Dave Fanning

For other people named David Fanning (disambiguation), see David Fanning (disambiguation) (disambiguation).

David Fanning
Born	David Fanning (1955-12-30) 30 December 1955 Dublin, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Education	English and Philosophy degree/Higher Diploma in Education
Alma mater	University College Dublin
Occupation(s)	Radio and television presenter
Employer	Raidió Teilifís Éireann
Known for	Music industry work, friendship with U2, Fanning's Fab 50
Spouse	Ursula

Dave Fanning (born 30 December 1955) is an Irish radio and TV presenter, journalist, DJ, film critic and author. He currently hosts weekend morning magazine/chat shows on the Irish national radio station RTE 2FM and a number of RTE Radio 1 programmes. In 2015 he regularly deputized on RTE Radio 1 across a range of primetime programmes and also presented his own Mon-Fri 9am show Mornings With Dave Fanning.

He currently presents a movie review programme for Virgin Media, formerly the UPC Customer Channel. The programme features interviews and special features as well as exclusive looks at some of the content available on My Prime and On Demand.

Early and private life

Born in Dublin in the mid-fifties, Fanning is the youngest of six children (one sister, four brothers). He is married to Ursula, a solicitor (formerly a TV researcher, most notably on Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show) and they have three children.

His father, Barney, was a Commissioner in Ireland’s Board of Works, his mother, a retired schoolteacher. Obsessed with music from an early age and fascinated by his older brothers’ music interests (jazz, folk, pop), his twin obsessions, during an “idyllically happy childhood” were music and movies. He was a member of The Beatles fan club from the age of eight. He was educated at Blackrock College, graduating from University College Dublin (UCD) with a degree in English and Philosophy and a Higher Diploma in Education. 

Career

Fanning has written for Hot Press and The Irish Times, presented The Movie Show and been a disc jockey for RTÉ 2fm since it began in 1979. During the 1990s he worked for RTÉ, Virgin Radio and had four television shows at one point, one of which was The Movie Show.

Radio

Main article: The Dave Fanning Show

In 1977 Dave took over as editor of Ireland’s only Rock magazine (Scene) and began working as a deejay on the fledging pirate radio station, the Inchicore-based, Radio Dublin, in 1977. Dave then moved to Big D when it was formed by Dublin deejays in 1978. On both pirate stations, he presented rock shows. He continued with that format when he made the move to legal radio (RTE Radio 2FM) in 1979. Hot Press summed up Fanning’s impact: “When Billboard magazine referred to the introduction of 2FM as one of the major factors behind the growth of Ireland as a major music centre, they really meant Dave Fanning”.

Fanning has always supported young, new Irish talent; he played bands’ demo tapes and with the move to 2FM started the Fanning Sessions with producer Ian Wilson.  Hundreds of sessions were recorded there. For the first session, Fanning invited the band he had championed and played most often on demo tape over the previous 2 years – U2.  His friendship with, and support for, the band led to the listeners deciding on the A and B-sides of the band’s first single release. (This was pre-CD or download release, when singles were only released on vinyl). The band came into Fanning’s show for five night’s in one week – a major seal of approval from Fanning and Wilson – and the listeners picked “Out of Control” as the a-side with “Stories For Boys” and “Boy/Girl” on the flip side.

Between ’77 and ’79, Fanning was resident deejay at Dublin’s city center McGonagles nightclub. The club hosted most local acts and many international ones. U2 played there many times. The band also played The Baggot Inn for six consecutive Tuesday nights in 1979 with support from The Blades. Fanning deejayed for the entire run between sets. He joined the band on their tourbus through Ireland (dates in Cork, Galway, Belfast, Dublin) on the eve of the release of their third album “War”. He made various TV documentaries on the band – at Self-Aid in ’86, in Modena in Italy the following year during the band’s Joshua Tree tour and has interviewed the band many times on radio and TV down through the years. In 1987 at the time of the release of U2’s The Joshua Tree his annual radio interview with the band was conducted in the nude following Bono’s request to ‘shake things up for the hell of it’.

His friendship with the band has continued. At a surprise birthday party, held at Dublin’s Mother Redcaps in 1989, all four members paid tribute to Fanning. The band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, presented him with a special present referring to him as “the world’s best deejay”. Besides being guaranteed the world exclusive on all U2 releases, the band recorded a unique filmed musical tribute to Fanning when he was presented in 2004 (by Larry Mullen) with the Irish Music Industry’s top award, The Meteor Industry Award. Organised by Ian Wilson, Fanning deejayed at the Beat on The Street and The Lark in The Park throughout the 80s. In Cork in August ’85, from the back of a truck at The Lee Fields, the surprise act was U2.

