Jenny Greene on dropping out of school, Guinness World Records and wedding DJs
DJ Jenny Greene will bring her enormously popular collaboration with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra to the Live at the Marquee concert series in Cork, in June. Pictures: Moya Nolan
Dark clouds burst open to reveal a cerulean sky the afternoon I meet Jenny Greene. Slight, beaming and wry, her energy precedes her. She rarely does interviews, she says, but given her obvious and palpable charisma, one might wonder why.
She bursts through the doors of the glamourous Shelbourne hotel, and caters to our interview, in a way only a skilled veteran can.
“I feel like I’ve stalked you in the run-up to this chat,” I say, commenting on the videos, podcasts and sets I’ve watched in preparation. “Oh, God,” she cackles, her cheeks turning slightly red. “I don’t even want to think of what you could find.”
The 40-year-old South Dublin DJ (Google says she’s 43, but, “that’s the astrophysicist, who I absolutely am not”) and broadcaster, is wearing tight leather trousers, a camouflage jacket and layers of gold jewellery, and greets me, and every person who meets with us, with a recognisable wide-toothed grin. Such is her calling card, friendly to a fault, charismatic to boot and a perfectionist by trade. More on that later.
In 2022, the last time any of us met Jenny was likely as a punter, looking up adoringly as she wove in orchestral house, electro-pop and Ibiza-dripping dance to the backdrop of one thousand bellowing rally cries. Many will know Greene from the resounding success of her genre-defying sets with RTÉ Symphony Orchestra (may I recommend looking up their renditions of The Bongo Song and Born Slippy) where ticket holders come for strings but stay for Jenny. Nothing gets a response quite like her. Even virtually.
During consecutive lockdowns, a time notoriously difficult for anyone in either the nightlife or arts industries, Greene strode on via her own personal YouTube profile, slinging discs from her new home’s designated Rave Cave, from whence Greene’s Kitchen Discos originated. When she’s not behind the decks, she can be found in the crowd, in front of a barbecue or watching telly, even on holiday.
“I just binged the whole of Severance before we [she and wife Kelly] went away. It’s the best show I’ve ever, ever seen. One of the episodes came out while we were over [in the French countryside] and we watched it in the hotel on an iPad. So sad.”
Growing up, Greene was a devoted music fan, a fact only enhanced by an undiagnosed illness that ruptured her youth. A deep, throaty cough persisted, she says, day and night, often pushing her to the point of vomiting and disturbing sleep for some 14 years. On those long, arduous nights, she found music, with the help of her dad, a staunch Paul Simon fan.
“I just felt like I was missing out on everything,” she’s cited as saying, a fact she’s made up for and then some in recent decades.
A diagnosis of a sinus issue at 15 brought hope (she subsequently underwent surgery and no longer suffers to this day – “fingers crossed”) yet was unversed in the art of being a child, opting for an altogether grown-up endeavour: working.
By the time she was 17, Greene was already hit hard by the radio bug, presenting a breakfast show for FM104, with two years of Pulse FM already under her belt, when her parents decided to take her out of school.
“I came home one day and they said they’d been talking about taking me out of school to pursue radio. I almost took the hand off them when they said it!” she says with her signature throaty laugh. “They rang the school the next day and I never went back.”
It was the 90s and rave culture was at its peak, and hostility from veteran DJs, both old and new, was rife.
Greene herself, still underage (“I had to get a special staff card made for the Temple Theatre so I could get into work”) faced the wrath of Dublin’s vinyl elite, so much so that she felt to DJ was to face judgement.
It’s likely where she picked up her persistent inner critic.
“Even though that was so the norm back then for young women DJs,” she says, “no one could have ever judged me as much as I did myself.
“I’m always beating myself up over every last detail and I have to remind myself that most of the people I’m playing for are locked by the time I come on. They’re never gonna care about the way I brought different songs in!
