The Joe Jackson Interviews

Nancy Sinatra, "Forget James Joyce! I want to see Bono's house!" A 200th Joe Jackson Interviews Podcast Special Edition.

This clip comes from a phone interview I did with Nancy Sinatra in 2004. I didn't use the exchange in the printed article and hadn't heard it again until this morning, June 16th 2021, when I was putting together a Nancy Sinatra podcast I posted earlier. But this is great fun, Nancy revealing herself to be a bona fide U2 fan, telling her Dublin driver in 1995, basically, "forget James Joyce, I want to see Bono's house!" The moment high culture in Ireland gave way to pop culture perhaps! I better be careful or what I say m ay end up in the U2 museum that is planned for Dublin. Maybe Mancy and I can go to the opening! Enjoy. 

From Darkness to Light. Nancy Sinatra, on dealing with Tommy Sands' drug abuse, the death of her husband Hugh Lambert and the loss of her dad, Frank Sinatra.

From 2000-2007 I did a series of interviews with people who had gone through dark periods in their lives, survived and in some cases had epiphanies. I hoped these interviews would help illuminate the lives of readers. In 2020, when COVID-19 began to shadow the world, I put the best of these interviews in an eBook called From Darkness to Light. This interview, which isn't in the book, has Nancy Sinatra, whose music I have loved since I was a child, refect on hits like 'These Boots Are Made For Walking,' 'Sugar Town' - "did your dad know it was a drugs song!" - and darker times involving Tommy Sands abuse of prescription drugs, the loss of her second husband Hugh, to cancer, and the death of her dad

Zooropa Revisited. Bono in 1993 reads his poem, In Cold Blood. A Joe Jackson 'Singles' Podcast.

It is rumoured that U2 may do a 30th-anniversary Achtung Baby/Zooropa tour. So, in this podcast, the first in a series based on my world exclusive interview with Bono during the recording sessions for Zooropa, I play the part where he tells me about how he plans to use in the Zooropa tour a poem he wrote, called In Cold Blood. The complete interviews are included, with a backstory, in my eBook Bono: The Joe Jackson Zooropa Interviews Uncensored. 

Christy Dignam 2004. Rock 'n' roll excesses. "Heroin is satan's semen." Listener discretion.advised.

This is the uncensored second part of a chillingly explicit, soul searching conversation I had with Christy Dignam - and it remains his most revealing interview by far.  Here, we talk about the cost, financially, in terms of his family, public image and career-wise, of Christy's heroin use and addiction. It does not make for easy listening and it should not. On the contrary, I hope it scares the hell of would-be heroin users, and users alike and makes them rethink their lives, as Dignam did. 

Eamon Dunphy 1996, on sex. "Football is not the 'public legitimisation' of homosexual inclinations."

At one point while watching on TV last Thursday's EUFA tournament football match between England and Denmark - in the podcast I describe the moment - I burst out laughing because I remembered the part of a chat I had in 1996 with Eamon Dunphy during what has been described as a legendary interview we did. It certainly was controversial in our homeland, Ireland. As for the subject highlighted in the title of this podcast, it grew organically out of a wider discussion we were having about Dunphy's attitude to sex and stemmed in part from a recent thesis I had read. I didn't agree with the thesis that football is a coded way football players can express gay leanings, and not did Eamon. But it it sure became a talking point and maybe will again. 

My Fleeting Encounters with the Mercurial Van Morrison. A Monty Python sketch, of sorts.

This is a rather unusual podcast in my "Singles" series, namely podcasts that last roughly five minutes, though here it is nearer seven minutes long. Firstly, I set the scene, Monty Python-esque, as far as my weird mind is concerned, by telling a tale of the first night I met Van socially and he shot at me "daggers from his eyes."And that was only the beginning. Secondly, the podcast is based on vox-pop I was starting to do at a lig after one of Van's gigs, in Dublin, and the sound of the crowd makes a lot of it hard to make out.  But let me preface the audio confusion by saying that the "Steve" Van and I refer to is Steve Collins, whom I had interviewed, and Van described as a poet. As for the row Van had with one of his musicians, Richie Buckley, it went on for nearly fifteen minutes and seems to have started because Richie described as a "gentleman" some guy Van described in a polar opposite way, as you shall hear, I hope. And yes, everyone in the reception area in the Morrison Hotel, did fall silent as soon as the row erupted in plain view of all concerned. 

Pamela Des Barres 1989 Self professed "rock groupie" on the quest to reconcile sex and romance, and the feminist response to her book I'm With the Band.

In this, the first part of a two-podcast series based on a 1989 interview I did with Pamela, I focus on what may have propelled her to become a "rock groupie," the quest to reconcile sex and romance, and ask if rock stars reciprocated when it came to love of "giving head." We also talk about the feminist response to her book,  and how and why some feminists hate her and some don't.

Troubled Voices. Gerry Adams, 1993. "RTE fails as a national broadcaster, Eoghan Harris is a propagandist, and Michael D Higgins should revisit his view on censorship."

In 2018 I was given a commitment by RTE Radio 1, Ireland's national radio broadcaster, that it would back a series I wanted to do based on the more than one hundred interviews I did between 1988 and 2003, related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. These were in-depth discussions with 76 politicians and countless cultural figures, such as Christy Moore, Richard Harris and Sinead O' Connor, about what was incontestably the single most important issue facing Ireland's future. RTE backed out of supporting that broadcast, for reasons that had more to do with internal politics, perhaps. So, now, I have decided to tap into many of those tapes in a new podcast series Troubled Voices, which, as with the radio series is basically an update of my 1996 book, Troubadours and Troublemakers. If you want access to the full tapes, contact me via joejacksoninterviewer.com 

Bono and Joe Jackson In Search of Elvis. Bono on "fancying" Elvis, and knowing "when he sang 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah' he meant it."

Elvis's death, in 1977, left me as a lifelong Presley fan, shattered at a psychic level. I decided to write a book, called In Search of Elvis, which has never been finished. Bono read an early draft and in February 1994, decided to add his name to those of the likes of Sam Phillips, June Juanico, and Leonard Cohen who had spoken to me about Presley. I ran part of our chat in 'The Joe Jackson Interview' slot in The Irish Times, This is the first part of the unedited tape which I will present in three podcasts. 

Sinead O Connor The Music That Made Me Part One. Sinead on Elvis, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley

This is the first part of a radio show I did in 2000 with Sinead O Connor. Here, we talk about what Sinead describes as "the politics of spirituality and representing the world of soul" in music, and how that came across in the work of her chosen artists.