What's Up?
From the real source of religion to the infinite reach of rock ‘n’ roll; from the puzzle of the human ‘I’ to the true meaning of money, John Waters speaks and writes about his exhilarating, totally original reflections on the meaning of life in the modern world.
Having started his career in 1981 with the Irish Music journal Hot Press, John Waters later wrote in The Irish Times from 1990 to 2014. His first book, Jiving at the Crossroads (1991), about the cultural underbelly of Irish politics at the height of the Haughey era, became a massive best-seller.
He went on to write and publish eight other books, including An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth, 1997) and Was it for this? Why Ireland lost the plot (Transworld Ireland, 2012).
He has written a number of plays for stage and radio and currently writes a fortnightly essay for the American magazine of religion in the public square, First Things.
He is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA.
Life & Work
Bio:
John Waters, Irish writer and formerly newspaper columnist, was born in Co Roscommon, in the West of Ireland, where he grew up in the town of Castlerea. His first book, Jiving at the Crossroads (1991), about the cultural underbelly of Irish politics, became a massive bestseller and was reissued by TransWorld in 2012.
His other publications include Race of Angels (1994) a study of the roots of U2’s music in Irish history and culture. He has written two books about the religious and spiritual imagination of modern Ireland (such as it is), entitled Lapsed Agnostic and Beyond Consolation (On How We Became too Clever for God and Our Own Good), He is currently completing a third book in this series y, provisionally entitled Men Without Chests. His book, Give us Back the Bad Roads, will be published in October, 2018.
His award-winning plays include Long Black Coat (1994) and Easter Dues (1997). He is also a songwriter and secret musician. He has a daughter, Róisín, and oscillates between Dublin and Lislary, Co Sligo, close to where his father was born in what is nowadays known as Yeats Country.
Beyond Consolation
Feckers: 50 People Who Fecked Up Ireland
Jiving at the Crossroads (Blackstaff,1991);
Race of Angels (4th Estate/Blackstaff,1994):
Every Day Like Sunday? (Poolbeg, 1995);
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth 1997);
The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell (Liffey Press, 2004);
Lapsed Agnostic (Continuum, 2007).
Was it for this? (TransWorld 2012)
He has written plays for radio and the stage, including Long Black Coat, (1994), Holy Secrets, (1996), Easter Dues, (1997), and Adverse Possession (1998).
Give us Back the Bad Roads was published in October 2018 (Currach).
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).