L.A. Confidential

It’s around 7.30am on the fifth morning of January, and Sinéad O’Connor bounces into the guest bedroom of her Bray seafront home to deliver a personalised wake-up call to your sleepy-eyed Hot Press correspondent. “Wakey-wakey!” she cries. The 45-year-old singer has a child on her back (her five-year-old son, Yeshua) and, for some odd reason, a glass of hot coffee in her hand.

“Sorry, but I couldn’t find a clean cup,” she explains in her husky voice, placing it on the bedside locker. “Anyway, get up! We’re going to LA. Yay!”
Elsewhere in the spacious house, other souls are also stirring. Following a very public break-up after just 16 days of marriage, Sinéad is now back with her new husband, affable drug counsellor Barry Herridge, and as I clamber out of bed, he is getting ready to depart for work in Dublin. Her 15 year-old daughter, Roisin, is also up, helping her mother pack a suitcase.
“Is Count Olaf up yet?” I hear her ask.
Her eldest son, Jake (24), is visiting from London, but there’s no sign of him at this ungodly hour. Nor is there any of seven year-old Shane, though the voice of one of the household’s two male nannies can be heard trying to rouse him. Why male nannies? I wonder. “It’s because my boys don’t have their dads around all the time,” Sinéad explains. “It’s good for them to have men around the house.”
As most of Ireland knows, Sinéad met Barry online after she publicly announced via the Sunday Independent that she was looking for a man, and the couple swapped vows in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 8, the day of her 45th birthday. Married as they may be, the couple don’t actually live together. Late last night, in the comfortable wooden cabin in her back garden, I’d met Barry for the first time and was impressed with his boyish good looks and honest smile. It was also his first time meeting Jake, Sinéad’s son from her first marriage to drummer and producer John Reynolds – a handsome young man who looks like his father.
“This is your new dad,” Sinéad explained with a grin, as her firstborn child and fourth husband shook hands. It was a slightly surreal moment. Then again, as the singer has stated to me on more than one occasion, she has a “21st century kind of family.”
It makes sense. Sinéad O’Connor has always been a trailblazer for Irish women.
No sooner have we stepped out of the taxi at Dublin Airport than a couple of press photographers materialise. They take about a dozen pictures apiece before bothering to say, “Good morning!” Sinéad barely bats an eyelid. This kind of thing is par for the course. I just suck my belly in.
Ten minutes later, as we walk away from the check-in desk, the Irish Independent’s showbiz correspondent, Ken Sweeney, approaches with tape recorder in hand. “Sinead, just a couple of minutes of your time,” he asks.
Sinéad is fond of Ken and so we stop and chat for a little while. “He’s not the worst,” she would tell me later, “though he did once make me cry.” It is, it seems, an occupational hazard.
“Are you looking forward to meeting Glenn Close?” Sweeney enquires.
“I actually met her already at the premiere in New York,” Sinéad explains. “But Olaf is orgasmic at the prospect.”
When Sweeney inevitably asks about her marriage she laughs and walks away. No hard feelings. He has his story and is happy.
She has a plane to catch.

