![]() “When I walk backstage, literally not a human being is in sight," O’Connor recalled in the book. As O’Connor herself (now known as Shuhada Sadaqat after converting to Islam in 2018) reminisced in her 2021 memoir Rememberings, she was greeted with an eerie silence not only on stage (director Davey Wilson ordered that the traditional “applause” sign not be lit), but backstage as well, where the stunned and variously appalled cast and crew had all but disappeared. NBC was immediately, and for days afterward, flooded with calls, overwhelmingly condemning SNL’s musical guest insulting the head of the Catholic Church. Watch Sinead O'Connor Rip of a Picture of the Pope on 'SNL' “Fight the real enemy,” O’Connor urged, then blew out the candles that had been her only accompaniment, and walked offstage. She sang “War,” O’Connor’s inimitable voice building in passion power until, after delivering the song’s final message, “And we know we shall win/As we are confident in the victory/Of good over evil,” raised a photograph of Pope John Paul II to the camera and, staring straight down the barrel of the live camera, tore it up. So the 26-year-old singer walked out onto the SNL stage for her second number of the night on the live show. Zonars, in the SNL oral history, Live From New York, claims that everyone was moved by O’Connor’s song and gesture in dress rehearsal when she held up the planned photo and made a heartfelt plea to protect the world’s vulnerable children. Rather than sing the planned a cappella song “Scarlet Ribbons,” O’Connor’s manager informed SNL music coordinator John Zonars that O’Connor would, instead, be performing an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley’s “War.”Īnd, since the Irish singer intended for the song to bring attention to the issue of child abuse, she’d asked that the performance be filmed with a single camera, in close-up, so that her closing gesture (of her holding up a picture of a starving child), would be the lasting focus. Still, by then nobody was thinking about him, General Electric, or much of anything else but that night’s musical guest.Īfter performing her first number, a typically striking rendition of the Loretta Lynn torch song “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home," O’Connor returned to the Studio 8H stage having made a few last-minute requests. (Robbins, perhaps anticipating that outcome, included a scene in his sly 1992 political satire Bob Roberts, in which the guest host-played by Robbins’ pal John Cusack-is similarly shut down by a self-mythologizing “edgy” live late-night sketch show called Cutting Edge Live.) Robbins, with then-wife and fellow provocateur Susan Sarandon in the audience, eventually appeared in the goodnights for the show sporting an anti-GE T-shirt. The politically active actor had pitched a searing broadside against NBC parent company and infamous polluters General Electric, which Michaels had rejected for the show, claiming the piece to be more pointed than funny. In the lead-up to the episode, show creator Lorne Michaels had all of his attention on outspoken host Tim Robbins. 3, 1992, when she tore up a picture of the Pope during her musical performance on Saturday Night Live. Singer Sinead O’Connor sparked outrage on Oct. ![]()
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