Sinead must have figured out that she believed Fachtna, 'cause her most vicious attacks on U2 followed the Wembley meeting with Bono.

"There were all kinds of emotional things that went on at the time that heightened it," Fachtna says. "Especially her need to express her independence of them. On her first tour in America the general percep­tion was that somehow she'd been discovered by U2 and as a young emerging artist she didn't see that as anything to be. So the minute she would see, 'U2 Protegee Sinead O'Connor' in some American publica­tion, she'd start freaking out. You know the way she is: she's very intense about the idea of honesty and very often makes her own life very painful.

"As far as I know once she stopped . . . employing me as her manager, let's put it that way, she began to make her peace with U2. When I had this horrible split-up with Sinead, among the things that she said to me

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was that I had manipulated her and used her in relation to this U2 business. My moment of honesty in answering a question in an inter­view caused me endless pain over the next few years. Caused Sinead pain. I don't know whether it caused U2 pain or not. I doubt it very much.

"Any problem I have with U2 does not relate to that period of time," Fachtna says. "As I say, I was asked a question, I gave an honest answer, and I do despise them and the music they make, so I don't care about that. I do care about the fact that it became such a huge issue between Sinead and them and clouded things and made some people think that she was using U2 to get publicity."

That leaves gaping the question of exactly what Fachtna's problem with U2—aside from not liking their music—was. He says he was upset that at a certain point they decided Mother should retain the publishing on one song by each artist they signed, but that seems like small potatoes, a justifiable attempt to keep a generous enterprise some­where near the break-even line. As Bono told that Australian TV inter­viewer, Fachtna's real sore spot with U2 was that he is a self-professed Irish Republican and U2 ain't.

"The reason I despise them and hate them is because of the lies and rubbish they propagate about Ireland and the out-and-out British-sup­porting propaganda that they put forward around the world," Fachtna says. "The idea of some major rock star going around the world with a white flag in his hand and singing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' and then saying, This is not a rebel song has some nerve, as far as I'm concerned, to exploit the pain and suffering of people in a part of ... whether it's his own country or anybody else's. That's the problem I have with them."

I'm sure Bono would say an artist has a right to talk about these issues," I say.

An artist has the right to inform him or herself in the first place before they open their mouths," Fachtna snaps. "If they talk from the point of view of ignorance, well, then they'll get abused for their igno­rance. If he wants to be taken seriously by the people that are fighting a war in Ireland and by the people who are dying left, right, and center, whether it's Loyalists or Republicans, he'll have serious conversations with them. He'd soon realize how utterly and totally and absolutely uninformed and ignorant he is. Take the time to go to Belfast or Derry

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And find out, or not even go there but meet up with people who are politically active in the war that goes on, from whatever side he cares to meet up with. He never chose to do that. He uses a major emotional tactic in order to look good.

"The information is all available to people if they choose to seek it. The younger Irish Americans are probably more informed about what goes on there than are the people in the south of Ireland who live a hundred miles down the road, because in Ireland we have out-and-out censorship on radio and TV of anybody connected with Sinn Fein. They can't speak, they can't appear on Irish television or Irish radio. Recently a book written by [Sinn Fein President] Gerry Adams called The Streets, a book of fictional short stories, none of which had a Republican content, couldn't even be advertised on TV because of the fact that it was written by Gerry Adams.

"In Britain there is the Broadcasting Act, which prevents members of Sinn Fein or anybody of that ilk from being interviewed on radio or TV. Pictures of Gerry Adams can appear, but they have to use an actor's voice to speak his words! I'd have much more respect for Bono if he was out there campaigning for the removal of censorship than I do when he turns around and calls the IRA fascists.

"It's not exclusive to U2. In the twenty-six counties in the so-called Republic of Ireland there is an amazing lack of interest, a complete and utter averting the eyes from what goes on a hundred miles away. And in some ways it's understandable because it's very painful. We're a relatively new nation from the beginning of this century who achieved some degree of freedom with an uprising and yet settled for less than what the uprising and rebellion had been about. And as a result of the civil war I know that my grandfather and my father couldn't get jobs because the government that was in power happened to disagree with what my family believed in. So there are all those undercurrents of old emotions. We can't turn a blind eye to them. We have to accept the responsibility and face the challenge of these things, not just the recent history but the seven hundred years of British oppression. We can't turn around and say, as I heard Bono say on television one time, 'Let's cast aside the baggage of history, let's start anew, let's look to the future rather than always looking back at the past.' We can't do that, it's unnatural. Unfortunately. We have to be informed by our past in order to face whatever challenge there is in the future and in order to look at ourselves

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