The Joe Jackson Interviews

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll. Episode 2. Drugs, including PJ Proby and Boy George

Lest anyone think otherwise, this podcast in no way glamourizes drug use. How could it?  My father's death at the age of only fifty, was drink-and-drug related, as was the death of my childhood hero, Elvis. I elaborate on all of this in the introduction and then go on to talk with Leonard Cohen - just two quotes from the man - about heroin, Dory Previn about pills and ECT, PJ Proby about drink and the Beatles use of dope and LSD, and Boy George's heroin horrors. Dark subjects but I have never been known to make a radio show or podcast that brings people down and I hope the same is true of this podcast. On the contrary, I hope it helps people. 

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll. Episode 1. Sex, including Boy George.

"You should have asked him more about sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll." That's what an editor told me when I delivered to a magazine my first interview, with, as it transpired, Leonard Cohen the music hero of mine who then inspired me to become an interviewer because of that interview. And, frankly, I thought the comment made by that editor was tacky. That said, over the following thirty years when I did interviews with more than 1,4000 celebrities, the subjects of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll arose so often that I now have decided to make a series of podcasts, each one on each of those subjects separately. In this, the first, I discuss sex with Dory Previn, Leslie Dowdall, lead singer of the band In Tua Nua, and with Boy George. All interviews are from the start of my career.

Keith Duffy 1994. Tears and Anger in Boyzone.

In 1995 I wrote the official Boyzone book, Boyzone: Our Story. However, it wasn't until 2020 when I began doing  Podcasts and revisited cassette tapes of interviews I did for that book and for articles in Irish newspapers and magazines, that I discovered there were many things Keith Duffy told me about the battles behind the scenes the band had with their manager Louis Walsh at the time.  In fact, this tape/podcast was recorded at Elstree Studio in London while Boyzone were recording their first appearance on the TV show Top of the Pops and during a break from rehearsals, Keith and I sat on a stairway outside the building and as he told me about the pressures he was under Duffy began to cry. The tale is told, about conflict over contracts, and so on,  relates to not only any boyband but also any musician in the music industry. Hopefully some will learn lessons from this Podcast. 

Davina McCall 2004 From Darkness to Light. An Inspirational Interview.

The article I wrote based on this interview is included in my Ebook, At The End Of A Storm Is A Golden Sky. It fits perfectly into that anthology of inspirational interviews, simply because Davina's story, as told to me in the bar of a Dublin Hotel, is utterly inspiring. In fact when the article was published in The Sunday Independent, the headline read 'Davina's Road to Damascus'.' Its sub-headline read, "If I took one drug now I'd go back to the miserable, lowlife idiot I was," says Davina McCall. For the 'Big Brother' presenter, marriage to a model, motherhood and a successful, glamorous career have been hard-won.' Joe Jackson heard how McCall's sobriety brought great gifts.' When it was published in Hello magazine the headline was 'Davina McCall reveals how she conquered her demons and found lasting happiness.' I hope listeners find the podcast equally inspiring. 

Billy Joel 2002. From Darkness to Light. An Inspirational Interview.

This 2002 interview with Billy Joel was recorded backstage at Madison Square Garden after I managed to get, following a round table Press Conference, twenty minutes alone with the man. As such it wasn't the kind of one-hour in-depth interview I usually did but we managed to cover core issues in relation to Joel's psychology, such as his self-consciousness about his looks - "I said to Bono, we look like two bricklayers!" -  about his voice, suicidal feelings when he was twenty-one, the break up of his marriage to Christy Turlington, pain, in particular at losing touch with his daughter, after that breakup, alcoholism and finally finding happiness in a new marriage and gratification as an artist, writing classical music, and performing live. This tale of a struggle from darkness back to light later led to me including in my anthology of inspirational interviews, At The End Of A Storm is A Golden Sky - available from Amazon and joejacksoninterviewer.com - the print interview that came out of this chat. Whether you read the book or just listen to this podcast, I hope it helps you - particularly during this dark period of a global pandemic. 

