Pure Gold: Eamon Carr on Horslips, Jack Charlton & the art of the Interview

13:48Eamon Carr:Sorry for interrupting you, Eamon. I think I know who you're talking about. I think I knew Longwa.

13:56Mario Rosenstock:He would have worn a cravat. No, I know.

13:58Eamon Carr:Hello, little boy. Hello. Hello, Mario Rosenstock. He lived with me. You're kidding. I lived with him. You're kidding. Jesus Christ. This is the most extraordinary coincidence that I didn't realise. Longwa, we used to call him. Or Danny. Danny, we used to call him as well. My uncle Greg, my uncle Gabriel and Greg used to call him Longwa. And so basically we lived in Monkstown. And I had no home to live in because my folks were splitting up all the time. So I was living in my uncle's school. Basically, they had some rooms there and stuff like that. And basically Longwa, who was a friend of my uncle's, lived there as well.

14:37Eamon Carr:And when I had no mother or father, basically, I'm 13, 14 years of age and trying to go to school. He was my Mr. Belvedere. He was like this kind of house butler. You can see him in that role, can you? He was this kind of house butler. and he'd have a cravat on and he'd go come along now Mr. Rosenstock it's 8 o 'clock in the morning time to get out of bed and get to school and do your stuff and they're okay Danny or Langlois or whatever we used to call him and I remember I lived with Langlois for about a year this is hilarious

15:06Mario Rosenstock:that's astonishing it's outrageous oh my god

15:08Eamon Carr:and then of course you say down with Langlois Kennedy and the art thing and everything and I remember then he was doing all this art and all this stuff and prints prints lithographs lithographs lithographs

15:18Mario Rosenstock:but at one point we had played our you know we recorded these six things on TV, we thought everybody would be sort of excited and delighted but people didn't really pay much attention and so we managed to start getting a couple of gigs at little school hops and what have you tennis clubs and things and initially and I said, or even actually slightly before that, I said look lads we really need to play a gig now so But we weren't, you know, we weren't equipped to play a game because we hadn't a clue. We'd just written maybe two tunes for six shows. And that was about 15 tunes. And so my bright idea was that we would actually play a gig in the art gallery.

16:06Mario Rosenstock:See, because it was there. I know we had that it was plug-in amplifiers and make it thematic. And so it suddenly became an arty event. and we, you know, so we did a little poster called, oh my God, Portraits and Anthems. Oh yeah. And put this around the place. That name rings a bell, yeah. And we performed on a Saturday afternoon in the gathering and people just strolled in and had a listen and went, oh yeah, and left again or hung around or whatever happened. It was sort of a happening, you know. But weirdly, a chap from Polydor had popped in, you see, and about a week later we got a call, would you like to do a demo?

16:46Mario Rosenstock:we pay for it for Polydor and so things started to roll on from there you know so I mean

16:53Eamon Carr:for some of my younger listeners the only maybe way you'd know the Horselips is this and that song is called Darug Doom and Darug Doom was made famous not only by the Horselips but later made very very famous by being sampled and played indeed for the Jack Charlton's Italia 90 Put Him Under Pressure Ole, ole, ole, ole. Tell me about Derek Noon. When did it come? When was it created? Who created it? How was it created? Oh, look, the simple story.

17:25Mario Rosenstock:We recorded that first album called Happy to Meet, Sorry to Part. We recorded it in Ireland, although there weren't, the studios, there were only one or two studios here and there weren't really on a par with London, but we didn't want to go to London.

17:38Eamon Carr:You mean the studios here weren't even technologically on a par?

17:42Mario Rosenstock:In those days, there were two studios.

17:44Eamon Carr:It was Eamon Andrews and Trend.

17:48Mario Rosenstock:Right, remember Trend. You know, you get away with doing stuff in them. But they weren't the height of technology. There was no windmill lane then.

17:56Eamon Carr:There was no windmill lane at the time. Oh, no, no, no, no.

17:58Mario Rosenstock:Windmill didn't come till the end of the 70s. And this was the very, this was 71.

18:03Eamon Carr:So, right, if you were a hot band in Ireland, you wouldn't record here. You'd go away.

18:07Mario Rosenstock:By and large, bands went away. And we decided, we were only trying to find our feet, essentially. But in the end, we thought, we'd better do it on our own terms. So we should record here. So then, but what about the studios? Well, we can't go and live in bedsits in London. Well, that's not appealing. But we were avid readers of the music newspapers, the Enemy and the Melody Maker. And we were reading about the Rolling Stones having recorded an album in the south of France on their own mobile studio. And they were now back in London with their studio. and they had rented it or hired it to some other band.

