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The Joe Jackson Tapes revisited: Leonard Cohen

cohen-and-joe-talking Image Name: cohen-and-joe-talking
When Joe Jackson interviewed Leonard Cohen for the first time in 1985 the singer’s career was at an all-time low. “His record company
had refused to release in America Cohen’s latest album Various Positions, they said it wasn’t commercial enough,” Jackson recalls. “The ironic thing is that track one on side two of that LP was a song called ‘Hallelujah’, which has since gone on to be Leonard’s most popular song!”Jackson, at the time was not a journalist. Looking back he now says, “I was simply another life-long fan of Cohen who desperately wanted to meet my hero, so I implored a magazine editor to let me do so.
But that meeting with Leonard was so illuminating, inspiring and transcendent that by the end of the day I decided to become a professional interview most to meet more of my heroes.”Jackson interviewed Cohen a second time in 1988, upon the release of his album I’m Your Man, and again in 1995, to mark the release of Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen. “During the latter I informed Cohen that Bono sang a wrong word in the lyric of Hallelujah and Cohen joked, ‘That’s it, he’s dead, he’s done!”

RTÉ Radio 1, Tuesday 3 January, 10pm