RECEIVING LONG, strange, phone calls from Courtney Love and making Lady Ga Ga cry are just two of the many unforgettable experiences Olaf Tyaransen has had in his career as one of Ireland’s leading journalists and interviewers.
Now these two interviews, along with 18 others, have been collected and published together by Hot Press Books as Selected Recordings 2000 - 2010. The book features some of Olaf’s finest and most memorable interviews for Hotpress, including those with loyalist thug Johnny Adair, Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, playwright Martin McDonagh, and musicians ranging from REM’s Peter Buck to the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones to U2.
“The book was important to make,” Olaf tells me as we sit in The Cellar Bar for the interview on Monday afternoon. “It was a way to mark 10 years and as I will be turning 40 in February I wanted to have something to say ‘This is what I did’. These interviews are my favourites and at the back of my mind, when I do interviews, is that I want to make them as good as possible so maybe they can be published in book form.”
Olaf was born in Dublin - his Scandinavian name comes from his Norwegian grandfather - but his family moved to Co Galway when he was six and he grew up in Bearna village. He feels that Galway has played a huge role in making him who he is today.
“Growing up in Galway you saw the possibility of making a living from being involved in the arts,” he says. “I remember my dad taking me to see Footsbarn Theatre performing King Lear and that had a profound influence on me.”
The Tyaransen family home was full of books and another potent influence on the young Olaf was literature. “I was a bookworm as a kid. I am a voracious reader, my parents are too,” he says. “I would be in geography class and I would be reading a novel hidden behind my school books. They were more interesting to me than school.”
Eventually Olaf’s mind turned towards becoming a writer himself. “I never planned to be a journalist. I wanted to be a poet but I did like the idea of my name in print, so I bullied my way into it,” he says.
Among the first places where Olaf’s journalism began to appear was the Galway Advertiser. “I noticed the Galway Advertiser didn’t have film reviews,” he says, “so I came along, fait accompli, with the reviews already done up - I never waited to be asked - and they were accepted.”
By the early 1990s, Olaf had begun writing regularly for Hotpress and in 1992 Salmon published his debut collection of poetry, The Consequences of Slaughtering Butterflies. However his major breakthrough came in 1995 when he wrote a major two part feature for Hotpress on Courtney Love. It was obvious a major new journalistic talent had arrived.
Since then Olaf has written numerous cover stories for Hotpress, contributed to a wide range of other publications, and published a variety of non-fiction works such as Sex Lines and his autobiography The Story Of O. He is best known for his interviews, which are celebrated and admired for their level of depth and research, a willingness to probe their subject deeply, and being unafraid to go to the darkest and most difficult places.
So what are Olaf’s recollections and reflections on some of the extraordinary people and characters who feature in Selected Recordings? What were his experiences of Courtney Love?
“I did an interview with Larry Flint, and we had a big row, but he still took me out for dinner,” recalls Olaf. “He asked was there anything he could do for me so I asked him for Courtney Love’s phone number and he gave it to me.
“I rang her and she was pissed off with Larry Flint but she talked until my phone batteries died. Then for a while afterwards I got these intermittent calls from Courtney Love and 98 per cent was her talking. It got to the stage where the phone would ring and I’d say ‘Oh f**k it’s Courtney Love!’
“I met her in Glasgow this year and she didn’t remember me, but she did an interview. I knew she had had an affair with Kate Moss so I asked her about it and she just said it. That’s when you know you are doing your job - when you get someone to say something they would never have before.
“The day it appeared it was on the front page of The Sun and Fox News. It was tabloid gold. That had nothing to do with journalism but there is a buzz in seeing words somebody said to you repeated all over the world.”
In January 2009 Olaf was asked to interview Lady Ga Ga, who at that point was just beginning her rise as a major pop (and perhaps even contemporary cultural ) phenomenon.
“I was in Dublin, dying to get back to Galway when the phone rang and Hotpress asked me to interview Lady Ga Ga. ‘Who’s Lady Ga Ga?’ I said. I thought this would be just another silly pop star interview, but luckily I agreed to it since she’s become the major star of our age.
“I remember she started to cry when I asked her about 9/11. She said no one had ever asked her about it before. Maybe she does that in every interview. It was a strange encounter but I like her. She is not afraid to take risks. She has opinions and is not afraid to express them, such as on issues like gays in the military.”
Around the world Bono is widely admired as a rock musician and humanitarian, in Ireland he is seen as sanctimonious, a buffoon, and a tax dodger. As someone who has met and interviewed Bono, what is Olaf’s take on the man born Paul Hewson?
“I will defend him over the tax situation,” says Olaf. “It was the U2 organisation that moved the tax. They are a business and every business is entitled to be tax efficient, but it’s not just Bono’s call. Each of the members of U2 are resident in Ireland and they pay income tax, and pay multiples of what most people do. They could have gone off to Monte Carlo to avoid paying it like many rock stars do, but they didn’t.”
