Career-wise, the Cranberries faced challenges in the late 1990s. Dolores’ relentless commitment on stage began to take a serious toll. By 1996, exhaustion forced the band to cut a tour short. “I had to fly to Ireland and take her to a doctor,” recalled former manager Allen Kovac.
“He said to her, ‘You’re not healthy enough to tour.’ My belief was you had to deal with those issues, but I don’t think she ever got through.”
In 2011, she was devastated by the loss of her father, Terence, who died from cancer. “I felt him around me a lot for a while. I could feel him trying to protect me and communicate with me,” she told Billboard the following year.
At her father’s funeral, Dolores came face-to-face with the person who had abused her between the ages of 8 and 12.
He introduced himself and apologized for his past actions. Reflecting on the experience in 2013, she said, “I had nightmares for a year before my father’s death about meeting him. … I didn’t see him for years and years and then I saw him at my father’s funeral. I had blocked him out of my life”.
Another major blow followed in 2014, when her 20-year marriage to Don Burton ended. The split became public shortly after she was arrested and charged in connection with an incident on a flight. In the aftermath, her mother, Eileen, told the Irish Mirror that her daughter was under psychiatric care.
