Leading & Colleagueship in Hard Times: Lessons from Sinead, Kris… and Willie
“Rule shows the man.” Aristotle [sic: “Power shows the person.”]
“Our job as artists is to be ourselves. And, in doing so, to inspire other people to be themselves.” Sinead O’Connor
“And maybe she's crazy and maybe she ain't
But so was Picasso and so were the saints..” Kris Kristofferson
“It’s abuse to be told to shut up and sing.” Phoebe Bridgers
“Respect to Sinead..She stood for something..Unlike most people..Rest Easy” Ice T
A Word of Background
In 1990, 24-year-old Irish singer Sinead O’Connor bolted to the top of the pop music world with a cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U. She generated one of the most globally favored songs ever, before or after. (Billboard Magazine proclaimed it #1 song in the world in 1990). Rolling Stone named her artist of the year in 1991.
Events of Note:
Courage, Power Applied and Collegial Support in Action
O’Connor went on Saturday Night Live on October 3, 1992, and tore up a picture of the Pope, declaring him ‘the real enemy’ because of then unacknowledged, large scale child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. She elicited an intense, to put it mildly, backlash, especially in America. Condemnation poured down on her from everyone from Frank Sinatra to Joe Pesci to Madonna. Some literally assaulted her. Many said she had derailed her career. Some believed she had ended it. NBC banned her for life. Her manager locked himself away for three days.
Several weeks later, Kris Kristofferson, at the time a longstanding music deity of the first order, introduced O’Connor as part of a massive musical tribute to Bob Dylan. Recent events notwithstanding, Kristofferson, no stranger to social causes, spoke enthusiastically, “I gotta tell you I’m real proud to introduce this next artist… whose name has become synonymous with courage and integrity, Sinead O’Connor”.
Kristofferson thereby attempted through his introduction to apply his star power to secure O’Connor room to ply her genius. The large crowd, nonetheless, quickly resisted O’Connor’s walking on stage and generated a mix of sounds, not the least of which being boos. The crowd seemed as if it were, as a collective, trying to work out what to do with her. They would not settle down. She could not perform amidst the cacophony. Her signal to the crowd to quiet down failed. O’Connor stood at the stage center and waited. A slight woman holding her 5’4” frame rail straight before tens of thousands bombarding her with sounds and gestures.
Offstage, Kristofferson fended off requests to remove her from the stage. Instead, he walked across the stage to her, hugged her as the boos grew louder, and whispered “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” She whispered back, speaking as a true Celt and fiery soul, “I’m not down.”
He left. She waited a bit more, standing straight and still. The crowd would not quiet. She shut down the band. She began removing her various performance gear and then, defiantly, spoke/yelled into the hand microphone not the planned song but rather the lyrics of her version of Bob Marley’s anti-racism song War, the work she had presented on SNL and had now edited to include child abuse... Her message sent, she left the stage. Kristofferson met her in full view of the crowd and hugged her again, an act that may have provoked the final surge of boos. She leaned on him and they disappeared backstage. She cried.
Backstage, a concerned Willie Nelson had a question for O’Connor. Nelson, another musical deity of longstanding, a friend of Kristofferson and fellow member of the super group The Highwaymen, had met O’Connor during preparations for the Dylan tribute. Nelson was looking for a duet partner, his primary choice, Dolly Parton, being unavailable.
Recommendations led Nelson to invite O’Conner to meet for a session the day after the Dylan event. Nelson now asked O’Connor if she really wanted to meet the next day as planned (having just been booed off a stage by a throng of thousands). She reportedly responded, “I will be there.” Apparently, she was most decidedly not ‘down.’
Willie Nelson and Sinead O’Connor met as planned the next day. The unlikely pair began work on a cover of a Peter Gabriel song that Gabriel had recorded with Kate Bush. Nelson and O’Connor created a piercing and acclaimed performance, particularly as captured on the official music video. The song, all too befitting O’Connor’s public and private challenges: Don’t Give Up, appeared on Nelson’s next studio album, his 40th.
Implications for Leaders and Colleagues
These were leaders in action-- fighting to lead, struggling to bring their power effectively to bear. Leaders have power, formal and informal, positional and personal, power to influence, real but limited power. Their (our) power can come from organizational rank, money, access to resources, ability to reward or to punish, fame, smarts, beauty, sport triumphs or artistic talent (like drawing worldwide audiences) … leaders have the capacity afforded formally or awarded informally, the capacity to influence others and how they act. To attempt such influence means to risk failure of non-compliance by possible or even designated followers. With an unknown outcome, attempting influence runs afoul of the first rule of command, namely, never to issue an order that will not be obeyed. Non-compliance means explicitly fracturing leader:follower relations (in this case, fandom). Furthermore, sometimes, one just can’t calculate the immediate or eventual impact of an attempt to influence ‘followers’… or the total cost of not trying to do so.
A spreadsheet provides little help here. A different, ‘off ledger’ calculation spurs action… or does not. As I advise current and aspiring leaders: get and stay very clear about who you are and, therefore, how YOU will lead, especially as you acquire more power. To quote Bob Dylan, “You’re going to have to serve somebody/ Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re going to have to serve somebody” (from chorus of Gotta Serve Somebody). Consciously choose. Then, regularly check your mooring. Otherwise, the times (the moments) and/or the riptides around the role of leader can tear you from your moorings and set you adrift, often amidst a squall.
IF one views leadership as a vocation and as the temporary occupation of a role imbued with a special capacity to influence events by influencing others, then what does one want to do with that power? What will one produce (great art, profits, …) AND how will one produce it? How and with whom will you build your pyramids? In hard times and in flush times, what will you risk for a cause? For a colleague?
It would have been far easier for O’Connor as a rising star appearing on a global stage, in the moment (or after), to remain silent about child abuse, to avoid risking protest of any kind, to leave her power unused, to remain silent. At the Dylan concert, she could have quickly fled the stage… or begged off even stepping onto the stage given the heat surrounding her. Why risk it? Why risk a rising career of fame and wealth laying within reach? Kristofferson, for his part, would not join in O’Connor’s castigation, that night or subsequently. He wouldn’t use his power that way, nor would he abdicate its use by standing by. He chose involvement (as would Willie Nelson…and precious few others). He chose to support O’Connor, as a person and as an artistic colleague. Kristofferson could have stood back and not ‘soiled’ his hands. He chose, as had O’Connor and as she would over a lifetime, to stand for what he believed, to move closer, to embrace, publicly and literally, his friend and a colleague he respected. Nelson, for his part, could have easily found another partner for his recording.
The Story Continued
O’Connor said in retrospect that the SNL appearance had not derailed her career, rather had gotten it back on track, freeing her from a trajectory (and life) as a pop star and facilitating her return to protest music and alternative rock. Her career, as a singer and as a protester/activist, continued and included recognition, affection, and respect in Europe and particularly in her native Ireland… albeit not without more than a little head shaking, disagreement, controversy, and cursing. She produced, in total, 10 studio albums and led the attack on numerous social issues such as child abuse, women’s rights (including her own as a female artist), and racism.
Sinead O’Connor’s accusations regarding child abuse within the Catholic Church eventually (and unfortunately) proved all too accurate. Her protests regarding various social issues continued and, recently, included classifying the handling of mental health, as exemplified by the media’s handling of it and especially pertaining to female artists, as a human rights issue. Throughout her life, she struggled mightily with her own mental health stemming from childhood abuse and genetics (varied diagnoses included bipolar, borderline personality, PTSD, and fibromyalgia).
O’Connor’s youngest and beloved son committed suicide at 17. She wrote with her oft evidenced combination of pain and compassion: “My beautiful son, Nevi'im Nesta Ali Shane O'Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God. May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example...” Sinead O’Connor died on July 26, 2023, about 18 months later.
Years after the Dylan tribute concert (2009), Kris Kristofferson offered a summary of O’Connor’s life and the life shaping events of 1992. He offered the summary in, appropriately, a song, one marked by the perspective, honesty, affection, and respect of a good friend and valued colleague carrying memories of acutely hard times—the rendition features Kristofferson singing and playing an acoustic guitar alone on his 20th studio album:
Sister Sinead (2009)
I'm singing this song for my sister Sinead
Concerning the god awful mess that she made
When she told them her truth just as hard as she could
Her message profoundly was misunderstood
There's humans entrusted with guarding our gold
And humans in charge of the saving of souls
And humans responded all over the world
Condemning that bald headed brave little girl
And maybe she's crazy and maybe she ain't
But so was Picasso and so were the saints
And she's never been partial to shackles or chains
She's too old for breaking and too young to tame
It's askin' for trouble to stick out your neck
In terms of a target a big silhouette
But some candles flicker and some candles fade
And some burn as true as my sister Sinead
And maybe she's crazy and maybe she ain't
But so was Picasso and so were the saints
And she's never been partial to shackles or chains
She's too old for breaking and too young to tame
A Closing Note
May your use of your own power afford you (and others) great fulfillment, both in what you lead and in how you do so. May your flame burn true. May your friends and colleagues help you to keep it just so.