“It’s also not something you can really teach, which means the only person you can blame is yourself. DJing involves being in a room by yourself, listening to your own mistakes for weeks, months, years at a time, and even though I believe that work really stands to me, I will never stand back after a gig and think ‘that was great’, so even if someone was having a go at me online, it’s not something I’ve never told myself before. I’d love for it to be different but it’s just the way I am.”
Success isn’t linear, and coming up through the industry as a wunderkind is not without its issues, but Greene has and does manage to push through barriers, even to this day.
In 2003, she earned herself a place in The Guinness Book Of Records when she broke The World Record For The Longest DJ Set playing continuously for 75 hours.
She has commandeered RTÉ 2FM Saturday nights for her dance show Electric Disco for some 12 years now and she now forms part of an in-demand DJ Duo playing B2B shows with fellow Irish DJ Al Gibbs.
Throughout her impressive tenure with the national broadcaster, Greene has among other things, interviewed a sunburnt Calvin Harris at the now-defunct Oxegen, guessed the identity of animals while blindfolded at Dublin Zoo, and even managed to put her céilí dancing to work with the principal Riverdancers on tour.
She did most of this with sidekick, broadcaster and Westlife frontman Nicky Byrne within spitting distance (“I still today get Instagram messages from fans asking for videos”), a friendship she has sincerely and frequently credited as everlasting.
“It’s just something about him. I don’t know what it is,” she says. “And I remember, like, you know, we didn’t obviously know each other.
“We started the show and it just worked. We just got lucky. We never had any rows or anything.
“And I remember thinking at the time that I’ll be raging when this ends. And it did of course because he got back into Westlife stuff, but I’d love to do it again. It’s probably good in a way that we finished on a high, but I’d go back in a heartbeat.”
Among her most recent tweets, is a repost from Pillow Queens, the four-piece indie rock band from Dublin, whose hits, often detailing the coming-of-age story of learning to grow up as a gay girl, have reached international acclaim.
The tweet, asking users to stream their latest song, Hearts & Minds, finishes with ‘And if you’re a celesbian plz [sic] retweet us x’.
The post is tongue-in-cheek, prodding fun at sensitivities and injecting humour in order to process trauma, much like the way in which Greene carries herself.
We speak on the same week Sligo men Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee were brutally murdered.
Not since the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum has the dust felt so unsettled. I ask Jenny how she feels.
“I think everyone thinks of Ireland as this really safe place, and it is, but it’s also just like everything else – nothing’s really fully safe,” she says.
“I’ve often said myself that I don’t walk down the road holding Kelly’s hand. It’s nothing really but I also don’t want to provoke attention.
“It’s the same whether you’re male, female, gay or straight. My heart goes out to the two men and their families. It’s been a really tough week for the community.”
Jenny married love-of-her-life Kelly Keogh at Wineport Lodge, Westmeath back in 2016, some two decades after their first meeting. She laughs as I ask.
“Yes, we met at the Gaeltacht. We became friends and kept in touch. I actually DJ’d her 17th birthday – the only gig I’ve ever done for free!”
They’re currently renovating their dream home (“I’ve gone from a Southsider to a Northsider”), the details of which can be found on Greene’s YouTube series Ah Sure It’ll Be Grand Designs with Greene and Keogh laughing throughout, as they redevelop a home from scratch.
These days, Greene is more excited about returning to gigs than ripping up floorboards, all the while neatly settling into her latest 2FM gig, The Greene Room, on Sunday to Thursday from 10pm to midnight, while also juggling her weekend show, The Electric Disco with Jenny Greene.
Does she ever stop? Not really.
“I give myself Fridays off,” she laughs. “On Fridays, you’ll find me at home listening to music, drinking a pint in an old man pub (the ones without daylight, you know, the grottier the better) or catching up on telly with our two cats, Ellie and Ralph.”
Just don’t ask her to play your wedding.
“I don’t think people understand how awful my set would go down at a wedding,” she laughs.
“They’d hate it – everyone would hate it! Stick with Nicky and Westlife for that one, he’ll steer you right,” she laughs.
