted, really. I needed to kind of regroup, as they say. A wise warrior knows when to retreat. Do you know what I mean? So, I did. I mean, I had got into music and everything very, very early as well in my life, and got the whole fame thing very, very early and very young, and I never really took time to really establish my own identity apart from all of that, you know what I mean?

So, it was good to take a couple of years. I took three years or something where I just looked after my kids and I didn’t even look at a guitar. I didn’t even keep any instruments, nothing, and just began to discover the ordinary person that I would be. Do you know what I mean? So it was nice basically to come out of it, and the way I see it now is, okay, I’m back working, but I would see myself as very much working in a different arena. I realized a part of me is in the rock and pop thing, but I’m trying to focus myself more into a different arena, really.

Do you consider yourself a spiritual singer? Is that, how would you describe yourself?

I’m always nervous about describing really anything. Cause you can’t really put yourself in a box or put a label on yourself, you know what I mean? But I would hope to be — What’s the best word? — I suppose yeah, I would like to be working in a more kind of inspirational arena, if you like. I think that’s a great word, really, because not so much religious as such, but some kind of inspirational-slash-spiritual arena yeah.

I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with the rock and pop arena, and like I’ve just done a song for a movie, for example, and its subtext is quite spiritual, but essentially it’s a kind of pop song. Do you know what I mean? And I got to pay my bills as much as anyone else does. So obviously it’s not that I would never work in that arena, but in terms of being a songwriter, generally, that’s what I would hope to be doing.

What is the movie and what’s the song?

It’s a movie called The Water Horse. It’s a movie for kids that’s coming out on Christmas Day, actually, and I wrote the theme song for it, so I can’t give away too much there, they’ll kill me. They don’t want the story given away, obviously, but it’s a brilliant movie, very unusual children’s movie, dealing with subjects that are not normally dealt with when it comes to children. So… [NB: The film is based on a novel by Dick King-Smith, who also wrote Babe, so the story was already out there, actually.]

You write in the notes that “Theology is my attempt to create a place of peace in a time of war.” Was that an intention with the songs because you get kind of, I mean, it’s not a new age album, let’s put it that way?

Yeah, I suppose what I meant by that was… First I was put under a lot of pressure to come up with right now, something that describes what the album is, and you’re not sitting and thinking very carefully what it is. I don’t know that that’s the most accurate description — because there are many reasons for making the record — but one sliver of the reasons was to do with, yeah, what’s happened since September 11th and the subsequent six years that we’ve all been living with.

To me, I guess I was inspired by this thing of when you look around what’s happened, you see that largely it’s all happened because of how a very few people have interpreted a particular theology. And that how those people misrepresent, in fact, their own theologies and more importantly, misrepresent God actually, and state on all sides, that God is somehow something which supports the use of violence as a means of sorting things out. I wanted, really, with the record, to be able to lift things from scripture, which shows, in fact, the opposite to be true. Cause I don’t believe, actually, that God is someone who loves conditionally or who supports violence. And there’s no evidence in any scriptures in the world to show that, actually, God supports that.

I suppose that’s what I wanted to be able to do, my tiny part in actually — What’s the word? — standing up for God, if you like. Because God is the most libeled person in history. Do you know what I mean? And there isn’t many people to speak for it. You know?

And he seems to be very silent on some of the issues of the day.

Well indeed. Well, no one listens. Isn’t it, you’ve got, if you want to hear something, you have to listen to it, isn’t it?

You sort of intertwine your own lyrics with the lyrics from the Bible, and I’m wondering how you felt doing that?

How do you mean?

Were you more careful about what you yourself added to it?

Yeah.

So, because of what was opposite.

Which goes back to the previous question, my specific focus with this record was to annihilate this idea of God being aggressive in any way. I wanted to be extremely careful, even with my own lyrics, to make sure it was all very gentle and pleasant and nothing that would be angry or particularly aggressive. I had to match up emotionally to what the Old Testament stuff was saying.

A couple of passages kind of stood out for me. In “Rivers of Babylon,” you added a part about “Under the poplars, I broke my guitar because my tormentors are…”

Requiring songs. It goes back to the previous question. “Rivers of Babylon” is actually a psalm. It’s, I think, I don’t know if Psalm 137 or 167, and that’s where the original psalm was taken from. Originally, it was a Rasta song. Actually, it was used in religious ceremonies with the Rastas, and then it was the Melodians took it, and then Boney M. took it. And again, it goes back to the previous question. I didn’t want anything even remotely bitter or angry on the record and the lines, which I love, but the lines about “Then the wicked carried us away.” They’re bitter actually, and understandably bitter, but still they’re bitter. And I didn’t want any type of bitterness on there, plus a lot of prejudice about this song. You know what I mean?