18:46Mario Rosenstock:So we rang the Rolling Stones. And Ian Stewart, who was the piano player with the Rolling Stones, who didn't look like a member of the Rolling Stones, so they never had him in the photographs. So they had him in the office and he ran their office. And he was really cool. And he said, yeah, yeah, of course. Now bands had stopped coming, English bands had stopped coming to Dublin then, just around then, because of the troubles in the north. But, you know, he had no problem. He said, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, all right, yeah, when you want it. We have a house in Tipperary. We found a Longfield house, Bianconi's house.

19:22Mario Rosenstock:And, all right, yeah, okay, Tipperary it is. And who's producing it? Well, we thought we might do it ourselves. He said, well, what about Irish O'Duffy? We said, sorry, who, what? Alan O'Duffy who worked in Olympic studio in Barnes in London and had recorded with the Stones and Jimmy Page

19:45Eamon Carr:and Blind Faith

19:47Mario Rosenstock:and Eric Clapton he said what about he's Irish oh right okay so we rang him and he came over and said yeah yeah great and so Ian Stewart who was Rolling Stones helped enormously

19:57Eamon Carr:You describe a very fraternal rock and roll world there where people are willing to help each other

20:01Mario Rosenstock:Yeah it was not amazing actually yeah no I have plenty of regard I'd never actually met him. And actually, there's a corollary to that. So we went to mix the album in Barnes, in the studio, in the same studio that the Stones used. And so while we were mixing it on the first night, I was on a rush job, you know, and I went for a walk in the corridor. I bumped into this big guy who was Bobby Keys who played the saxophone with the Rolling Stones. He was from Texas. He goes, hey, you're Irish, right? I said, yeah, yeah. He said, you're with Irish's band, Ireland's band, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've got to hear this shit, man.

20:44Mario Rosenstock:So, oh yeah, come on then. So we came and he sat down and there was a fiddle playing and of course he related to that. He was going, wow, wow, I really like this man. He looked around and he said, you got the hippie stick? Of course we were fresh out of the seminary. You know, we go, sorry, hello? The hippie stick? Oh man, he says, you can't mix an album without the hippie stick. Oh right, okay. He left the room. And he came back half an hour later with the hippie stick.

21:11Eamon Carr:Which is? The fuck?

21:14Mario Rosenstock:And then through a fog, for the next three days, we mixed the album. And we got into three-dimensional panning of the snare drum.

21:23Eamon Carr:Sorry, is the hippie stick just smoking?

21:26Mario Rosenstock:That was what he called.

21:27Eamon Carr:I'd never heard it called that before. So basically you just smoked your faces off for three days.

21:31Mario Rosenstock:Well, we wouldn't go that far, Gard. But I think he was in the corner anyway, and with the hippie stick, and waving the hippie stick. And so anyway, so, you know, their fingerprints, their Olystones fingerprints are all over that first album. Hilarious. But you didn't ask about that. You asked about the second album. Yeah. So anyway, we got that out. And it was a huge success in Dublin, in Ireland at the time.

21:56Eamon Carr:The first album.

21:56Mario Rosenstock:And yeah, happy to meet Sergeant Powered. It was a dice-damped sleeve that cost more than the album. to produce because there were colour photos inside and the cover represented Charles' concertina. And so it was die stamped like a concertina and all this sort of great art work going on. And so anyway, so that was released whatever Christmas of 72. And I think the big album that year, I think was Abba's Greatest Hits. So it was either Horseships or Abba's Greatest Hits and people were buying it. There was a bit of a vibe all of a sudden. and so when the thing slightly died down after Christmas well it didn't quite die down but after Christmas she suddenly went what are we going to do next because we called it Happy to Meet Sorry to Part because we thought we might only be doing one album and but we'd been fooling around earlier on we'd been asked to do music for a stage production of the tone that was planned as a one off on a Sunday night in the Abbey and it never happened but we'd been tootling away in the background for a few days.

23:01Mario Rosenstock:So I said, listen, is there anything lying around from that towing business? And there wasn't really. But I said, because concept albums are in vogue. And, you know, it's supposed to be just see these Irish folkies. You know, maybe we should give this concept album lark a crack and try retelling the story. And, oh yeah, that's not a bad idea. So we'd have a look at it. so we started that so I sort of mapped out I knew the story from my childhood so I mapped out the story the narrative and wrote a couple of tunes that called to try and set the scene explaining what was going on and and then there was Cullen's lament about killing his friend Ferdy but we needed I felt it needed a killer track.

24:01Mario Rosenstock:And lo and behold, Johnny Fien, one day, while we were sitting around getting ready for rehearsals, I just mess it up. And Johnny was doing some sort of like, I don't know, he was doing exercises or something, fiddling around, doing little riffs, quietly now. And I heard this thing. I said, what was that, Johnny? He said, what? He played something. I said, no, no, no, no, just earlier there you were doing something. And he went back and he went, da, da, da. I said, what is that? He said, oh, it's the March of the King of Lees. I said, I know that tune, but you've done something. Oh, yeah, whatever.

