Special Announcement:
The Hot Press Sinéad O’Connor Issue is available now
The special tribute issue – featuring a wonderful array of powerful contributions from the singer’s friends, family and fellow artists – is in stores nationwide across Ireland and directly from hotpress.com/shop
Ireland’s Hot Press magazine has just published a one-off edition for the ages. For the first time in its history, the magazine has produced a special tribute issue, wholly dedicated to one iconic artist – the incomparable Sinéad O’Connor, who died at her home in London on 26 July, 2023.
The special collector’s edition features superb essays, revealing reflections, fond memories and compelling missives on the queen of Irish music, from a remarkable range of artists and individuals. The edition also includes a range of archive Hot Press interviews and reviews with Sinéad from over the years. It also includes the first ever major feature on Sinead written by BP Fallon back in 1987.
The Sinead O’Connor Tribute Issue features powerful and moving personal contributions from Bob Geldof, John Reynolds, The Edge, Hozier, Denise Chaila, BP Fallon, Moya Brennan, Julí Ní Mhaoileóin, Kathryn Ferguson, Gary Lightbody, David Holmes, Dot Allison, Victoria Mary Clarke, Joseph O’Connor, and more. Superb contributions from Hot Press writers Niall Stokes, Lucy O’Toole, Stuart Clark, Eamonn McCann and Pat Carty also feature, alongside a Sinead interview and review by the late Hot Press legend, Bill Graham.
In what is a beautifully designed publication, there are wonderful – often previously unseen – pictures of Sinéad at different stages of her singular, challenging and always vital work as an artist.
“Sinead O’Connor was one of the most important Irish artists of the past 50 years,” Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said. “Her music, often glorious, made an enormous impact on people in Ireland and across the globe. It inspired millions, touching an extraordinary number to the very core. Sinéad mattered. We were determined that we would reflect her unique and marvellously enduring contribution in our Sinéad O’Connor Tribute Issue. I think it will be genuinely treasured by anyone who loved Sinéad or listened to her music.”
The Sinead O’Connor Tribute Issue of Hot Press can be ordered online at hotpress.com/shop or here:
SOME QUOTES FROM CONTRIBUTORS
In a marvellously insightful essay – full of personal memories as well as powerful polemic that together will take readers’ breath away – Sinéad’s long-time friend Bob Geldof describes her as a Yeatsian figure, and writes about how the singer used her platform to champion important causes.
“Like Maud Gonne, Sinéad believed that Art could serve Action,” he says. “That Fame unto itself has no meaning. That celebrity is a platform for something other than simply getting an upgrade or a table at a busy restaurant. That it is a currency that can be used and spent wisely…. That Art can and indeed should be weaponised.”
Bob recalls Sinéad telling him that, while she was at school, she was a big fan of The Boomtown Rats.
“She got into nun trouble,” he says, “by bringing in our records and putting a poster of meself on the notice board.”
It is a piece that everyone who ever listened to Sinead’s music should – no must! – read.
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The same can be said for an article by Sinéad’s greatest and most consistent collaborator and buddy – and father of her first child Jake – John Reynolds.
In a beautifully warm, career-spanning piece, John reflects on the enormous success of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and the I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, – and the impact it had on their lives.
“It was quite weird having this huge record, because we were actually still very young,” he says, in a wonderfully warm article that runs over five pages. “We had entered into this new world. And it’s great – but you lose a lot of your privacy at that point. She was so recognisable, everywhere you went. It was pretty mad for a couple of years.”
John also remembers Sinéad’s warmth and sense of humour.
“I think it’s important to remember – amid all the seriousness, the confrontations, and the political stances she took – she was also a really, really funny person,” he says.
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Gavin Friday – who was also a close friend of Sinead O’Connor’s – recalls working with Sinéad on her hit song ‘You Made The Thief Of Your Heart’, which was co-written with Bono and Maurice Seezer, and included on the soundtrack of Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-nominated film In The Name Of The Father.