Westlife 2001. The Music That Made Us Want To Make Music

Thanks to my friendship at the time, with Louis Walsh, I gained more access to Westlife than any other journalist and they were told by Louis not to give me "crap" during interviews. Prior to this radio interview, which we did at Christmas in 2001- copyright laws dictate that I can't play on this podcast the music - I had interviewed each member of Westlife separately and in-depth for an Irish magazine, hence I had a handle on the musical influences of each member of the group. Even so, during this show which focuses specifically on those influences the three members came up with many surprises - in one case a hatred of a particular Take That recording - and we all had a blast that suited the Christmas season.

Cliff Richard Unleashed and Uncensored 1989. "The best interview I ever gave," he said. It remains his most provocative interview

Sadly when this interview was published in an Irish magazine it hit the headlines in every newspaper in the UK simply because of one single, albeit staggeringly revealing, comment Cliff made about his love life - that will be Part 2 of this Podcast - but he also was equally forthcoming when it came to subjects he rarely discussed in public, such as his anger at doctors after the death of his father, his need, after that for "father figures," the bisexual appeal of his music, feminism, working mothers, Margaret Thatcher and the claim that "evil is" the "essence" of who he says he is. The fact that one day after doing this interview in Dublin Cliff told friends in London, "It was the best I ever did" proves that, whatever you may think about his music, Cliff Richard had no problem being pushed to the utmost on even the most challenging questions. Part 2 will follow in a few weeks. 

Tony Joe White: The Song that Started It All For Me. Lightin' Hopkins, Baby Please Don't Go. A Podcast Single

If my full interviews are like albums then look upon this as a single! For nearly a decade at the start of the 21st century, I interviewed many of the most famous musicians in the world, for a radio series called Under The Influence. Taking my cue from the fact that hearing two particular Elvis songs when I was a child - I tell that tale in the intro to the podcast - changed my life, changed it utterly, I always kicked off each show by asking a musician if she or he had a similar memory that maybe led to an epiphany and to them wanting to make music. So, now, alongside my uploading already four of the full shows - Christy Moore, Elvis Costello, Micky Dolenz, and the other Joe Jackson- I have decided to "release" these "singles" which focus on the song that became a clarion call of sorts to the musician in question. Here Tony Joe White talks about Lightnin' Hopkins' Baby Please Don't Go, and, to kick off tells us what Polk Salad really is and that it should not be smoked!

Mike Murphy 2000 Tells His Story As You Never Heard It Before.

I made the original radio show programme version of this show for my series The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited. It was meant to be broadcast by RTE Radio 1, in Ireland, at Christmas 2018. However, they pulled the show. Now it is a podcast in my series, The Joe Jackson Interviews. Mike was my mentor in broadcasting, we worked together for ten years, I regard him to be a friend and so I felt free to ask the man the kind of questions that other interviewers might shy away from. And Mike had no problem with that. Here he discusses, in a frank and fearless fashion, subjects such as Eamon Dunphy, RTE, The Irish Times,  and more personal matters such as his childhood, and marriage break-up. It really is Mike as you never heard him before and you won't until I upload the second interview we did, as a companion piece to this, thirteen years later in 2013. 

Eric Clapton 1991 Discusses the Death of his son, Conor, Drug Use, Religion, Racism and Enoch Powell.

Phoebe Bridgers has brought Clapton back into the news this week by claiming that his music is "extremely mediocre" and by describing him as "a famous racist." Her comments - which I address in the intro to this podcast - made me go back to a round table interview I attended with the man, in Milan, in 1991, at the time of the release of his album,  Eric Clapton: 24 Nights. I rarely did such round table press conferences, because they didn't lend themselves to the type of in-depth discussion I prefer. And I was not popular with many of my fellow journalists at the table because I did persist with questions I wanted to ask, about the death of Conor, the songs the tragedy was inspiring, Clapton's music in general, drugs and racism etc. Hence, I want to point out that this is a less than half-hour long edit of a one-hour press conference and it focuses mostly on my exchanges with Eric Clapton.