An Irish Wake at Carnegie Hall
Artists pay homage to Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan in New York City
Back in the fall of 1992, I attended what to this day was probably the best concert I’ve seen in my life: Columbia Records’ 30th anniversary tribute to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden.
That night, one great artist after another performed one great song after another. There was one moment, however, that threatened to destroy the good vibes of the evening. When Sinéad O’Connor came onstage to sing Dylan’s “I Believe in You” — this was not long after she infamously tore up a picture of The Pope on SNL — the crowd booed her off the stage. More than 30 years later, I can still see her walking away and collapsing into the arms of Kris Kristofferson (a standup guy if ever there was one). It’s a strange feeling to know that you’re witnessing history, particularly at a young age.
So in a sense, the concert I saw on Wednesday night — a tribute to Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan at NYC’s Carnegie Hall — seemed like a full circle moment. Before the concert began in earnest, Roisin Waters — O’Connor’s daughter — came out and spoke to the audience. Roisin’s speech was short but incredibly moving. When she mentioned her Mum — and also her brother Shane Lunny, who committed suicide in 2022 — I couldn’t help getting as misty-eyed as she was. Immediately after her speech, an older gentleman in a kilt walked through the audience playing a majestic tune on the bagpipes. Only after that did the show officially begin.
Throughout the evening, artists young and old, male and female, Irish and American performed songs that O’Connor and MacGowan either wrote or made famous. The show alternated between songs by Sinéad and songs by Shane (or The Pogues). Most of the artists were accompanied by a crack house band led by Tony Shanahan, whose day job is being Patti Smith’s bassist. The band also included the Irish whistle player Joanie Madden, stringed instrument virtuoso Larry Campbell, guitarist Gerry Leonard and even one-time Pogues bassist Cait O’Riordan (among others). When she was introduced, O’Riordan received the loudest cheers from the audience by far! And throughout the evening, she was a live wire on bass; her energy was constant and contagious. In addition to honoring two legendary Irish musicians, the evening raised nearly 70 thousand dollars for PEN America, a New York based nonprofit that supports free expression through the advancement of literature and human rights.
There were many highlights at Wednesday night’s show. But to these ears, most of the evening’s best moments belonged to women. Whether that’s because I’m a bit more partial to Sinead’s music than to Shane’s or because their performances were simply deeper and more varied, I’m not really sure; probably a bit of both. Early in the show, the Irish folk singer Lisa Hannigan owned the stage when she performed “I Am Stretched on Your Grave,” from O’Connor’s 1990 masterpiece, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Later on, veteran soul singer Bettye LaVette delivered that album’s intense, a capella title track after telling the audience, “When you sing other people’s songs, it’s their babies — and I can’t write nothing!” Amanda Palmer tackled yet another song from I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Accompanied by her father Jack on guitar, she performed the subtly powerful folk song “Black Boys on Mopeds.” And Julia Cumming — lead singer of the Brooklyn-based band Sunflower Bean — blew me away with the standard “Success Has Made A Failure of Our Home” (which appeared on O’Connor’s 1992 covers album Am I Not Your Girl?). Appropriately enough, Roisin Waters returned toward the end of the show to deliver her mother’s biggest hit, the Prince song “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Not only was it lovely and powerful, but her vocal resemblance to her mother was eerie.
This is not to say that there weren’t some good performances by the men or some worthy covers of MacGowan’s songs. The veteran Irish singer-songwriters Billy Bragg and Glen Hansard were both crowd pleasers with their versions of “Rainy Night in Soho” and “I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Everyday,” respectively. Josh Ritter, a singer-songwriter from Idaho, offered an enthusiastic take on “The Broad Majestic Shannon.” But for sheer giddiness, nothing could touch John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, who performed a duet of the Pogues classic “Sally MacLennane.” Watching them was like spending five minutes at a Dublin wedding!
Not everything worked so well. Immediately following the Resistance Revival Chorus’ impassioned take on O’Connor’s “Thank You for Hearing Me,” Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz took the stage to perform a mashup of MacGowan’s “Church of a Holy Spook” and “Song with No Name.” While heartfelt, it was barely intelligible and might have benefited from better placement during the show.
Another highlight, toward the end of the evening, was when Hansard and fellow Irish troubadour Imelda May sang “Haunted,” O’Connor and MacGowan’s hit duet from 1995. Immediately afterwards, May invited Victoria Mary Clarke, MacGowan’s widow, onstage. Speaking to the audience about her late husband, she got one of the night’s biggest laughs when she said, “They weren’t interested in velvet ropes… Sometimes it was hard to get Shane to even change his shirt!” But Clarke also explained that neither artist was really interested in celebrity and that O’Connor “would never make you feel bad about being in trouble… Or being emotionally broken.”
In a sense, this was just as big a takeaway from the evening as the music. Though they had obvious stylistic differences musically, O’Connor and MacGowan had a lot in common. Both came out of Ireland’s post-punk scene. Both grew up in public (O’Connor in particular) and famously struggled with demons. Both died last year — O’Connor at 56, MacGowan at 65. And both were true artists. In an age where pop stars are increasingly manufactured, this is no mean feat.
When O’Connor released “Black Boys on Mopeds” in 1990, I doubt she could have imagined that its lyrics would ring even truer more than three decades later:
“Margaret Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing
It seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her…
England’s not the place of Madame George roses
It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s any such thing as grieving…”
Amen from an American guy who knows you deserved better, Sinead.
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