Sinead – RIP

I've wanted to acknowledge the terribly sad loss of Sinéad O’Connor who died last week. This morning I watched her singing on various Youtube clips and this is one of them with The Chieftains. This prompted me to call Pat, a very good old friend, and we chatted for ages. I decided to send him a link to the video as he knew several of The Chieftains very well.

I thought I'd use the email I sent to Pat as the basis of today's blip as it is a personal anecdote.
My picture of her is of my screen showing her singing live in a video clip.

From: Steve H
Sent: Wednesday, August 2, 2023 5:04 PM
To: Patrick H
Subject: Lovely to chat with you, Pat!

Hi Pat,

It was lovely to have a chat with you today. Sorry about the poor connectivity!
I mentioned that I'd thought of you because of watching the Chieftains this morning. I’d been looking at some Sinéad O’Connor videos on YouTube and this one came up of hear singing 'The Foggy Dew' with The Chieftains, live in 1995. I thought you might like to see The Chieftains when they were all still together. I don’t know if you’d heard that she had died last week, probably suicide, following the recent death of her son.

I really liked her ever since I’d met her on a job when I was making music videos. I was just a production assistant for Tattooist International where my friend Jeff B. was a cameraman / director on this song. (I’ve just remembered that he had a video company with Danny N****m!). In 1986 Jeff had a job for Danny to make the music video for the first record by World Party, who were actually just one man (Karl Wallinger). He wanted to make the film at his house in the Midlands. He also wanted to make the film, unfortunately!

I was asked to bring one of his friends up from our offices in Camden Town, with a 6am rendezvous. When I opened the door I met a nearly shaven headed Sinéad in a leather jacket and trousers! I then drove up for several hours with her before we started filming all day, and on into the night. We finished about 11pm and then I drove her back to Camden.

She was astonishing and great fun and we chatted all the time. I bumped into her a couple of years later at a do, by which time she was famous, and she gave me a big smile and said hello again. This was the video we made. You can see her in the chorus line. The whole thing was filmed in one day, including the animation. Yes, I know it looks like it! Very 1986. Sinead sang the backing tracks on the album and was a friend of Karl. He then produced her first album not long after this. I thought she was wonderful, very likeable and so talented. RIP

This is the video we made:  Private Revolution by World Party

Lots of love
Steve