Culture That Made Me: Susan O'Neill on Nirvana, Withnail and I, and trad nights in Clare
Susan O'Neill, Ennis-based singer. Picture: Mrs Redhead
Susan O’Neill, 34, grew up in Ennis, Co Clare.
In 2018, she released her debut solo album, , which she followed up three years later with the acclaimed collaboration album, , with Mick Flannery. O’Neill has just released her latest album, .
She will perform at Connolly’s Of Leap, Co Cork on Saturday, October 26, and a matinée on Sunday, October 27.
In my teens, I was friends with skaters. They put me onto Nirvana's greatest hits. I remember hearing ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ and thinking, This man is singing my emotions. No one else has done this yet — the melancholy of it, the desperation of it as it grunges up. I found other singers to be balls to the wall or gentle whereas he had his light and shade, this yearning in his voice that was like, I don't give a flying feck what you think. You could tell Nirvana were doing it for themselves. It was so real.
I was really into The Beatles. They were so fun. Where is the fun in music? How can a band encompass “There's nothin’ you can do that can't be done” on ‘All You Need Is Love’ and in the next breath you're listening to, “We all live in a yellow submarine” that would have a three-year-old fully satisfied? I remember it bowling me over and the fact that my Mam and Dad listened to them when they were my age. “What? It's that old?!”
I was in a gospel choir growing up. I listened to any singers that could belt like in a gospel voice. I adored Whitney Houston. The control in her voice blew me away. There weren’t as many female artists on the radio at the time. So when I heard Whitney Houston singing and a little bit later, Aretha Franklin, they stirred in me something much more guttural and profound. I realised they're singing from every inch of their being. Aretha Franklin sings and it's not quite like anything you can describe.
Florence Scovel Shinn’s is only about 80 pages long. She was a spiritual teacher, like a nun. She was in tune with what’s important and how to conduct yourself as a person. It was written so long ago — in 1925 — that she was still using “man” in the case of humanity. She said we should not utter a word unless to bless, heal or prosper. That made sense to me because it feels like if every word that we hear is a mantra, praise or prayer, we're manifesting it. To use such a beautiful thing as a voice for anything other than blessing, healing, or prospering feels like misuse. I could not recommend the book enough.
A podcast I love is Manchán Magan’s The Almanac of Ireland. In it, he deals with everything from folklore to nature. In one episode he spoke to this Dutch man living in the Burren for 20 years. He takes children who find education difficult, who don't quite fit within the system because of their brain types, out into nature three times a year. They're told to walk and stop when they see something they’re drawn to — whether it’s a rock, tree or plant, and they become calmer.
Manchán has taken the time to tell us about him. That podcast restores my faith in humanity, the magic that’s happening right here on our land. It’s like that W.B. Yeats line: “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
I started to work in a bar, Faffa Considine’s in Ennis, as a teenager. It was a nice-sized pub with the fire lighting. It had the best selection of traditional musicians – you’d have Blackie O'Connell, Siobhan Peoples, Edel Fox, the best of trad musicians who came in from the Willie Clancy festival. I’d come out from behind the bar and they’d kindly ask me to sing a song so I’d be there with glasses in my left paw and I’d sing, always something bluesy, like ‘The Tennessee Waltz’, or a Clare song. They’d back me up. I was surrounded by trad and I loved it.
Pink Floyd’s was an amazing concept album. These people were saying something that needed to be said, but also embellishing the music with samples like the idea of coming out of the womb. It was like being brought through the journey of what a lifetime is in the cycle of that life and then there’s tracks like Money slating the capitalist agenda. I’m a teenager thinking, Whoa, was that a problem back then [in the 1970s]? OK, these problems have been here before, so it's sending me back to the fact that we're going around in these cycles.
The one great movie I love is . It's so good even if it’s one being pegged and put up on the line for potentially questionable themes these days. I got introduced to it when I was younger. The humour and the dialogue is amazing: “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!”
I adored the characters’ ability to be so dramatic about something as basic as washing the dishes which had mounted up. I loved the theatrics of it. I had only heard this level of drama in Shakespearean plays at school and all of a sudden I'm seeing it applied to the dishes. I thought that was clever. It’s so funny.
When I discovered Leonard Cohen, I found him to be using gospel chords and progressions but being this poet over these folk and gospel tunes. I remember hearing Puppets for the first time — a song which came out much later — and I cried. I got goosebumps the whole way back up through my neck. Music has always been a voice and sometimes you don't need words at all, but for someone to say what needs to be said with that much honesty is extremely moving.
When I was in a Disney movie phase as a kid, scared me. The clergyman epitomised evil. He hated everything it was to be feminine. He tried to burn Esmeralda. He was attracted to her and he hated that in himself. He propositioned her, and when she was not interested, he sought to destroy her. I remember thinking what it is to be feminine, wild, intuitive, sexual, beautiful was to invite danger. Then the scene where they bullied the hunchback made me sick to my stomach. Quasimodo was bullied based on how he looks yet he's this kind, talented man who's locked away. These are themes that shaped me because this is not a world I want to live in yet it is true, it is actualised. It profoundly upset me.