(For those interested, an appendix entitled "Liner Notes" appears below and contains a variety of testimonials to Sinead O'Conner's impact as well as a brief annotated sample of video links to her music.)
Keep Paddling, stay in touch and please feel free to pass this newsletter along as you see fit.
Greg
LINER NOTES
IMPACT
As for Sinead O’Connor’s impact on victims and survivors of abuse by Catholic priests and in particular the ripping up of the pontiff’s picture, see it presented concisely and yet powerfully in Rolling Stone. Three excerpts appear immediately below.
“Peter Isely, who is a survivor of a priest’s sexual assault and is a cofounding member of the organization Ending Clergy Abuse. “Kids were raped and sexually assaulted in rectories and churches with that photo in the room, looking down upon us in complete silence.” The same photo that O’Connor recalls looking up at as her mother pinned her to the floor and berated her, the very one that she tore up on SNL in frustration and rage.
“It was monumental for survivors to hear a person they love — an artist, a musician — publicly [decry abuse] so loudly and on such a public stage with such rebellion,” says Michael McDonnell, another survivor who is Interim Executive Director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). “It was powerful. Truly, I believe it gave individuals the courage and strength to start digesting the abuse that they had suffered.”
“I remember it vividly,” McDonnell says. “As someone who had not disclosed to anyone about the abuse that I had suffered, it was shocking because I still very much thought that any bad word against the Catholic church or display of anger against them was a sin. It took years for me to really digest and understand the full impact of what she did that night.”
More generally,
“The Irish musician Sinéad O’Connor died, on Wednesday, at the age of fifty-six, without having received adequate apologies from this society we inhabit, which is often fueled by an obsession with doling out gleeful, prolonged punishment…” Hanif Abdurraqib
“Sinéad always believed things that she actually believed, not things she was told to believe by somebody else, even if it was completely subversive…If your entryway into politics or standing for something is because you want to be awesome like Sinéad O’Connor, then great. She embodied what it means to be a musician and stand for something. Maybe it’s the internet, but in today’s landscape, people are told what is kosher to believe in and they just do that or the bare minimum. She was not like that at all. She made me feel like I was allowed to stand for things. It’s still hard, but I feel so lucky that I can feel validated and my beliefs are taken seriously. And that world exists because of Sinéad’s sacrifice.” Phoebe Bridgers
Women, whom I know, who hold a special (and occasionally strikingly so) place in their psyches and in their hearts for Sinead O’Connor, built and secured this place in no small part because of her ongoing active defiance of the nonsense of prejudice and discrimination, a defiance in clear evidence in this brief story from the beginning of her career. “In her 2021 memoir “Rememberings,” she tells a story about Nigel Grainge, the British record executive who signed her, suggesting that she “wear short skirts with boots and perhaps some feminine accessories such as earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and other noisy items one couldn’t possibly wear close to a microphone.” She walked out of the lunch. The next day, she went to a barbershop—a “Greek place by a bathhouse”—and had her head shaved by a reluctant employee. “I loved it. I looked like an alien. Looked like Star Trek. Didn’t matter what I wore now,” she wrote".
Of her art,
Regarding the legacy of O’Connor’s first hit, Mandinka: “Perhaps the most succinct tribute to the impact of “Mandinka” is a video of Fiona Apple, posted to YouTube in 2017. In it, Apple lies in bed with her laptop while singing and air-punching along to O’Connor’s 1989 Grammy performance. It was a historic one: Nominated that year for Best Female Rock Vocal, O’Connor infamously drew Public Enemy’s bull’s-eye logo on her head to protest the fact that the newly minted Grammy for Best Rap Performance was awarded off camera. (On Twitter yesterday, the group’s Chuck D and Flavor Flav both remembered the protest.)” The Atlantic
The original live recording of the 1992 Dylan concert did not include Sinead O’Connor. In 2014, a remastered copy included her rehearsal version of what she had planned to sing, namely, an almost too ironically gentle cover of Dylan’s I Believe in You.
