Post by cw on Dec 4, 2009 3:16:17 GMT 1
Thanks to Jamie on Sharon's forum for typing this up for everyone. It's more a conversation with a few people than just Sharon herself so Jamie has typed up the parts that Sharon says.
"Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the festival of chat that is the Hot press round table summit - in fact, you might say it's more important than An Bord Snip, NAMA and the campaign to have Thierry Henry exiled to French Guyana put together. This year, our panel of rock world's great and good get animated about "Le Main de Dieu", surviving the recession, the passing of Stephen Gately and Michael Jackson and encounters with famous friends such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Taylor Swift"
Sharon on the Ireland V France match:
Ours was an extremely depressed house last Wednesday. I was tweeting at the time and yawning my way through most of it, which I do normally with football, but I was effing and blinding with the best of 'em when that happened. It would have completely changed the mood of the country for however many months it is until the World Cup Finals.
Joe (Def Leppard) on touring with Taylor Swift & thinking about what makes different shows artists do
When you've been doing it for 32 years like we have, you need your distractions because everything else becomes routine. Elton John played Madison Square Garden 51 times - he's got the record - and must be thinking, "oh god, not another one. The same old f**k**g place!". Remember that thing The Corrs did in Bray, Sharon, with Bono and Ronnie Wood? That's what you remember as being special.
Sharon:
It's a bit weird when you look around during a song and there's Ronnie Wood doing the guitar solo. 'Wooooargh, this is cool!'. One of the things I've loved about making my solo album is working with people like Jim Lockhart from Horslips, and Stuart Cable, the former Stereophonics drummer. You learn so much from being in the studio with other musicians.
Tim (from Ash) and Sharon discuss their albums:
Sharon:
I'm doing the opposite! The Corrs stopped for a couple of years to get our heads showered and have some children, but I was still writing song after song and thought 'I really want to do my own album'. For me, it's about producing a beautiful piece of work that i'm really, really proud of. So far i've spent about €280,000 on the album, which is just studio time and paying the musicians. It's not what was being spent 15 years ago but it's still a lot of money. Obviously i'd love to be a commercial success, but i'm prepared for it not to be. It may turn out to be the loss leader, which enables me to go out and play live, and make the money back from selling tshirts or whatever. I want to take my kids with me and tour for as long as I possibly can, because that musician's life is a beautiful bubble to be in.
Sharon on the Music Industry
I think people have a very inaccurate view of the music industry and how it works. You've an engineer, a producer, a band, a plugger, a graphic artist, somebody working the record company switchboard and everybody needs to get paid. They're always going to go "oh the friggin' U2s and Def Leppards and The Corrs, they're all loaded". Fine, but what about all the other people in the music industry who definitely aren't loaded and are being laid off or having houses repossessed? I'm waiting for the Digital Economy Bill to be passed because I want respect paid to music and the industry that produces it.
Tara (from an Irish band Vengeance & The Panther Queen) & Tim (Ash) in response to Sharon:
Sharons right, there are a lot of people working in the music industry who earn an average weekly wage - or less - and are having their livelihood taken away from them by piracy
Tim:
It blew my mind when I checked out Pirate Bay one day and found our entire catalogue - 17 years of work - in a folder that someone could download in 3 minutes. It's not free to make, so why should it be free to get online?
Sharon on Stephen Gately (Boyzone member who died suddenly in October )
I went to Stephens funeral because i'd met him a couple of times, one of them being in Belfast, where we both had a couple of drinks on us and had a really good laugh. He was heartbroken that Boyzone at the time were broken up and trying to figure out 'what next?'. He was one of the innocents in the music industry with open arms for everybody. the funeral itself was very beautiful and respectful - you could feel the love around Sheriff Street. The Daily Mail trying to infer that just because he was a gay man they were up to something deviant....that sort of thinking ought to be long gone at this stage. It's so wrong and so disrespectful. Had I come back from a bar with my husband and another girl, nobody would have jumped to those conclusions.
Sharon's Gig of the year
Mines Leonard Cohen as well, in the O2. I've never seen a gig like it in my life - the only word I can think of that does it justice is 'spiritual'. i'm not hung up on meeting people but i'd love to tell him how much he moved me.
Sharon on where is the oddest place her music has surfaced
The Sporanos, which is one of my all time favourite TV shows. Meadow comes don the stairs with her iPod on and she's listening to 'Breathless'! That was the coolest moment ever.
Sharon on being star-struck
I ran into Neil Finn from Crowded House and actually wasn't able to speak, which was really embarrassing. All I could think of were these great songs like "don't dream it's over" and "take the weather with you". I just stared inanely, it was really sad.
