Ode to Dolores

Dolores is dead.

Somewhere in the dusty corners of the Slacker’s home is an audio cassette of The Cranberries’ debut album, Everybody Else is doing it, So why can’t we? Also present there is the audio cassette of their sophomore album No Need to Argue and their fourth, Bury the Hatchet. In a much less dusty part of the house – in fact at my elbow as I type, is a CD of Stars – The Best of 1992-2002, to which I listened last week.

In terms of album possession then, this puts The Cranberries just behind Pink Floyd in my collection, though one might struggle to find any other commonality between the psychedelic and later, concept-rock of the 1970’s that Floyd embodies and the alternative-folk sound of Dolores O’Riordan and her merry men.

But there is a topicality to music, regardless of genre, and in the songs of The Cranberries there is a sadness and a sense of longing that made them relatable precisely in the manner of Floyd. In the strange days that were the nineties, The Cranberries represented a way for a Mumbai schoolboy to make sense of violence and ache, to deal with love and loss, an escape from social awkwardness.

Dreams was where I could forget reality for its four-minute-odd duration, as she sang

‘Oh my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems,

Never quite as it seems’.

Ode to my Family helped me make sense of the daily oppression of urban life as she sang, 

‘Unhappiness, where’s when I was young and didn’t give a damn’.

Zombie was an outlet for the rage within me, a way to make sense of the violence as she screamed,

‘In your head, in your head,

they are fighting,

with their bombs and their guns,

In your head, in your head,

 they are crying’.

Salvation scared me, despite the plaintive cry of

‘Salvation, Salvation, Salvation is free’.

Animal Instinct, felt like a ray of much-needed hope, a plea to,

So take my hands and we will pray

They won't take you away

They will never make me cry, no

They will never make me die

I can’t be with you embodied a sense of inevitable losses to come,

And now it's just farewell

Put your hands in my hand

We'll find another end

and Linger…ah, Linger…perhaps the song I related to only much later, when it became an accusation directed, quite rightly, at me.

You know I'm such a fool for you

You've got me wrapped around your finger

Do you have to let it linger?

Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger?

Running through all these songs, and more, was Dolores’ voice, an ethereal chant, an expression of womanhood, vulnerable and strong, coming from the beauty of the Irish country and the strife of its history; it was the tragedy of the occupation and the famine, the smile of Irish eyes and the merriment of their art, it was unique – it was enough.

Dolores O’Riordan was not a frontwoman in the mould of the ice-cool beauty of Debbie Harry or the quintessential rocker chic of Joan Jett, she did not own the stage with the raw sexual charisma of Shirley Manson or the idiosyncratic glamour of Stevie Nicks. She drew, perhaps, most from the free spirit of Janis Joplin, and like her, has left us too soon.

The 21^st century has not been kind to music-lovers, I often think, and music-lovers have not been kind to music. The commercialisation of the industry and the predominance of auto-tune has made it difficult for a raw act like The Cranberries to achieve the sort of mainstream success that they were able to in the early nineties. The album and the music video itself is on something of a decline as streaming takes over from digital purchases just as digital purchases took over from those poor CD’s and cassettes that I still hold on to. We have given far too little love to the artistes we do love either – the children of the 80’s and 90’s like me grew up to get involved in other things, to get degrees and jobs, to start families and businesses, and if we listened to music at all, it was more likely to re-hash those old records than to buy new ones, even when they were brought out by those we had loved so much. It did not help that the very mass media – Radio and Television – which had first introduced us to these musicians gleefully abdicated their responsibility in pursuit of reality shows and competing with General Entertainment Channels.

And so Wake up and Smell the Coffee (2001) went largely unnoticed, as did Roses (2009) and so did Dolores’ solo albums, Are You Listening (2007) and No Baggage (2009). But then that was what happened to the albums released by such icons as Prince, David Bowie, Motorhead, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Glen Campbell, the Allman Brothers and Chuck Berry (and that’s just naming a few of those who passed away in 2016-17).

And now it is Dolores who is dead, and as we did for those before her, we will have an awakening, remember who she was, and the band she fronted, and wonder where they were for the last twenty years, shed a silent tear, write a glowing tribute, pirate their albums and play them for a day or two. If we are a little more principled, we might buy or stream their work. And as it was for Bowie and Prince and Petty, it will be a tad too late, for there will be no new music to listen to.

So cherish what you love, put your money where your mouth is, and do not let all that remains of your love for music a vague memory of a cassette in a Walkman, of songs heard sitting alone in your bedroom as an angst-ridden teen. Your idols grew older, they made music they loved and put into words and voiced the concerns and travails of a different time and place from that you first loved, perhaps, and the charts may not reflect their names any more, but the art never went away.

Let us mourn Dolores, for indeed a part of our memories – mine, surely – go with her, to remain only in the power of her voice, but let us also remember to appreciate and love those we have, and most of all, to express the love, in words, and through our wallets.

That dusty corner of a home where your voice is encoded on magnetic tape and plastic, a technology long since obsolete, may one day be cleaned, and the cassette-tape thrown away, but in a dusty corner of a crusty, cynical man’s heart, Dolores, your memory will always linger. 

He will always be a fool for you.

A Farewell to Lawns: Remembering Martina Hingis

In 1996, around the end of November, Stephanie ‘Steffi’ Graf won the season-ending WTA Tour Championships. It was not the fact that she won that was particularly surprising. Steffi had won the last 6 Grand Slam tournaments she had played (remaining absent from the Australian Open in 1995 and 1996) and was generally the odds-on favourite to win whatever she played. It was that she had been taken to five sets (the WTA Tour Final was the only women's match played over best-of-five, and this was the last such match, I think, they reverted to best-of-three after that). Even more surprising was that a girl who had just turned 16 had stretched her that far.