I am accompanying Sinéad to Los Angeles for the launch party of the Albert Nobbs soundtrack album. Set in Dublin at the turn of the 20th century, the movie stars Glenn Close as a woman forced to disguise herself as a man in order to get work in a boarding house. The renowned American actress wrote the lyrics to ‘Lay Your Head Down’, the lush lullaby that closes the movie, and Sinéad is slated to perform it at the party.
It’s a long way to travel, to sing just one number, but the stakes are high. The song has already been nominated for a Golden Globe, and the film’s producers are optimistic that it will also be shortlisted for an Oscar. Getting Sinéad over to perform it live in front of an influential Hollywood crowd certainly won’t hurt its chances. And if it is nominated, then Sinéad herself will be catapulted back into the limelight in the US.
Once we’re through security, I go to the newsagents to buy a magazine. Sinéad asks me to get one for her, too. She doesn’t want to go near the newsstand herself, for fear of what might confront her. With good reason. Not for the first time in recent weeks, she and Barry are splashed all over the front pages of the tabloids.
Using her Twitter handle ‘vampyahslayer’, the previous day she had tweeted: “Guess who had a mad love making affair with her own husband last night?” Needless to say, the redtops are loving it. She dismisses the notion that the publicity is of any interest to her.
“It’s them that want the publicity to sell their newspapers,” she says. “I personally couldn’t give a shit.”
Why tweet about your private life then?
“Why shouldn’t I?” she shrugs. “Most normal people tweet this kind of stuff all the time. It’s just because I’m ‘Sinéad O’Connor’ that I get treated differently.”
She is well used to being treated as media fodder. Although the intensity has varied over the years, Sinéad has been a permanent tabloid fixture since the early ‘90s.By now, you could probably wallpaper the Vatican twice over with all the newsprint she’s generated.
As we’re waiting at the gate, a young woman approaches with a camera-phone and asks if she can take a picture. Sinéad politely refuses. This happens about 50 times a day when she’s out, and normally she’s more obliging, but she’s already had enough of cameras for the morning.
An announcement is made over the garbled airport tannoy that our British Airways flight to Heathrow has been delayed by an hour. We sit down and relax, unaware of the turmoil which has just been unleashed.
Anyone with £200 to spend – rock stars, actors, successful businessmen, politicians – can hire a VIP escort to fast-track them through Heathrow. Despite the best efforts of the nice young lady who’s looking after us, however, there’s no getting away from the fact. The hour lost in Dublin has cost us dearly. We’ve just missed our connecting flight to Los Angeles.
“Fuck it!” Sinéad seethes. “We should have asked them to hold the plane when we were waiting in Dublin.”
Phone calls are made. Emails sent. Cigarettes smoked. Beers and coffees drunk.
We examine one another’s passport pictures. Sinéad’s is a few years old and so she looks a little heavier around the face and has a full head of hair. “I was majorly depressed when that was taken,” she whispers.
Looking at my passport, she realises that I was born on February 10. “That’s the day my mother died,” she says, quietly. It is a strange coincidence. I was all of 14 years old, the day that Marie O’Connor’s car was involved in a fatal smash-up, in the spring of 1985. Anything I say seems inadequate to the moment.
Her phone rings. It’s Lisa Tinley, her tour manager and travel organiser. The good news is that we’re going to make it to LA. The bad news is that we’re now flying via Washington and the only available seats on the connecting flight are in economy.
We traipse over to Terminal 5, for the four-hour wait for our new flight. “People think the life of a rock star is really glamorous,” Sinéad sighs. “Actually, I spend most of my time hanging around fucking airports.”

Minutes before we board our Washington flight, Sinéad receives a call. It’s Barry and he’s evidently deeply upset. Niamh Horan, entertainment correspondent with the Sunday Independent has just called his place of work – a Dublin-based service dealing with vulnerable young drug-abusers. And she’s asking: is he not giving the wrong impression to his clients by rekindling his relationship with a known weed-smoker? Meaning Sinéad.
Sinéad is furious. Barry has passed on the number,
and before I can say a word, she rings Horan. She’s wearing a thunderous face, and her voice takes on a venomous edge.
“You fucking listen to me, Niamh Horan, and listen good,” she says. “I’m going to tell you exactly what you’re going to do now. You are going to ring my husband and apologise to him and then...”
Having berated Horan, she rings a senior editor at the paper to further voice her discontent. She stays snarling on the phone until ordered to switch it off by the air hostess.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, looking at me.
I shrug: “Well... it’s done now, isn’t it?”
“Do you think I’m a cunt for doing that?” she demands.
“No, but I do think you’ve just given them an even bigger story. They’re not going to apologise.”
She’s obviously pissed off that I’m not being more supportive. There’s an uncomfortable silence as the jet taxis down the runway.
I hold her hand as the plane takes off.

