My Peter Hook interview here.
Archive for the ‘Love and Death’ Category
07
Feb
Interviewed ex-Joy Division and New Order bass player Peter Hook today, after a couple of frustrating attempts to catch him yesterday. I’ll put up a link to the interview once it’s published. For now, here’s a link to a Joy Division documentary on You Tube, with thanks to Ed for sending it to me.
21
Dec
As it gets nearer the end of the year, there’s a natural tendency to review what you’ve done over the last twelve months, and take pleasure or recoil in horror from what’s gone on. I’ve been proud to achieve some things this year that I had always wanted to: such as get articles published in newspapers and things like that. I’ve been able to write about things that interest me, and pursue peculiar and brilliant individuals to interview: a memorable non-interview was that of Lemonheads lead singer Evan Dando, who hung up his phone on me during an interview. I thought: must have been some Brian Wilson-ish bad vibes coming down the phone to his end. But no, a few days later he went on and played a very good set in Dublin, and seemed pretty together. I’ve been able to return to comedy and history in a couple of Irishman’s Diaries.
But, what’s been unpublished (up until now) has been my interview with legendary rock writer Nick Kent, an interview that I was very excited about, and which I reprint on my site here.
On his confrontational interview with rock and roll wildman Jerry Lee Lewis, Kent had this to say to me:
Sometimes you have to go into a situation where you are in potential physical danger in order to get the story that matters. Jerry Lee Lewis had a reputation to keep up, but so had I.
More here
27
Sep
While standing in Mount Jerome cemetery in Harold’s Cross yesterday, waiting for the hearse to arrive, I stumbled upon the gravestone of William Wilde and his wife Speranza, the father and mother of Oscar Wilde. The sun was sharp and clear, and the day was wintry but bright, and the skeletal trees shook with the violence of the wind. Mount Jerome is a beautiful cemetery, one that at some time in the past would have had a view of the Dublin mountains, but now the vista is disturbed somewhat by the redbrick terraced apartments that line the south wall of the grounds. The graveyard houses much of Dublin’s upper crust: doctors, Sirs this and that. Founded in 1830, it only began to allow Catholic burials there in 1920. Yesterday the place had a distinct Joycean air – but perhaps I was just kidding myself: in spirit, and in reality, Mount Jerome belongs to the Victorians. It has much of the weather beaten, decaying charm of Pere Lachaise in Paris, and stands on a hill shielded from the view of the main road.