Martina Hingis, the girl in question, was a phenomenon. She burst upon the scene by winning a doubles title at Wimbledon in 1996 and followed it up by winning 3 of the 4 singles slams in 1997 (losing the French Open final to Iva Majoli, a shocker of a result). She had a delicate touch, an extraordinary skill and a head for angles and reading a point that, for a heady period of about 30 months, compensated for the fact that she had a weak serve and lacked power in her groundstrokes. At 16, she was the dominant player on the women’s circuit, with Steffi Graf in semi-retirement and Monica Seles never quite the same player after the horrific stabbing incident that wrecked her health and her confidence.

But she was also fun. With a broad smile, a perky nose and mischievous eyes, she came across as thoroughly real, a precocious child, not a tennis robot or even the ‘forced into playing’ phenomenon that had become so common in those days. And with teenage came its other idiosyncrasies – she loved to party, she was capable of petty jealousy (ever wondered why the Hingis – Kournikova doubles combination played so little together in spite of their remarkable success?), and capable of saying things I hope she regretted when older (the most blatant being her homophobic remarks about Amelie Mauresmo).

It was, anyway, easy to overlook, for me at least. In an era where tennis was fast becoming an ugly, brute-force contest, it was nothing but wonderful to see a player who could uncork a picture-perfect lob, a running drop-shot and a cross-court half-volley, sometimes all in the course of the same point. I would, of course, be hypocritical if I denied that I also found her easy on the eye.

In January of 1998, I used to attend a ‘Tuition class’ in (shudder!) Andheri. The day began at some ungodly hour of morning and classes continued through the day to late afternoon. The Australian Open Ladies final happened while I was being taught the finer nuances of some accounting concept. I spent every break in lectures looking for an afternoon tabloid in the hopes it would carry the result. Eventually, I found a copy of the Mid-Day, with the front page header – ‘Hingis defends title at Melbourne’. I do not remember much of anything else I learned that day, but I do know that had Conchita Martinez won, I would have been mightily upset. I may even have cried. As it was, I virtually cradled that newspaper in my arms as I went home by bus, a big smile plastered on my face. It seemed as though she was living up to her promise, and I, as her devoted fan, was glad that at last (my other great favourite, Goran Ivanisevic, was an exercise in self-torture) I was supporting someone who would give years of the same, wonderful, winning feeling.

But 1998 would also be when we saw the first signs that she would never become the dominant force it seemed she was destined to be; she would fall in the Semis at Roland Garros and Wimbledon before losing the US Open finals to Lindsay Davenport. In 1999, she would display shocking bad temper following a loss to Steffi Graf at the French Open finals before having a terrible meltdown in the Wimbledon first round against Jelena Dokic. When she reached the finals of the US Open, though, and was to square off against a player who was only known for being someone's younger sister, it seemed as though things were coming back on track. Instead, she would lose to Serena Williams (hallowed be Her name) in straight sets, and that was when I knew that there would be no era of dominance. At least, not for Martina Hingis.

Not that Martina gave up. She had another Australian Open in her, winning in 1999 against Amelie Mauresmo, and she continued to make deep inroads into Slams, often felling two of the big hitters – the Williamses, Davenport, Capriati and Mauresmo – before falling to a third in a final or semi. On the doubles circuit, she changed partners as often as she changed boyfriends off-court and still won – the best women’s doubles team was always ‘Hingis and whoever’ as long as she was playing.

Pictured, with 'whoever'

Then, in 2002, after making her sixth consecutive Australian Open singles final, she declared she had an injury and sat out the French Open and Wimbledon before making a run to the fourth round at the US Open. She would announce retirement after that, claiming a foot injury, and sue her shoe sponsor in the off-season. It seemed tacky, even cynical, for those who suspected her frustration at being unable to overcome the weaknesses in her own game was the real reason.

But my love for tennis, even sport in general, was on the decline. I would admire Roger Federer, I would be awed by Nadal, I would worship at the altar of Serena (In Whose Grace We Trust) but I would never love a player again. I would never stand desperately around newspaper stalls, or later, smartphones, looking for a result, I would never be tearful, or angry, or ecstatic, because of a sporting result.

Hingis made a comeback in 2006, and made three Quarter-finals before retiring again, this time under rather shameful circumstances, having tested positive for cocaine use. It is not a performance-enhancing drug, of course, but that, if anything, made it even more believable. Hingis had always liked to defy conventions and morality, riding horses when the tale of Maureen ‘Little Mo’ Connolly is on every true tennis-fan’s mind, spending a night with Justin Gimelstob during a Slam, taking off for a beach vacation a day after that first-round loss to Jelena Dokic.

The last comeback was in 2014, and this time, she chose to play only doubles. It was a wise decision, and in bits and pieces – for even when she partnered Sania Mirza and Leander Paes, only finals were broadcast in India; in the US, even less – I got to relive the beauty that had characterised her heyday. There were the lobs and drop-shots, the cross-volleys and the exquisite hand-control that had made her such an extraordinary player to watch.

And now, she retires again, having won both the women’s and the mixed doubles events at the US Open, with a relatively inexperienced and unknown partner in the women’s event at least, and making a respectable run to the semi-finals of the WTA Tour finals, 21 years after she had heralded her presence to the world at the same event by running the great Steffi Graf to five sets.

May it be a happy retirement this time, Martina. May there be horses and laughter and parties and whatever else makes you happy.

The game goes on, as it did before and as it will now, and as it will even after she retires, the one who rightfully claimed the title that for a while we all thought would be yours.

But for a boy who stood outside a newspaper vendor’s stall in Andheri in 1998, desperately waiting to find out whether you had won a match and for whom that news made the difference between tears and happiness, a part of his life will go with you into retirement, never to make a comeback.