The Joe Jackson Interviews

Christy Dignam 2004. Sexual abuse survivor and former heroin addict Dignam says, "heroin is Satan's semen." Listener discretion advised

Please be aware that this interview, done in 2004, and prompted by Christy's devastatingly honest memoir, 'This is Christy Dignam,' has sections about his rape experience that some listeners may find disturbing. I have edited out the most explicit passages, but I need to remain true to Christy's story in this the first of two or three podcasts about how that experience as a child later led to heroin addiction. 

Tom Jones 1989 remembers Elvis. A remarkable and revealing chat, "Elvis told me in 1969, I've tried everything," meaning drugs, "to stay sane."

Tom Jones during this interview in 1989, the first of three, laughed and said: "you are dangerous!" I said, "why?" He said, "becuase talking to you is like talking to a mate in a pub! I have to be careful about what I say!" That may apply to his revelation that Elvis told him in the late '60s, "I tried everything" alluding to drugs, then he added, "to stay sane." Tom also claims that later in life, the Memphis Mafia were "rolling joint after joint" for Elvis at home. If true, this is not widely known. Although Diana Dors has said that Elvis was smoking dope in 1956. It also is staggering to hear that Sinatra tried to help Elvis in the end and asked Tom to do so. 

Scott Walker 1995 looks back on his Jacques Brel recordings. A clip from the eBook Scott Walker Looking Back (Through mirrors dark and blessed with cracks).

Two for one. My 1990 critique of Scott - now published as an ebook called The Fugitive Kind- was quoted in the sleeve notes of the  1991 album Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel. Herem, from my second new eBook, Scott Walker: Looking Back (Through Mirrors Dark and Blessed with Cracks) is a clip of Scott and I, during our 1995 interview, talking about, first, Bergman, fleetingly, then Jacques Brel. 

Tony Bennett Remembers. Part One. A Personal Tribute. Tony Bennett talks about his early days of music, Bebop, Sinatra, and the influence of the visual arts on his singing.

As a lifelong Tony Bennett fan, who owns every album he recorded and loves so many of them, and who met and interviewed the man no less than four times - once we even had dinner together - I was deeply saddened this week to learn that he has Alzheimer's Disease and has had secretly for four years. I mean no disrespect by titling this podcast, Tony Bennett Remembers. I mean the opposite, it is posted out of total respect for a man and artist I admire deeply. I also now am more aware than I ever was to be blessed to be able to sit in Tony Bennett's company and hear him pass on to me his personal history and to get it on tape. Hell, the guy even introduced me to the music of Louis Armstrong. I dedicate the podcast to fellow Bennett fans but above all to Tony himself and his loved ones and family. Let the music play on.  

Brush Shiels of Skid Row Remembers his first gigs with Phil Lynott and plays the first song "Philo" ever recorded, Brush's song, New Places, Old Faces.

This is a clip from a radio interview I did with Brush, in my own kitchen. A brush in a kitchen makes sense, right? I loved his recollections about the earliest gigs Phil Lynott played with Brush's band, Skid Row. I saw Phil a year or so earlier, in The Black Eagles. I also love Brush's song, New Faces, Old Places, which will resonate for anyone, who has ever lived in a home but who finally were told they had to get out. Subscribe to this podcast on Podbean, or the visual version on YouTube 

N17. The roots of the song by the Sawdoctors. Leo and Davy in 2000 explain how they wrote the song. A Joe Jackson Interviews Podcast Single

Tolu Makay's 2021 staggeringly reimagined version of this song proves how timeless songs by The Sawdoctors were. This is a clip from my podcast The Sawdoctors: The Music That Made Me, but here, all they talk about in a "single" roughly three minutes long- is the roots of their now legendary song NB17. 

Gabriel Byrne 1988, brave enough to admit "I was used as a romantic hero in films to reduce women to the role of passive fantasists." A clip from Gabriel Byrne: The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus

In 2016, I made a one-hour radio documentary based on my interviews with Gabriel Byrne. They also form the basis of my eBook, Gabriel Byrne: The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus, which is available from all eBook outlets. The interviews with Gabriel were some of the earliest I did and were remarkable in terms of his honesty. He said after the first one, "that was the first totally honest, soul-searching interview I ever gave."  And, looking back from 2021, I have to ask what other male sex symbol at the time - or even now - would have guts enough to agree with a feminist analysis of his films that might conclude that he, as, say, the quintessentially romantic hero, Byron, in Gothic, was "used to reduce females to the role of passive fantasists"? Many wouldn't even grasp the concept. Enjoy. 

Gabriel Byrne talks about arousal during sex scenes in movies like Gothic, and director Ken Russell. From the eBook Gabriel Byrne: The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus

 In 1988, when this Gabriel Byrne interview - it's published in full, plus another one, in the eBook Gabriel Byrne: The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus - was published in an Irish magazine I was told by two fellow journalists that some of my questions were "too intimate." Now, even in the Irish media, such questions are commonplace. Or maybe not, here, Gabriel Byrne and I, sitting in a mansion in Bel Air, talk about the female movie stars he fantasised about as a teenager, and this leads naturally enough to me asking if he could handle doing sex scenes with a woman he did fancy, such as Ann Margret, and if he got aroused "getting head while making Gothic. Seems like a nondescript question to me. and i bet you want to know the answer, right? 

Backstage with The Sawdoctors in Salthill, County Galway, in 1992. The Joe Jackson interview for The Irish Times.

Less than a week ago I made my first Sawdoctors podcast before I knew that N17 had become a hit again. I couldn't be happier for the guys. I have championed their work for nearly thirty years - jeez, are we all going that long!!!- as is evident from this interview which was recorded backstage after one of their gigs in Salthill, in 1992 for The Joe Jackson weekly interview slot in The Irish Times.  In my intro, I explain why I was determined to give my weekly slot to music acts from outside bloody Dublin, which the media still regards as the centre of Ireland, if not God's gift to the planet! Of course, I am kidding. Maybe. The sound at the start isn't great. We are backstage but as the interview progresses the sound improves. Because the lads are so loved I have decided to upload the entire tape we recorded that day, two more Saddoctors podcasts to follow. 

"Elvis would kill with his bare hands anyone who said that about himself and his mother or himself and Nick Adams," Sam Phillips 1992 set the record straight.

This podcast - based on my eBook Elvis, Sam Phillips and Sun Records Revisited - picks up where my last Sam Phillips podcast ended. There are a few lines that overlap. I had phoned Sam to talk about a new rumour that Elvis peddled speed at Sun Records, and after he addressed that question Sam himself admitted there was another subject that made him take the call and want to set the record straight. It was not an issue I intended to raise, although it had hit newspapers in America and in Europe, where I am based. But Sam did, and this podcast has his response.