KRIS KRISTOFFERSON IS today being remembered worldwide for his long career as a singer-songwriter and actor following his death at the age of 88.
But for people in Ireland, a standout memory of the musician will undoubtedly be the moment where he supported the late Sinéad O’Connor when she was faced with a booing crowd at a Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992.
It followed another unforgettable moment in music culture that happened two weeks earlier, on 3 October 1992, when O’Connor appeared as a musical guest on the US show Saturday Night Live.
The 25-year-old performed an acapella rendition of Bob Marley’s 1976 song War, changing the lyrics to include child abuse among the reggae singer’s original themes of racism and conflict.
Then, holding up a photograph of Pope John Paul II to the camera, she sang “And we know we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil” before tearing the photograph into halves and then quarters.
“Fight the real enemy,” she said, to shocked silence from the crowd.
The incident, which would become a defining moment in her career, was met with fury. NBC received thousands of phone-calls criticising the performance. Frank Sinatra called her “a stupid broad”.
The following week, actor Joe Pesci hosted Saturday Night Live and held up a repaired photo of John Paul II. He told the audience that if he had been on the episode with O’Connor, he “would have gave her such a smack”.
It was nine years before the Pope would issue an apology for “a string of injustices, including sexual abuse, committed by Roman Catholic clergy”. By the late 2000s, sexual abuse of children by Catholic institutions was recognised as a global scandal.
Two weeks after her appearance on SNL, O’Connor appeared for a Bob Dylan 30th anniversary tribute concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Introducing her to the stage, Kris Kristofferson said: “I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity. Ladies and gentlemen, Sinéad O’Connor.”
She was immediately met with a chorus of overwhelming boos and jeers. This continued for a minute-and-a-half, with O’Connor staring back at the audience in silence.
In a show of solidarity, Kristofferson reappeared on stage to offer her some encouragement.
He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned in to tell her something, which O’Connor can be seen responding to before he leaves the stage again.
Though she had been due to perform Bob Dylan’s I Believe in You, O’Connor told the band not to play and asked for her mic to be turned up before launching into an acapella version of Bob Marley’s War, the same song she sang on SNL.
After the performance, she left the stage in tears and was comforted by Kristofferson. Her performance was not included on the live album of the event.
It took nearly 20 years to find out what Kristofferson had said to her onstage.
Speaking about the moment on RTÉ’s Saturday Night with Miriam in 2010, he said he was asked by the concer’s organisers to “get her off the stage”, but “was not about to do that”.
“I went out and I said, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down,’ and she said: ‘I’m not down’, Kristofferson told Miriam O’Callaghan.
“And she sang. It was very courageous. It just seemed to me wrong, booing that little girl out there. But she’s always had courage.”
He sang a duet of Help Me Make It Through The Night with O’Connor, who died last year at the age of 56, on the show.
The previous year, Kristofferson released a song called Sister Sinead, which was dedicated to O’Connor.
In 2019, the photograph of Kristofferson supporting O’Connor onstage was shared by someone on Twitter who said it was an example of an alternative to toxic masculinity.
But O’Connor herself responded to the tweet, saying: “I would not agree Kris wasn’t toxically masculine.
“He took full advantage when he got the chance and then immediately turned nasty,” she wrote on Twitter, adding the hashtag ‘NoHeroOfMine’.
She elaborated on her statement the following day. “In case my use of the words ‘took advantage’ [in] an earlier tweet might be misconstrued I wish to make clear that in no way, shape or form was I in any way sexually assaulted by Kris Kristofferson. And that the one time we did have sex, it was consensual.”
Kristofferson never commented on her remarks.
Tributes have poured in for the late musician since the news of his death was announced last night.
Barbra Streisand, who starred opposite him in the 1976 remake of musical romantic drama A Star is Born, said “I knew he was something special” the first time she saw him perform.
Country music legend Dolly Parton also shared a tribute on social media, writing: “What a great loss. What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend.”
US star LeAnn Rimes also described him as “an epic human with the biggest heart”.
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