After a few unsatisfactory responses, Mr Right offered his services, and this resulted in her brief fourth marriage. I was like every other girl in a band. We all fucked our way around America. She stops, and says she has a confession. Then I went on a load of dating sites. I never did any one-night stands before, and then I did the entire slutty college years in six months.
But it was time for it to stop. There are also honourable — or dishonourable — mentions of celebrity boyfriends. Did that upset her? Anyway, this is all the past, she insists; the hysterectomy has done for her libido. The thought of having to shave your legs, pluck your eyebrows, hold in your stomach, stick out your arse, always stress, stress.
He told me to stop wanking. For her, music has always been a form of therapy. Having said that, she did earn a fortune from music. I probably should have made more. I gave away half of it. So as soon as I got the money, I doled it out in various ways to different charities and people. She looks embarrassed. Has that defined her career? There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy.
I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance. Despite everything that has happened to her — the abuse, the breakdowns, the betrayals and fallouts — she has never lost her faith.
Religions are simply platforms for faith, she says, and she decided Catholicism was a lousy platform, so she chose Islam. Why did she become a Muslim? In the same way that Jesus was a militantly anti-religious figure, Allah is saying that people are not to worship anything but God. The worst thing that happened to God is religion.
But over the following days she calls and texts with corrections and additional information. There are reminders of how much she adores her father, her children and two of her ex-husbands. Last time we met it was a period of relative stability in her life. At the end of that interview I asked if she thought her state of calm could be permanent, and she bridled.
Now she feels differently. For a moment, she looks just like the angelic skinhead of old. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on or email jo samaritans. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 Other international helplines can be found at befrienders. Simon Hattenstone. After a life marked by abuse, fame, scandal and struggle, the Irish singer-songwriter says she never lost faith Read an exclusive extract from her new memoir.
Reuse this content. Newswire Powered by. Close the menu. Rolling Stone. Log In. To help keep your account secure, please log-in again. You are no longer onsite at your organization. Please log in. For assistance, contact your corporate administrator. It was the start of her first North American tour in almost six years, and I had been invited to tag along with the band while they gigged along the Pacific Northwest.
Little did we know that just six weeks later, the tour would be cut short due to the Covid pandemic. Every show was sold out, a testament to the love and respect still held for the Irish singer in America, despite her famously controversial Saturday Night Live appearance in , when she tore up a picture of the Pope during a performance of Bob Marley's War.
Millions of people watched as she shouted "Fight the real enemy" into the camera. It was a protest against the covering up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, but others saw it as a shocking act of blasphemy. And she got cancelled for it.
The scandal led to crowds gathering outside the New York City offices of her record company and steamrolling hundreds of copies of her album. Complaints flooded into the SNL studios.
Frank Sinatra called her "one stupid broad" and the Diocese of of Brooklyn demanded an apology. It would be years before we realised how right she was. I wonder if she would be treated any differently today, knowing what we know about mental health? Every member of O'Connor's band is from Northern Ireland. They're mischievous, you know? And I appreciate the elements of it which are English, if I'm honest with you.
It's also where she's working on her forthcoming album with DJ and producer David Holmes. But the real reason we're speaking is because her memoir Rememberings is about to be released. Fans are excited.
Others are probably quaking in their boots. Amusingly, she writes that some people have been left out "because I know they prefer privacy", but others have been omitted because she wants them to be annoyed "when they look for their names in the book and don't find them". Her true intention, however, is to "to put all the pieces of the jigsaw that was me out on the floor and see what I could put together", she says. The book is in three parts and told in two "very distinctly different voices" - one leading up to the tearing of the Pope's picture and one after.
Both are equally as important," she tells the reader. There are a number of confessions in the opening pages too, and O'Connor is the first to admit that much of the last 30 years has been a bit of a blur. In the foreword, she explains: "I was actually present before my first album came out. And then I went somewhere else inside myself.
And I began to smoke weed. I never finally stopped until mid Despite this, the book offers an intimate insight into the singer's life and works - there's a chapter for every album. It chronicles everything from the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother to discovering God and music. My mother was saying all this scary stuff, and I was curled up so she could kick me on the bottom. Suddenly, there Jesus was in my mind, on a little stony hill, on His cross. It is a soul-bearing, brutally honest account of an extraordinary life.
When she speaks to me, she's in good spirits.
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