24:33Mario Rosenstock:I flattened the fifth or whatever, you know, some technical stuff. And I said, do it again. And I hammered out the floor. And he said, yeah. And I said, listen, can we utilize that? Can we write it? Can you and I write a song around that? He said, yeah, yeah, of course. I said, cool. So I said, right. so that was that was our Jumpin' Jack Flash Yeah it was yeah you know and for me the riff was like the Kinks or you know it was a classic riff already you know and you couldn't go wrong with a classic riff so anyway so then it had to be Jared Coo Cullen and you're going Coo Cullen it was a difficult one to write in a song so anyway so there was it took a while and in the end the red the red hand and the red blood and the Jared this and do And he was a sort of a crazy sort of character.

25:26Mario Rosenstock:And of course, I'd read all the Yeats stuff. And he was very important in Yeats's iconography. And so I used to go into the National Library and get out Yeats's papers and look at his doodles from his automatic drawings when he was in a trance and all that sort of stuff. That was great. And I thought, there's more to this than meets the eye, you know. and so anyway so he became he became Jarog Doom the Red Death or the Red Doom or whatever it is and but the story is just a story the lyric rather is just a lyric of Braggadocio and with a little nod to Amergin and Muddy Waters essentially

26:12Eamon Carr:yeah yeah

26:13Mario Rosenstock:now

26:14Eamon Carr:we all know this tune but did it capture the imagination at the time no

26:18Mario Rosenstock:it didn't not straight away In fact, as a single, it was released as a single initially before the album. And, you know, this is traditional, isn't it, in reviewing and critiques. Oh, I don't like the new direction. We don't like this noisy stuff. We prefer, you know, diddly-eye or whatever, you know. And no, it didn't initially. but it was working live and people were getting off

26:51Eamon Carr:Were they? Yeah So you could tell that you weren't wrong when you thought that this was a good tune Oh no no no

26:57Mario Rosenstock:when you cranked it up live

26:58Eamon Carr:And when did it then become part of if you like before 1990 and Big Jack when did when did it had it become

27:06Mario Rosenstock:By then the album would have been released the Tawin album it was on the Tawin album and that was released in 73 and and in the context of the album people began to hear it and because we've been playing it live, it sort of just became the big number.

27:21Eamon Carr:Did it? So it became Your Streets Have No Name.

27:25Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, yeah. And Jumpin' Jack Flash. Yeah. And so we sort of knew it hadn't, oh yeah, sorry, it actually became a hit in Germany. Did it? Yeah, yeah.

27:35Eamon Carr:The Germans always come in for the Irish.

27:37Mario Rosenstock:And they took us over there and Baden, Baden and Radio...

27:42Eamon Carr:Yeah, we loved the Dubliners as well.

27:43Mario Rosenstock:Fantastic. And it was wonderful. And that gave us a glimpse of a whole other world and a whole other lifestyle. And where artists or musicians or long haired musicians who might even be drunk were actually treated with a degree of respect. You know, it's fantastic.

28:00Eamon Carr:Very interesting. What was, let's say, the apex of your popularity? How good was it going? How well was it going?

28:07Mario Rosenstock:It was curious. The first album was Sensation in Ireland. and they opened all sorts of doors and promoters decided they wanted the band to play for them in ballrooms and all that sort of carry-on. And that was all excellent. We were playing in a place like the stadium and so on. And Philip Linett, Lizzie, had gone to London at the start and they had, we came after them and they had recorded a couple of albums and things weren't going terribly well at that point. and they were in the studio recording a track one day and Eric Bell, the guitar player, started like, ticking the piss essentially, started to play whiskey in the jar, like horse lips, you see.

28:53Mario Rosenstock:And they said, oh, that's good, we'll lock that out. And that was meant to be a B-side, but the manager said, hey, that's a very good single, so let's make it an A-side. The band didn't particularly want it, but it was a huge hit for them. God, it was.

29:06Eamon Carr:I remember seeing them playing it on Top of the Pops. Oh, indeed. It was a number one, I think.

29:10Mario Rosenstock:But it rescued the band's career. It got them a brand. They were just ending.

29:15Eamon Carr:So Whiskey in the Jar, is your point to me that Whiskey in the Jar was a parody almost of the Horslips?

29:19Mario Rosenstock:Well, sort of, yeah. It was partly. Partly. Banter, I think. But anyway, it became what it became. And it got them a new deal and kickstarted their entire career then from there on. And then, I mean, Philip's genius then really came to the fore, you know. But around that time And we did the Tyndon, the second album. And that was really, really well received in Britain. The London Times album of the year, all that sort of carry on. Wow.

29:51Eamon Carr:Were you able to do big gigs over in England?

