Sinéad O'Connor Has A New Memoir ... And No Regrets

Sinéad O'Connor rose to fame in 1990 with a multi-platinum selling album. Two years later, a controversial TV appearance on Saturday Night Live threatened to derail her career. Since then O'Connor's struggles have often played out in the public eye. But with Rememberings, a newly published memoir, she's hoping to show there is a lot more to the artist "behind the music."

It all started in Ireland, where O'Connor says she was brought up in an abusive household. Her parents split up when she was nine, and, after a few minor scrapes with the law, she was sent to a notoriously tough Catholic reform school. There, thanks to unforeseen circumstances, her life began to turn around. "Sister Margaret was like a mother to me," O'Connor explains. "There was a punk rock clothes shop in Dublin called No Romance. She took me there and bought me a red parka, and a whole lot of punk clothes, and my first guitar and a book of chords for Bob Dylan songs."

She also brought in a guitar teacher, which led O'Connor to a songwriting collaboration with In Tua Nua, a band signed to U2's newly launched record label. Although O'Connor was too young to tour, she performed in and around Dublin, eventually attracting the attention of the London-based label Ensign. Ireland was an established proving ground for exports such as Thin Lizzy, the Boomtown Rats and U2. But when it came to women, its most well-known artist was a straitlaced pop singer called Dana, winner of the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest.