In 1987 Nanci Griffith became a country-rock superstar in Ireland even as she struggled with obscurity back home in the United States. Something in the Texas musician’s storytelling style and the starry-eyed sadness of her lyrics connected at a deeply emotional level to audiences on the other side of the Atlantic. She sounded poetically miserable, and, emerging from the awful 1980s, we were poetically miserable, too.
That sadness was more than just an artistic device, as becomes clear in RTÉ pop presenter turned producer David Heffernan’s Nanci Griffith – From a Distance (RTÉ One, Sunday, 8pm), an engaging, if harrowing, account of her success in Ireland, the many friendships she made and her retreat into isolation and alcoholism in the years before her death in 2021 at age 68.
It’s a tragic story, and while her music will be familiar to anyone who remembers Ireland in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the film struggles to give us a sense of what Griffith was like. But perhaps that’s because she herself was never quite sure who she was: one contributor explains that, like many creative types, Griffith was insecure – a lack of confidence that intensified with age. “She would pour it out in some of her songs,” says her manager, Ken Levitan. “You see in a lot of artists. She was very insecure. The insecurity grew as she got older.”
Still, if she lacked self-belief, she had plenty of fans. Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett and Rodney Crowell are among those who express their admiration. They recall a gifted songwriter and lyricist and talk – seemingly in earnest – of how they envied her success in Ireland.
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Nanci Griffith: From a Distance review – harrowing account of the country music star’s life that ended in isolation and alcoholism
“Everywhere you went, everyone mentioned Nanci,” recollects Crowell of a visit to Ireland. “I was probably a little jealous. We’ve been slogging away. She hits the big time. But good for her.”
Emmylou Harris agrees Griffith became an Irish success story, even with her American roots. “You almost thought she was Irish,” she says. “Sometimes you forgot she was from Texas, even with that deep accent.”
Yet that success papered over profound unhappiness – a remoteness from even close friends that spiralled with age. “I didn’t know her loneliness,” says Emmylou Harris. Crowell says that even if he had reached out, he isn’t sure how much help he could have offered. Some people don’t want to be saved.
The paradox is that she has made friends easily. She was close to Heffernan, a host of Anything Goes in the 1980s, and godmother to his son, Aaron. Heffernan recalls visiting her in Nashville and being collected from the airport in a limousine.
But Griffith grew distant from even her closest acquaintances in her final years. Twice married, she struggled to connect with people at an emotional level, says a friend.
“She wasn’t capable of forming real intimate relationships,” they say. “She couldn’t let go of herself. She drove [the men in her life] away because of that. She knew it, I’m afraid. It was a source of un happiness for her.”
She died alone in 2021. If beloved by her fans, there was a perception she had been forgotten by Nashville – though with a 1994 Grammy to her name (for best contemporary folk LP), she could hardly be described as unappreciated.
Her final years were tragic, yet there are many heartwarming aspects to the story of a singer with low self-esteem and a poetic air who found success in Ireland, where people were struggling with the same sort of emotional damage. This heartfelt documentary is a worthy homage to an artist Ireland took to its heart in troubled times – but whose own troubles were ultimately too great for even the love of an entire country to heal.