29:53Mario Rosenstock:Yeah. Well, build up Arena at the time. Did a half hour special on the band and so on. So there was something going on at the time. And so we worked our way through college gigs and then up through the bigger clubs into the public halls. And then there were two albums that followed that that didn't perform as well. And then we regrouped and we recorded. It took two years. And during that two years, in fact, we should have. We recorded an album a year, essentially, you know. But during that two years, we recorded an acoustic album called Drive the Cold Winter Away, which has just been remastered and been re-released on vinyl this year.

30:38Mario Rosenstock:But in the meantime, we worked on an album called The Book of Invasions. And that became a very big record and charted in Britain and charted in the States. and while we had been getting traction in Germany on the back of the Tone album and Jareg Doom suddenly America beckoned and off we jolly well went and started touring there and did almost How long did you tour in America? Well in those days I think it's probably still the same you get a 90 day visa

31:13Eamon Carr:Yeah, so you just knock the hell out of it for three months

31:15Mario Rosenstock:Yeah and if you're not working it's costing you money because you're staying in motels or whatever, you know. So you had, you know. What was going across America like

31:24Eamon Carr:with the horse lips?

31:25Mario Rosenstock:It was pretty much everything. It was insane. And all sorts. I mean, at the time, it was all sorts. And, you know, New York, Boston, you would expect, you know. The immigrant Irish weren't there at that point, you know. Our generation hadn't, that was the 80s, you know. but we were getting sort of Irish-Americans but not curiously and this is another one it certainly wasn't exclusively Irish-American the first two albums Happy to Meet and The Toine had been distributed in America by Atlantic Records so we were assigned to Atlantic Records at the time with the Neswe Ertigan Ahmed Ertigan's brother and And we didn't fully appreciate until we went back to America a few years later, the amount of work they had put in promoting us.

32:23Mario Rosenstock:Okay. Because those two albums had serviced every college station in America, every alternative rock station in America. It certainly wasn't mainstream. So when we got back with the Book of Invasions, people would go, you know, I've got the Toynabal Men, you know, and it was all that. And it was like, because they had been students. I run the college station. and now they're on the commercial stations and they had bought into this in the way that they bought into English rock or English progressive rock. So we found that we were hit with students across America, which was very interesting. And places that you might think you'd expect a big audience, we didn't get it and places that you wouldn't expect.

33:03Mario Rosenstock:You know, like we sold out Detroit in four hours. My God. Detroit. I mean, come on.

33:09Eamon Carr:The home of Black Motown.

33:10Mario Rosenstock:All of that. That was wonderful. I was in the element. It was fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

33:14Eamon Carr:So did you, was it a great trip?

33:16Mario Rosenstock:Well, we were backwards and forwards and up and down and crisscrossing. We did that for two years. Yeah. And then we were just totally exhausted. And we didn't, we hadn't the savvy, to be fairly honest, to do, to sort of say, lads, can we not slow this thing down? Do you know what I think you need

33:30Eamon Carr:during those cases as well? I mean, you, obviously you're the man, but I always think you need the Paul McGuinness figure. The character who is your manager, the fifth member of the band, that character who basically is just doing so much groundwork, laying the groundwork, making the contacts, the networks for you. We had Paul McGuinness's mentor, a guy called Michael Deeney.

33:59Mario Rosenstock:Yeah. So you need to check this one, right? Michael and Paul had been promoting gigs in Dublin when Horses started, right? and they were called Headland Action and they put on gigs in the Mansion House and in the National Stadium and Charles designed posters for them and then Michael saw us and they put on a two day festival in the RDS and Horst and B. hit at that like a huge hit at the time so Michael came back afterwards and we'll have a chat and Michael was from Lurgan and son of Dr. Dini in Lurgan he'd been educated in Maudlin College in Oxford and Donald his brother the head of the arts council in Northern Ireland subsequently laterally and high court judge but at the time it would have been a student in Trinity but so Michael suggested that maybe he decided to manage the band so essentially Michael was the Andy Warhol of the horse of Scenario he was behind the scenes and he I mean he played a blinder Did he?

35:09Mario Rosenstock:Yeah He was the guy who got the deal with Atlantic Records He was doing his very best for you

35:12Eamon Carr:Oh no he did it astonishing

35:13Mario Rosenstock:and he toured with us

35:14Eamon Carr:It's so interesting when you talk to Tom Dunn for example about Something Happens and you know brilliant tunes and everything but the endless sort of tiresome stories not stories but the tiresome inevitable struggle with America this idea of just sleeping in vans and doing college circuits for years and then you know the idea I mean I remember saying you too did it and Tom went, Tom would say, the way U2 would have worked it just worked beyond working themselves to the bone. Gone to the next level of drogery.

35:45Mario Rosenstock:Oh yeah, And in fact...