I went back into the psalm itself and read through the lyrics. It’s actually a horribly aggressive psalm, believe it or not. Like this song’s about the people who are carried away are asking God to smash the babies of the enemies. You know what I mean? On the rocks and stuff. So it’s really not pretty, but I did find these very forlorn lines in it. So those lines are all taken from the psalm where whoever is speaking says, “We hung our guitars on the poplars cause we didn’t ever want to hear music again because of what happened to us” or whatever, which obviously I could identify, with having come out of the rock and pop arena there for a while.

But anyway, no, they’re all lyrics from the psalm. And like I say, I changed them ‘cause I didn’t want to have anything bitter or even remotely angry or whatever.

So, the lines in “Something Beautiful” about dressing the wounds of the poor people…

Yeah. Those are all from the book of Jeremiah. And I love the books of the prophets passionately. That’s what I love really about the Old Testament. And I love him in particular. I love Jeremiah and Isaiah particularly. I also love Hosea, but Jeremiah is my favorite. He’s the only child prophet, which I find fascinating. Also, he’s the only one that moans about being a prophet. He’s always complaining to God, “Why are you giving me a pain?” You know what I mean? And so he’s nice because he’s a real ordinary kind of character. But the God character in that book, too, I love, because it’s a very human kind of character, very emotional kind of character. And I love this thing of it, talking about “my poor people” all the time. It’s lovely language in it.

I had a teacher, that’s what kind of made me want to make the record, too. I studied theology for a while with this old priest who I’ve dedicated the record to, this guy called Wilfred Harrington, and he used to teach this class on the prophets. But when he got to the Jeremiah thing, it was incredible, because how he did it was he would assume all the characters in the book. And when he was playing the God character, he just did it so — I’ve never seen anyone do it like that, because he was almost crying. You could almost see tears in his eyes when he would say, “My poor people, my poor people”, and all this stuff. It was amazing to have someone bring it off the page and bring it alive like that. So…

Do you see parallels with various aspects of what’s going on today with…?

Very much so. That’s why I love, that’s why I’m kind of obsessed with those books, because of exactly that. Yeah. And that’s why I loved the song. If you have a Vineyard, what is it? “If You Had a Vineyard,” that comes from the book of Isaiah, it’s all chapter five of the book of Isaiah. It starts with God saying to Isaiah, “Well, now I’m going to sing a song about my beloved and his vineyard”, and every line of that song is scripture. And to me, God is singing a song to two warring factions in Israel. You know what I mean? Anti-war song. And it has aggressive parts in it and everything, but I just kind of left those out. But yeah, I mean, there are massive… What’s the word?

Correlations?

Yeah. Between what those guys are writing in those times and what’s going on in our world, obviously. That’s why I like the Curtis [Mayfield] song [“We People Who Are Darker Than Blue”], too. It’s a bit of a red herring in some ways, but it’s also not insofar as I see him as having a little bit of that kind of prophetic blood, so far as he was writing about things that were very appropriate in his time, but they’re equally appropriate in our time. And I think without him even realizing it there was probably a slightly religious undertone, even in that song, insofar as in talking about we’re all actually one, he’s talking about how we’re all by blood connected to each other. So yeah.

When did you get the idea of doing that song? I mean, was that something that naturally fell in?

I’ve always loved that song, and I’ve always wanted to do that song at some point. So I don’t know why. Again, it’s a bit of a funny one. I can’t quite find the words to explain the link between it and the other songs. On the outside I can’t make anyone else see it. But in my mind, for some reason, it is there, the link. But I just love that song always. You know what I mean?

So I suppose partly one of the links, I do sit thinking about it, but one of the links, I think, is as a Catholic person growing up in Ireland, in the times that I did to be a good Catholic, you had to think you were a bad person, basically. And I think that song also was dealing with that issue of self-esteem, do you know? So, to me, every time I heard that song, I would think of it as being, he’s talking about people who are sad, not to me about color. Do you know what I mean? It’s about darker than blue to me means people are really fucking miserable. So I like that about it also, that it kind of approaches the how, well, to me it means anyway, how religion can affect people’s self-esteem badly.

Why didn’t you do “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” acoustically?

Because the acoustic record was finished before the London record, so it was all in the bag as such.

Would you have liked to have explored how that sounded acoustically?

Well, in one way, yes. And in other ways, I really wanted there to be significant differences between the two albums. There’s a track on the acoustic album that’s not on the London one also, the Latin chant [“Hosanna Filio David”]. So in one way, no, I think it’s good that they have differences.

What’s your personal history with that song [“I Don’t Know How to Love Him”]?

