00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Joe Jackson is an enigma. He showed up in seventy eight seventy nine on the UK's new wave scene, all nervous energy and biting wit with hits like is she really going out with him, putting him in the same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a lot of his peers stayed in that lane, Jackson kept moving into the jump blue swing of Jump and Jive, into the sophisticated, Latin tinged jazz sounds on night and day, into classical composition, into a music hall concept album under an alter ego named Max Champion, and so much more. He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness has probably cost him the kind of mainstream consistency that turns an artist into a household name. But I can't help but love the boldness of his approach, even if it's made him, over the course of his career, a little unknowable to fans. I was hoping by the end of a conversation he might be a little more knowable, and I don't know if that really happened, but I do think I have a bit of a better sense as to why He's maintained a sense of mystery throughout his career, and really, I think it's because he just doesn't take himself all that seriously. On today's episode, I speak with Joe Jackson about his new studio album, Hope and Fury and dig into some of the songwriting on it and some of his older albums. Plus, we discussed Joe's collaboration with his longtime, criminally underrated bass player Graham Maybe, and get into what makes comedy an important part of Joe's artistic sensibility. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my interview with Joe Jackson from Amazon Music Studio one twenty six grow Back. 00:02:14 Speaker 2: I forgot we did this question. 00:02:16 Speaker 1: This is pretty cool, amazing. 00:02:23 Speaker 3: Don't ask you want to think of you and I'm not give the answer. 00:02:26 Speaker 4: That you want. 00:02:27 Speaker 5: Mazing. 00:02:31 Speaker 2: Wow, I've got this girl. Huh. 00:02:35 Speaker 1: Such a great writ I don't even want to turn it off. 00:02:45 Speaker 2: Let me kurd light upould do it. I think he's thinking. 00:02:55 Speaker 6: And we're not talking to God. 00:02:57 Speaker 3: A little stay sister, find me to be your guy. Don't ask you want to think of you and I'm not give the answer that you want me. 00:03:31 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'll want to break it out. You gotta do it, it's all. Yeah, damn, it's weird. It's weird that you it's kind of strange that you picked that one that you did that. 00:03:50 Speaker 2: I always thought it could have been written about me, because like, I can't sing, I ain't pretty, and my legs are thin, so you know that fits. Yeah, I'd completely forgotten we did the version of that. Actually it's but it sort of has this Afro Cuban vibe going through it. So, I mean, if I ever do a cover version of something, it's because I can see a way to do it it's different to the original version. Yeah, I don't see any point in that. 00:04:16 Speaker 1: So you see, you definitely sense a way to do it different, But there's also probably something about it you sense that must feel familiar in some way or feel like it it fits also. 00:04:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose. So yeah, it's more about you know, can I see a different way to do it that's interesting? And can I can I sing it and actually capable of singing it? I mean that was hard to sing. 00:04:44 Speaker 1: Yeah, did you know that song from uh from one of First Way Back? 00:04:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean it wasn't something that's Uh, I mean, I don't I don't know. It's just I guess maybe I heard it on a radio somewhere or something and thought I could see a way. 00:04:59 Speaker 1: To do that. 00:04:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember. Now. It's kind of like a last Fleetwood Mac classic, you know. Yeah, I mean it's not what you think of when you think of Fleetwood makes. 00:05:08 Speaker 1: No not for a long time. It hasn't wrote. But Peter Green, who wrote that, was the you know, leading the band at the time. He did have a I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm just spacing this based on Santana taking or doing or a Black Magic Woman. Oh oh right, yeah, I was gonna say, oh, come on by t by doing Black Magic Woman, which you wrote. But I would feel like he had a bit of a Latin flair. 00:05:31 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:05:33 Speaker 1: Something. No, No, okay, you certainly do. 00:05:37 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:05:37 Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm a Latin music not Yeah. 00:05:40 Speaker 1: When did that start? 00:05:41 Speaker 2: I'm telling you exactly because I was in London in nineteen seventy eight something like that. It was around the time that I recorded my first album, Yeah, and I went into a second hand record shop. I saw this speed up LP. It was called Salsa Live by the Fania All stars, and I was intrigued by it because the cover art was a painting of Latin musicians standing on the platform in the New York subway. And this was in the seventies, and all the trains are covered in graffiti and stuff, and they looked like gangsters, you know, with their instrument cases and like big broad brimmed hats and stuff. And I thought, this looks really cool, and I took it home, listened to it, and I couldn't make sense of it. I couldn't understand the rhythms. They were alien to me. I was so fascinated by it. I started reaching out to everyone I knew in London, all the musicians I knew in London, Does anyone know any Latin percussionists, any Latin musicians who can kind of teach me about this music. And managed to find a couple of people, and that's where it started. And then when I got to New York, one of the things that I was most interested in was the Latin music scene. And so, you know, the first tours I ever did in the US, we would always be sort of based in New York and we would have days off, you know, like the early eighties and I would be going to Latin gigs wow, and most of my band and crew they wanted to go to CBGB's you know, which is great too, right, And they didn't get it at all. They thought it was crazy. But it was an amazing time for Latin music in New York. It was such a vibrant scene. I just loved it. 00:07:14 Speaker 1: Where would you go at that time for Latin music? 