35:46Eamon Carr:But why did Horstloops not become the next U2 then, for example? Because we didn't

35:51Mario Rosenstock:have a singer. Ah, okay. I mean, probably that's, well, maybe we didn't have the song.

35:57Eamon Carr:Yes, I understand what you mean.

35:58Mario Rosenstock:But you needed a hit singer. Essentially, you know, you need to go top 40. That's essentially what did it. And that's what did it for most bands. I mean, while we were doing, while we would have been doing that, over the two-year period, 77, 78 into 79, I think.

36:16Mario Rosenstock:Another band from England, mind you, a three-piece band, again, easier to manage and, you know, logistically on the road, were The Police. And I knew the writing was on the wall for Horses. Sorry, not just for Horser, for me, when I'd been partying, let's say, in some motel somewhere, I think somewhere around Colorado. Oh God, I dread it. But anyway. Just say hippie stick. I wanted to go to sleep and I was pulling the flimsy curtains on the motel window. And because the light was daylight, as Bobby Womack said, daylight has caught me up again. So as I'm pulling the blinds closed, and it's around 5am in the morning, I see a man, I swear, jogging across the grass and into the shrubbery.

37:17Mario Rosenstock:It was sting.

37:20Eamon Carr:What's the story here?

37:21Mario Rosenstock:And I thought, oh no, oh no. I mean, we all know that Mick Jagger, you know, always ran and did, you know.

37:29Eamon Carr:Oh, your point being these guys were like athletes.

37:31Mario Rosenstock:Well, the other two mightn't have been, but he certainly was. Sting would be up bright and early and he would go for his morning run. But he was, I saw Sting going for his morning run when I was going to bed. And you knew the writings on the wall. And I said, I hear this. I mean, sorry, rock and roll. The rock and roll that I envisaged is this is a different industry at this point. So at that point, I said, right, OK, I'm out of here. Very funny. Metaphorically, I didn't leave. I didn't leave, actually. The band just ended.

38:03Eamon Carr:And the band just ended. And then, of course, music changed. I mean, it went from disco to new wave and then this kind of pop and then Stock Aikin, Waterman and all this. And music moves so fast. But then this dramatic thing happened where Derek Doom made this massive comeback. And of course, you probably would have thought nothing about this. This is a soccer song. Of course. Who gives a damn about a now soccer jingle?

38:23Mario Rosenstock:Look, I knew how powerful the riff was and how powerful it had become.

38:26Eamon Carr:And Larry Mullen played the drums on it.

38:29Mario Rosenstock:Traditionally and legendarily, it was played at every wedding in Ireland.

38:33Eamon Carr:It was played at every wake in Ireland. And Larry Mullen played the drums on it. It was Larry Mullen's idea. Larry produced it, didn't he? Yeah, it was Larry Mullen's idea. and

38:42Mario Rosenstock:and and when I heard I went oh wow that's really the production is fantastic

38:46Eamon Carr:it is yeah

38:46Mario Rosenstock:and I just thought oh that's really and so clever and having the jack thing at the start

38:50Eamon Carr:and the illin pipes the illin pipes is savage the illin pipes in that song when the illin pipes oh yeah absolutely the hairs hairs back your neck is that Daley Spillane

38:57Mario Rosenstock:I think so I think so

38:59Eamon Carr:Jesus yeah yeah yeah because when it goes off with the illin pipes yeah but when it goes off with the illin pipes with that your hair's standing up in your arm wonderful so

39:07Mario Rosenstock:no no I was absolutely delighted I mean, thrilled. There was a sort of a slight fly in the ointment, though. When Horsup stopped in 1980, we had recorded everything ourselves because we had started recording on that album, the first album, on the Rolling Stones mobile. We had paid for that and then licensed it. So it was a sort of an inverted way of doing things. But we managed to continue doing that for every album. And so we had ownership of our recordings, our copyrights, and we hadn't signed up to a label and they paid us. It was a different, it was the other way around. But when we had broken up, we'd taken our eye off the ball chart, went to England and Barry went off and then Jim was out northean and so on.

40:01Mario Rosenstock:I discovered in fact that suddenly albums started appearing and they were pretty shoddy sounding. dodgy covers what's this so it turned out anyway that there was a company sort of releasing horse lips product as they call it in the business and that had no right to and redisputed it and didn't have the master tapes and were taking taking the the quality was cassettes and you know of of vinyl and also dreadful business and it took 18 years for that to resolve itself through the courts 18 years So it was 18 years, in fact, when we were in Perth. We just couldn't really promote anything or discuss anything or consider anything because we needed to get the ownership of this stuff back.

