Autor: Christopher John Treacy
Published: July 6, 2007
After selling more than 40 million albums worldwide with the Cranberries, Dolores O’Riordan was tired of the rock star grind.
You could almost hear the passion fading on the Irish quartet’s ho-hum final disc, 2001’s “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.” Finally, after the Cranberries’ 2003 tour, O’Riordan left the band that had made her a star. At the time, the media portrayed her departure as the product of a nervous breakdown, but her reasoning seems perfectly sound in hindsight.
“It was clearly the end of the road,” O’Riordan said from Los Angeles shortly before embarking on the solo tour that brings her to Avalon on Monday. “We started recording another disc, but nothing felt inspired. We’d lost any sense of creative excitement.
Plus,” she continued, “I needed time to care for my mother-in-law, who was very ill. I’d come to a massive intersection and I eliminated the Cranberries as an option since it no longer seemed to be going anywhere. In retrospect, it seems if I hadn’t taken the time off, I probably wouldn’t ever have returned to music.”
It took four years for the now-35-year-old siren to feel her creative itch return, resulting in her diverse new solo debut, “Are You Listening?”
But for O’Riordan, family had to come first.
“I went up to Canada,” she said, referring to her Ontario property. “I had to completely step away. No contracts, no obligations. I wanted to be surrounded purely by love, so I became a full-time mother.
“Suddenly, deciding what to give my kids for dinner became important. I wanted to prove to myself that I could run my own household and actually cope without all the usual assistance that rock stars require.”
Prove it she did. Not only did she care for her children, Taylor, 9, and Molly, 6, she and her husband, former Duran Duran tour manager Don Burton, found time for a third: Dakota, who was born in April 2005.
O’Riordan also did some volunteer elementary school teaching and made good on a promise to herself to finally obtain a driver’s license.
It was partly thanks to a nudge from funnyman Adam Sandler that she found her way back to music. A phone call asking her to do a cameo in his film “Click” got the ball rolling.
“The call about the film thrust me back into the big bad world,” she said. “I spent 10 days in L.A. enjoying a bit of the celebrity treatment and I thought, ‘Gee, this isn’t so bad, now, is it?’ I had to stop breast-feeding Dakota and switch to the pump so I could make the trip, which was really difficult, but I ended up having a blast. And I also had four years of experience and inspiration to bring to that table for a new project.”
O’Riordan must have known she’d eventually record again: “Are You Listening?” was whittled down to 12 tracks from the 30 new songs she’d amassed. Using a variety of producers and musicians gives the CD a fresh feel, along with vindication of her decision to walk away from the Cranberries. Despite some rumors, she’s not planning a reunion.
“I wouldn’t consider working with a full-time band again,” she said. “No, this is better. As an artist beholden only to myself I can move freely between this life and my other identities as wife and mother. That way, neither ever really gets dull. And I know I’m blessed to be able to have both.”
Dolores O’Riordan, at Avalon, Monday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $30; 617-931-2000.