Well, that came out I think when I was about eight. And at the time, I remember saying, that’s my song. I loved it, fell in love with it immediately. So always, always loved it. I don’t particularly associate it with the musical [Jesus Christ Superstar], I just hear it as a love song in its own right. But I always knew I would record that song. But it was only when I finished recording the record there over in London, I realized I hadn’t really, it was all Old Testament. I hadn’t really paid any kind of respect to the New Testament at all. I was trying to find a song that I could touch on the New Testament, but that wasn’t obviously New Testament necessarily.

One of the objects of the game and making the record is obviously you’re trying to aim it at people who are sick of religion in some ways, you know what I mean? And you want to aim it at the people who’ve been turned off to the idea of God as such. You have to be aware of their prejudices, and you don’t want to feed into their prejudices. One of the biggest prejudices in the world is the J word. You say the J word, people go running, you know what I mean? You’ve got to find a New Testament song that isn’t going to buy into prejudices or be obviously about Jesus or whatever. Well, it’s obviously about Jesus, but it’s all done in the subtext, if you like.

His name isn’t in the song.

Exactly. Well, it could be about any man, but I like the theology of the song too, insofar as talking about him being just a man. You know what I mean? But also, what else was I going to say? Yeah, I think with, this is not PC to say this, but often New Testament music can be quite corny. You know what I mean? And if you’ve got to approach, even I myself, even as a songwriter, I don’t think that I would be certain yet to write a New Testament song that wouldn’t be corny. Do you know what I mean? It’s just difficult to do. You know? And I think that’s one of the rare occasions where someone has managed to do it without it being corny or toe curling too.

Is that a goal you might set for yourself for the future?

Yeah, it actually is something that I would like to do. I would definitely like to do it, but I would think I would need to study for quite some time in order to be able to do it.

I understand the album’s going to be sold in major Christian outlets and that kind of thing. Is that something that you had to lobby for? Were you personally involved in that?

Yeah, to the extent that it was my desire as expressed to labels that are working the record, that I would like them to work it in that arena and in those arenas, definitely. We were just talking about that earlier. I had a certain amount of resistance from some companies when I said I’d like them to work in that arena. They were like, “Why?” Do you know what I mean? They didn’t want to do it, and some leapt on it and really did it. But in terms of the welcome that I have received in that arena it has been incredible.

Again, I was talking with [my publicist] about it earlier, but I kind of maybe thought a little that that arena might have a problem with me, because I’m this, that, or the other. Do you know what I mean? But actually, they’ve been incredible. They’ve never once asked me any kind of question about the past or controversy or, do you know what I mean? They don’t ask me anything, any kind of rubbish. Do you know what I mean?

I was noticing that there seemed to be a lot of theologians who were interested in you, and not judgmentally.

Yeah. And it’s incredible. I was saying earlier on that there was one interview I did for a Christian radio station, the guy kept calling me mom. Do you know what I mean? Just like bliss. So no, they’ve really been lovely. I guess they just like music. They’re not caring about rubbish. Do you know what I mean?

So how long do you expect to be out touring the album?

Well, we’re kind of running two tours. Like now I’m here only for a couple of weeks and I’m just doing four shows. which is just Theology: Acoustic Version. Then I’m supposed to come back in September and do full band retrospective kind of Elvis show.

So you will be doing the old songs?

Yeah. Yeah. Mostly old songs. In that set there’s only maybe four or five songs from Theology.

You played a Green Energy festival in Dublin recently. Is that a big cause for you? Are you very interested in that?

Oh, well all they’re talking about, I think, is alcohol. It’s sponsored by this Heineken beer. That’s all they give a shit about. They don’t care about the environment. Believe me, if you’ve seen the stage of the place when we left, you’d know they don’t care about the environment.

I noticed that the day of Live Earth you’re going to be doing T in the Park in Scotland. Would you have liked to have done Live Earth?

I got asked to do it, and I actually felt like a bit of a hypocrite, to be honest, because I’m terrible. I’m actually terrible. I don’t recycle. I don’t do anything, you know what I mean? And so I kind of felt I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I did do it. Do you know what I mean? I just think if you’re going to do stuff like that, you have to really be the thing. Do you know what I mean? So if any of them got their hands on me and came to my house and saw how completely ungreen I am, they’d bury me under the stage. Do you know what I mean?

So you might have more problem with them, then you have with the with the clergy here? Huh?

Yeah. Well, you know what I don’t like either is, I had a lot of pressure from all over the place, of course, to just do it and say nothing. And you get that. There’s a lot of… You couldn’t describe that as a charity event, but I don’t know what you would describe it as, but a lot of time you get artists going on those kind of shows for purely for promotional and business reasons, and they don’t really give a shit about the event, or sorry, the cause. So I don’t know, I just don’t want to be a hypocrite.