40:51Mario Rosenstock:And because it was the north of Ireland, it was British jurisdiction, and you're talking the 80s now, you know. So it was hairy enough. And I remember sitting in front of a judge in the north, and our barrister was standing up. I remember the judge saying, CD, what exactly is a CD? Oh, my lord, it's a mechanical device for the conveyance of audio sound. You mean like a gramophone? Yes, yes, my lord, like a gramophone. And this was the level of it. But that was in the 80s. It took us through the 90s. And then eventually, look, everything was proven correct. And we had our copyrights back. and at that point then Dennis Desmond sort of put his head up and said why don't you just do a gig

41:39Eamon Carr:my promoter

41:40Mario Rosenstock:oh yes indeed he promotes me Dennis and and yeah so there you go and that was it

41:47Eamon Carr:brilliant I was fascinated by the whole era and that whole rock and roll folk rock thing there's even there's such a spinal tap about it as well

41:56Mario Rosenstock:oh no totally totally folk rock

41:58Eamon Carr:yeah no totally and the gnomes and the descending onto the stage.

42:02Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, we didn't quite get to the gnomes scenario, but we went far off.

42:06Eamon Carr:Yeah. But I also wanted to say, because you see, all you guys were interesting because, you know, you're all intelligent lads and you all worked in advertising. You're all well educated. Some of your music journalists. Barry, of course, is a screenwriter and Jim Lockhart, a well-known RTE producer. And then yourself, madly interested in music writing and madly interested in boxing as well. Boxing. Yeah, and yesterday, of course, was the 50th.

42:26Mario Rosenstock:And Renaissance Art. And Renaissance Art.

42:29Eamon Carr:And yesterday, of course, was the 50th anniversary of the Thrilla in Manila. Oh yeah. The Thrilla in Manila, Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraser in their third epic fight.

42:37Mario Rosenstock:Outrageous.

42:38Eamon Carr:Outrageous. But I wanted to tell people about your book and your book is called Pure Gold because you're also a well-known journalist and you've also interviewed some very, very interesting people and you conducted a series of interviews on cassette or gramophone over the years. Cassette. Cassette. Try explaining that to people.

42:53Mario Rosenstock:Yeah, exactly.

42:54Eamon Carr:And you interviewed people like Jack Charlton and Arthur Kitt but you also interviewed the great dancer Rudolf Nureyev, the writer J.P. Don Levy Shane McGowan and all sorts of interesting people and they are in this book and their words are in this book and their actual words are in this book and it's called Pure Gold Memorable Conversations with Remarkable People by Eamon Carr himself a remarkable person and lovely conversations and I urge you to get it because I've been leafing through it and it's one of those ones that you can't put down and just when you think you know one is over then another one starts and Jack Charlton maybe one story maybe one story from one of the things what story do you like I don't know look the weird thing is Jack why have we been talking about the thing what about Jack you had to sit down oh yeah well you're a Jack man yeah yeah what you doing what you doing that's it

43:43Mario Rosenstock:oh no bloody hell you've got a deep voice though

43:46Eamon Carr:yeah he's tremendous

43:49Mario Rosenstock:look I mean I was asked to do this gig of a weekly interview double page spread Evening Herald, Michael Denif was the editor and he said look the format will be different, he said so you're going to have to really work on this because it'll be question and answer. I said alright okay so there won't be a lot of colour and puff copy and so on so on. I said alright okay. I said I'm not really the man I'm not cut out for that. He said no you're the one to do it. So anyway so that was it. I got the gig and he said but look make out a list because it's going to be difficult to get somebody every week.

44:27Mario Rosenstock:So I made our list and of course at the time it was 1989 1989 my god. Jack Charton was hot. So in other words it was after Euro 88 so Jack was top of my list and so I made a list with a bunch of names on it and Jack was top of the list. So I thought right okay maybe I'll just see if I can get Jack. So I got a number and I rang the number and it rang his house. Imagine I mean, like, people don't believe this sort of stuff. And I said, oh, what do you want? He picked it up. He picked it up. He picked up the phone. What are you doing there? And so, well, you know, independent newspapers, Ireland, you know.

45:10Mario Rosenstock:And I said, maybe do an interview. Well, effing hell, you're not good enough effing interviews with me over there. Effing this and effing that. So, because I wanted to laugh, right, on one level, but on the other level, my heart sank. Because I went, holy God, what am I going to say? So I said, Jack, I don't want to talk to you about your team or your hamstrings or any of that stuff. I just want to talk to you about football and the lads you liked when you were growing up. And, you know, maybe fellas you liked to play with. All right, come up to the hotel. See you Sunday. Good luck. I went, hotel?

