Dolores O'Riordan thanked by father of IRA bomb victim for 'majestic' lyrics

'To read the words written by an Irish band in such compelling way was very, very powerful'

The father of an IRA bomb victim has paid tribute to Dolores O'Riordan, thanking her for her "majestic and also very real" lyrics on "Zombie".

Colin Parry's 12-year-old son Tim was killed alongside three-year-old Jonathan Ball in 1993 when two IRA bombs were detonated in Warrington, Cheshire. The attack inspired O'Riordan, frontwoman of The Cranberries, to pen "Zombie" as a pained cry against violence and a tribute to these two young victims.

“I remember at the time there were a lot of bombs going off in London and the Troubles were pretty bad,” she told Team Rock this year. “I remember being on tour and being in the UK at the time when the child died, and just being really sad about it all. These bombs are going off in random places. It could have been anyone, you know?"

"It’s a tough thing to sing about, but when you’re young you don’t think twice about things, you just grab it and do it. As you get older you develop more fear and you get more apprehensive, but when you’re young you’ve no fear."

Mr. Parry told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster that he had not known about the significance of the song's lyrics until after O'Riordan's death, stating: "Only yesterday did I discover that her group, or she herself, had composed the song in memory of the event in Warrington."

"My wife came home from the police centre where she worked yesterday and told me the news. I got the song up on the laptop, watched the band singing, saw Dolores and listened to the words."

"The words are both majestic and also very real," he continued. "The event at Warrington, like the many events that happened all over Ireland and Great Britain, affected families in a very real way and many people have become immune to the pain and suffering that so many people experienced during that armed campaign."

"To read the words written by an Irish band in such compelling way was very, very powerful. I likened it to the enormous amount of mail expressing huge sympathy that we received in the days, weeks and months following our loss. Proportionately a very high total of that total came from the island of Ireland."

A spokesperson for O’Riordan said she died “suddenly” in London, aged 46, where she had travelled for a short recording session. The cause of her death has not yet been revealed.

O’Riordan joined The Cranberries, made up of brothers Noel Hogan and Mike Hogan, after reading an advertisement in a local paper in 1989. They went on to sell over 40 million records around the world, O’Riordan later releasing the solo records Are You Listening? in 2007 and No Baggage in 2009.

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