The Joe Jackson Interviews

Mark Knopfler: The Music That Made Me Want To Make Music.

It was quite something special to be in Mark Knopfler’s studio and talk with him about wonderfully evocative memories such as plugging his first electric guitar into a radio and blowing its amp! Plus, childhood memories of songs such as The Big Top Candy Mountain, the electrifying joy of seeing at the age of fifteen, Chuck Berry, “playing his guitar and doing the duck walk,” his “pilgrimage” to the USA to see the places Blind Willie McTell had lived and played, his love for The Shadows, specifically the lead playing of Hank Marvin, and how all this, and so much more fed into his own art. He also talks about the roots of songs such as Money for Nothing, and the phenomenally popular album Sultans of Swing. To end, Mark Knopfler talks about his latest album at the time, Sailing to Philadelphia. Heaven for musos! He even talks about working with the enigmatic Scott Walker! 

Lionel Richie: The Music That Music Me Want To Make Music.

It was a joy to talk with Lionel Richie, partly because I share his love for all the three heroes whose songs he chooses as core influences on his art: The Temptations, My Girl; Sam Cooke, A Change is Gonna Come and Marvin Gaye, What's Goin' On. Hearing all three in succession leads us directly into his own smooth soul classics such as Easy Like Sunday Morning. Lionel also talks to me about feeling out of place as a teenager, and the shyness that kept him from even kissing girls in the audience during concerts by The Commodores.  It is a lazy chat with Lionel and - would sound particularly good on an easy Sunday Morning! 

June Juanico: A Candid and Explicit Conversation with one of Elvis Presley's Earliest Lovers.

I did this interview with June Juanico in Dublin in 1997, when she was promoting her wonderfully evocative memoir, Elvis: In The Twilight of Memory. But be warned, apart from telling the tale of a youthful love story cut short by Colonel Parker, and by the romantic/sexual excesses of Elvis himself, it is sexually explicit at times and even addresses a rumour that was circulating at the time, courtesy of the crappy National Enquirer, and Dee Presley, Elvis's stepmother, about Elvis and his mother Gladys. That said, June Juanico, gave me wonderful insights into Elvis recordings I had loved all my life, such as Is It So Strange, and I, much to my embarrassment made her cry by telling her a story about the song Unchained melody which has since turned out to be questionable. Either way, she was once Elvis's lover and I was a lifelong fan, who truly cared about the man, hence this became one of the most intimate and revealing conversations I ever had about Elvis. Indeed, I didn't rediscover the tape until August 2020, and I regret deeply the fact that June wasn't the much-needed female voice in my 2017 documentary, Conversations About The King. But hey, now she has gotten her own 'show' and June Juanico more than deserves it. 

Joe Jackson's Conversations About The King. 2107. Includes, Sam Phillips, DJ Fontana and Bono talking about Elvis.

I already uploaded the precursor and companion piece to this radio documentary. It is called, Memories Of An Elvis Fan, which was deemed to be "too personal" by RTE Radio 1 in Ireland, to be broadcast. And so I substituted, Conversations About The King,  which then was nominated for a 'Best Music Documentary' award in 2018. The first show tells the tale of how I became an Elvis fan and how he became to me a kind of spirit guide and source of ceaseless inspiration, and strength, particularly during periods of 'dark sadness' surrounding my family, to quote a poem I wrote in 1973 in response to his recording of You'll Never Walk Alone.  This show, on the other hand, is based on countless interviews I probably was destined to do as part of a personal quest after Elvis died in 1977. Eight years later, I became an interviewer and this gave me access to not only many of the world's top musicians, such as Bono, but more importantly, to me,  to the likes of Sam Phillips, Founder of Sun Records and a founding father of Rock 'n' Roll. When I was ten years old I told my mother, "One day I am going to Memphis, Tennessee, to thank Mr. Phillips for discovering Elvis." A quarter-century, or so, later, I did. This podcast also includes interviews with the likes of DJ Fontana, Elvis's original drummer; Gordon Stoker from The Jordanaires; songwriter Ben Weisman, and fellow Elvis fans such as Sinead O' Connor and Cliff Richard. This one is for Elvis Aaron and I am launching it near enough to the forty-third anniversary of his death to ensure that maybe a few people will be listening to it on August 16th 2020. 

 

when i was ten, that i intended to "go to Memphis one day to thank him for discovering Elvis." 

The Joe Jackson Radio Archive: Memories of an Elvis Fan. Part 1. 2017.

From the intro to the Podcast. 

'At 11:40 PM on August 16th, 1977 my phone rang. I had been listening to Elvis sing a beautiful ballad called, Suppose. And I was smiling. Why? I realised that as he sang my favourite part, those lines,  ‘it's impossible to imagine the world without a star but imagining know you is more impossible by far’ I did something I had been doing since I first heard the song nearly ten years earlier. When he reached that final word, ‘far’ and seemed to be reaching for the heavens, if not heaven, I closed my eyes and held my breath, as if in prayer, and almost said aloud “You can do it, Elvis.” It was a glorious moment of union, though to what I haven't a clue. Then I answered the phone. it was my girlfriend. She said “Joseph I have terrible news. it's Elvis. He's dead.” I said, “No, he can't be.” She said, “He is. Your mother saw it on the news, rang and asked me to tell you. She said, “I can't bear to give Joseph this news, I know it will break his heart. Elvis was his life.” And so in an instant, my life changed.'