45:43Mario Rosenstock:What hotel? You know, I wasn't a sports journalist. And so anyway, off I went up to the airport on the Sunday. And Jack comes down and, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. come in and have dinner I said this is my first big interview you know I said oh no Jack I couldn't interview a man when he's eating his dinner I'm making it myself here you know anyway so Jack Muriel you'll have your infant dinner I said oh okay Jack okay so I thought god this is impossible I mean he was going to be eating stuff and I'm going to have to try and talk to him so anyway we went into the room some of the players were there already because it was it was a Sunday evening before a match on Wednesday against West Germany that's how long ago it was West Germany

46:30Eamon Carr:Oh do you know what I think that West Germany game might have been possibly Liam Brady's last game Liam Brady's last game for Ireland Indeed He pulled Liam Brady off the pitch

46:39Mario Rosenstock:Indeed Yeah But not only that he told me during dinner Did he? Yes I'm going to pull Liam off He said he's got a surprise coming No He knew it Yeah yeah I mean, I couldn't do that and win it. The little bollocks. I couldn't do that and win it, but I luxuriated in the knowledge. Jesus. Because I'd been given a bit of a hard time by the guys in the sports department, you see, who, he'll eat you alive, he'll eat you alive. You know, in other words, what are you, you old hippie, you're going up there, you know, what do you know about football? Sorry, lads. Anyway, so, yeah, so I went in, sat down with myself as setters.

47:19Eamon Carr:Mara Setters.

47:19Mario Rosenstock:And so we asked about it. He said, we looked around, the lads were still arriving, you know. And he said, is Stan in yet? And Sutter says, don't know, boss. And I said, yeah, he's outside in the bar. What? What? I said, no, he's with his parents. He's drinking orange juice. It's grand, yeah. Anyway, he said, all right, right, right. And I said, I said, so I sort of wanted to try and establish a bridge because I like, you know, so the Stockholm Syndrome vibe or something. I said, Jack, I said, remember that first match against Tunisia when he kicked the ball free from the Havlock Square corner.

47:58Mario Rosenstock:I remember the ball almost went out the gate at the dart, you see, the other corner. I had been sitting behind them. I got tickets and there was nobody at the match. It was an afternoon match. I was sitting behind them. And when Stan kicked that free, the ball went out. It was a real GAA job, you know. And the two boys went and looked at each other and they got up and were scratching their heads and nodding to each other. And that registered with me. And so he said, Yugoslavia. I said, sorry, Yugoslavia? I said, no, no, Tunisia. It was fucking Yugoslavia. I said, I was in Tunisia. And then I said, no, no, shit.

48:41Mario Rosenstock:I'm having an argument. I haven't even started the interview. And you've already got all the wrong. And I said, sorry Jack, listen, what am I saying? You're the boss, you're immaculate. And when he knows it's you, oh you're all right, me lord. But I knew I was right. So he looked at Setter's, I could tell from Setter's eyes as well, so it was cool. And he said, who was it? He said, the lad's right boss. he said have you got a tape recorder it's in the bag there pull it up pull it up so I had a tape recorder little pro Walkman job with a 90 minute cassette so I put it up and he I ran out of tape 90 minutes later seriously I got another 90

49:34Eamon Carr:Was he a good storyteller? Oh brilliant I mean brilliant

49:38Mario Rosenstock:and look I'd have gone to war with him you know or for him you know I mean he was great Was he? Was he charismatic and warm? I interviewed him then subsequently I interviewed him on two other occasions now he was fine he was but he was professionally nice you know we weren't buddies or any of that stuff on the other hand I did a few late night sessions with setters subsequently

50:06Eamon Carr:He had an aura though didn't he Jack? Apart from the fact that he was Jack Oh no no he did He had a personal aura. He's a commanding man, a big man, very sure of himself. The curious thing about him was when I met him in person, he was younger looking and fresher looking than the image on TV or in photos

50:30Mario Rosenstock:or any of that stuff. He was a younger guy and he was sharp. He was really passionate. He was pragmatic. and I actually look at

50:39Eamon Carr:I loved what they did and possibly smarter than he came across on TV as well infinitely brighter and he knew his job

50:45Mario Rosenstock:he knew his trade

50:46Eamon Carr:yeah well do you know what they say they say you know the kind of clop clop football derives all from Jack Charlton get in amongst them hustle get after that ball totally totally

50:55Mario Rosenstock:but he told me a story and actually I was thinking of this there recently and it's not in that so it mustn't have been in that the interview that's in Pure Gold it was probably in one of the subsequent interviews but it was at I forget which of the clubs it was at Sheffield Wednesday Middlesbrough or Newcastle anyway he said he was talking about his tactics and he outlined the game because I was putting I was doing devil's advocate and he said oh no bloody no he said look the game is simple what is it about he said what's scoring goals how do you score a goal he said you get your goalkeeper to kick it out up into the edge of the area get a lantern to knock it down, get it in behind them, turn the defence, put it in the net.

