Sinead O’Connor was an undemanding performer ‘driven by doing the right thing’

Sinead O’Connor has been remembered as a performer who was undemanding, engrossed in the details and “driven by doing the right thing”.

She liked a cup of tea in her dressing room before performing live on one of Ireland’s prominent TV shows, and was nervous before performing, due to being “anxious to get it right”.

Musicians, artists and producers who had encountered O’Connor, who died on Thursday aged 56, paid tribute to her as generous, funny, and down to earth, and said Ireland had been left “bereft” by her death.

Dermot McEvoy, the music producer of Irish broadcaster RTE’s TV programme The Late Late Show, which had O’Connor on as a guest many times, told the PA news agency that she was meek and a perfectionist.

When he first took up the role in 2007, he was apprehensive about what to expect from O’Connor.

He said: “I was kind of anxious about it, I’d only just started on the show and she was a big name.

“I have to say, she was as meek and as undemanding as you can imagine. She came in, she probably knew more about the sound set up than the sound engineers, she knew more about the music set up than the musicians, she knew her stuff.”

O’Connor’s live Late Late Show performances included appearances in 2020 when she sang Nothing Compares 2 U, in 2010 when she did a cover of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, the 1993 performance of Make Me A Channel of Your Peace and her first Late Late Show performance of Mandinka in 1988.

“In a weird kind of a way, it was sort of a safe place for her,” he said, adding that she had a good relationship with former Late Late hosts Gay Byrne and Ryan Tubridy.

“There was no airs and graces, she just would like tea in her dressing room, and she’d get honey and do her warm-ups.

“When she came in, she was so nice and she owned it.

“A lot of artists, they only want to do (a song in rehearsals) two or three times, ’cause they’re sick of doing the same song over and over, and we’d sheepishly say to her ‘Do you mind, would you be able to do it once or twice more?’ She goes ‘I’ll stay here as long as you want.’

“She would change her mind a lot. She thought about stuff a huge amount.

“Sinead thought it over and over and questioned it and said ‘is this the right thing, should I be doing this?’

“She was driven by doing the right thing, she didn’t want to be doing it if it was the wrong thing.”

Mr McEvoy said that on one occasion, O’Connor came into studio in the early afternoon and although she wasn’t due on until 10pm or 11pm, she stayed in her dressing room and focused on the song.

“She didn’t want to have her picture taken by the paps, she didn’t want to be meeting other showbiz people.”

He said that earlier this year, O’Connor got in touch to organise a Late Late Show performance, but pulled it because she said she was making an album and she didn’t want “there to be too much Sinead O’Connor on the telly”.

“Unfortunately that never came to be,” Mr McEvoy said.

Broadcaster Philip Boucher Hayes, who was in school with Sinead O’Connor, said in the 1980s, a teacher organised for her to perform in front of the Co Waterford school.

“(They were) all a bit nonplussed but by the end of it, after she did just a couple of numbers, a cover of a Bob Dylan song One More Cup of Coffee, there was not one single person there who was not absolutely convinced, it almost didn’t need to be said, that this woman was going to be an international superstar,” he said on RTE Radio.

“Because she was just so assured, so powerful, such an amazing performer.”

Cait O’Riordan of The Pogues said that cassette tapes were handed out to artists in Dublin before O’Connor’s first album, The Lion and The Cobra, was released.

She told RTE: “It was kind of the worst thing that ever happened to her that she was so beautiful and so massively successful.”

Musician and broadcaster Fiachna O’Braonain said she was “incredibly smart” and they had many conversations covering a broad range of topics when they were in their 20s.

“And she was talking to me about the Catholic Church in Ireland and talking to me about child abuse, and talking about stuff that nobody else was talking about with such insight and intelligence, and (with) calm as well as anger.”

Mr McEvoy said that during all her performances “she always nailed it, we were never let down by her”.

“I’ve done 600 Late Late Shows and I’ve seen thousands of artists on the show, and her ability to control her vocals, you watch her on the show and she’s moving the microphone away from her and bringing it closer… her technical ability and the passion that she delivered, you’d rarely see that.

“It was a Celtic soul, she was Irish but there was soul in her voice as well.

“The last time that she was on, she was on to do a (Pogues frontman) Shane McGowan song as a tribute to him, A Rainy Night in Soho, and just at the last minute, we said ‘You wouldn’t think of doing Nothing Compares 2 U as well?’ She said yeah yeah, no problem.”

The YouTube video of that Late Late Show performance has now amassed over 5 millions views.

“If you watch that, you see her vocal performance she’s almost lifting off the ground when she does it.

“She’s delivering this huge passion throughout the performance, and then when she’s finished singing, and the band are just playing out to the end, she just looks at the camera and she waves as if to say ‘that’s me done’.”