The Joe Jackson Interviews

Joe Jackson’s uncut interview from The Ghost of Richard Harris film. The best interview about Harris ever?

The 2022 documentary, The Ghost of Richard Harris, now showing on Sky Arts and elsewhere and nominated for an IFTA award, came into being because its director, Adrian Sibley, became aware of the taped interviews I did with Richard from 1987-2001. He decided to use them to voice the 'ghost', and this adds an extra depth to the film, said the Guardian newspaper. I also am an associate producer of the film and one of its interviewees alongside the likes of Russell Crowe and Vanessa Redgrave. Aye, but there's the rub, to quote Shakespeare. The interview I did with Adrian for the film lasted two hours, and only two minutes were used. That's the way things can happen in the movie-making business. Even Richard once told me that some of his finest scenes in films ended up on the cutting-room floor. And so, I recorded the full interview, and this is the first podcast based on that recording. The interview was done after my book Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, was finished but not yet published. 

The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited radio show. Eartha Kitt. 2018. ’An extraordinary hour,” said The Irish Times.

This is a re-post of one of my first podcasts in 2020. I am re-posting because I am currently reading through my journals for a proposed documentary that may be made about me, and I came across something wonderful Eartha Kitt, a woman I admired greatly, said to me after this interview in 1987. She said, "I feel you are interested in me, in the spirit of Eartha Kitt, not the image." I was. Also, this was one of my first interviews, and I was, from the start, doing my damndest to do interviews that outlasted the latest issue of whatever newspaper or magazine in which my articles appeared. I had no intention of giving my life over to throwaway interviews. That is why, in 2018, when The Irish Times choose the Eartha Kitt edition of my radio series, The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited, as its radio highlight of the day and said it was "an extraordinary hour," I was delighted. It remains one of my favourite interviews. Enjoy. 

Leonard Cohen on singing with a voice that is true to one’s self. A repost.

I think all singers should listen to this podcast. It's a clip from a 1988 interview I did with Leonard that I decided not to include in my Ebook: Hallelujah: A Conversation with Leonard Cohen, which is about our first interview that re-routed my life and made me decide to become an interviewer. Here we talk about the quest to sing truthfully. Eight years later, during an interview with another of my heroes, Scott Walker, he talked about singers who try to imitate his dark, sad, sonorous voice and said, "but I can always tell when the voice of a singer is not true." So can I. In fact, it is rarely one hear's a voice that is true, in any area of life! Emjoy. 

Joe Jackson recalls buying dope from Bob Geldof in 1970 and making a holy show of himself! Re-post.

This is a fun re-post from 2021, with me remembering teenage encounters with Mr Geldof in Dun Laoghaire and showing just how cool I was as a kid - not! It's one of my 'Singles' podcasts because it lasts roughly the same time as, say, a single such as I Don't Like Mondays. I hope it makes you smile. No, Bob, I don't mean you! 

Bono 1993, ”when you serve money-making you sell out on your vision.” Have U2 finally sold out?

I was reminded of this exchange when I saw the tsunami of nonsense in the media, social and otherwise, about U2's latest ventures. Even David Letterman, a brilliant interviewer, has become a U2 media groupie, hyping their latest album and forthcoming tour.  Frankly, when I read a headline that quotes The Edge as saying U2 choose to do a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas because the venus is "state of the art," I so want him to add, "and besides, we are making a bloody fortune to top up our 700 million, by not touring and insisting that if fans want to see us in 2023, they must come to see us in Vegas!"  So has U2, seemingly in its endless pursual of making money, finally sold out on their vision? Or was making money their vision? 

”So, Bob Geldof why did you mock your late wife, Paula Yates, on your album Sex Age and Death?” A re-post

This is a companion piece to the Paula Yates podcast part one I posted to mark the screening of the Channel Four documentary about Paula this week. Bob Geldof, who I knew socially growing g up in Dun Laoghaire, has not spoken to me since we did this interview in 2000, Though he did grunt a "hi" once, in 2016! 

Paula Yates 1993 talks to Joe Jackson about sex, ageing and life. A repost.

This week I saw on Channel Four part two of a fascinating documentary about Paula Yates and her final years. I have yet to see part one. I am reposting this podcast in memory of Paula and to remind people what a joyful, life-affirming and fabulously flirtatious woman she was. I'll also re-post a podcast based on an interview I did wth with Bob Geldof - missing from the TV show - and in which I asked why he mocked Paula in a song he released after her death. 

”The Academy Awards are totally unimportant,” says an enraged Richard Harris in 1990.

It's the Academy Awards weekend - which will be forgotten next weekend! But to celebrate the fact that so many of my countrymen and women are nominated this year, I am posting this podcast of part of an interview I did with Richard Harris - the full text and Richard's life story are in my new book Richard Hazrris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven -  in 1990 even before he was nominated for a Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in The Field. He gave me a new perspective e on the Academy Awards, especially when he said bluntly, "I don't give a f**k about Academy Awards. " But his best line, and a line worth remembering for any winner, is, "don't think just because you had one success that you know it all."  A certain actor who portrayed Pfresley is already exhibiting that tendency, unfortunately!

’It was a turbulent journey.” Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven Podcast One. Re-Post..

Today, March 7th, Adrian Sibley's documentary, The Ghost of Richard Harris, which was inspired by my taped interviews with Richard and uses them to voice the 'ghost,' and of which I am an associate producer, was nominated for an IFTA award as one of the best documentaries of 2022. My book, Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, was published to coincide with the film, although it is an independent entity. I'm marking the nomination by reposting this podcast. Enjoy.  

Dermot Morgan Enraged and Uncensored 1993 style. Part Two of a two-part podcast

Earliest this week, on the actual 25th anniversary of Dermot's death, I reposted part one of this two-part podcast I made in 2021.  I am delighted that so many people listened to it and responded on Facebook, Twitter and so on. I stand over my assertion that he need not have been driven out of Ireland to make Father Ted and to become yet another Irish icon abroad. And he sure as hell died way too young.