Sharon on albums she's been listening to over the last 12 months
I bought Lily Allens album, but mostly it's old 70's stuff I've been listening to like Nick Drake's Treasury. I'm loving that album!
__________________
"Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the festival of chat that is the Hot press round table summit - in fact, you might say it's more important than An Bord Snip, NAMA and the campaign to have Thierry Henry exiled to French Guyana put together. This year, our panel of rock world's great and good get animated about "Le Main de Dieu", surviving the recession, the passing of Stephen Gately and Michael Jackson and encounters with famous friends such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Taylor Swift"
Sharon on the Ireland V France match:
Ours was an extremely depressed house last Wednesday. I was tweeting at the time and yawning my way through most of it, which I do normally with football, but I was effing and blinding with the best of 'em when that happened. It would have completely changed the mood of the country for however many months it is until the World Cup Finals.
Joe (Def Leppard) on touring with Taylor Swift & thinking about what makes different shows artists do
When you've been doing it for 32 years like we have, you need your distractions because everything else becomes routine. Elton John played Madison Square Garden 51 times - he's got the record - and must be thinking, "oh god, not another one. The same old f**k**g place!". Remember that thing The Corrs did in Bray, Sharon, with Bono and Ronnie Wood? That's what you remember as being special.
Sharon:
It's a bit weird when you look around during a song and there's Ronnie Wood doing the guitar solo. 'Wooooargh, this is cool!'. One of the things I've loved about making my solo album is working with people like Jim Lockhart from Horslips, and Stuart Cable, the former Stereophonics drummer. You learn so much from being in the studio with other musicians.
Tim (from Ash) and Sharon discuss their albums:
Sharon:
I'm doing the opposite! The Corrs stopped for a couple of years to get our heads showered and have some children, but I was still writing song after song and thought 'I really want to do my own album'. For me, it's about producing a beautiful piece of work that i'm really, really proud of. So far i've spent about €280,000 on the album, which is just studio time and paying the musicians. It's not what was being spent 15 years ago but it's still a lot of money. Obviously i'd love to be a commercial success, but i'm prepared for it not to be. It may turn out to be the loss leader, which enables me to go out and play live, and make the money back from selling tshirts or whatever. I want to take my kids with me and tour for as long as I possibly can, because that musician's life is a beautiful bubble to be in.
Sharon on the Music Industry
I think people have a very inaccurate view of the music industry and how it works. You've an engineer, a producer, a band, a plugger, a graphic artist, somebody working the record company switchboard and everybody needs to get paid. They're always going to go "oh the friggin' U2s and Def Leppards and The Corrs, they're all loaded". Fine, but what about all the other people in the music industry who definitely aren't loaded and are being laid off or having houses repossessed? I'm waiting for the Digital Economy Bill to be passed because I want respect paid to music and the industry that produces it.
Tara (from an Irish band Vengeance & The Panther Queen) & Tim (Ash) in response to Sharon:
Sharons right, there are a lot of people working in the music industry who earn an average weekly wage - or less - and are having their livelihood taken away from them by piracy
Tim:
It blew my mind when I checked out Pirate Bay one day and found our entire catalogue - 17 years of work - in a folder that someone could download in 3 minutes. It's not free to make, so why should it be free to get online?
Sharon on Stephen Gately (Boyzone member who died suddenly in October )
I went to Stephens funeral because i'd met him a couple of times, one of them being in Belfast, where we both had a couple of drinks on us and had a really good laugh. He was heartbroken that Boyzone at the time were broken up and trying to figure out 'what next?'. He was one of the innocents in the music industry with open arms for everybody. the funeral itself was very beautiful and respectful - you could feel the love around Sheriff Street. The Daily Mail trying to infer that just because he was a gay man they were up to something deviant....that sort of thinking ought to be long gone at this stage. It's so wrong and so disrespectful. Had I come back from a bar with my husband and another girl, nobody would have jumped to those conclusions.
Sharon's Gig of the year
Mines Leonard Cohen as well, in the O2. I've never seen a gig like it in my life - the only word I can think of that does it justice is 'spiritual'. i'm not hung up on meeting people but i'd love to tell him how much he moved me.
Sharon on where is the oddest place her music has surfaced
The Sporanos, which is one of my all time favourite TV shows. Meadow comes don the stairs with her iPod on and she's listening to 'Breathless'! That was the coolest moment ever.
Sharon on being star-struck
I ran into Neil Finn from Crowded House and actually wasn't able to speak, which was really embarrassing. All I could think of were these great songs like "don't dream it's over" and "take the weather with you". I just stared inanely, it was really sad.
Sharon on albums she's been listening to over the last 12 months
I bought Lily Allens album, but mostly it's old 70's stuff I've been listening to like Nick Drake's Treasury. I'm loving that album!
__________________
