As part of my podcast "Singles" series, running roughly five minutes, here we have Kris Kristofferson and me in 2002 talking about the music that originally inspired him. It is a clip from my radio series, Under the Influence, which was broadcast from 2000-2009.

A bit if fun from an interview I did with Elvis Costello for my Under the Influence radio series. Here we talk about some of the great pop lyricists that influences him, namely Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter and I light-heartedly ask if he, like both is a "closet gay"! 

This podcast is my way of celebrating the 95th birthday of an artist whose music I have loved all my life. Furthermore, I was blessed to meet and interview Tony three times. And at one point during this mid-1990's interview, he told me a childhood story that suddenly gave me a seminal insight into the man and his art. If you want a definitive overview of Tony's music, and painting, and philosophy, listen to what he has to say. 

In 1990 I interviewed Crosby, Stills and Nash, separately, on the same day. This interview with Crosby is, arguably, his most revealing ever, in terms of drug abuse, his sex life, relatively privileged background, music, and, oh yeah, who he believes killed JFK. Prepare to have your mind blown, as hippies used to say! 

On March 1st 1985 I decided to become an interviewer because a one-hour conversation I had with Leonard Cohen, one of my life-long heroes, left me feeling transcendent. So much so that I felt I had to track down more of my music heroes to talk with. Apart from Elvis and Sinatra, I pretty much interviewed them all! I learned many a lesson, good and bad, from those conversations. In this series of podcasts, I hope to pass on to listeners some of the lessons I learned.  Enjoy. 

I became an interviewer to meet my music heroes. I'd loved PJ's music since I was a child and finally got to interview the man in 1987. He turned out to be a far stranger man than I expected. But here are his sometimes hilarious memories of hanging out with John and Cynthia Lennon before John shifted focus from getting drunk to getting high. 

Around the time of this fundraising concert, on April 3oth 1989, Irish actor Richard Harris had appointed me to be his official biogrpaher. This project involved me taping all of my conversations with Richard, "even our personal phone calls" he suggested. It also involved me taping Richard's contribution to that 'Night of the Stars' at the Abbey Theatre. But, as I say, in the intro to this podcast, as someone who loves the poetry of William Butler Yeats, I ended up taping far more than just Richard's contribution. This is Bono half singing and half reciting Mad as the Mist and Snow. But, be warned, the sound is most definitely not Hi-Fi! Btw, I call this podcast a "single" becuase it last roughly five minutes. Enjoy. 

A year after doing this interview with Paul Durcan in late 1987, I began doing political interviews with political representatives from all sides in terms of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, starting with Danny Morrison and Ken McGinnis. However, as with this exchange with the poet Paul Durcan, I also talked with countless cultural figures about what I knew even then to be the single most important issue when it came to the future of my homeland, north and south.  I had intended to make a for RTE Radio 1 a 12 part radio series called Troubled Voices in 2018, but certain people silenced the series. So, now it is a podcast series. It is our history.  Arguably, as never heard before, simply becuase these interviews were for the print media, not for broadcast. Hence, the likes of Durcan could speak at leangth. 

Even since I heard in my teens the works of female singer-songwriters such as Dory Previn, Joni Mitchel and Carole King, female artists have been central to my love of music. In 1994, while doing a weekly interview slot for The Irish Times, for which I got to interview Dory, Joni, Alanis and Melissa, I did a piece on radio about such artists. 

This is part of an Irish Times interview I did with George Martin in 1994 when the Beatles "red" and "blue" albums were released on CD. When I was a teenager my dad heard Elanor Rigby and said "the genius behind that song is George Martin." The idea fascinated me. More than a quarter-century later, I got great delight sitting down with George Martin in Air Studio - also present was his son Giles who you will hear at the end of this podcast - and asking him about how important he felt his role was as the Beatles' producer, and if he felt he received due credit. I hope what comes across in this podcast is part of that sense of delight.