I Was Almost the Late Sinéad O’Connor’s Publicist
It worked out better for us all that I wasn’t. But, damn, I loved & admired her
The initial news of Sinéad O’Connor’s death at age 56 on Wednesday hit me like a cosmic sucker punch to my chest, right above my heart. I never met her, nor saw her perform live – both my loss – but would have if my life had gone a wee bit differently. And, somewhat ironically, when the news of O’Connor’s death broke, I had reached page 40 of her quite seductive 2002 memoir, “Rememberings,” at the start of the chapter titled “Why I Sing.”
Back in the early-to-mid-1980s my career path had led me from music journalism into staff writer gigs with an indie music PR firm and a major record label. Which then led to working as a publicist for a Los Angeles-based indie publicity firm. And leaving there to start my own one-man PR shop.
I’d had some success representing roots rock acts, singer-songwriters and New York City music clubs. From working with the Georgia Satellites as “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” made a name for them, I became friendly with Mike Bone, the head of radio promotion at their label, Elektra Records.
After Bone moved from Elektra to Chrysalis Records to serve as the label’s president, I got a call from him. He had a new act he wanted to talk to me about possibly representing. He messengered me a tape of the artist’s debut album.
I put it on and was intrigued from the first note, especially the young woman’s potently assertive and at the same time alluringly supple voice. By the second track, “Mandika,” I was sold on her talents,. As the album played I was blown away further by her fantastic songs and modernist post-punk rock sound. By the time it ended, I was convinced the singer was going to be a not just a hugely successful but also important artist.
The artist was Sinéad and the album was The Lion and the Cobra.
I met with Bone and he explained with a blunt honesty – not a common trait among many record execs, but Mike’s a welcome exception – why he called me about O’Connor. When he’d taken charge of the US Chrysalis operations, the label’s publicist, Elaine Schock, departed. I had worked with Elaine when I was staff writer at the Howard Bloom Organization PR firm, liked her, and knew her to be a skilled and wise flack and a consummate professional.
She was already in talks with Sinéad and her management about representing her as an indie publicist. Mike admitted that there was bad blood between him and Elaine and he would rather someone else do PR for what was his label’s big new priority act. He said he wanted to fly me to London to meet O’Connor.
Just the prospect of an-all-expenses-paid overseas trip was enticing. Working with the amazing Sinéad seemed sure to kick my stature as a PR guy up a few notches.
Yet I was conflicted. I considered Elaine a friend, and was certain she could do a class A job as Sinéad’s publicist. I felt a bit uncomfortable being part of Mike’s obvious chess move, but no way could I refuse the opportunity he wanted to give me. I also wondered if I had the full PR strength and savvy to represent this seemingly magical and rare musical talent as well as she deserved.
No matter, it turned out. Elaine had firmly secured the account, so I never even got trip nor met Sinéad. I was right about her: Her debut album blew up and made her a star. Her next release, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, further propelled O’Connor to international superstardom thanks to her stunning single of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” written by Prince.
Representing Sinéad through her rise and later controversies and conflicts helped establish Elaine as a top-shelf indie music publicist. I moved on from PR work and eventually circled back around to writing – where I belong. Some 20 or so years after we were briefly in competition to work with O’Connor, I began doing PR writing for Elaine and still do so today. It’s funny how life can sometimes come around.
I can now say same about how Sinéad came back around into my consciousness not long before her passing. A few weeks back I watched the incisive O’Connor documentary, “Nothing Compares.” It reminded me how my esteem for her as a person and artist was deep and unwavering, and how meaningful her music and humanity are. Then I ran across her memoir while browsing a small indie bookstore, immediately snatched it up and started reading it.
I’m still digesting what Sinéad meant to me and what if any significance might be attached to the long ago possibility of working with and knowing her (which just might be none). My eloquence feels crippled in its efforts to articulate all I felt about and for her along with O’Connor’s place in contemporary music and culture.
Fortunately there are others to do that better than I might like the New Yorker’s consistently insightful music columnist Amanda Petrusich or noted veteran music journalist Mikal Gilmore (who happens to be married to Elaine) on Facebook or Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine here on Substack. Or an essay from 1992 by Jon Pareles in The New York Times that followed her ripping up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live” and then being booed a few weeks later at a Bob Dylan tribute concert.
My old friend Jon’s last line is telling: “better the occasional passionate, off-the-wall eruption – taking the chance that might stir up outrage – than a culture of safety and calculation.” Sinéad O’Connor never once made what could be called a “career move.” She seemed to revere music for both its defiant and redemptive qualities. She was never less than honest about herself and how she felt. She was so genuinely human in her brilliance and passion to provoke a better world and at the same time her dysfunctions and sorrows.
Sinéad was like a comet that illuminated humanity’s messy contradictions and disrupted the status quo. Though she recently converted to Islam, the purity of her personal and artistic intent alongside how deeply she suffered prompts me to nominate her for sainthood. And I pray that in whatever might follow our time on this mortal coil, she finds the true human love she so deeply craved and richly deserved.