From Darkness to Light: Inspirational Interviews for Troubled Times

Biographie de Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson, June 18th 2012, that pic of me is memory of a wonderful moment last Saturday, Bloomsday. Along with 110 other Irish writers I took part in a 28 hour reading session at the Irish Writer's Centre where we all attempted to break the Guinness Book of Records world record for public reading and did! I was thrilled. I'm probably best known as an interviewer who has published five books and had my articles included in newspapers and magazines all over the world, from The Irish Times - I was their music interviewer for a decade - to Playboy and Rolling Stone.
But I'm a writer! I decided at nine years old to become a journalist, when I saw a movie called Deadline Midnight, starring Jack Webb, that made journalism seem like a knightly quest. But when I was 20 my dad told me one night that he was abandoning his secret dream of "becoming a literary creator"and, in a knightly fashion, I picked up the gauntlet and decided to become both a journalist and literary creator.
What a stupid thing to do, right?But I can be stupid in ways, and after years of working on plays, poetry, memoir, and even giving readings of my own poetry, I moved into music journalism in 1985, with an Irish magazine that sadly now I'd rather not name. By 1988 The Irish Times was saying that magazine was "noted for its probing interviews conducted by" little old me. I loved interviewing right away, it helped me bring together my passion for literature, psychology, and even poetry, in ways.
Then I did a degree in Popular Culture and started to apply also a socio-political microscope to people I interviewed and it all became even more fun. I mean that seriously, folks. At the time, during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, I was interviewing, or rather "grilling" terrorists, politicians, even a Taoiseach and two future presidents of Ireland. So, now, I've drawn back from interviewing and with my new series of self-published book, The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus, I am making available the original, unexpurgated typescripts, plus the Back Story of my experience with each interviewee, and drawing heavily on diaries I kept at the time.
I'm also exploring the option of making my more than 1, 000 interviews available as MP3's and/or CD's. Upcoming subjects for The Joe Jackson Interviews Plus series include, Bono, Tori Amos, Gerry Adams, Richard Harris, Elvis, Sam Phillips, Johnny Cash, The Chieftains, Bob Geldof, The Corrs and the...