Known in the music industry as the man who signed U2 to their first record contract, Jackie Hayden has published over twenty-five books, under his own name and as a ghost writer/editor. He topped the Irish book charts with two editions of My Boy, about the late rock star Philip Lynott. That
Known in the music industry as the man who signed U2 to their first record contract, Jackie Hayden has published over twenty-five books, under his own name and as a ghost writer/editor. He topped the Irish book charts with two editions of My Boy, about the late rock star Philip Lynott. That book has been contracted to be filmed in 2023 using a screenplay by Kit de Waal.
His music industry history involved stints with Polydor Records and Sony Music
where handled marketing campaigns for acts as illustrious as Abba, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, George Harrison’s Concert for Bangla Desh, the Rolling Stones, U2, Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, and others.
For Hot Press, Hayden reviewed countless albums and interviewed almost all top Irish-based acts as well as such international figures as Mick Taylor of The Rolling Stones, Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Rosanne Cash, Def Leppard, Beautiful South, Donovan, and Irish politicians President Michael D Higgins, Gerry Adams, Senator David Norris, Eoin O’Broin, and Gay Mitchell. As part of the Heineken Proms in Amsterdam he interviewed Brian Ferry and Andrea Bocelli for Spanish TV News.
In the mid-nineties he was invited to serve on the Irish Government’s Task Force on the Irish Music Industry and was appointed chairman of a government committee on the International Marketing of Irish Music. His prominent industry profile led him to be invited to address music and writing seminars at home as well as in the USA, Spain, France, the UK and Germany.
For the Write By The Sea Literary Festival he has conducted on-stage interviews with the late Dervla Murphy, Jennifer Johnston, Mike Hanrahan, Ruth Fitzmaurice, Geoff Hill and Eilish Ni Dhuibhne. A script he penned was recorded in the room where the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was born, for inclusion as a CD with his book A Map of Love-Around Wales With Dylan Thomas. He was also invited by Thomas’ granddaughter Hannah Ellis to deliver a talk in the poet’s birth home in Swansea.
In 2015 he was appointed “writer-in-residence” at the Literary Centre in Tranas in Sweden and lectured about Dylan Thomas on World Poetry Day at the Swedish State Theatre in Uppsala. In 2022 he delivered a talk on Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood during the Wexford Opera Festival. He has also written books about musicians Bob Dylan and Don Baker, and In Their Own Words, a collection of interviews with rape and sexual abuse victims.
Born in Dublin, Hayden has lived in Wexford since 1996.