Enya : "I never look back and regret anything"

By The Telegraph, Saturday October 18 2008

Reclusive Enya opens up to Jacques Peretti and talks about stalkers, the bitter family split and how she had to practise piano as her siblings played in the sun

(...) How did they come to be involved with Enya? Was she part of your master plan? Nicky [Ryan] sighs. "In a sense, it was a master plan. We had managed Clannad. But after seven years, the fact of the matter is they didn't want us any more." (Clannad -- best known for composing the theme music to two popular ITV television series of the 1980s, Harry's Game and Robin of Sherwood -- were the band that Enya's musician parents formed before Enya finished school, and included Enya's brothers and sisters, plus Enya herself on keyboards.)

Nicky wanted to drag Irish folk into the 1980s, using a Prophet-5 keyboard and creating a big new 1980s sound, to go with the big new hair. But Clannad, he says, weren't having any of it. They believed traditional meant traditional. Nicky and Roma [Ryan] hatched a plan to go it alone with Enya, but the family forced a showdown. "They stood her in a room and said, 'It's them or your family', and Enya said, 'I'm going with Nicky and Roma'."

The split was acrimonious. "Don't believe a word about how friendly traditional music is. We lost a lot of friends. Let's just say that." Enya is characteristically guarded. "Look, you cannot impose someone else's life on another person," she says. "I have to say I'm very comfortable with my decisions. I'm able to make decisions very quickly. Do you want to do this or do that? I never look back and regret anything."

But they didn't speak for years, and only recently does she now see her nieces and nephews. In a quirk of fate, Nicky says, Clannad were recording at Peter Gabriel's studio when news came through that Enya had got to Number 1. Gabriel came through with a bottle of champagne and said, "Are you not going to toast your sister's success?" (...)