In a Facebook post Simon Napier-Bell, who together with his partner Bjorn de Water has been managing Sinead O’Connor since last November, reacted on O’Connor’s accusations that she has been mishandled by them.

Says Napier-Bell: “(…) She also writes frequently on Facebook; sometimes fiery rants, other times about music she likes or people she respects. For some time now she’s been telling her Facebook friends about problems with her health, her son’s ill-health, and about her financial losses from having had to cancel a South American tour in order to stay behind and take care of him. Fate and circumstance came together to cause these things to happen and throughout them Bjorn and I gave Sinéad carefully considered advice and acted with honesty and integrity. But earlier this week Sinéad wrote a post that accused us of doing otherwise. It was untrue, defamatory, and damaging. Through our lawyer we applied to Facebook to have the post removed. If it is, then without prejudice to our right to take further legal action for defamation if we feel it necessary, our preferred choice would be to leave things at that. We’ve enjoyed working with Sinéad – she’s a great artist, a caring mother, and for nine months was a good friend.”

To be continued! The picture used above shows from left to right Simon Napier-Bell, Sinead O’Connor and Bjorn de Water, in happier times that is. Photo by Simon Napier-Bell.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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We all know – or at least you should – that most German goth festivals still do the pay-for-play game. That is that many bands actually pay to play at the festivals. Nowadays even ebm/electro/goth DJs are asked to pay in order to DJ at an event (some of them were actually asked to cough up 400 Euro to play at a certain well known electro festival in Cologne for instance). But you would think that bigger artists would not have to go through this ordeal. Alas, it’s more or less what happened to Sinead O’Connor after her Italian tour agent screwed her over majorly during her last world tour.

O’Connor has posted a message on Facebook accusing her booking agent, Rita Zappador of Modus in Rebus, of defrauding her of thousands every night during her last tour. A document which O’Connor posted seems to show she got 500 Euros for a German show, while the agency got nearly 12,000 for production costs and commission.

Read O’Connor’s statements below: “What I got paid for three shows in Germany, FIVE HUNDRED EURO as compared to what everyone else got paid. The last two figures on this list amount to what the agent Rita Zappador and Modus In Rebus got, €11,700.00. The €47,700.00 is the total of what my four and a half hours’ work generated. Pls note the document is page 9 of 7! This is the type of dodgy documents we are being provided with. This is the sodding insurance document !!! In the end the agent didn’t even pay me the five hundred. SHE DOCKED ME FOUR THOUSAND! So my work generated almost €48k but cost me €4k. Pls note bands do not arrange these things themselves. One’s business managers and agents do. One trusts one is not being lied to when one is seduced to go on tour by being assured of earnings. Our job is to shake our asses and sing nice. Management’s job is to fight off every cunt that wants to rip us off. MASSIVE negligence cases to be brought by me against every member of my now ex management team. Not only for the below but for several even more appalling and wreckless negligences, which have cost me hundreds of thousands of euro which I was illegally told was my obligation to pay, and it was NOT my legal obligation. In short I have been ass raped by Rita Zappador and Modus in Rebus with the full (written, and totally behind my back, without my knowledge) support of Simon Napier-Bell, Bjorn De Water and my now ex accountant. ALL of whom need to lawyer up, and get ready for the fraud squad.”

In the meantime we noticed that it is very silent on the social media profiles of the people O’Connor holds responsible… silence before the storm. Simon Napier-Bell has reacted in a Facebook post and denied the allegations.

To be continued.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.

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