Posts by Joe Jackson

Hi. My name is Joe Jackson. And as I say in the video that accompanies this blog, ‘I became an interviewer purely to meet my heroes, starting with Leonard Cohen in 1985.’ Let me elaborate. Roughly twenty years earlier, when I was ten years old, I read a book called. The Elvis Presley Story and told my mother, “One day I am going to Memphis. Tennessee, to thank Mr. [Sam] Phillips for discovering my hero – Elvis.” That probably is where it all began.

But I didn’t just love Elvis. I loved pop music. So, four years later, even though I was too young to attend The Animals gig in Club Caroline, Glasthule, where I grew up, I sat on a wall outside the venue listening to the show. I almost shouted “Don’t push me” as Eric Burdon sang It’s My Life. But when I heard the opening notes of my favourite Animals 45 House of the Rising Sun, I had to get closer to the music. I wrenched a grill off the venue wall, climbed inside a ducting pipe, and crawled on my belly until, finally, lo and behold, I saw through the slits of a ventilation shaft The Animals, sadly minus Alan Price, sing and play that song.