51:40Mario Rosenstock:I'm sorry. He made it sound so simple. And I had trained, I had trained a juvenile team. So I'm sort of, you know, I could relate to what he was, what he was telling me. So anyway, so I thought, right, this is, yeah, I love this. So anyway, one of the teams that he had gone to, he said, oh, it had been great difficulty, he says. But he said, I signed a lad, he said. Now, he might not have been a great footballer, he said. But I knew that he was the North East 100 yards champion. Brilliant. Sprinted off to the ball. So we got this lad, had him out in the left wing and somebody put the ball up and you had to go boom.

52:16Mario Rosenstock:He got a little hair, beat all the defenders and then cut across with the ball and did that to get in and knock it in

52:21Eamon Carr:and we're getting results. Of course and that's based on the idea of course that no player can run faster than the ball. Yes. So the ball is always faster. So if you have a player who just run off to the ball the fastest player will get the ball.

52:33Mario Rosenstock:And he had this lad in position. And I mean, now, I say, was that not on that first interview? It was, I think it was in the second time I spoke to him. But no, I knew Jack was fantastic. I ran out of tape. But yeah, in the middle of it, the Chippy story, he asked me, he said, look,

52:57Mario Rosenstock:is Chippy in yet? Or something like, no, he's coming later on, he'll be here soon, or whatever, said or said. and it was a bit of grunting and I sensed something but I wanted to know what it was and he sort of looked at me and I knew he was about to say something and I actually reached over and turned off now I did this was slightly dramatic on my part but I wanted him to feel that he could trust me so I reached over and I said oh Jesus Jack I'm not sure I should hear this you see and switched off the tape recorder and he said well He said, well, he's got a surprise coming. He said, he's got a surprise coming.

53:37Mario Rosenstock:I went and said, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

53:42Mario Rosenstock:And I said, right, right. And so, yeah, he was going to take him off. So then we got over that little bit. I switched the tape back on. And, but like, there's no way. Look, supposing I had ran back into the newspaper and said, he'd have left him on, you know. and then I wouldn't be trusted I'd never get another interview

54:02Eamon Carr:it was a very interesting great scoop but it was a pity because Brady could have played in that World Cup then you know

54:07Mario Rosenstock:yes yeah yeah but you know well you have to read in between the lines I think in the Jack interview exactly

54:16Eamon Carr:well it's a lovely I'm leafing through it at the moment it's a lovely collection of interviews and it's called Pure Gold and listen thank you thank you Eamon for telling me the wonderful story of the horse lips and a picture a vivid picture of Dublin in the early 70s Would you have been bumping into BP Fallon and stuff around then? Indeed, yes.

54:32Mario Rosenstock:BP, of course I knew BP. I first met BP in, whatever, 65 or 66. And we travelled together. And at the time, and we formed a band, you know, fiction of the band, you know, like pick your favourite team. And we picked a band, we formed a band that actually became Cream. Ah. Within six months. Jesus. And then Beep went to London. And I used to go and stay with Beep in London. and and and I had come back from Liverpool where I had met the Liverpool scene poets McGough and Henry and Brian Patton and those guys and so I was inspired and then Beep says to me he said his brother Peter you know younger brother Peter was a poet and when I bring Peter along and so I brought Peter along and Peter and I formed Tarot Telephone and started publishing Capella the book of invasions and the broad sheet at gallery gallery books amazing Which actually then when I left Peter carries on as Gallery Press and made a wonderful success.

55:33Mario Rosenstock:This is one of those conversations

55:33Eamon Carr:which I'm going to terminate now because I'm afraid to mention any name because if I mention any name to you in the world you'll go it's funny you should mention that because I actually started a band with him and then he met me and I met I don't know

55:44Mario Rosenstock:it's stressful I'm not going to mention any more names. No no don't please stop stop stop Eamon Carr

55:49Eamon Carr:Eamon Carr you are a machine you are out of control you are unstoppable and thank you for joining me on the Mario Rosenstock podcast. Thank you. Lovely. And my thanks to Eamon Carr for coming in and telling me his fascinating story. And that is Pure Gold is his book. And it's out now and contains some fascinating interviews that Eamon conducted over the years. My thanks, of course, to On Ice, our brand new sponsor here with us for a few months. We had the pleasure of their company as sponsor this time last year. Get out there, get down to onice.ie and grab your tickets now for a great, great winter festive experience.

56:24Eamon Carr:My thanks, of course, to you, the most important aspect of the program. And don't forget, you can contact me personally, mariorosenstock at gmail.com. I read them all and get back to nearly all of them. I'm on tour at the moment as well. So I'm in Ennis for Friday and Saturday. They're both sold out. I'm in Cork next week at the Cork Opera House on Thursday the 9th and Saturday the 11th and then Gaiety Theatre Dublin on the 16th, 17th and 18th. Hope to see some of you there. Make yourselves known to me if you're coming and I'll point you out from the audience. take care see you same time same place next week