This podcast is Part 1 of a radio show that RTE Radio 1 in Ireland, told me was "too personal" to broadcast. So I substituted another show 'Conversations about the King' - which I will also turn into a podcast - and it included interviews I did with the likes of Bono and Sam Phillips and Sinead O Connor. In 2018 was nominated by IMRO, the Irish Music Rights Organisation, for an award in their  'Best Music Documentary' category. I'd like to believe that this show, 'Memories of An Elvis Fan.' it's precursor, might have been as successful. 

 

Francis Rossi, Status Quo: The Song That Started It All For Me. 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. 

Dermot Morgan Uncensored 1993. Morgan on, RTE, Irish politics, Charles Haughey, and Chris De Burgh.

Below is the description I used for Part One of this Two-part interview. It applies equally to the second part, although the subject matter moves from RTE to Charles Haughey and Terry Keane, Chris De Burgh's sex life, Irish politics, Dermot's roots, and his core drive, as a comedian and his hopes if finally being financially secure at fifty. Oh yeah, he also talks, not entirely seriously, or maybe totally seriously about the first time he masturbated and how priests and bishops do the same thing. That was Dermot Morgan, OK. R.I.P. 

'This interview with the man-who-would-soon-be-Father-Ted, Dermot Morgan, took place in 1994 only weeks before he went to the UK to start the latter TV series. 75% of this, at times explosively controversial material, has never been in the public domain, the reasons for which will be apparent as you listen. In the podcast, perhaps for the first time Dermot, understandably enraged at points, tells his version of how and why his successful radio shows, such as Scrap Saturday, were "sidelined" by RTE, perhaps as a result of political pressure, and why he was forced to go to the UK to make Father Ted. It is a no-holds-barred interview, exactly as it happened, with colorful language and merely minor fades at four points, which I made purely for legal reasons, and some of which Dermot suggested in 1994. The full typescript of the print interview is available at joejacksoninterviewer.com'

Tommy Tiernan Soul Searching 2002. Part Two.

As I say in the new introduction for this interview - recorded in 2004 for the Sunday Independent - Tommy Tiernan is now doing psychologically probing and, arguably, spiritually driven interviews in Irish TV. Without meaning to sound self-aggrandizing, I have to say, because it has been said about my interviews, and even my recently launched series of podcasts, in The Joe Jackson Interviews series, that is the kind of interviews I have done since the start of my career in 1985. It's no big deal, just my way of doing things. So, I decided to present in this podcast, part one of two, the original tape unedited and minus the kind of revisionist narration I used in my radio series, The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited. This show was meant to be a part of that series but now never will be. Enjoy this version, as part of my series of podcasts.  

Neil Diamond More Open and Honest Than You Ever Heard the Man. 2002

Part Two continues the story as described in part one. 'This may be one of the most revealing interviews ever given by Neil Diamond, who rarely talks about his private life. He certainly, until that day, in 2002, in a recording studio New York where we did this interview - the third I had done with Diamond - had never discussed in such detail his conflict with the Mafia during the early years of his career. In fact, I was told that when I raised the subject while sitting alone with Neil in that studio, a member of his management team in the control room said aloud, "Did he just ask Neil about the Mafia! My God!" Either way, as you will hear, Neil himself had no problem addressing that or any issue with me. Then again, the guy knew I loved his music and the fact is that we had always gotten on great. This is part one of two podcasts that I guess I could have called 'The Neil Diamond Story - as you never heard it before.' Btw, these tapes are copyright Joe Jackson and must not be broadcast or quoted in print without my permission.'

An Incendiary Interview with Bob Geldof 2001. Part 2.

Please note that this is Part 2, of a three-part podcast. Part 1 is available on this website, Part 3 will follow in a few weeks. The following is the description from Part 1, it applies to all three parts.

'This episode on The Joe Jackson Interviews series differs from most of my other podcats. For one thing, it is based on my eBook, Bob Geldof: The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus. The ‘Plus’ in the title refers to the fact that the eBook contains the uncensored versions of the two major interviews we did, first in 1989, then in 2001, and a fragment of memoir. Growing up in Dun Laoghaire I knew Geldof, albeit from a distance that was largely defined by the fact that he came from the so-called right side of the tracks and I came from the other side. Even so, our paths crossed on countless occasions in local teenage meeting places such as Murray's Record Centre, Bamboo Café, at parties. We also had a mutual friend called Peter Finnegan. And later again Bob and I met in the dole office. I have fond memories of us talking about bands like The Animals and Bob saying he wanted to be a Rockstar. I wanted to be a writer. By 1977 he had become a Rockstar I was a photographer for Irish rock magazine Hot Press. I photograph Geldof on stage in Dalymount park and at the launch of the first album by The Boomtown Rats. All of this is probably why towards the end the second part of this 2001 interview – it will follow in another podcast - Bob says he is uncomfortable being interviewed by me because I know too much about him, although that comment may have more to do with the instinctual insights into his psyche which I gleaned during this interview. Afterwards, he phoned my editor and said that I had been a “bit too hard on” him, to which the editor, replied, “Joe was only being as hard on you as you were on interviewees when you worked  for this magazine!” But it would appear that Geldof doesn’t agree with my contention that by pushing him as hard as I did it led to, arguably, the most mercilessly honest interview he had given and or has given since. Nor has Bob spoken to me since this interview, professionally or, on a personal level. Did I push him too hard? You decide. The interview coincided with the release of his album, Sex, Age and Death. The typescript of the original article – never published in full in any magazine – can be seen at joejacksoninterviewer.com. The eBook is available wherever you buy your eBooks.