“Hey missus, wake up! We’ve landed...”
Sinéad has slept throughout the eight-hour flight. Groggy, disorientated and bewildered, she seems half-asleep as we disembark at Washington Dulles. By the time we’ve cleared immigration, she’s so zonked I have to keep propping her up. Eventually it dawns on me: she’s doped up to her eyeballs. What. The. Fuck?
“I took a load of pills,” she admits, blearily.
“What kind of pills?” I ask. “Sleeping pills?
Valium? Xanax?”
At least if I know, I can start to figure out what to do. She shrugs indifferently, averts her eyes, and scratches her neck like a guilty teenager. I’m busy calculating. Maybe Sinéad took enough pills to sleep through the planned London to LA flight; the trip to Washington is four hours shorter, so with a bit of luck the drugs should have worn off fully in that time. Then again, maybe she was so upset by the Sunday Independent contretemps that she took whatever she had to hand…
There’s an anxious-looking VIP escort named Abdul waiting for us. Apparently there’s not much time between flights and so we’ll have to shift ass to catch our LA connection. No chance. Sinéad resolutely refuses to do anything without a cup of coffee first. She immediately spills half of it over her dress. “Oh shit!” she says, wiping it down.
At the check-in desk, her passport has gone missing. Tired and confused, she empties the contents of her bright pink Ted Baker bag onto the floor and starts to sift through the mess. There’s a few packs of cigarettes, various items of make-up, a small white laptop, a spaghetti of chargers and headphones, a scattering of scrawled notes, two mobile phones (blue and pink), an iPod, a plastic bag full of candles, and lots of other stuff besides.
“If a woman’s bag represented her vagina, Freud would have a field day,” she mumbles, laughing. “But he’d have a much better time in the real thing.”
Abdul isn’t laughing. Nor is the girl at the check-in desk. Sinéad looks up triumphantly. She has located her passport. We get our boarding passes, ensure that our luggage is onboard the plane, and start moving towards the gate. Slowly.
“Come on, Sinéad!” I exhort her. “Get it together, for Christ’s sake!”
“What’s your problem?”
“You keep fucking losing everything and slowing us down is my problem! We’re going to miss the flight!”
At this moment, the lady from the check-in desk materialises at my shoulder, having run after us. “Sir... you left your passport behind.”
Sinéad finds this absolutely hilarious. My pomposity has been suitable pricked. Poor old Abdul is rather less amused. “Come on! Come on!” he urges. “We must hurry!”
Despite my best efforts, progress is interminably slow. Eventually I spot a row of airport wheelchairs and plonk Sinéad into one. I throw her pink handbag over my shoulder and push her at breakneck speed through the terminal. Several announcements are made over the speakers: “Would passengers O’Connor and Tyaransen please proceed immediately to Gate 341...”
Impressed that they can pronounce my name, I burn rubber, but we still don’t make it. When we arrive at the gate the greeting is a frosty one. “I’m sorry, sir, but the flight is closed. We’ve been holding it for you for the last ten minutes.”
“But the plane is still there!” I protest.
The girl at the desk isn’t budging. “Sorry, sir, but we’re not allowing you to board this flight.”
Abdul is a lot more disappointed than we are. We didn’t really want to fly economy anyway.

An hour or so later, I’m standing outside a Washington 7/11, clutching a 12-pack of Budweiser, chain-smoking Camels, and reassuring our impatiently pissed-off cab driver that we do seriously intend continuing on to the Hyatt Hotel. “No, man, trust me, it’s totally cool... Just keep the meter running... Yeah, yeah... I have cash... Look!”
Sinéad has been inside the store for at least 20 minutes, poking fruitlessly at the ATM, splashing coffee all over the aisles, and gathering armloads of toiletries (our luggage has travelled to LA without us).
I’ve tried to get her out twice already, but there’s no stopping the woman in the middle of a minor shopping spree. “You can’t buy any of this stuff back home,” she keeps insisting. Still, she seems to be in better form.
The cab fare comes to $30 – painful given that the Hyatt is practically within walking distance of the terminal.
The night manager is an Irish-American named Katy, and she couldn’t be more delighted to see us. Well, to see Sinéad. “Oh my God,” she gushes. “Miss O’Connor, I am such a massive fan of your work. I used to have your posters all over my bedroom.”
Sinéad may not have had a big chart hit in years, but she’s still massively famous and utterly distinctive. Everywhere she goes, she is recognised. “The best thing about being me is that I get lots and lots of hugs from complete strangers,” she tells me. Having escorted us up to our floor, Katy gives her a friendly squeeze too. “I’m so happy to meet you. Anything you want, you just call down and ask for me.”
We have two rooms booked, but hole up in mine to see out the night. Sinéad falls asleep in the bath, but seems fully alert when she finally emerges. The pills have obviously finally worn off. “Are you up for some talking?” she asks.
Yes, I am.

Over the past few weeks, more than one Irish journalist has called me to ask is there any truth in the rumour that Sinéad O’Connor and I are lovers. Actually, we’re involved in a far more intimate relationship than that. I’m currently working on her official biography. It’s half the reason I’m accompanying her on this trip. Aware that there’d be plenty of downtime, we figured that we could get a lot of interview sessions done for the book.
I hit the record button and we talk intensely for a couple of hours. Sinéad tells me about her childhood and teenage years, holding nothing back. We cover some pretty harrowing ground before I finally push the stop button. “I know it’s tough to hear, but you need to know all of this in order to understand where I’m coming from,” she insists. “You don’t have to use it in your book, but you have to be aware of it.”
Sinéad makes no attempt to disguise the fact that she feels damaged. “My problem isn’t chemical, it’s emotional,” she explains. “Basically I had the shittiest childhood imaginable, and I’m suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.”
Her account of those early years is deeply upsetting and unsettling, but the session is a rewarding one. Eventually she tires of talking and, utterly spent, crawls tearily into the bed at around 4am.
There’s a car scheduled to pick us up at 6.15am to take us back to the airport. I know that if I fall asleep I’ll never wake up. Desperate to stay afloat, I sip lukewarm Budweiser, chainsmoke Camels, and listen to old Bob Dylan songs on her iPod.
Sinéad only has Dylan songs on her iPod. She’s met him a couple of times. “He’s just this amazing old dude, and really, really kind,” she told me. “An amazing character. He’s like a big kid.”
It’s a muted ride to the airport. We’re flying first class with Virgin from Dulles to LAX. The seats recline all the way back and Sinéad snoozes throughout most of the five-hour flight…