Before every U2 album release, Bono invites Fanning up to his house for a listen.

In ’01, when he presented a live Saturday Night TV Talk Show, Bono was his final guest and on the morning after the Paris terrorist attacks in November ’15 when U2 cancelled their final two concerts, Bono spoke exclusively to Fanning.

Television work

Further information: 2TV, The Movie Show (Irish TV series), Planet Rock Profiles, and You're a Star

Fanning has presented over twenty different series for RTE TV ranging from 2TV (a live, weekly 2-hour music show for six years ,’95-’01) to documentaries in Cambodia, Ethiopia. (Others include Jobsuss, The Arts Show, Music Zone, Number One , 7 Bands on the Up, Visual Eyes etc.). Throughout the nineties he wrote and presented over 400 editions of The Movie Show, a film review programme  which included interviews with movie stars in locations all over the globe. One-on-one 2-camera-shoot interviews include Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Cameron Diaz, Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson, Pierce Brosnan, Lindsay Lohan, Denis Quaid, Nicholas Cage, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Bruce Willis, Dan Ackroyd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Dreyfus, Ralph Fiennes, Eddie Murphy, Val Kilmer, Uma Thurman, George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum, Kim Basinger, Charlize Theron, , Keanu Reeves, Robert de Niro, Antonio Banderas, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, Julianne Moore, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Holly Hunter, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Madonna, Liam Neeson, Glen Close, Scarlett Johansson and more.

In ’03 he presented twenty programmes in a series called What Movie and later produced and directed over twenty film review programmes for Channel 6. For the duration of the first decade of this century he wrote and presented seven series of the late-night TV music programme The Last Broadcast (later The 11^th Hour).

At the beginning of the nineties he presented Rocksteady (a live Channel 4 music show) from various locations around The UK (from Glasgow’s Barrowlands with Daniel Lanois to London’s Royal Albert Hall with Eric Clapton), one in Cork with Hothouse Flowers and one live from Boston with J.J. Cale.

Later (this time with co-presenter Craig Ferguson and again on Channel 4) he presented Friday at The Dome, a live music programme from Kilburn in London. One of the show’s many interviewees was Richard Branson who subsequently asked Fanning to present a show on a new radio station he was about to launch. With a 4-hour Saturday afternoon programme (following Chris Evans’ show) broadcast live from London’s Soho, Fanning stayed with Virgin Radio for two years. In July ’05 he hosted RTE’s 12-hour television coverage of Live 8 from London’s Hyde Park and Live Earth in ’07 from Wembley Stadium.

Working with Bob Geldof (who had been in Gerard Fanning’s class in Blackrock College a few years ahead of Dave), Fanning was programme consultant for ITV’s The South Bank Show for the music special Cool Clear Crystal Streams and presented many documentaries on music including a BBC Radio 4 documentary on Bono and in 2010 a documentary (filmed in Ireland and Ghana) for RTE TV in the Ireland’s Greatest series, also on Bono.

His music star TV interviews have aired in numerous countries around the world on programmes like Planet Rock Profiles, Fanning Profiles, Interviews With Dave Fanning. In New York for Rainbow Media’s Rave TV he presented a series of rock star interview programmes in ‘06/’07 (Noel Gallagher, Rod Stewart, Iggy Pop, Fleetwood Mac, Pet Shop Boys etc.). For three years, Interviews With Dave Fanning ran on SKY Arts in the UK.

He has conducted one-on-one, 2 or 3-camera shoot interviews with hundreds of music acts in various locations around the world e.g. Nick Cave, Air, Michael Bolton, Beyonce, Ice T, Mariah Carey, Sophie-Ellis Bextor, Kirsty McColl, Paul Young, Neville Brothers, New Order, Smashing Pumpkins, Simply Red, Texas, Linkin Park, Willie Nelson, David Byrne, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Eminem, Sinead O’Connor, Jarvis Cocker, Richard Ashcroft, Moby, REM, Oasis, U2, Rod Stewart, Shane McGowan, Kylie Minogue, Alanis Morissette, Slash, James Blunt, Paul Weller, Counting Crows, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, Billy Joel, Gloria Estefan, New York Dolls, Killers, David Gray, Robert Plant, Foo Fighters, Peter Frampton, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Blur, Robbie Williams, Coldplay, John Mellencamp, Morrissey, Mike Scott, Mavericks, Def Leppard, Ronan Keating, Travis, Gabrielle, Elvis Costello, Radiohead, The Corrs, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Metallica, Geri Haliwell, Cranberries, Tori Amos, Kylie Minogue, Alison Krauss, Lenny Kravitz, Jack White, Roger Waters, Radiohead, Counting Crows, Christy Moore, Bryan Ferry, Michael McDonald, ACDC, Dave Matthews, KT Tunstall, Ryan Adams, Paul Weller, James Blunt, Bryan Adams, Chris Cornell, Elbow, Belinda Carlisle, Ron Sexsmith, Flaming Lips, Fleetwood Mac, Gary Numan, Bon Jovi, Peter Frampton, Pet Shop Boys, Ringo Star and many more.

