The Joe Jackson Interviews

I always championed the Sawdoctors, and here we have great fun about the music they love and created. 

When this interview was published nearly thirty years ago, a magazine editor cut this section about Dunphy's experience with U2. I think it should be on-the-record.

Sedaka says he has "balls and substance" and that Manilow doesn't. You decide! 

I had a bit of fun with my namesake while we discussed his musical influences. Btw, he was originally 'David Jackson' and I was always 'Joe'!

A great wide-ranging chat with Boy George, who had told me in 1987 that he fancied Larry!

A timely repost for this fun recording made in my home studio in Dublin, where Nils saw an 'Elvis guitar' I had and said "Bruce would love that." He didn't say Bruce who. 

This was an amazing chat I had with Taylor in a hotel in London in 1988. It remains provocative and controversial. Repost

At home with Mark, in his home studio, talking abut the music that made him what he is

I think we all should define for ourselves what is "cool." At one point it was decidedly uncool to liker the music of the Carpenters, but here I happily celebrated them on an Irish radio show

Here in 1993, I took Jon Bon Jovi to task for using the word "faggots" on stage, and he talks about all that other stuff. A slice of rock history. 

For people like me who love John Lennon's song. A Day in the Life, and early Fleetwood Mac, this little chat is a revelation!

Not one of my favourite interviews and far from one of my favourite interviewees. But here, from my archive is a repost of the Gene Simmons interview from 1996

I knew Bob socially, growing up in Dun Laoghaire, but he complained to an editor that I was "too hard on him: during this interview, You decide. Repost

This is a podcast from my archive, first posted during the COVID pandemic and what Cohen says applies to us all, singers or otherwise

This interview happened by chance when I attended a Chieftains recording session in Zappa's home. It was one of his last interviews

I'm reposting this because it helps set in a historical context Beyonce's country album. Ray went there first, sixty years ago, and we touch on that subject

A repost for a radio slot I did about Dino the week she died. 

Great exchange with the late Gordon Stoker, one of the Jordanaires who tells it like it really was and not as you will read it in books about Elvis and that Sinatra show! 

Mike Love and I backstage at a Beach Boys gig in America in 1989, reflecting on classic albums such as Pet Sounds, and more. 

This was originally a radio show, and it became one of my first podcasts in 2020. Time for a repost, of this revealing encounter with the man who has since become President of Ireland. 

The rapport I had with Nanci, apparent in this 1993 interview, led to her asking me in 1998 to co-write her book Nanci Griffith's Other Voices. I'm told, from Texas, there is a resurgence of interest in her work. That thought delights me. I dedicate this podcast to anyone discovering Nanci!

Joan was a joy to interview, and even meet. Her story is hugely inspiring for those of us who sometimes yield to dark feelings  

I am posting this again because I have learned that I was one of the few journalists to ask Neil about his ties to the Mob, who backed, he says, the Bang record label - with its logo, a smoking gun!!!

Dory Previn said to me in 1986, "I hope that someday you write about my songs and life the kind of  psychosexual study you did of Sinatra's work." We made tapes, starting that year, and recorded up to 2000, with this in mind or me writing a one-woman show about her. Now, my hopes are set more on me and someone who is equally passionate about Dory, making a film.  Here she talks about the backgroun...

This clip was recorded backstage in Madison Square Garden at a Bob Dylan/Joni Mitchell gig, and the sound is not great. Be warned! But it is a historic clip, of Joni chatting about the song she wrote, The Magdalene Laundries, that was soon to be released on a Chieftains album, Tears of Stone.    And it will give you a flavour of being backstage