We land in LA shortly after 11am, local time. One of the greeting signs being held up in the Arrivals Hall says ‘Mary O’Hara’. That’s our man. A big beaming besuited Californian Alpha-male with teeth like Mount Rushmore greets us with handshakes and hugs. “Welcome to Los Angeles, Miss O’Connor!”
He makes a call on his mobile and, almost immediately, a gleaming black SUV pulls up outside the exit. Our driver is a friendly, former US marine, a black dude by the name of De Andre. A pretty cool character, he’s served in Iraq, Afghanistan and a dozen other dangerous locations besides. Notwithstanding, he wears a white surgical mask to protect himself from our cigarette smoke.
It’s a 30-minute drive to the Palihouse, a boutique hotel on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, where we’re staying. It’s also where the Albert Nobbs soundtrack album launch is happening. At least we won’t get lost on the way.
Sinéad lived in LA for the best part of a year in the early ‘90s. As an aside she reveals that she left within 24 hours of her drink being spiked with acid by a couple of world-famous movie stars. “They were taking revenge for something I’d said in the press about award ceremonies,” she explains. “They totally freaked me out. Evil bastards!”
When we arrive at the Palihouse, a PR guy named David is waiting for us. I’ve already had a couple of frantic telephone conversations with him (“But Olaf, if you’re looking after Sinéad, who’s looking after you?”). The look of sheer relief on his face is palpable. “Oh my God, you’re finally here,” he laughs. “When we heard you missed your flights, we were worried that you weren’t gonna make it.”
With the soundcheck in just four hours’ time, and the launch itself in six, we’ve cut it fine. But what the hell? There’s a dickie-bowed doctor waiting to give Sinéad a quick check-up and ensure that everything is okay. She might be seriously tired, but Sinéad passes muster. “Ah for fuck’s sake,” she laughs. “I’ve only got to sing for four minutes.”

Sinéad’s hotel suite is more like a penthouse apartment. We hang there for a while, smoking and chatting and laughing about the trip so far. A long way to come for just one song indeed...
“Do you not want to get some sleep?” she asks me. “You haven’t slept in ages and, to be honest, you look fucking wrecked!”
The sliding doors are open and, somewhere off in the near distance, somebody is playing an Amy Winehouse track at full volume. Sinéad never met Amy, but always felt a certain kinship with her. “I can’t even look at a picture of her now without wanting to cry,” she admits. “I was just so sad when she died. It’s making me sad listening to this.”
Her mood picks up when the soundtrack changes to Florence + The Machine. She’s a big admirer. “Did you read the article her dad wrote in the Guardian about driving the band around Europe on tour? Her mum and her dad drove the tour bus! It was brilliant!”
As soundcheck time approaches, I close the doors to allow Sinéad to play ‘Lay Your Head Down’ a couple of times on her laptop. “We should keep an eye on the time,” she says. “Responsible behaviour required. Not diva-bitch behaviour.”
How are you feeling, missus?
“Great. But I wouldn’t mind if we were only soundchecking today. I’m completely out of my fucking mind.” She takes another swig of her coffee. Although she claims to drink about 20 cups a day, she spills at least half of these. “Coffee helps everything.”
She’s nervous before the performance, but no more or less than normal. She’s also looking forward to meeting Glenn Close again. “I met her in New York when we did the premiere of the movie, but before that we had been in touch by email. Putting the track together we had to email each other a few times so we knew we were fellow nutters. But she’s more sanely nuts than I am. She’s actor nuts. And I mean ‘nuts’ as a compliment.”
By now, you can tell that she’s simply dying to sing the song. Her manager Facthna O’Ceallaigh wasn’t convinced that this trip would be worth the effort, but Sinéad insisted that she was doing it. “I wouldn’t have bothered leaving Dublin one way or the other except the fucking song is such a bastard of a song. It’s one of the biggest bastards of a song that I’ve ever had anything to do with. It could just make me do anything, that song. It has total control over me.”
More to the point, when it comes to the performance, will she have total control over it?

Los Angeles. Where anyone with a prescription can purchase medical marijuana at any number of registered outlets, but smoking tobacco is strictly verboten. Not that this bothers Sinéad. As the musicians tune-up in preparation for the soundcheck in the Palihouse function room, she wanders over to me with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth: “Gimme a light, will you?”
“Sinéad, you can’t smoke here. It’s a major fucking
no-no.”
“Well now, they’re hardly going to fucking throw me out, are they?” she observes.
I light her cigarette. David rushes over as Sinéad cheekily waltzes off in a haze of smoke. “Does she know that she can’t smoke here?” he asks.
“Yes, David, I think she does.”
“Oh!”