“Her vocal styling is unlike anything else. She does that Irish folk thing with her voice, the same way Dolores O’Riordan did, that is just so hard to do. I think you have to grow up doing it, and it’s f****** incredible…” Phoebe Bridgers
“So there’s a lot of very nice behavior and very nice songs and everything’s very nice, but I miss my Sinead. I want that chaos. I want that sensitivity. I want that brilliance and that truth, like that. She sang about abortion, for God’s sake, with “Three Babies.” She’s just singing about abortion on a major label, at 19 years old, and unapologetically…The messaging was one thing, the activism was one thing. The force and the rebellion was one thing, but above all else were these beautiful melodies, sung out of the throat of a dove. Just absolute genius.” Shirley Manson, Garbage frontwoman
VIDEO LINKS WITH PERSONAL NOTES
(Below, I offer a relatively brief annotated bibliography of a few of Sinead O’Connor’s works…with a leadership lesson along the way.)
Nothing Compares 2 U Videos
(Original music video of Nothing Compares 2 U) Should you ever feel cut off from yourself or from others, watch this video about the primal and foundational human ache for, from and of love. Do NOT parallel task. Concentrate on her. If you don’t at least come close to tears, then listen again. It’s so blue, so sadly beautiful, resigned, resolved, so strong, vibrant, emotionally complex and clean that it will affirm you and make you feel more connected--to Sinead, to yourself and to others. You’ll feel better.
(Live concert in Chile) Barefooted, total body, full throated, driving, throbbing performance of Nothing Compares 2 U by a seemingly ebullient O’Connor, apparently reveling in the act of performing, of singing, of drawing you to her (as distinct from sending her to you). Remarkable and remarkably different than the controlled nuanced ‘head shot’ official music video of the same song (immediately above).
A vocal coach carefully and appreciatively reviews the Chilean live concert version of Nothing Compares 2 U (immediately above), discussing O’Connor’s skilled technique and, importantly, how she fearlessly transcends it, infusing it with emotion. (For a more detailed review by a professional opera singer and coach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS8FIjD09Zo&t=44s ).
Takeaway for leaders: Technique without feeling rings hollow, feeling without technique doesn’t get through. Or, to paraphrase T.S. Elliot: ‘art aims to dissolve the separation of experience between artist and beholder’. Or, restated by a ‘first time listener’— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mbpPv2bzdI . Leaders attempting great communication at important moments should attempt no less, namely a connection of heartfelt and understood self in this moment to others through the use of strong technique. PowerPoint is not the point, not when communication matters most.
Reaction Videos Concerning Nothing Compares 2 U
I find many ‘reaction videos’ enlightening and fun—the reach of music across individuals and groups over space and time to share the experience of the music of being a human—here are a few regarding Nothing Compares 2 U.
Start here. Moving and thoughtful.
A man & a woman take the song in together… and another couple of quite different heritage
A male commentator locks in.
Numbers portraying the success of the recording followed by commentator’s reaction.
A pure and particularly emotional engagement and reaction.
Other Sinead O’Connor Performances of Possible Interest
Mandinka. Her first true hit. Alt rock. What’s coming in her music is all there. The video features her mainly alone on a stark set playing an electric guitar. The Mandinka are a large West African ethnic group. As for artistic impact of this alt rock ‘classic’… Foo fighters w/ alanis morisette in tribute
Danny Boy—distinctively her (all voice and all alone) and traditionally Irish… millions of performances exist of this Irish ‘anthem’ and none better than hers.
The song Troy, performed live in 1988, i.e., before Nothing Compares 2 U. There’s a music video, but I find the special effects distracting and favor this live performance. Careful though. Brace yourself for the ending bit… and her rage about losing love—not for the faint of heart.
Reportedly, when O’Connor first heard I Don’t Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar she said, ‘that’s my song’. This video includes Irish instrumentation and just her smile and thanks at the end, as they say, ‘makes it all worthwhile’.
Kristofferson and O’Connor in 2010 performing Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through the Night. Two friends of longstanding (and likely of complexity) enjoying each other in the practice of their craft, in a manner that one could characterize as intimate. Listen to the end when Kristofferson, once again almost whispering, warmly thanks her before they hug.
‘Late’ in her life performance of Thank You for Hearing Me which is her ode to life lived, all of it—personal and universal, good and bad (surprising closing lyrics).
O’Conner’s cover of Loretta Lynn’s song Success (covered as Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home) together with Harry Chapin’s Cats in the Cradle probably belong as cautionary tales for all of us trying to live both a family life and a work life. O’Connor signs most of her lyrics… herself.
Famine. A ‘soft’ rap presentation of Ireland as an abused child and the accompanying need for full historical remembrance to enable healing and forgiveness. As current as today’s news.
End Here…
A conversational, wide ranging, appreciative, and very Irish remembrance by two Irish journalists who ‘covered’ Sinead O’Connor for years.
Special Thanks to WhiskyRiff as a resource.