Los Angeles Times May 13, 1990, Sunday, Home Edition SINEAD O'CONNOR FROM RAGE TO REASON; SINEAD O'CONNOR BURST ONTO THE SCENE IN 1987 AS AN ODD-LOOKING PROVOCATEUR. BUT NOW, AT 23, THE IRISH SINGER-SONGWRITER HAS MATURED INTO A MAJOR ROCK FORCE By ROBERT HILBURN Sinead O'Connor, whose "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" is the hottest and most acclaimed album so far this year, does want one thing that she hasn't got -- a more accurate public image. Possibly the most valuable young pop property at the start of the '90s, the Irish singer-songwriter scorched the rock consciousness when she arrived on the scene three years ago. With a maverick, shaved-head look that was hard for photographers to resist and for pop fans to forget, O'Connor exhibited signs of being the most provocative pop strategist since Prince. She backed that bold appearance with outspoken interviews, viciously attacking rock's reigning heroes -- her fellow countrymen, U2 -- and expressing sympathy for the Irish Republican Army. The tough, high-profile stance helped build enough interest for her 1987 debut album to sell 1 million copies worldwide and for her to win a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance. (She lost to Tina Turner.) The link with pop's provocateur tradition seemed complete late last year when Steve Fargnoli started managing her. His former client: Prince. But there were evidences of a more sensitive and straightforward artist at work in O'Connor's new "I Do Not Want . . ." album. Reflecting an intimacy and intensity that recalls John Lennon's landmark first solo album, the new collection is an eloquent statement about personal exorcisms and spiritual transformation. The album's thematic thrust is summarized by its opening track, "Feel So Different." Sitting in a hotel room here during a brief British tour, O'Connor shrugged at the mention of her old "angry young woman" image. Though still just 23, she dismissed the early stance to insecurity and youth. "People shouldn't take into account anything I said or did before the last year because I was not being honest with myself," the thin woman with doleful eyes said in a voice so soft that a tape recorder had to be placed on the arm of her chair to register the remarks -- a softness that was surprising in light of her vocal authority on record and her spunky image. "I wasn't saying the truth. Without realizing it, I was saying what I thought everyone wanted to hear, especially some of the people around me. Everything happened so fast. I disliked what I saw when I looked back on it." After the initial storm, O'Connor went through intense soul-searching. The new album documents some of that examination -- songs such as "You Cause As Much Sorrow" and "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" that talk about personal trials as well as songs, including "Three Babies" and the album's title tune, which deal with spiritual awakening. Sample lines from "Feel So Different": The whole time I'd never seen All you had spread before me The whole time I'd never seen That all I needed was inside me Despite the album's huge success, during an interview, O'Connor appeared worried that she is still seen as sort of a manipulative pop opportunist. "I'm not obsessed with fame and pop stardom," she said. "I'm glad there are fans out there and I'm pleased if they like the record, but I am very removed from the whole adulation thing. I didn't make these records for other people. I made them to learn things about myself. "I'm not even sure interviews are a good idea. I don't think I'll be doing many more. It's probably best to just let the music speak for itself. But I made some mistakes (in what I said after the first album) and I want to try to correct that. The one thing I'd hate someone to think is that everything I do is just some sort of gimmick." Confessional is too strong a term for O'Connor's mood in an interview, even for a woman who was raised Catholic in Dublin. But she did seem unusually open as she talked about the sometimes turbulent events of her childhood and her brief tenure in pop. Not one for pretense, O'Connor didn't think of calling room service when she decided she wanted some coffee during the interview. She walked over to the room's courtesy coffee maker and began fixing her own. Obligation was a better word to convey her manner. She seemed to feel it her responsibility to clarify all the confusion stirred up in the last three years. The shaved head seemed to be a good place to start. The widespread assumption: The move was a blatant attempt to forge a rebellious pop identity. "No," she said, firmly. "It wasn't for those reasons. We are all so accustomed to having everyone do something to attract attention or build an image that it doesn't occur to people that it's possible to do something just because you feel like it. "I'm just a girl. I forget that I'm a singer or that I'm in the music business. I have always been doing things with my hair, shaving it, bleaching it. I'm sure that practically every girl who has ever been born messed with her hair. So I just decided to cut it one day -- and I liked the way it looked. It's nothing more important