The soundcheck is a complete revelation. Composer and pianist Brian Byrne looks nervous, as do cellist Steve Erdodie and violinist Jennifer Curtis. The sound engineer also has his work cut out for him. Sinead, it transpires, has forgotten to bring her own microphone from Dublin. “Ah, fuck it!” she snarls, scratching her head distractedly. “My brand new Neumann. I wouldn’t mind, but I left it beside the front door.” No matter. Suddenly all of Sinéad’s vulnerabilities disappear and she comes across as a formidable artist in total control of all around her.
Over the course of the next hour, the ensemble runs through ‘Lay Your Head Down’ at least ten times. Sinéad fully deconstructs the song like a bootboy academic, line by line, verse by verse, laying down exactly how it should be performed.
“This line here is the emotional highpoint,” she tells Byrne. “So you play this bit softly and I’ll sing up.”
Her voice is one that instantly forgives all other transgressions. It’s the soulful voice of an angel that’s been tormented by demons, and transcended them. I suspect that at times Sinéad would prefer to be happy rather than supremely gifted, but it’s not her choice to make. I feel strangely proud watching her perform, glad to be her travelling companion. When I tell her this in the elevator back up to the room, she deliberately deflates the praise by farting loudly in the lift.
“Sinéad!” I protest. “Stop that!”
She laughs uproariously. “Don’t you know that girls fart too, Olaffy? Farts are God’s way of showing that He has a sense of humour.”
Back in the hotel suite, Dylan is playing loudly and the room is thick with smoke when David arrives with a requested hair clippers. Sinéad examines her scalp in a mirror. “Do you think I need to shave my head?” she asks. We reassure her that she looks great.
Room service delivers a bowl of lemon and lime, peeled and grated. A must-have before every gig. “That’s great, but I need about three times that amount,” she informs the waiter.
A gorgeously made-up make-up girl arrives. There’s a long discussion about how much slap Sinéad should wear. “Can you make it look like I’m not wearing any at all?” she asks. “There’s nothing worse than a 45 year-old woman trying to look like a 25 year-old.”
“Oh my God, you are so beautiful,” comes the reply. “Do you know, I don’t normally get nervous meeting clients, but I used to have your posters all over my room...”
When the make-up girl finishes working on Sinéad, she turns to me. “Would you like a little work, sir?” she asks.
I feign righteous indignation. “I’m sorry... are you suggesting that I look completely and utterly fucked?”
She laughs. “Well, sir, I didn’t want to say...”
Sinéad has brought a choice of dresses. She chooses a black velvet number. Jewellery isn’t on the agenda. “I fucking hate jewellery – especially expensive stuff,” she states. “When Barry bought me a wedding ring I told him I’d kill him if he spent more than €30.” She happily displays the Claddagh ring on her finger, with the red heart inverted. “This cost €29.”
The big colourful Jesus tattoo on her chest, which she had done here just a few months previously, means that she no longer has to wear necklaces.
“And there was another reason I had it done,” she admits. “I had a ‘Mrs. Cooney’ tattoo there and I needed to cover it up.” Sinéad’s third marriage, to acclaimed Australian guitarist Steve Cooney, ended in April 2011 after less than a year.
I decide to pop out to buy some cigarettes and booze. Sinéad wants to accompany me, but David instantly vetoes the idea. “A lot of people have already arrived downstairs,” he points out. “It would probably be a lot better if you made your entrance just before the song rather than have everyone seeing you beforehand.”
There’s some discussion about whether or not she should say anything before singing. “It might be best if you just sing,” David suggests, diplomatically. “You know, just blow them away, no distractions.”
I have a much, much better idea. “Do you know what’d be really great, Sinéad? When you finish singing the song, you should rip up the Albert Nobbs movie poster and shout, ‘Fight the real enemy!’”
“Fucking brilliant idea!” Sinéad enthuses. “Can you get me a poster?”
David almost has a heart attack on the spot.

