Jacknife Lee: "Cathal Coughlan was a giant. His perspective was unique - he was intellectually so far ahead of everybody else" 

Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, iconic producer of U2, Snow Patrol, The Killers and Taylor Swift is enduring a tough morning at his home in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Already feeling rotten with flu, he must now talk about his pal, Cathal Coughlan – about the incredible records they made together as Telefís (a-Dó, released 7 October, is, in my opinion, a contender for album of 2022) and the poignant passing of Cathal in May of this year – not an easy task. Obviously, emotions are still raw, Jacknife’s speaking of Cathal in the present tense, is a moving indication of his grief.

Jacknife is immediately likeable and mannerly - we exchange pleasantries about my neck of the woods, Westmeath, and Grouse Lodge Recording Studios where he produced REM, Bloc Party and Editors. What ensued was not so much a conversation, more a beautiful eulogy from Jacknife about his friend, colleague and hero, Cathal Coughlan - the magus of Microdisney- a band that John Peel referred to as ‘an iron fist in a velvet glove’ - and the front man of The Fatima Mansions, a band for whom, members of U2 once stood side stage mouthing lyrics, when the Mansions supported them on their Zooropa tour.

Fatima Mansions promo shot

I start by offering my condolences.

“When we were doing the first album,” Jacknife sighs, “Cathal told me this was going to happen, obviously it was a big incentive for us to get as much work done as possible, just to keep him busy and motivated. Even though we knew it was coming, it still came quick at the end,” he pauses, gathers himself, “He did get to hear the finished record and approve all the artwork, he was working all the way up to the end and we had started working on the third record.”

Is there more material? I ask and immediately regret the indelicacy.

“Because he had lost confidence in his ability to sing, I told him ‘just keep on writing’ and we’ll do piano stuff, I always loved him playing the piano. When he was in Microdisney, he had a song called ‘Michael Murphy’ that I really liked, so I thought that we could do something similar, like a test card record from the 70s and 80s, when the TV channels shut down and they would play music all night. So, we had a lot of things on the go. He had written some words and we were going to get someone else to speak them or sing them, so, I don’t know maybe, maybe not.”

It is painfully poignant to hear of Cathal losing confidence in his lush baritone, so definitive, when exquisitely delivering wondrous words. Jacknife knew that voice, better than most anyone, the two Telifís men possessing a shared history, indeed the first gig that Jacknife saw was Microdisney.

Microdisney.

“Yes, supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees in Cabra, and funnily enough when I was working with Cathal, I was also making a record with Budgie from the Banshees. I think I was twelve at the time when I saw both of them and it was really interesting to be collaborating with them, forty years later. Also, the first gig I played was supporting Microdisney in Cork, I was fourteen, my brother came with me, he was a year and a half older. I stayed in Cathal’s rehearsal room, so I got to know him, the difference between a fourteen-year-old and twenty-one-year-old is huge and he was very kind. We had mutual friends through Dave Clifford who ran a magazine called VOX. At Cathal’s memorial service, Sean O’Hagan (Microdisney soulmate) reminded me that we used to go and work at the Galway Races - myself, Sean, Cathal and Dave, selling junk. So, we were close for a while, then he moved to London, I followed suit but our paths diverged until the middle of lockdown.”

How did you both reconnect?

“I was mixing a record for Luke Haines (The Auteurs) and Peter Buck from REM, Luke said ‘a friend of mine says hello’ and it was Cathal. So, we did a Zoom one day, and I was nervous because I was still the teenager approaching this legendary giant of music and I just blurted out ‘do you want to make a record?’ The first thing I sent him was the backing track for ‘We Need’ (single from Telefís debut album a hAon), he sent it back with a vocal, and we were away. We had every other day Zoom calls for a year, where we would go down a rabbit hole. When you are speaking with Cathal, he’s mentioning so many things, I had a notebook, just writing down things to listen to, things to watch, things to read. So, when we finished a hAon, we didn’t really want to stop the relationship so we kept going, it was really beautiful and easy, we just trusted one another.”

Cathal Coughlan photographed in the grounds of Woodbridge Chapel, Clerkenwell, London, on Saturday, 24 October 2009, by Bleddyn Butcher

The Telifís project – self-described as ‘theocratic electropop from the Irish diaspora’ – is a fascinating concept.

“Cathal has always been an outlier,” Jacknife explains, “so that gives him a different perspective, even when he was starting out with Microdisney, he was aware of the absurdity of Ireland. We both became emigrants, and the longer you are away from Ireland the more special it seems. We were the first generation not relying completely on Britain to give us cultural stuff, Ireland was about to pivot into the EU but there was still a de Valera mentality and conservative Catholicism - this weird juncture in Irish history is what we explored. We started talking about TV shows and Eastern European cartoons that RTE would broadcast, because they had no money, so they would buy this weird shit, that you wouldn’t see anywhere else. I was interested in Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity, talking about the emergence of nuclear power, and also the awareness of propaganda in the new technology. So, all this stuff started to be extrapolated from there and ended up in this weird concept.”

“RTE was a closed shop when we were coming up, obviously there were people like Dave Fanning and Ian Wilson, but it was very much the establishment. So, we decided to use their graphics, co-opted the Brigid’s Cross, a pagan symbol that they had co-opted into something technological and Christian, so we decided to do the same thing. And the name, we stole from the New York band Television, which Cathal was very nervous about, he didn’t want to upset anyone but I thought it would be funny to do it. When we were kids, we just stole stuff, taking from Beefheart, and channeling it through a curiously Irish perspective.”

