Listen to Hooman Majd’s glorious, globe-spanning playlist from his life in music, available on Apple Music and Spotify. Read on for the track list and a conversation between Majd and our Publisher, Michael Zilkha, who ran the influential underground record label ZE Records in the ’70s and ’80s.

To accompany his memoir Minister without Portfolio, Hooman Majd has curated an eclectic, danceable, deeply personal, and globe-spanning playlist that moves from Chuck Berry and Barbara Lewis to Barry White, U2, and Lisa O’Neill—each track marking a moment in his peripatetic, genre-crossing journey. In conversation with ZE Books publisher (and ZE Records cofounder) Michael Zilkha, Hooman reflects on the musical memories that shaped him: discovering reggae through Bob Marley and Peter Tosh; blasting Kotch’s “Wonderful Tonight” in the Island Records L.A. office; and finding solace in the voice of Lisa O’Neill at Shane MacGowan’s funeral. Together, they trace a soundtrack filled with longing, rebellion, and reinvention.

Michael Zilkha: What music did you grow up listening to at home? Was there a communal stereo or console? When did you get your own record player?

Hooman Majd: My parents listened to Persian classical music and Frank Sinatra and other crooners, which made me love Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and others that they occasionally would put on. But we—my parents anyway—were not an especially music-loving family. We had a communal console player growing up and I also remember my dad getting a reel-to-reel tape player in Tunisia, although other than Persian music I don’t recall him playing anything else. I got my own record player when I first boarded at St. Paul’s.

MZ: What was the first record you bought? How influenced were you by your siblings’ music choices? Your parents? Your effective exile to boarding school and fellow school friends?

HM: I can’t exactly remember what the first record I bought was, but remember; we lived in Tunisia from 1964-1967 and I was only ten when we left. If there were any record stores in and around Carthage, I wouldn’t have been aware of them. I did know of the Beatles and The Beach Boys and their songs, and I think it was from either one that I personally bought my first record in London later in 1968.

MZ: You start the playlist with a foundational greatest hit, but then you switch to less obvious choices – for instance the Italian “Love Me Please Love Me” by Michel Polnareff. It feels like throughout the playlist you attempted to avoid the obvious, so why did you start with “Johnny B. Goode”?

HM: I chose that song because it reflected rock and roll in a period of time—when I was an infant—but I had never paid much attention to it until I went back to listen to it after hearing Peter Tosh’s version, which I also include in the playlist. I prefer Tosh’s version, but I thought it would be a good intro from the 1950s.

Otherwise, I did try to include less obvious songs from otherwise well-known artists because I didn’t want to create a “greatest hits” playlist; rather, a more interesting list of songs that I’d be happy to listen to more than a few times.

MZ: How did you decide that Shusha Guppy’s “The Stars in Heaven” would appear between Barry White and Marvin Gaye? Ditto It’s a Big Country. Would it have made more sense to have The Gap Band precede it? Or were you looking for the contrast?

HM: I don’t know if I was consciously looking for contrast, but I did feel that the songs fit together and the bookends worked. And these were bands; artists and songs (and Shusha was my aunt, my mother’s baby sister), who were important to me at a particular time in my life.

MZ: Did you listen to music differently after entering the music business? At what point in the playlist did you enter the music business?

HM: I think I did start listening to music somewhat differently when I was in the business. Probably more because I was suddenly inundated with records and people asking me what I thought of them! Kotch’s version of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” was pretty much at the beginning of my music career. I remember receiving the record and playing it quite loud with the door to my office open—this was in the L.A. office of Island which the record company shared with the film company and music publishing (and before Island was sold to Polygram). Lionel Conway, who was head of music publishing and whose office was a few doors down, came down to my door and asked who the hell was doing a reggae cover of a Clapton song! But he thought the record was good, too. And I actually liked it more than Clapton’s version—there's such love and longing in the high-pitched singer’s voice.

Featured

Minister without Portfolio: Memoir of a Reluctant Exile - Hooman Majd

$35.00

From the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ comes a globe-spanning memoir of identity, exile, and reinvention.

Release: Sep 30, 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 9798988670063 • 320 pages
UK release: Nov 6, 2025 • UK Price: £25

MZ: Do you still follow music closely? Did your habits change after leaving the music business? It’s great that you close the playlist with a 2025 song.

HM: I do not follow music closely any longer. I feel somewhat removed from pop, which I always liked, and hip hop is not as exciting to me as it once was (and properly because I’m much older now).

I do occasionally come across what I think is a great new song or record—whether it’s Billie Eilish or Lady Gaga or Lana Del Rey, or even Japanese Breakfast—but I’m certainly not current. I do love the closing song by Lisa O’Neill, who also sang so beautifully in a rendition of "Fairytale of New York" alongside the Pogues and Glen Hansard at the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan's funeral service in Ireland last year. Her voice kills me, and how appropriate a song for the times we live in!

MZ: Please discuss the tracks that resonate most for you and why. When did your love of reggae first emerge and did it change because of your relationship with Chris Blackwell?

HM: I have to go back to Lamont Dozier as one that resonates a lot, mainly because I loved the song and his voice, but also a girl I had a major crush on played the song over and over and over again in her bedroom when I was at her house once. So that song brings back fond memories.

Barry White because not only did I love his music, but I remember going to see him live in London (as the Love Unlimited Orchestra). And once when flying from London to Washington, in those days, his song was on the aircraft entertainment (such as it was, with the hollow tubes for headphones back then!) and I probably played it on repeat for hours on end. And that was memorable because my parents had just moved to D.C. and I was incredibly excited to be spending time in America after a long absence (really since 1962!)