A table in the hotel restaurant has been cordoned off for me to do some interviews. David introduces me to two of the film’s executive producers, Julie Lynn and Bonnie Curtis. Julie operates mostly within the independent film world, while Bonnie worked for Steven Spielberg for 14 years, producing Minority Report, AI and Saving Private Ryan, amongst other blockbusters.
She’s no stranger to Ireland then. “No, we spent two-and-a-half weeks on the shores of Wexford making Saving Private Ryan,” she recalls. “That was a huge learning experience for me.”
Albert Nobbs is the first film the duo have worked on together. “Albert Nobbs is a passion project of Glenn Close,” Bonnie explains. “She played the part of Albert in a stage adaptation of the short story, which was written by George Moore, called The Singular Life Of Albert Nobbs.
“Glenn’s been shepherding the thing for 17 years as a film project, but for about 30 years the seed’s been in her brain. She brought in John Banville when Stephen Frears recommended him. So he did a couple of drafts, and then Glenn picked up the pen herself and did a lot of the writing for the last five or six years.”
Both of them are excited at the prospect of meeting Sinéad for the first time. “We both went to college in the ‘80s so Sinéad was the soundtrack of a really important time in our lives,” Julie enthuses. “So when you say ‘Irish chanteuse’ to us, we say ‘Sinéad O’Connor’. So when the song was written by Brian and Glenn, there was a discussion about who would be the authentic heartbreaking voice for the song. And it was a universal no-question for everybody. We still can’t believe she
did it.”
“I have a wife, Kim, and a child,” Bonnie adds, “and they were going to come tonight early to meet her – and they’re both sick. Kim is devastated. She is so upset right now. But I told her, ‘we’re gonna get nominated for an Oscar, honey, so you’re gonna meet her!’”
Risking life, limb and dignity, I’m wearing a pair of snakeskin twelve-inch shoes. “Oh my Lord,” Glenn Close exclaims. “They’re wild. Are they boots or shoes?”
Dressed in a sharp black suit, the Fatal Attraction star looks at least 20 years younger than her 64 years – despite the fact that she’s had a tough day. Having flown in from New York on the redeye, she filmed an episode of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno before coming over to the Palihouse. She’s flying back to the Big Apple later tonight.
The writer of ‘Lay My Head Down’ positively glows when I tell her that Sinéad has told me that she thinks she should make an album herself.
“Oh, it’s so nice of her to say that. It was Brian who actually said, ‘why don’t we try to write a song?’ At first I thought, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t want it to be clichéd and I don’t want to try to manipulate people’s emotions’. He’s on record as saying that he tried to write some lyrics himself. But we always wanted to use that tune. It’s a beautiful tune. So I kind of screwed up my courage and said, ‘Let me try’.
“I was hugely influenced by lullabies when I was little, and I sang lullabies to my daughter. And it kind of evolved from that last moment of the film that it would be a lullaby. It’s about somebody finding a safe place to be, and trying to realise their dreams, which is basically what the movie’s about.
“So I sat at my kitchen table. The first bit came first, ‘Sing to me softly your tales of woe/ I’ll cradle you gently and I won’t let go...’ So I had that and I called up Brian and went (excitedly) ‘What do ya think about this?’ He was like,
‘It’s great! Keep it up!’ It really helped to have that beautiful tune.”
Glenn was actually a jobbing musician before her acting career took off. “There was a time in my life when I wrote songs. I was a member of ASCAP.” She laughs self-deprecatingly.
Do you still sing?
“Yeah, well I’ve been in musicals and I sing in them. But I don’t really sing otherwise. I was brought up on Rogers and Hammerstein, so I know a lot of those songs. I remember vividly one of the first songs I ever heard, I was about three, and it was Mary Martin singing ‘Cockeyed Optimist’ from South Pacific.”
She tells me that she wrote her very first song when she was just a child. “It was so pretty. It went, ‘Nitwit, I sit and knit...’ (laughs). I sang it over and over again. I think I must have been about six or seven.”
Was she aware of Sinéad before working with her?
“I certainly was aware of Sinéad. Obviously she’s a very colourful person (laughs), you know? The vibes I get from her, I sense a real fragility. And I sense an authentic person and I have huge respect for that.
“You get the feeling that there’s a soul that’s been through something,” she continues. “That’s why I love that she’s embraced this song because it’s a song about comfort. It’s about, ‘It’s gonna be okay. I’m here and I’m not gonna let you go’.”
Sinéad told me earlier that she’d love for you to be
her mum...
Glenn Close’s face totally lights up. “Oh, what a compliment! I can’t wait to see her!”
“I think it finishes the movie in a very perfect way. And then, who should sign on, at the very end of the movie, but Sinéad – who was our dream.”
Glenn is making a speech to the assembled throng of movie bigwigs. Sinead, meanwhile, is lifting her dress and showing me a cut on her leg. “I was walking in the back garden one night last week and I fucking fell over one of Yeshua’s toys or something. Look at that!”
“Sheesh!” I hiss. “Glenn’s talking about you and
everyone’s looking.”
Glenn walks across the room and gives Sinéad a warm hug, before passing over the mike. The room falls silent. You could hear a cocktail stick drop. Sinéad steps onto the podium and clears her throat. It would appear that she’s decided to say a few words after all.
“There’s a guy in Ireland called Ryan Tubridy who presents a big radio show in Ireland, and he’s in love with this song. And he said something to me and I just thought up in the bathroom there that maybe I might mention it...” She looks over at David and reassures him, “It’s polite, don’t worry,” she says, to much laughter.
“He said he felt that it’s a real kind of lullaby for the times we’re in at the moment, you know. So it’s quite a nice little lullaby for the world... so thank you, Ryan, for that. Here it is...”
Byrne hits the ivories, Erdodie’s cello and Curtis’s violin begin to keen mournfully, and the entire room is lifted into a different realm. Sinéad O’Connor starts to sing. For the next four minutes, the little girl whose mother died in 1985 and who has her own extraordinary and embattled tale to tell, owns the room. Standing beside me, hearing her soothing lullaby being brought to life, Glenn is visibly close to tears.
I am too.

