The Joe Jackson Interviews

In late 2022/ early 2023, I was interviewed many times on Irish radio about my book, Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. In other words, as a professional interviewer, the tables were turned on me. This is the first of two podcasts based on those interviews. 

Tommy Tiernan is back on RTE televison with a new series of interviews. Here he is, interviewed by me nearly a decade ago. However, Tommy should not expect all his guests to be as forthcoming to me as he was. Every interviewee has the right to draw a line in the sand. 

This podcast is a blend of Richard Harris 1987-style mocking the "method" approach to acting, which he once practised and espoused, and its practitioners, such as De Niro, in The Untouchables, and me reading a section of my new book Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. It will be available in America from January 10th onwards. In the section I read - because it was a pub chat with...

It's nearly 2023. This is a repost. Nowadays, Tommy does on TV what I did with him and all my interviewees all my life - went soul searching with them. But when I use that phrase, I don't mean it only as searching for the soul of the interviewee. My new book, Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, highlights that fact. I hoped, pretentious as it may sound, to find truths that would...

This is a repost as my tribute to Sean Hughes nearly thirty years after we did the original interview - which was done for a Christmas issue of a magazine in Ireland. It's been five years since Sean died, and I wanted, at Christmas 2017, to mark that event by including this programme in my radio series The Joe Jackosn Tapes Revisited. However, I was asked not to broadcast it as RTE Radio 1 had oth...

In 2000 Scott Walker asked me to allow him to use a 1990 12,000-word two-part article I wrote about his work as the essay for his 5-CD box set Five Easy Pieces. Sadly we couldn't come to an agreement on the deal. So, I have published the essay and its backstory as an Ebook. This clip, however, is from a major in-depth interview we did in 1994,  and we talk about what Scott rightly described as one...

Here, I read from my book, Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, the opening section of Chapter 14, Lovemaking or 'Hate-Making' in a Sexual War Zone.'  This is a lead into Richard Harris's highly contentious views on men and women during the late 1980s. But a word of warning, much of what he says will enrage feminists, such as 'women should have thoughts and not be allowed to expre...

Firstly, coming up to Christmas 2022, I want to thank sincerely and wish a Happy Christmas and a fulfilling New Year all those who listen to my podcasts and inspire me to keep making them! No one wants to podcast into an abyss of silence! This is a bit of fun from my new book, Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. Harris at 70, remembers his last fight.     

Yesterday, December 9th 2022, I read the sad news that my one-time fellow broadcaster in RETE Radio 1, Ronan Collins, is vacating his daily music show, though he will still do occasional programmes for the station. Even so, for 43 years, his voice has been part of the social fabric of Irish society, so, today, I put together this, my personal tribute to the man - even though he slagged me!

Today, December 10th, I have published in the Irish Independent, a letter under the headline, 'Why review of my Harris book made me laugh.' It is a reference to Daily Telegraph writer Jasper Rees. Today also happens to be the 90th birthday of Richard Harris's only remaining sibling, Noel. He told me he "felt sick" when he read in the Irish Independent the review by Mr Rees. This is my response. 

This is the third and last, for now, reading of one of the articles that were published to coincide with the publication of my new book, Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. This book extract appeared in the Limerick Leader and tells of Harris's hatred for Frank McCourt's misery memoir Angela's Ashes. It also tells of how enraged he was when folks said that the Harris's as part of...

This is the second in a series of three podcasts I'll upload today, December 2nd, 2022, during which I read recent articles about my book Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. Or extracts from my book that were published in newspapers. This article was published in the Belfast newspaper, The Irish News. Other recent reports, based on the film, The Ghost of Richard Harris, of which...

'My friend Richard Harris. Joe Jackson recalls some fiery encounters.' That was the headline on the front cover of the Irish newspaper, the Sunday Independent, on September 4th 2022. It was a 'hook' for 'A Turbulent Journey,' a 4-page article in the newspaper's Life magazine. The strap for that article said, 'Richard Harris and Me: The Journalist who cracked the actor's 'fake facade,' revealing th...

Well, it's Christmas time pretty baby, and... I am reposting this fun chat with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 2005

I am deeply saddened to learn that today Christine McVie died. At the start of this interview we did, I told her that, ling before she joined Fleetwood Mac, her version of I'd Rather Go Blind, with Chicken Shack, was a single I bought and loved. May her soul rest in peace. 

For the first decade of the 2000s, I did a music series called Under the Influence.  That title then was "borrowed" by MTV for a similar series of their own. Cool. Now I see that the substitute title I choose in 2020  for the podcast version of that series, is being used as a series in an Irish newspaper! So, I am reasserting my ownership of the title and letting people hear again some of my favou...

Today, November 17th 2022, the biography Richard Harris once asked me to write, is finally published. It's called Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. This short podcast explains why I choose that title and tells you something few people know about Richard. My book is full of such revelations, mostly in his own words, as in here.  

I am an associate producer of the documentary, The Ghost of Richard Harris, directed by Adrian Sibley. Tapes I made with Richard over a fifteen-year period - many for the biography I have finally written, Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, published later this week -  voice the 'ghost' and I am interviewed in the film. Sadly one of the most revealing scenes in relation to the hid...

The middle section of Richard Harris's definitive version of MacArthur Park became my anthem when I bought the single in 1968. The song is loved by millions of people. Harris said, "it is the story of my life." Here,  in a section from my upcoming book Richard Harris Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, he talks about the battle he had with c composer Jimmy Webb who, according to Harris, didn't w...

Here, Richard Harris, on August 8th 2001, discusses with me his 1968 recording, Didn't We. And takes some sideswipe at its composer, Jimmy Webb. It is from my new Biography of the man, Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven. In the book, I finally tell the full story of his relationship with Jimmy Webb - at least from Ricard's perspective. And he could lie!

Let me clarify the claim in the title of this podcast. If you live in Ireland, you may have heard my 2015 two-part radio documentary, Richard Harris Revisited, based on interviews I did with Harris over the last fifteen years of his life. Or, if you live in Limerick, you may have seen my one-person show of the same name a year later. More recently, in 2022, in fact, you may have seen in a cinema t...

This is an extended, contentious, hilarious, and revealing clip from a longer podcast I am making called Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven - the title of my long overdue Richard Harris biography.  How long overdue? Thirty-three years! Richard appointed me to write this book in 1989 but died before we could finish it. I've now written it to mark the 20th anniversary of his death...

The Crown has returned for a new season on Netflix. That fact reminds me of a brutally honest interview Sarah Ferguson gave me in 2004. The most telling part, besides the comments about herself, and Prince Andrew, is her suggestion that the Royal Family damaged her marriage from the start. Listen, between the lines. 

Jerry Lee Lewis died today. He was a great rocker and a great country singer and a great pianist. I loved his music all my life. Then I met him...

This podcast was inspired, if that is the right word, by my seeing the detestable 'Blonde' movie on Netflix this week. A disgustingly reductive travesty of Marilyn Monroe's life, talent and legacy, it omitted more about Marilyn than it included. And it reminded me of a brief chat Anthony Summers and I had in 1990 about Marilyn's death. This is that chat.