It was thirty years ago I got my "world exclusive" interview with Bon about U2's yet-to-be-titled next album, which turned out to be called Zooropa. This podcast is one of two parts based on my 2018 radio show The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited: Bono. The full interview is in my ebook, Bono: Soul Searching and Uncensored. 

Patrick Kielty will be the next host of The Late Late Show; it was announced this weekend. A quarter century ago, we sat down and did an in-depth interview, upon which I base this, the first of perhaps three podcasts. I haven't heard the tapes myself since 1998, and boy, is it wonderfully irreverent, funny and revealing.  Enjopy.

Sean Keane died yesterday. This is my tribute to the man, his memory and the music of the Chieftains. it is a short clip from a one-hour show I did with the Chieftains

I am deeply saddened to hear of the death of Sean Keane. I got really close to all the members of the Chieftains because I championed their work in the same way that most of my fellow music critics in Ireland choose to champion U2. I prefer the Chieftains. Their music is the soil and soul of Ireland, but it also is timeless and transcendent and universal. It was a total joy for me to have this chat with all the members of the Chieftains back when the world was a little kinder to us all. Sean Keane R.I.P. 

Bruce is back in my home city of Dublin. I have great memories of this interview in 2009 when Nils called to my home, and we did this interview for a radio show of mine. I'll never forget him holding a toy Elvis guitar I had since I was a child and saying, 'Bruce would love this." Listen to a great chat between two music nuts!!!

The Ghost of Richard Harris, a documentary based on my interviews with Richard Harris, which also sit at the soul of my recent book Richard Harris: Raising Hell and Reaching for Heaven, may win an Irish Film and Televison award on May 7th. I was an associate producer of the movie and argued that the section I include in this podcast should have been in the movie. It isn't. But this was a seminal exchange with Richard, and I think he would want it to be heard. Repost. 

A repost because this weekend in Ireland, the film The Ghost of Richard Harris, inspired by and based on my interviews with Richard over a fourteen-year period, may win a BAFTA award in Ireland. I am in the movie and was an associate producer of it. I did a two-hour interview - maybe the best I ever gave about Richard - and only fragments were used. This is part one of three podcasts that will make it all public. 

I included the full text of this interview in my 1996 book, Troubadours and Troublemakers. I uploaded the podcast in 2021, before my podcasts had as many listeners, as it now has, thankfully.  So I am posing it again as my way of marking the recent anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. 

You have to laugh at the fact that in his teens, Tommy Tiernan saw himself as a "dour, bearded, penitent, Russian monk," and he has now adopted that look in middle age. More seriously, I hope this is a helpful chat about dealing with teenage depression, which Tommy had, I had, and millions of teenagers have. 

The U2 media machine is going full tilt re The Sphere and will involve countless media folks who will go along with telling their story as U2 want it told. But what if, after they go to back Elvis and shuffle off their totally mortal coils, we find that they were living a lie, all of them? Eamon Dunphy and I pondered that question nearly thirty years ago. A timely re-post I hope.