An hour or so later, the crowd has thinned out. Sinéad has changed into jeans and a red sweatshirt and is jamming with Curtis and a group of local musicians in the hotel lobby.
Composer Brian Byrne, meanwhile, is enjoying a stiff drink and wearing the relieved smile of a man whose plan has just come off without a hitch. Tonight’s the culmination of a lot of work for the 35 year-old Navanman.
“This is the biggest thing I’ve done in the film world,” he explains. “It’s been crazy mainly because of the profile of the people – Glenn Close, Brendan Gleeson, Sinéad, Rodrigo Garcia, and so on. I’ve worked with big names before – people like Barbra Streisand and Bono – but they’re one-off projects when you go in for three hours and you do it and you’re gone.
“With this, I’ve been involved for a year. I finished writing the music ages ago, but everyday there’s been an email or something’s been happening. Right now, this is my life.”
An acclaimed orchestral composer, Byrne arrived in LA eight years ago. “As soon as I moved over here, I started getting more work in Ireland,” he laughs. “Which was great because it paid the rent over here. I could write from here, send the scores to Ireland to my brother, he’d bring them into RTE or BBC or whatever, and I’d get paid. It allowed me to knock on doors trying to get film work.”
It was pleading phone calls and emails from Brian that convinced Sinéad to come all this distance to sing just one song. He’s obviously hugely grateful.
“Sinéad’s been amazing!” he says. “She’s a real trouper. There’s nobody like her in the world. When she went to the National Concert Hall on New Year’s Eve in Dublin, and she sang with the Concert Orchestra, it was breathtaking. I had shivers down my spine. When she’s in the zone, when she’s on form, there’s no other singer who can touch her.”
A few hours later we’re staggering into the Chateau Marmont, and a female paparazzi is begging for a photograph. “Sinéad! Sinéad! Please! Turn around,”
she wails.
Sinéad looks at me and says, “I don’t feel like having my picture taken.” We keep on walking.
Obviously tired and wired, she orders two different meals in the bar and barely picks at either of them. One moment, she’s really buzzed up about the Palihouse performance. The next she’s seeking reassurance. “It was okay, wasn’t it?”
Realising that we’re both completely and utterly fucked, we decide to leg it back to the hotel. Word has spread and there’s six photographers and a TV cameraman lying in wait. Cameras start flashing the moment we hit the street. 15 years ago, when I was thinner, vainer and dumber, I’d probably have loved this kind of attention. Already, though, I can see that such constant intrusion must be a total pain.
We head straight for the waiting cab. Chin-up, belly-in, I hold the door open for Sinéad and then walk around the other side. The original female photographer puts her camera down as I clamber into the car, inelegantly wasted.
“Congratulations!” she coos. “I’m so freaking happy that you guys are back together! Good luck!”
“Thank you very much,” I reply, pulling the door shut.
Sinéad thinks this is extremely funny. “Ha, ha! They must think you’re Barry!”
I make the point that her husband himself may not be quite so amused.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she reassures me. “He has a great sense of humour.”