“Myself and Jim brought her to a rough screening of the film,” he says. “She just loved it and said, ‘I’m in’. She had a demo and said she had a few ideas. Like, that beautiful ‘Oh your loss’, that was her improvisation. She got right in there and literally nailed it in two takes. There’s very few voices that can take the air out of the room. It was wonderful.”
Gavin also reflects on her enduring cultural impact.
“Sinéad changed lives,” he says. “Very much the way Bowie would have changed lives in the ’70s, she changed lives for many outcasts and kids who felt awkward.”
This special issue of Hot Press also features gorgeous pics of Sinead and Gavin singing their hearts out on stage together.
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Limerick rap sensation Denise Chaila reflects on the powerful impact Sinéad made on her, as someone of Zambian background trying to find her way in Ireland.
“I didn’t know if I could be Irish until Sinéad stood up and fought for me without even being aware that she was doing it,” Denise says. “I can’t stress how hard it was to be here in the 1990s and to feel so broken and othered in a society and to have the words to say, ‘This is what I’m experiencing.’
“If I felt like I was being bullied, Sinéad would be the person to stand up for me…
She was like a prophet,” she adds, in what is an inspiring, finely written piece.
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Acclaimed producer David Holmes, who was working with Sinéad on an album before her death, reflects on her similarity to artists like Bob Dylan and Bob Marley.
“Like them, she stood and was counted,” he says. “Sinéad never, ever flinched from raising her head above the parapet, regardless of the flak awaiting her. She said what everyone else was thinking before they themselves had mustered the courage to say it. Does that make her a protest singer? Absolutely.”
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Renowned artist Jim Fitzpatrick worked with Sinéad on two of her album covers, and took some extraordinary shots of Sinead that appear in print for the first time in the Hot Press tribute issue…
“Sinéad had a public voice,” he says. “When she stood up for a cause, whether it was for people with mental illness, refugees, fighting racism or for the people of Palestine, she identified with all these people. She made it safe to talk about your mental history. She’s opened up a huge door for women in particular. I thought that she had a divine spark within her – but Sinéad never pretended to be anything except who she was.”
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Sinéad’s good friend, Victoria Mary Clarke, offers some deeply personal memories of her closeness with Sinead. This is just one of many…
“When she became a priest, she would say mass,” she recalls, “and I would be her assistant and do all the things that an altar boy would do. It was really beautiful. I’d never seen anything quite as beautiful as Sinéad saying mass, it was incredible.”
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Grammy-winning Clannad singer, Moya Brennan, remembers the first time she met Sinead –
“I first met Sinéad when she was 17,” she says, “and I was having my annual Christmas party up in Woodtown Manor House, in Rathfarnham… I remember her coming in. She was with The Edge and she was really shy. But when I saw her, I thought, ‘My gosh, what a stunner!’ Then somebody said to me she’s an amazing singer, so I couldn’t wait to hear what she was up to.”
Moya goes on to capture what it was that made Sinéad O’Connor truly special…
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The one-off Hot Press edition also features a selection of curated interviews from the Hot Press archive, when the magazine went head to head with the iconic singer down the years. Included is the late Hot Press great Bill Graham‘s interview with Sinéad around her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra. In what was the magazine’s first interview with the young singer, Graham asks what makes her a performer…
“It’s a chance to go completely mad”, O’Connor said, “to unleash myself on myself, standing on the stage and screaming with happiness and pain and emotion. It’s so intense and exciting and there’s no point in me saying that I don’t want attention, that I’m not an egoist. I am, otherwise I wouldn’t be a singer – but I’m performing to myself really”.
As is stunningly captured in the special Sinead O’Connor Tribute issue of Hot Press, she did that – and so much more besides in a remarkable life that was packed with stunning music and success that was unparalleled for any other Irish woman.
The Sinead O’Connor Tribute Issue of Hot Press can be ordered online at hotpress.com/shop or here, and is in stores across Ireland.