than that." Nigel Grainge, the head of Ensign Records and the man who discovered O'Connor, confirms her story. Grainge has enjoyed so much success over the years with Irish bands, including Thin Lizzy and Bob Geldof's Boomtown Rats, that he makes periodic trips to Dublin in search of new groups. It was on one such expedition in 1985 that he heard O'Connor. She was the lead singer for a group called Ton Ton Macoute. "They were horrible," Grainge said in a separate interview. "Awful songs, awful playing, but she was interesting . . . this little student-type with baggy jersey and torn jeans, just singing to her feet for three quarters of an hour with this amazing voice." Grainge gave O'Connor a bit of encouragement when she phoned him in London a few weeks later to say she had left the band. Still he recalls his subsequent surprise when the phone rang again and the voice said to him, "Hi, it's Sinead, I'm at the airport." Caught up in other business, Grainge asked himself, "Sinead? Sinead? Do I know a Sinead?" As much out of embarrassment as anything, Grainge arranged for Karl Wallinger, of the band World Party, to go into the studio with O'Connor and help her record four of her songs. Grainge loved them and signed her to a contract. While working on the debut album, O'Connor spent a lot of time around the Ensign office. That's where Grainge first saw the shaved head. "I remember the day she came in with a Mohawk, the sides shaved off," he said. "Then, about two days later she came in completely shorn. It wasn't that she was manufacturing a look. She didn't make a big deal of it. I think she was just experimenting, trying to express herself. "She had quite a turbulent childhood -- a lot of trouble in school and so forth -- and people often react to that in different ways. Some people walk out in the street and scream. Others turn to crime. She turned to (music)." Troubled childhood. That's another aspect of O'Connor's life that she thinks is a bit overplayed. The Dublin native doesn't deny there were traumatic moments, including the break-up of her parents' marriage and enough teen-age rebellion -- including shoplifting -- to land her in a "corrective center." O'Connor didn't seem to enjoy going through these old times, but she again pressed on -- as if in penance for her earlier loose talk. "It was a hard time, but I don't want to appear as if I am going, 'Oh, I had such a terrible childhood.' I can talk about it, but you should realize I am a very philosophical person. I believe people chose their lives before they are born . . . choose their parents and everything else so I believe this is a life I chose." The most troubling moment was when O'Connor's mother died. Sinead was 17 -- and she was shaken by the suddenness of death and upset by the unhappiness she saw in her mother's life in a country where people are prohibited from remarrying because divorce isn't allowed. "Luckily, the record contract gave me an excuse to leave Dublin because everywhere I went, I could see things that reminded me of my mother and it was devastating," she said. The first album took nearly two years and a then-pregnant O'Connor was pretty weary of the material by the time the collection was finally released and she went on tour. "I was more interested in my pregnancy, to tell you the truth," she said. "I was waiting for Jake (now 2 1/2) to be born. By the time the album was finished, he's really all I cared about. I had lived with the songs for so long. It wasn't that I didn't like the album, but it wasn't really that big a deal to me. I never thought anything would happen anyway. I thought it would sell about 10 copies and that would be that." But the album, "The Lion and the Cobra," was a critical and commercial success, passing the 1 million mark world-wide. Still, the following months, including a U.S. and British tour, wasn't a particularly comfortable time. "I was having a very, very hard time personally. . . . In my private life and the tour seemed to be very secondary to that. I wasn't really into it because I didn't understand what was going on in my life." It was during the period that she gave some of the interviews she now regrets. In a recent interview in Q magazine, she reflected on those earlier remarks. "I was 20 or 21 when I said those things and I didn't have the slightest idea of what I was talking about," she said, referring to the IRA comments. "Now when I see pictures of a bombing on television it horrifies me that I said such things." It wasn't until after the tour that O'Connor began to sort out her life. "When I got married (to her son's father, drummer John Reynolds), that helped," she said. "I settled down and stopped thinking about other things. I found some new friends and I had to sever ties with people who had been close to me, but who had not been encouraging me to be myself. It was very painful, but I have never been happier." The severing of ties included her relationship with her first manager, Fatchna O'Ceallaigh, who she credited in the liner notes of her first album with being "my biggest influence and my best friend." There have been hints in the British pop press that much of the anger and frustration