It’s about midday and we’re having breakfast on the balcony of Barney’s Beanery, a bar and restaurant right next to the hotel. Sinéad has taken a few mouthfuls of waffle before pushing the plate aside, and I’m on my third bottle of Stella.
We amuse ourselves for a while by trying to flick lit cigarette butts into a bin across the pavement. Then we realise that setting a bin on fire in a city that’s just been terrorised by an arsonist might not be such a hot idea..
John Reynolds has emailed with the news that Music Week have made her powerful new record, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, its ‘Album of the Week’. It won’t be released until February 20, but it’s a good omen.
The album is a real return to form, and is her most commercially-viable release in years. Sinéad’s not especially interested in commercial success, but wouldn’t say no if it knocked on her door again. “If I wanted my albums to be commercially successful, I’d have to spend months doing promo,” she shrugs. “I’ve got young children. I can’t be leaving my boys at home on their own. And I’ve had young children throughout my career. They come first. Always.”
Does she read what the music critics say about her?
“No, not really. I only keep cuttings about the Church escapades. And other various things that my grandchildren might be interested in.”
Talk of grandchildren – she really wants to have them someday! ­– leads us to a humorous working title for the biography: Why We Don’t Talk About Granny. Sinéad tweets it. Almost immediately somebody tweets back, “You might want to think again!”
“Fuck them!” she sighs. “You can’t ever be listening to what other people say about you anyway.”
Jetlag kicks in and the rest of the day is spent in a smoky twilight zone. There’s much Bob Dylan, inappropriate dancing, caffeine, alcohol, smoking, filthy jokes and honest heartfelt discussion.
Around 1am, we wind up back in Barney’s Beanery with some serious munchies. The owner comes over with a smile and a camera-phone. Sinéad chats with him, but politely refuses to pose. When he leaves, I kick her under the table. “You fool! He probably wouldn’t have charged us for the meal!”
The emergency exit door suddenly slams open and an ageing hippy busker walks in, straight out of central casting, badly strumming and singing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. There’s a couple of drunken frat-boy types behind him, filming on their phones. Sinéad shoots them such a baleful glare that the joke’s over before it even began.
Later, when I’ve stepped outside for a smoke, the busker comes over to apologise. “Hey man, I’m truly sorry about that. Those guys made me do it. The thing is I’m a massive fan of hers. That thing she did with the Pope’s picture. Right on! Like... he was just a total dick!”

It’s another glorious day in Hollywood, but there’s one serious dampener on the good vibe. Back in Ireland, the Sunday Independent has published a news piece by Niamh Horan headlined, ‘Sinéad O’Connor: “Do not f**k with me or my husband.”’.
Sinéad is clearly upset. I try really hard not to say, “I told you so.” But fail…
She bristles at first but takes it. “I know you think it was a mistake, and I understand why you do, but I don’t think you’re seeing it easily from where I was at the moment,” she says. “But I agree with you. You’re right. Calling a lawyer would have been the wise thing to do, but there wasn’t the time to do that.”
If you can’t do the wise thing, why not do nothing
at all?
“Because your instinct immediately, when you
feel that someone you love is being bullied, is to
protect them.”
Has that instinct served you well over the years?
“I don’t think it’s served me badly because I don’t agree that it matters that anyone reads that I’ve told some fucking bitch that she’s a fucking bitch, and she better not bump into me. Do you know?”
How’s Barry feeling?
“Barry is very determined to bring legal action against her. And he is... upset about it. It’s wounded him. He’s an innocent person. He wasn’t fair game.”
Newspapers, I say playing devil’s advocate, take the view that by getting involved with you...
“That doesn’t make him fair game,” she interrupts. “Your girlfriend isn’t fair game just because you’re known. And if you got that call on the plane five minutes beforehand, you wouldn’t have waited until you got to LA to call a lawyer. You’d have called the guy and said, ‘You cunt! You fuck with my wife and I’m gonna kill you!’ And you wouldn’t care who thought you said it, either.”
Around 2pm, De Andre drives us back to the airport. “I’d like to thank you guys for requesting me again. I really appreciate it,” he says.
Once more, he dons a mask while we smoke. “I don’t mind if you guys wanna put that poison into your bodies, but I personally make the choice not to,” he explains. Exchanging glances, Sinéad and I chuck our half-smoked butts out the window. Respect.
The airline bump us up to first class. Or so I think. I tweet: “At LAX. Bumped from Business to First. Nice end to a great trip. Or beginning to a 12 hour one...”
Ten minutes later, Sinéad looks up from her phone and goes, “No, they haven’t, you stupid fucker. They’ve only bumped us up to the first class lounge.”
She insists that I correct my tweet. “I don’t want people thinking I’m flying around like some fucking diva! Anyway, we can’t leave America on a lie!”
Shamefaced, I tweet: “Bummer! Only First Class *lounge*... Unless I can convince Sinéad to throw a full-on hissy fit...”
It’s five hours into our British Airways flight back to London, and Sinéad is fast asleep, her head resting on my lap. I stroke her shaved crown and realise that I feel a great love and tenderness for this strange, brilliant and unashamedly troubled woman to whom I have become so close.
It’s been a long strange trip, and it’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. Within the next few hours, we’ll miss our connecting flight to Dublin. Within the next few days, Sinéad’s fourth marriage will be well and truly over. Within the next two weeks, she’ll have checked herself into a Dublin hospital for treatment for depression. Most of this will be documented in a blaze of tweets and tabloid headlines.
But we know none of these things just yet. Right here, right now – travelling at 800kph in this artificial free-booze atmosphere, 35,000 feet above a cold, indifferent and restless Atlantic – seems as good a place to stop this story as any. For the moment.
We all need to lay our heads down at some point...