What have you thought about, or have you thought about what your next project is going to be?

I haven’t a clue to be honest. I really believe that — What’s the best way to put it? — this record will lead me to the next thing. Do you know what I mean? When I go about working this record and doing shows and that kind of thing, it’ll open the door to what the next thing is. So I don’t have a clue.

Oh, okay. You sang on Peter Gabriel’s album. That’s kind of been long delayed.

I didn’t. It’s funny, the last guy said that to me too.

Oh really?

I actually haven’t sung on this new record that he was coming out at all. No, I sang on one of his records like years ago [a duet on “Come Talk to Me” on his 1992 album, Us], but…

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. I mean that there must have been a [publicity] piece that said that mistakenly and…that’s probably why we both asked you about it. I was wondering, just listening to the album, the kind of atmosphere and everything, and the flow and the spirituality, and I’m not saying it because he’s also Irish, but was Van Morrison an influence at all on…?

No, actually no, not at all. But I guess I’m aware that the record in particular, the acoustic side of it, has a particular feel of certain of his records, like a particular record he made called “TB Sheets,” maybe aspects of Astral Weeks in terms of it was all acoustic and it was all two chords. Do you know what I mean? So from that point of view, there are similarities all right. But there’s a certain kind of freedom that you would think that two chords would limit you, but actually it doesn’t. You can fly around the place a lot easier than you could on a whole lot of chords. And I think he understands that very well, although he can probably play a lot more chords than I can play. But no, I wasn’t consciously being influenced by him or whatever, not that I’m aware of anyways.

Is there anything that is consciously influencing you right now as far as…?

Well, in terms of this record, I did have specific influences. One obviously was the Rastafarian movement and their use of music as a priesthood, and also what they do with music. I was a very inspired by this woman, Irish woman called Nóirín Ní Riain. She works with a group of monks in a place called Glenstal Abbey. And I went to work with them for a while, learning Gregorian chant. And I was very inspired by what they were doing, in particular what she was doing. Cause it’s not usual for lay people and in particular women to be singing this stuff. It’s usually on the altar kind of stuff that the men do. So she was kind of bringing it out of its traditional arena, if you like.

And then the other thing I was blown away by was, you know that artist Bryan Adams? He gave me a double-CD set put out by this company called SAR Records. And it was all the stuff that Sam Cooke did before he became a pop singer. He was working with various different choirs and groups or whatever doing gospel songs. In particular, there was a group called… a singer, anyway, called R.H. Harris. I think the group was called The Soul Stirrers. But there was a singer with them, a guy called R.H. Harris, who just blew me away. I never heard anything like this guy, how he sang and all of his songs mentioned his mother, which I thought was lovely as well. He talked about his mother teaching him this, that, or the other. So those kind of influences altogether would’ve… Oh, another big influence. From the time I was a kid, I was actually thinking of putting scripture to music, but one of the big influences was Bob Dylan, that record he made called Slow Train Coming. That was a massive one. Since I was young. So that would’ve been the first influence, if you like.

Since you finished the record, have you heard anything that you’ve liked or that you’ve loved?

Other artists and stuff, you mean? You mean anything particularly religious or just generally?

No, just generally. Yeah.

Oh, well, I love this girl who’s just happened lately. Lily Allen. I think she’s incredible. And I love Amy Winehouse obviously. But the two of them, I guess, would be pretty much hot stuff at the moment.

What do you like so much about the two of them? And they do seem to be being spoken about.

I guess they’re quirky. I mean, there’s a million blonde girls out there dancing around robot style in videos, do you know what I mean? Everyone’s doing the same thing. So those two are very different and quirky and eccentric and individual as such. And particularly Lily Allen, I like her too because she doesn’t watch what she says and I think that’s really sweet. You know what I mean? That she just is herself and she doesn’t really let herself … A lot of people, out of shyness or whatever, invent almost a fake personality, you know? You never meet the real person. Do you know what I mean? And I like her ‘cause you, it’s obvious you’re meeting the real person kind of thing.

Does she remind you of anyone?

Well, no. I think she’s a lot more talented than I would’ve been at her age, if you like. She’s funnier as well. I was terrible serious. She’s very funny kind of girl, so that’s why I like her.

I was going to ask you if you’ve gotten more or less serious as you’ve gotten older.

I’m probably less serious. I still obviously have the capacity to be too serious. But, yeah, I’d be a lot less serious, I think, than I was. I’d be a lot happier than I was. I wasn’t a happy camper when I was younger. I have more capacity for happiness [now].

That’s good.

Mm-hmm.

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