expressed in "I Do Not Want I Haven't Got" is a reflection of their relationship, but O'Connor refused to discuss the matter in the interview. O'Ceallaigh too declined to discuss their relationship. Ensign Records' Nigel Grainge was also guarded when asked about his perspective on the artist and her former manager. "That's a very sore point," he said. "There was a very strong relationship between them that was very much over and above the normal artist-manager relationship. "I don't want to delve into it too deeply, but he was very much part of her life . . . and I think the new album reflects the experience they had." Given similar past pronouncements by David Bowie and Prince, it certainly sounds like pop strategy when O'Connor says things like she may never make another album. The decision to work with Prince's former manager adds to the suspicion that there is still a bit of pop manipulation in O'Connor when she says her interest is in self-expression, not in stardom, and that she may eventually concentrate on acting. (She has already played a supporting role in a film, "Hush a Bye Baby," made for British television.) But O'Connor insists she only hired Fargnoli because she had met him a few times socially through friend Karl Wallinger, whom he also manages. The goal, she said, with a smile, was not for him to build her into pop's new Princess. She said she simply trusted Fargnoli. Ironically, it wasn't Fargnoli who introduced the singer to "Nothing Compares 2 U," the old Prince song that has become a smash hit single for her. She learned the song, which first appeared on a 1985 album by the Prince-aligned group the Family, from former manager, O'Ceallaigh. About the statement she may not make another album for "five years or ever," Ensign's Grainge said, "I'd like to think she will make more albums, but I don't see her writing another one album until she feels she has had enough experiences for the songs to be meaningful." In a separate interview, Fargnoli too smiled at the idea of O'Connor wanting to be a pop Princess. "She is not someone who is driven by pop career or pop sales," he said backstage at the Apollo Theater in Manchester. "That's what I find exciting about her. She's willing to take risks because she's not trying to protect anything . . . such as a record career. She'll do what interests her. "If I ever met anyone who would be able to handle stardom, I think it's her. She's conscious of the dangers and of getting lost in it." O'Connor wore a hooded white robe on stage for the first of her two shows at the Apollo, an old movie theater that is now used for concerts in Manchester, the second largest city in England. The image was of a nun or possibly a Franciscan. The religious symbolism was underscored by the hymn-like nature of the opening song, "Feel So Different.' It was a powerful image in a deeply moving, introspective concert that was among the most compelling performances in recent years. O'Connor, who is now on a brief U.S. tour that will include stops May 29 at San Diego State University's Open Air Theatre and May 31 and June 1 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, is aware of the seductiveness of her own struggle and salvation commentaries. She has seen the handful of girls who invariably show up at her concerts now with shaved heads of their own and an intense, almost obsessive attachment to her music. Despite the clear spiritual undercurrents in her songs, she doesn't want the role of pop missionary. "Religion isn't a very good word to use because it conjures up Catholicism or Judaism or Protestantism," she said during the hotel interview. "I am talking about universal spirituality . . . the feeling that someone like Van Morrison leaves you with after seeing his concerts or listening to his records." For one of the few times in the interview, O'Connor's voice moved beyond a whisper, suggesting the importance she attached to the comments. "This album is about finding yourself and finding a certain fulfillment, but I want to make it clear that I do not feel I am someone with all the answers, someone who is trying to convert others. "That's not the case at all. I have beliefs and opinions, but they are based on my own personal experience and I could change them tomorrow. It's up to everyone to find their own answers." Pausing, she added, "Maybe the one lesson of the album is that you can find the answers if you look hard enough. Everything in the new album happened to me -- and I learned from it." Postscript: O'Connor was scheduled to sing two numbers on "Saturday Night Live" last night, but announced last Wednesday that she was cancelling the appearance because she did not want to appear on the same program with guest host Andrew Dice Clay, whose comedy routines are laced with expletives and feature jokes about sexual violence that have been criticized as anti-women. "It would be nonsensical of 'Saturday Night Live' to expect a woman to perform songs about a woman's experience after a monologue by Andrew Dice Clay," she said in a prepared statement. "I feel it shows disrespect to women that 'Saturday Night Live' expected me to perform on the same show as Andrew Dice Clay."