The Joe Jackson Interviews

Sinead O Connor and Joe Jackson talk about the soul power of John Lennon and Bob Dylan

I started this chat with Sinead O Connor in 2000 talking about our shared belief in the fact that songs can make the spirit fly - music/art as therapy. But she broadened and deepend the conversation when she talked about the source of inspiration and illumination and hope she had found, from the age of eleven onwards, in the songs, singing and soul power, as she calls it, of John Lennon and Bob Dylan. Sadly I can play only part of Mind Games and have to fade Dylan's Precious Angel from his criminally underrated album Slow Train Coming. Hop on board - especially if like Sinead and I, you believe in the redemptive power of music. 

Peter Sarstedt talks about his iconic song Where Do You Go To My Lovely, including the verse that was censored from the single. A Joe Jackson Podcast Single.

Everyone loves the song Where Do You Go To My Lovely? If they don't they should. It is one of the all-time classic pop songs. And so when I interviewed Peter Sarstedt, its singer and composer, I couldn't wait to hear the tale of the genesis of the song - especially the 'firm and inviting' body verse that was censored from the single and why that was! The full interview is available at joejacksoninterviewer.com. Or it soon will be!

"Oh I was always a horny bastard" Richard Harris tells his biographer Joe Jackson. And he talks about bursting beyond Catholic guilt. A Podcast Single

This is a 'Joe Jackson Podcast Single' a teaser about four minutes long from twenty hours of tapes I recorded with Richard Harris mostly for the biography he appointed me to write - but which we never did. it was said that while in Hollywood making Camelot he became 'Hollywood's new Error Flynn'  shagging basically everything that moved - was the suggestion made at the time in. a magazine called Uncensored. I asked him about all that, and the Catholic guilt he once wrote about in a poem.  

Soul Searching with Irish playwright Tom Murphy, Pulled by RTE, described by The Irish Times as 'a fine tribute to a brilliant mind.'

Tom Murphy, as I say in the new intro for this podcast, which itself was pulled from broadcasting at the last moment by one particular power-that-be in RTE, is my favourite Irish playwright and one of my favourite interviewees. And this is one of my favourite interviews, which will appeal in particular to artists in any field. It is an astounding exploration of creativity. I made the show a few days after the man died, in 2018, it was meant to be my personal tribute but it was never broadcast and is now, happily a podcast Enjoy

"So, Nancy Sinatra did you have a fling with Elvis while making Speedway and did your dad Frank really hate rock 'n' roll!"

As I say in the intro to what I call this podcast single - it lasts only five minutes - this is a clip from a phone interview I did with Nancy Sinatra, who, in case anyone doesn't know had a relatively famous father called Frank! I grew up listening to Frank, whose music my dad loved ( and I later did too) but to me, Elvis was the King. And I bought all of Nancy's 45's. So during this phone call, I had to ask if her dad really hated not just Elvis but also rock 'n' roll and if she had a "fling," let's say, with the King while they were making the movie Speedway.   Don't forget to check out the article at joejacksoninterviewer.com

Soul Searching with Comedian Sean Hughes in 1993. Joe Jackson's Personal Tribute 2017

Sean Hughes, tragically, died at the age of only 51 in October 2017. I made this radio show within days for my series The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited, on RTE Radio 1. It was meant to be broadcast around the time of the year it had originally been recorded, in 1993, at Christmas. I thought that would be fitting. Unfortunately, RTE asked me not to broadcast the show - despite the fact that it was heavily promoted and many people were looking forward to it - because they had, I was told "another tribute ready to be broadcast in the new year.". If it was broadcast, I missed it. So, three years later close enough to Christmas, I am delighted to finally make the show available as part of The Joe Jackson Interviews series

JP Donleavy 1990 talks about Fairy Tale of New York, The Ginger Man, Richard Harris, Brendan Behan and the Dublin literary scene of the 50s

From Joe Jackson’s introduction to his 2017, RTE Radio 1 programme, The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited: JP Donleavy, which, was “pulled” from broadcast by RTE and has never been heard until now. Copyright Joe Jackson.

‘If like me you came of age during the 1970s and dreamed of one day becoming a writer you must have read, loved, and being influenced by, at least one of JP Donleavy's books. Be it The Ginger Man, Fairy Tale of New York - yeah one of the inspirations behind Shane McGowan's song of the same name – or, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. But back in 1990, despite my delight in meeting one of my old literary heroes, and my fondness for many of his old books at a time when one of his more recent was JP Donleavy's Ireland, I did bring a more critical - deconstructionist, in fact - sensibility to bear on the man's work. Specifically, when it came to his representation of women, sexual politics, race, class, and more so what to me and two others seemed to be Donleavy's deification of the Anglo Irish ascendancy.’

 

Leonard Cohen jokes to Joe Jackson, "He's dead!" after being told Bono sang wrong a lyric line in Hallelujah. A single.

This is a three minutes podcast culled from my one-hour radio show Leonard Cohen: The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited. But, a word of warning for listeners, the clip includes a phone chat I had with Leonard in 1995,  the connection from Dublin to LA, was bad, and he is hard to hear and in this non-representative section of the interview I, frankly, talk too much! I hate interviewers who think what they have to say is more important than anything said by an interviewee. But, at least this clip upends the idea that Cohen was merely a merchant of gloom and had no sense of humour. And undoing that reductive public image is what I set out to do, from the first time I first interviewed the man a decade earlier. And another word of warning. If you feel precious about Bono, and do actually lack a sense of humour - unlike 'Bobo' himself as his wife once called him in my presence- this may not be for you! 

That's All Right, Mama. Sam Phillips 1989 pissed off when Joe Jackson pushes him by asking if he pushed Elvis to sing black music

This is a clip from my Elvis radio documentary/podcast Conversations about the King. But since I uploaded that podcast two months ago, or so, I rediscovered, as I say in the intro to this podcast, a taped interview I did in 1987 with singer PJ Proby - I have since uploaded that podcast, too, PJ Proby: Monster of Rock?' and there you can get the full context for his quote -  and it had inspired me to another layer to the story of That's All Right Mame - the clarion call of rock 'n' roll. If you love the song, you will love this five-minute clip, I believe. 

Sinead O Connor 2000 sings Wooden Heart as a a duet with Elvis Wooden. The Song That Started It All

My familiarity with Sinead and her music in terms of this opening section from a one-hour show we did together, stems in part from the fact that we had already recorded the show in her apartment, but the noise of traffic meant that couldn't be broadcast so we did it again. Here she sings, so sweetly, along with the king's hit, Wooden Heart, which as it transpires started it all for me as a music critic. Sinead also talks about Jailhouse Rock and Elvis's sex-appeal, but more so his sensitivity and 'angelic' side