The Blackbyrds are another band that resonates on a personal level. They were at Howard University and the only radio station I listened to in D.C. was WHUR (Howard U radio), and the only record store I would shop at was the Soul Shack a few blocks from the White House in the opposite direction of Georgetown. So WHUR played the song quite a lot, and some mornings when I would drive my baby (4 year-old) sister to kindergarten, it would come up on the radio.

After a few times, she started singing along, and it was incredibly endearing.

Santana is another artist that resonates—I was a huge fan and loved his performance in Woodstock (the film). I also saw him play live, and I remember him walking down the aisle at the Rainbow, if I’m not mistaken, and thinking how very cool he was. When I met him at Island, introducing him to Salif Keita, I told him what a huge fan I was as a teen, and how it would’ve never occurred to me that I would actually meet him and talk to him one day. And then when we signed him at Polydor, it was another experience I won’t forget. I also loved Malo, his brother’s band in the 1970s, and it was also a thrill to meet Jorge Santana, who was now in his band. (I was saddened to hear of his death in 2020.

The Cranberries are important to me because of the relationship I had with Delores O’Riordan, which came about somewhat accidentally but that endured while I was at Island. As she and the band grew more famous and were selling out venues, the demands on her both in the US and internationally grew, and at one point she decided that she didn’t want to deal with anyone at her record company or its affiliates except me (and I had not signed them—they were signed out of our London office by Denny Cordell through his son Tarka). I’m not sure if it was just out of practicality (and Denny, their champion, had died in 1995), since I was the most senior creative executive at Island at the time, but if that was how it started we actually did develop a solid relationship and I really enjoyed her company. Especially pub crawling in Dublin.

U2 of course, resonate, again because of a personal relationship and a friendship with their longtime manager Paul McGuiness. We had, at times, a contentious relationship when things weren’t going well for them, or as well as they wanted, but in the end both Bono and Adam Clayton were kind to me and fun to be around, whether in NY, Antibes, Jamaica, or on tour. I chose Mary J. Blige’s version of their song “One”, because her contribution to the song lends it a gospel-like flavor, and given what it’s about, makes so much sense to me (apart from being beautiful and an amazing song that Johnny Cash also covered in his own unmistakably unique way).

My love of reggae emerged with hearing Bob Marley for the first time which made me look into what other different music was coming from Jamaica (I knew and liked Ska from living in London, and “Israelites”, by Desmond Dekker and the Aces was a huge hit that you couldn’t miss if you listened to Radio One). So I found over time other artists I liked, such as Gregory Isaacs, but when I started at Island and being with Chris in Jamaica, a whole world of music opened up to me that I hadn’t realized existed to the extent it did. Early in my career Chris sent me to D.C. to see about the possibility of acquiring or distributing Ras Records, which was a reggae label I didn’t know that was owned and run by Gary Himelfarb, with the name “Doctor Dread” that he chose to use professionally. We hit it off and had a number of meetings and even dinners, but in the end Chris decided to not pull the trigger. Gary wasn’t disappointed as he wasn’t even especially keen on selling, so he continued his label and we moved on with our own reggae artists.

When Chris began managing the Marley estate, he also made me the point person in NY as he was busy with hotels and other businesses, and so my appreciation for Bob, his family and the music just continued to grow.

The Playlist

Listen on Apple Music | Listen on Spotify

Dariush Rafiee: 1950s

Chuck Berry: 1958

Booker T: 1962

Lloyd Clarke: 1963

Barbara Lewis: 1963

Bob Dylan: 1965

Michel Polnareff: 1966

The Paragons: 1967

Rolling Stones (Sympathy for the Devil): 1968

Elvis: 1970

Don McClean: 1971

Curtis Mayfield: 1972

Bob Marley, Slave Driver: 1973

James Brown: 1973

Isaac Hayes: 1973

Barry White: 1973

Shusha: 1973

Marvin Gaye: 1973

Serge Gainsbourg: 1973

Cat Stevens: 1973

Lamont Dozier: 1974

Minnie Riperton: 1974

Blackbyrds: 1974

Bob Marley, No Woman (live): 1975

Tom Waits, Tom Traubert’s: 1976

Culture: 1977

Isley Brothers: 1977

Lee Scratch Perry, Dreadlocks: 1977

Lee Scratch Perry, Curly Locks: 1978

Black Uhuru: 1979

Van Morrison: 1979

Gap Band: 1979

Davitt Sigerson: 1980

Sugar Minott: 1981

Muddy Waters (live): 1981

Ernest Ranglin: 1983

Peter Tosh: 1983

Kid Creole: 1983

Big Youth: 1985

Tom Waits, Downtown Train: 1985

Pogues: 1986

Santana, Bella: 1987

Foundation: 1988

Kotch: 1988

Baaba Maal: 1989

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: 1990

Salif Keita: 1991

Leonard Cohen: 1992

Khaled: 1993

County Crows: 1993

Jah Wobble: 1994

Cranberries, I Can’t Be With You: 1994

Pulp: 1995

Tricky: 1995

Passengers: 1995

Cranberries, When You’re Gone: 1996

Dark Sun Riders: 1996

Ednaswap: 1997

Kid Loco: 1998

Mc Solaar: 1999

Ned Sublette: 1999

Johnny Cash: 2000

Mary J Blige: 2005

Cat Power, I Love You (Me Either): 2006

Lethal Bizzle: 2007

Eddie Vedder: 2007

Alpha Blondy: 2007

Yas: 2008

Fat Freddy’s Drop: 2009

Kanye: 2010

Alborosie (Zion Train): 2013

Lana Del Rey: 2013

Bruce Springsteen: 2014

Sogand: 2014

Santana, Suenos: 2016

Jackboys: 2025

Lisa O’Neill: 2025