When Kris Kristofferson (RIP) Stood by Sinéad O’Connor at the Height of Her Controversy

One would have imag­ined Sinéad O’Con­nor imper­vi­ous to any reac­tion from a hos­tile audi­ence, no mat­ter how vit­ri­olic. But even for a pub­lic fig­ure as out­spo­ken and unapolo­getic as her, it could all get to be a bit much at times. Take the 1992 con­cert Colum­bia Records put on for the 30th anniver­sary of Bob Dylan’s first album. “Avail­able on pay-per-view,” writes the New York Times’ Marc Tra­cy, it “fea­tured per­for­mances by Dylan along with some of the biggest stars of his era, among them Ste­vie Won­der, George Har­ri­son, John­ny Cash and Eric Clap­ton,” as well as the late out­law-coun­try icon Kris Kristof­fer­son.

The young O’Con­nor also per­formed, despite being “at the cen­ter of a firestorm. Just two weeks ear­li­er, the Irish singer was the musi­cal guest on Sat­ur­day Night Live when, at the con­clu­sion of her sec­ond and final per­for­mance of the evening, she ripped up a pic­ture of Pope John Paul II and exhort­ed, ‘Fight the real ene­my,’ a defi­ant act of protest against sex­u­al abuse in the Catholic Church.” It fell to Kristof­fer­son to intro­duce her, where­upon she “took the stage to a cas­cade of applause and boos, which did not let up as O’Connor stood silent­ly at the micro­phone with her hands behind her back.”

As you can see in the video at the top of the post, Kristof­fer­son did­n’t stay off­stage. After a minute he “re-emerged from stage left, put his arm around O’Connor and whis­pered some­thing in her ear.” The show then went on, albeit not as planned: instead of doing Dylan’s “I Believe in You,” she did Bob Mar­ley’s “War,” the very same song she’d sung on SNL before the noto­ri­ous Pope-rip­ping. Rather than leav­ing his mes­sage as a Lost in Trans­la­tion moment, Kristof­fer­son lat­er revealed the words he’d sum­moned to encour­age her: “ ‘Don’t let the bas­tards get you down.’ To which, he said, she respond­ed: ‘I’m not down.’ ”

That response was char­ac­ter­is­tic of O’Con­nor, as was her 2021 auto­bi­og­ra­phy’s note that she was think­ing, “I don’t need a man to res­cue me, thanks.” What­ev­er her feel­ings in the moment, her friend­ship with Kristof­fer­son seems to have last­ed until her death last year. “Kristof­fer­son appeared with her in the 1997 music video for the song ‘This Is to Moth­er You,’ ” writes Tra­cy. “In 2010, the two per­formed a duet of Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ on an Irish talk show. It was a year after Kristof­fer­son had released a song about the 1992 inci­dent, ‘Sis­ter Sinead.’ ” Out­ward­ly, the two could hard­ly have had less in com­mon, but inward­ly, they must have rec­og­nized each oth­er as kin­dred spir­its — the likes of which we’ll sure­ly not see again.

via New York Times

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a Rare First Record­ing of Janis Joplin’s Hit “Me and Bob­by McGee,” Writ­ten by Kris Kristof­fer­son

Shane Mac­Gowan & Sinéad O’Connor Duet Togeth­er, Per­form­ing a Mov­ing Ren­di­tion of “Haunt­ed” (RIP)

Sinéad O’Connor’s Raw Iso­lat­ed Vocals for “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Trib­ute to Sinéad O’Connor & Per­forms “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.