Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan, who died in London on Monday at the age of 46, was about to record a version of her hit Zombie with the hard rock band Bad Wolves, the group said on Tuesday.
“We are shocked and saddened at the news of Dolores’s passing, mere hours before she was to record vocals on our upcoming version of Zombie,” the band said in a message on Facebook post late on Monday.
The band’s singer Tommy Vext said: “We always felt the rawness and honesty she projected on stage and in her recordings was something to which all bands should aspire to, regardless of genre.
“When we heard she liked our version and wanted to sing on it, it was the greatest compliment a new band, or any band for that matter, could have received,” he said.
Music producer Dan Waite, a friend of O’Riordan’s, said she had left him a voice message shortly before her death “stating how much she loved the Bad Wolves’s version of Zombie; she was looking forward to seeing me in the studio and recording vocals.
“She sounded full of life, was joking and excited to see me and my wife this week. The news of her passing is devastating,” he said.
O’Riordan’s is not being treated as suspicious, British police said on Tuesday. A friend said the singer sounded excited and “full of life” just hours before her death.
Police initially said the death was “unexplained,” but on Tuesday ruled it non-suspicious, meaning that they found no evidence of foul play. The case will be passed to a coroner to determine the cause of death.
O’Riordan had suffered physical and mental health problems over the years. Last year The Cranberries cut short a world tour because of the singer’s back problems.
O’Riordan had spoken in interviews about being sexually abused as a child, her battles with depression and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In 2014, she was accused of assaulting three police officers and a flight attendant during an air-rage incident on a flight from New York to Ireland. Medical records given to the court at her trial indicated she was mentally ill at the time.
The Cranberries formed in the Irish city of Limerick at the end of the 1980s and had international hits in the ‘90s with songs including Dream, Linger and Zombie.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that “for anyone who grew up in Ireland in the 1990s, Dolores O’Riordan was the voice of a generation.”
In her hometown of Limerick, residents signed a book of condolence at the city council. Mayor Stephen Keary said O’Riordan “put Limerick on the music map and on a world stage.”
“She achieved so much in her short years. Her memory will live on,” he said.
