Sinéad O'Connor on Pope pic controversy

In the new issue of Hot Press (out today) Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor speaks candidly for the first time about her 1992 Saturday Night Live appearance, where, on live TV, she tore a photograph of then-Pope John Paul II to pieces.

"I never thought there was much point discussing it actually," O'Connor tells Olaf Tyaransen, before recalling, “I was really quite calm about it. We had the sound-check, and I tricked them about what photo I would use."

Instead of what she'd inferred, Sinéad held up a photo of Pope John Paul II, and declared, “Fight the real enemy!” Then she tore it up and threw the pieces onto the floor. There was a stunned silence from the audience – director Dave Wilson reportedly gave the order not to light up the ‘applause’ light – and then the station went straight to a commercial.

O'Connor claims that reports of child clerical abuse had in fact inspired her actions - “I trusted in the Church,” she begins. "But I began to come across articles in the newspapers about families who had been trying to bring cases against the Church for child abuse. Some of the victims or survivors, and they were being silenced by the Church. And at the same time I was reading these conspiracy theory books..."

She continues, “I think people reacted the way they did because they thought I was someone who didn’t believe in God or didn’t respect Jesus. But in fact I was quite the opposite."

The SNL incident had big repercussions for Sinéad. When she returned to America to perform at a birthday concert for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden a fortnight later, large sections of the crowd started to boo and hiss.

“I got the shit kicked out of me for it,” she sighs. “But I was used to having the shit kicked out of me. Plenty of practice before anyone had ever even heard of me."

She continues, with a laugh, “I didn’t enjoy everyone treating me like a crazy person for 20 years. Of course I am a crazy person, but I didn’t enjoy people putting that in the list of why I’m crazy. There is a box of evidence that I’m crazy, but there’s certain things that shouldn’t be in there.

Read the full, fascinating interview with Sinéad in the new issue of Hot Press (Mumford & Sons cover) out now.