Audio interviews include Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Johnny Rotten and hundreds more. 

Journalism and other work

Fanning has written articles for more than twenty publications, both at home and abroad. He was rock correspondent with the Irish Times for ten years (’82 - ’92) and movie critic for The Sunday World from ’97 to ’04.

HarperCollins in London approached Fanning to write his autobiography and The Thing Is was published in 2010. The book’s positive Irish Times review began “if you were a music loving teenager in the 80s and 90s, you owe a lot to Dave Fanning’ while The Independent ended its equally positive review with “that same enthusiasm for music seems to have been undimmed with years and perhaps it’s that wisdom ahead of knowledge which has ensured his longevity.” Bono wrote the book’s lengthy foreward.

In 2014 Fanning wrote, produced and presented a four hour, four-part radio series for BBC 6 music on the history of Irish rock. In December 2015 he presented a Bob Geldof documentary called When Dave Met Bob.

Fanning has conducted numerous public interviews down through the years e.g. Richard E. Grant in University College Dublin, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in Trinity College etc., and – over the past couple of years – various celebrities and luminaries at numerous events ranging from The Dalkey Book Festival (e.g. Amanda Palmer) to The Dublin Film Festival (e.g Nick Moran) to The Electric Picnic (e.g. Michael Long, Woodstock Festival organizer). In 2015 he conducted an interview to an invited audience at the residence of the American Ambassador in Dublin’s Phoenix Park with David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos. For a number of years he presented the televised IRMA Awards, the Irish Digital Media Awards, the Tralee Film Festival Awards (alongside Maureen O’Hara, Juliette Binoche, Finnoula Flanagan, Rebecca Miller etc.). He chaired a number of forums at the ‘In The City’ Music Seminar in New York, has chaired, and been a member of, various awards committees in Ireland, presented The Fleadh Festival in London throughout the 90s, deejayed at London’s Mean Fiddler for a number of years and was a member of the judging panel for the first 4 years of the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in London, the music equivalent of The Booker Prize.

Fanning has been a stage announcer at every major music festival in Ireland dating back to Bob Marley and The Wailers at Dalymount Park in 1980 and Thin Lizzy/U2 at the very first Slane concert in ’81. For ten years through the nineties he fronted the Rollercoaster Tour. Each mid-winter he travelled with four bands to twelve colleges throughout Ireland – forty bands, 120 dates. He has presented nights of Cinema Classics with the National Symphony Orchestra at Dublin’s National Concert Hall. In ’05 in conjunction with EMI he released an Irish-only triple CD, Fanning’s Fab Fifty Vol 1. Sales reached 1.5 times platinum. Volume 2 was released for Christmas ’06, also going platinum. Volume 3 in ’07 featured music from Bowie, U2, McCartney, Massive Attack, Sigur Ros, Blur, Lennon, Stone Roses, Oasis, The Velvet Underground and forty others.

Awards

Down through the years Fanning has been the recipient of a number of ‘Best DJ’ awards from various publications, including Hot Press where he topped the annual Readers’ Poll for over twenty years. In 1980, he was the first person ever outside of Radio 1 to be honoured with a prestigious Jacobs Broadcasting Award for “the depth and scope” of his radio show. Following Christy Moore in 1990 and preceding Van Morrison in ’92, Fanning was awarded the IRMA Special Industry Award in ’91.  In recent years he’s been the recipient of a number of accolades and awards ranging from the 2012 Dublin Lord Mayor’s Award (“To the voice of Irish Radio, in recognition of his broadcasting career, his support of new Irish talent and for bringing alternative Irish music to an Irish audience”)  to the 2014 University College Dublin Music Society Award. (The Honorary Fellowship citation reads “in recognition of his outstanding contribution to music through his work as a journalist, DJ and broadcaster – in particular his support of homegrown Irish talent”). He won numerous IRMA awards and was nominated for Best DJ at The Meteor Music Awards on seven occasions, winning four times. U2 performed a special tribute when he won the Special Industry award in ’04.

Fanning received the Industry Award at the 2004 Meteor Awards.

Year	Nominee / work	Award	Result
2004	Dave Fanning	Industry Award	Won