In his most candid interview to date Wicklow superstar Hozier has revealed he felt his childhood ended when he was just six years of age after his father was left wheelchair bound following a failed surgery on his spine.
The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter was the focus of the first episode of the latest season of RTÉ's The Meaning of Life, which is fronted by Gay Byrne. He spoke about how his dad's illness devastated his family and how he had to grow up really fast to help his family cope.
The 25-year-old award-winning musician explained: "When I was about six or seven he had an operation on his spinal cord which, simply put, didn’t go well.
"That caused irreparable nerve damage. That’s where childhood ends. That was, I suppose, the watershed of childhood. It changed all of our lives. It changed his life, it kind of ruined his life in a big way.
"I don’t know how my mum did it. When you’re on morphine the whole time… you’re watching someone you love kind of fade away in many ways.
"It’s an incredibly destructive drug in what it does to the mind and what it does to the body. He was immobile for a long time.
However, Hozier revealed that his dad is doing "much, much better" thanks to a new treatment.
"There was a new treatment only in the last few years. It was a different drug, which I think was only on trial at the time. It doesn’t have the doping effects that morphine does, but it still has a similar pain-blocking effect."
Hozier also condemned the church's persistence in "sticking their noses" into the "relationships of two people". He said that Catholic doctrine can inspire people to fear "being born, creating life or making love and dying."
And when it comes to marriage, Hozier admitted he thinks the concept is pretty "scary".
He said: "I don’t know if I’ll ever get married. I have no plans to not get married. I think marriage is a scary concept. It’s a scary concept for anybody. I’m not sure where I sit with that."
