Belgian. Born 1941. Died 1985, aged 44. Cause of death: Suicide by drug overdose.

 

Rock ’n roll giveth, and rock ‘n roll taketh away. So it is with many, and a sad case in particular was that of Jeanine Deckers, The Singing Nun. She was one of only two Belgian nationals to chart in the UK, the other being Plastic Bertrand, who, in an act unworthy of an otherwise friendly foreigner, inserted two offensive and inalienably stupid records into the charts in 1978. That about sums up Belgium, rock-wise.

 

The Singing Nun’s one hit was the dire Dominique, which spent over three months in the UK charts over the winter of 1963/4, topping out at number seven. In the USA it was even bigger, spending four weeks at number one. Who were these people who bought the thing, and have they been punished? She had been known in her convent as Sister Smile, and her song was so bright and full of life that you yearned for the opportunity to knock her teeth out.

 

She accompanied herself on a very cheap Spanish acoustic guitar, strumming basic chords, and was the role model for any number of cheery vicars who wear sandals, play similar cheap guitars just as badly, and urge the half dozen elderly members of the congregation to turn and hug each other. To their understandable horror.      

 

Because of her vows - which sadly didn’t include silence - all the royalties went to her convent, where she stayed for four more years after the success of Dominique. Pop was getting to be a habit however, and she released a startling new single, Glory Be To God For The Golden Pill, which more than advocated contraception. This was stunningly advanced; although The Pill existed it wasn’t widely taken or even that well known about. It will always be one of pop music’s great  was-she-pushed-or-did-she-jump? controversies, but in 1967 she left the convent where she had been since she was a teenager.

 

She and a ‘friend’, Annie Pescher, founded a centre specialising in the treatment of autistic children. It greatly resembled the one in that Elvis movie of the same era - the name of which escapes me - but who cannot forget the moving and deeply serious scene where Elvis, playing a doctor diagnosing a child, says to the mother, ‘Ah think yur child’s autistic, ma’am’; to which she replies, ‘That can’t be it doctor, he’s never liked drawing or painting.’ Absolutely true.

 

It was more than rumoured that The Singing Ex-Nun and her ‘friend’ were rather closer than mere bosom pals. This was twenty years before k d lang, and the world was a very shockable place. To their credit, they did last as a loving couple.

In 1985 the long arm of the Belgian Inland Revenue caught up with The Singing Nun and proffered a tax bill the size of the Vatican’s cash reserves. The convent might have had the royalties from Dominique but she was responsible for paying the income tax. In a moment that remains one of rock music’s greatest tragedies, she and Annie took a long walk to a local vegetable plot, lay down together, and downed enough sleeping pills to kill themselves. An empty bourbon bottle was not found nearby. The rock world grieved.

 

IF ONLY SHE HAD LIVED
A drum ‘n bass disco re-mix of Dominique for the gay and lesbian scene?

 

CONTRIBUTION TO THE HALL OF FAME
Nun.

 

GREATEST EVER MOMENT ON RECORD
The silence when she stopped.