“Going through the RTE stuff, I saw the Rolling Stones coming to play the Adelphi cinema in 1965 and Mick Jagger complaining about Irish showbands, about how dull they were, and how shit they were. It struck me - that was a colonial attitude to this country, that he thought they were uber-cool and everything here was a joke and that really irked me. We started thinking about Irish showbands and their purpose.”

‘We See Showbands’, ‘The Carthaginians’ and ‘Circling the Shannon’ form a spectacular triptych on a Dó.

“‘We See Showbands’ is one of my favourite things that Cathal ever did. I did a version where I had the computer read out a list of showbands and it sounded so sad, like at the Oscars when they read out the people who have died. We made up the name The Carthaginians and Cathal said let me have a go at writing something and he did and it was just amazing. You don’t know if he is taking the piss, it’s kind of funny and then he switches and it becomes heavy. For ‘Circling the Shannon’, I asked him if he could come up with a chorus which sounds like Catholic mass, which was a big ask, to have a liturgy - and he delivered.”

I wonder about Cathal’s song-writing process.

“He said he would listen to the tracks and come up with a story. I think he would get an idea for a song, let it simmer and then keep coming back to it and see how much he could bend it. I never asked him too much about the process, we were kind of running down a hill, not thinking too much about what we were doing. It was one of those odd instances where everything worked, including graphics and videos. We developed an aesthetic that didn’t require money or even being in the same room. Things weren’t spoken, we just went with it. I miss it a lot. I miss working with him.”

Awful that we will not hear these magical tracks live.

“We were talking about it. He didn’t make it that long; he was given more time than he had. We were talking about photos for the album, I sent him an e-mail and he never responded, I thought, that’s not good, he always responds. So yes, in May it was quick, it was very quick. So live, I think that would have been very special.”

Man, I’m sorry.

“Life is fucking tough,” he says.

What have we lost with Cathal’s passing?

“Cathal was a giant. He was a great writer. His perspective was really unique. Even when I met him when he was twenty, he was writing things like ‘Helicopter of the Holy Ghost’, he was intellectually so far ahead of everybody else. He was intimidatingly smart and gifted,  conveying these images that were so tangible. And he stayed that good. I think he had a weakness, in that he created sabotage quite a lot. That could have been out of fear, I don’t know, there was certainly a bit of that with Microdisney. Sabotage was one of the genetic codes of Fatima Mansions, you can hear it in the songs. He didn’t give a fuck if people liked him or not which is not what happens now in music. He had such a unique voice that was always hip. It always seemed that his words were made of dirt that he moved away, and there was the song. There’s not many like him. It was a shame that he didn’t get the attention or the props when he was alive. After he died, people came out and said ‘I love Cathal Coughlan’, but people forgot about him, I mean I forgot about him for a while, I’m as guilty as everybody else. He’s a giant in Irish writing.”

How different was he off-stage?

“I was expecting this ball of rage,” he smiles, “in Microdisney, he was pent up, you could see his muscles were tensed, even doing nice songs. And Fatima Mansions was just fucking intense. I saw them a few times, loved them, but it was so intense. But he was the complete opposite - very gentle, very, very funny, generous and caring. I would be cavalier about upsetting people, not asking people for permission to use video, and Cathal would always say ‘we have to ask them, make sure no one is upset’. He was so sensitive to other people’s feelings, which I wasn’t expecting.”

Jacknife Lee.

“Since The Fatima Mansions, lots of things went wrong for him and lots of things went wrong with Microdisney. There was a renaissance in his creativity over the past number of years, with Songs of Co-Aklan and the Telefís record he did feel, ‘oh, some people actually like me’ which was nice. There is a certain feeling you get when you abandon Ireland, I certainly feel it, not quite been a traitor, but wondering, ‘will I be accepted if I go back or make a record’ or will it be ‘who the fuck are you to have an opinion on Ireland?’ Telefís is not an opinion on Ireland, it’s just us thinking of ourselves as kids in that Ireland. It’s not a broader comment on Ireland, rather a reasoning on why we were both so far away from it, what compelled us to leave and not come back.”

a-Dó features Will Sergeant, Jah Wobble and A Certain Ratio – were they sought because of their 70s/80s post-punk relevance?

“It happened coincidentally. When I brought out my own record a couple of years ago, I was asked to DJ for 6 Music, and I put on A Certain Ratio song ‘Lucinda’, one of the guys from the band got in touch with me to say thank you. I adored A Certain Ratio. When myself and my brother started playing music, the bands that we copied were Public Image Limited, the Bunnymen, A Certain Ratio, we just used to sit and play them. I ended up doing a mix for them for their new record and then Martin (Moscrop) said if you ever need anything just ask. So, for a Telifís song, I decided to sample A Certain Ratio song, and I asked them to replay it and they did, it was amazing, Cathal was such a huge fan of the band, so we were so beyond thrilled.”

“Will Sergeant, he’s one of the great guitar players. I live in Topanga Canyon, he knocked on my door looking to borrow an amp, I said, ‘if you ever want to play on anything, come around’, so he did. Jah Wobble knew Bryan from Dimple Discs and I wanted to do a dub version of ‘Falun Gong Dancer’ and he said why don’t we ask Wobble. Myself and Cathal just reverted to being kids and said, ‘he’ll never do it’. We were a bit intimated by him, we had read his book and we were frightened but he was so sweet. It was just coincidental that they were all from the same period, it wasn’t that we sought them out.”

Telefís, an Irish Gorillaz?

Jacknife manages a grin, “That’s funny. I guess there is some connection, I think we are less…utilitarian.”

• Telefís’ new album a Dó out now.

Read more interviews in the new issue of Hot Press, starring The Coronas.