GRIPPING CONVERSATIONS WITH ICONS IN EAMON CARR'S NEW BOOK

From MacGowan to Nureyev, all of the artistic heavyweights had a brush with the acclaimed Horslips legend

- BY DAVID COUGHLAN

EAMON Carr could see the parallels.

"How could you not?" he says. "The more things change, the more they stay the same.

For Kneecap in 2025, see Christy Moore, The Pogues and the Sex Pistols in the 1970s and 1980s. Artists who pushed boundaries and fell foul of the establishment.

"It's ludicrous. You had the Prime Minister in England suggesting that Kneecap shouldn't play Glastonbury. Ludicrous. Just nonsense interfering in popular culture," Eamon adds.

From his time as Horslips drummer to his other lives as a producer, poet, playwright, journalist and author, Carr has seen and heard it (nearly) all before.

While writing for the Evening Herald he also interviewed some of the biggest names in music, film, sport and the arts. Going back over the tapes he found a common thread.

"Ultimately I selected 15 long-form interviews for the book to build everything else around," he says of the collection, called Pure Gold.

"There were a few others that would've stood up, but there was a feeling that these fit together. A sort of psychic thread that links them."

Carr lifts the lid on the likes of Jack Charlton, Eartha Kitt, Malcolm McLaren, JP Donleavy, Brenda Fricker, Sheila Mooney and 'Mad' Frankie Fraser.

Injustice and resistance are themes that emerge again and again.

Among the collection is a November 1989 interview with Shane MacGowan which addressed the pressures he was under at the time and hinted at unrest within The Pogues.

ADRIFT

"Listening back now, the game was up. But I didn't know that," he says. "They dropped Frank (Murray) as manager a few months after the interview. So that wouldn't have happened overnight.

"That would have been brewing in the band, because a band like that, it's like a tanker trying to turn. It takes a while to get everything on board.