00:07:15 Speaker 2: If you remember, there was I mean I would go to places like the Corso Latin Bore Room one hundred and twenty fifth Street. And then there was a thing called Salsa meets Jazz Monday Nights at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village, which was amazing. They would have a couple of the top Latin bands in the city and then they would have guest jazz soloists playing with them, people like Stanley Turrentine and nat Adalie and you know, like really great players. That was incredible. I went every week. 00:07:43 Speaker 1: That's why I loved it. I never heard those guys do anything Latin. And you know, I can recall you know, it's pretty yeah, yeah, pretty think of him as being pretty smooth in terms of pretty soulful player. 00:07:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, but there would also be people like Pachito de Rivera, who's both Latin and a great jazz player, you know. Yea, But I saw so many great artists there. I mean everyone who was Ray Bareto was my favorite. I saw so many gigs. Barretto always had the greatest band. It was so exciting. Yeah, I couldn't understand why my peers were not into this music. Yeah, was anyway? 00:08:18 Speaker 1: Was there ever? I'm trying to. I mean, I guess it didn't really come around in popular music until like Miami Sound Machine or something. 00:08:25 Speaker 2: You know, probably you got a bit of it with Santana, I guess, But yeah, whose brother actually not a thing about Yes, brother was in a band that I think was signed of Fanya. Uh his brother was I think in that group, uh Mallow or something, And I think I think they were signed to Find You. But they were like more they were kind of like Santana, but even more like kind of more down the Latin. 00:08:49 Speaker 1: Rock niche than even Santana was. You know, But nothing from but find You didn't seem to really get too much traction in mainstream music, you know. 00:08:59 Speaker 2: But I mean, uh, yeah, if if you see mainstream as being Anglo American pop rock, which was most people did. 00:09:08 Speaker 1: But it is, but I don't know what it is. 00:09:11 Speaker 2: But I mean, you know, when I first started living in New York in the eighties, I was going to Latin gigs and jazz gigs all the time, and that, to me was the sound of New York, you know, to me it was it was a Latin and jazz town rather than a pop rock town. 00:09:26 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:09:28 Speaker 2: So that that's that was very much what fed into my album Night and Day, which I thought no one was going to like. Yeah, but it. 00:09:39 Speaker 1: Was a huge departure from the first three albums. 00:09:42 Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons I thought no one wouldn't like it. 00:09:45 Speaker 1: And it's looking in hindsight, it was a it was a quick you made that detour rap quick. I mean, it's the fourth album, but it's only three years later, in nineteen eighty one. 00:09:56 Speaker 2: I guess that album, Yeah, but years were years back then. Tell me about that, Well, they lasted a lot longer than they do now, you know, I mean distance between your third, first, and third and fourth albums. Yeah, looking back, it was just a few years. But at the time it didn't seem like, oh, it's you know, we made an album last week. Let's make another one this week. It didn't feel like that at the time. Yeah, and yet that's what you were doing. I mean the first two albums, well just came out in the same Yeah. Yeah recorded months of I mean fun we recorded in the summer of seventy eight and it came out in January seventy nine. 00:10:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:10:35 Speaker 2: From the second one, I can't remember when were recorded, but I think it came out in September seventy nine. Okay, but yeah, I mean who puts that two albums a year? The Beatles and the Beatles did yeah, you know, well back then people did. 00:10:46 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:10:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:47 Speaker 1: Was there a reason you did? Like, was there? 00:10:49 Speaker 2: No? It was just like, let's I weren't really thinking about that much. I just had enough songs for another album and everyone seemed to want to do it. Yeah. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: What was what was your relationship with A and M? Like at that time it was pretty good. 00:11:03 Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, when they were a pretty good, pretty good label at the time. 00:11:08 Speaker 1: Incredible. 00:11:10 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they had a lot of great people and it was a really different era when the record company made a difference. 00:11:18 Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also like it was that A and M was you know, it's like KRB Albert and Jerry Moss, that's the those are the founders. That's the A and M in it. And then you know, and it's a it's a substantial label, you know, And I don't know it was an independent and yet it wasn't independent, but because those guys were such record you know, record industry guys, but they were also musicians, but there were also originally did you meet them ever? 00:11:45 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:11:46 Speaker 1: What were they like? 00:11:49 Speaker 2: Jerry must seemed like a pretty cool guy. I mean I met him a few times. Herb I only met once or once or twice I think, and it just seemed like incredibly laid back. Yeah. I don't know how much they had to do with with my career, to be honest, I don't think they were the people most involved. 00:12:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting that also you were Courted the first album before The Police is for I mean the Police were label mates, yes, and their first album came out after it. Court is your first album. It came out before I thought it was. 00:12:22 Speaker 2: I don't remember, well, it. 00:12:23 Speaker 1: Came out before yours came out, but you recorded yours before it came out, and which is interesting just because it feels like they were sort of the. 00:12:33 Speaker 2: You know more about this than me, I'll just shut up and. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: You tell it like it is, I'll do about your career. 00:12:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not know that, but yeah, we were contemporaries and Squeeze as well. It was the other band that we're like. But like I said, time was was so much bigger than you know, the fact that someone's first album came out six months before or after mine might have seemed quite significant at the time. Yeah, it certainly doesn't, you know. 00:13:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess where I was going with the Police comment was and kind of I think most people's popular imaginations, like it felt like they were the Police were sort of the lead off to I'm sure it was happening already. You know, there was Madness and all those other groups that were sort of SKA tinged at the time. 00:13:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think their first time came out the same year as mine. I think Madness and the Specials. 00:13:27 Speaker 1: I think the special Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But in terms of in terms of I guess going back to popular music, I felt like the Police were sort of like the ones that sort of broke it that out of being local to whatever was happening. In the UK and made it feel worldwide, made it feel global or at least transcontinental. But it must have been, like you know, obviously, if you've recorded your first album before that came out, that was a thing that was brewing, right, that sort of SKA new wave. 00:14:00 Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think, like anyone else, I was influenced by what was going on around me. And I was in a certain place at a certain time, and I was, you know, twenty three years old. And even though I wanted to think that I was just being original and I wasn't part of a movement or you know that sort of stuff. You know, I think, yeah, I was very influenced by everything that was going on around me. And if I listened to my first album now, but not that I do, to be honest, but it just really sounds like London in nineteen seventy eight. You know, It's very much of its time and place, and I think you can't avoid that. 00:14:40 Speaker 1: But that wasn't the intention, you did, want to know, I mean, apart from. 00:14:42 Speaker 2: Her, Yeah, I felt like this is my thing and I don't want to be compared to anyone else, and you know, and I would do interviews in Spain or somewhere, and they'd say, so are you part of the new wave? And I'd say, what are you talking about? I don't even know what you're talking about. 00:14:59 Speaker 1: You know, that term was particularly triggering for a lot of artists, I think, you know. 00:15:06 Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like, you know, you don't want to feel like you just part of the cults, you know, ideology or something. You know, we all want to feel like we're brilliant originals. 00:15:16 Speaker 1: What was playing live like at that time? Was there? Who were you? Who would you have been playing with at that time, pre pre getting signed, pre your album? Were you playing out, playing live, working out those songs? 00:15:29 Speaker 2: Well, yeah, only a couple of pub gigs. I didn't have a regular band until I got the record deal because I couldn't afford to pay them. So there's basically the band that I made my demos with. You know, I called them up and said, hey, do you want to quit your whatever your job is and go on the road and we can just about afford to pay a living wage. So before that I was just doing any kind of gig I could get, and not with your not with the band, doing all kinds of stuff, you know, like I played in the Playboy Club and I played for a cabaret a duo called Coffee and Cream when I really cheesy. I did that for six months to save up money, you know. That's how I saved up money to make the demos that became my first album. 00:16:21 Speaker 1: Wait, were you in Coffee and Cream? 00:16:22 Speaker 2: I was the piano player. Don't shoot me. I'm only the piano player. Yeah, it was my choice, but I would just do anything, you know. Before that, I was in top forty cover bands and playing weddings and playing in restaurants and playing jazz gigs. Just I mean, it's really weird to think back to when I made my first album. I was only twenty three, and I felt like a veteran at that point. I mean, I did my first paying gig when I was sixteen, you know, so I was doing all kinds of gigs and I felt like sort of culmination of this long journey making an album. 00:17:04 Speaker 1: I was twenty three, sixteen or twenty three. It's it's it's substantial. 00:17:11 Speaker 2: Well again, when you're not age, it really is substantial. 00:17:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, super substantial. What was your like, what was your so if you're playing popular music at the time that what was your repertoire pre. 00:17:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know what whatever was in the charts, and just depending what kind of band it. 00:17:28 Speaker 1: Was, remember certain songs you would loath to have. 00:17:36 Speaker 2: I wasn't crazy about the Neil Diamond medley we did with Coffee and Cream. But you know, I don't think it's it's a bad thing to use the skills you have to make money, No, and also you get it. It's all experienced whatever you do, and and I think it it's a good groundwork. I think people don't have it so much anymore. But but you know, when you've gone on stage and had glasses thrown at you, buy an audience of skin heads and things like that, you know, it does kind of toughen you up a bit, prepare you for the long haul. And yeah, so I said to me, it sounds like they're seen in the Blues Brothers where they have to have chicken wire in front of the bed and they said, we longed for chicken wire, if only. 00:18:27 Speaker 1: There would have been an improvement. Yeah, what records were you listening to then? Formative Views that's sixteen to twenty three making the first album. 00:18:35 Speaker 2: What were you ingesting? Let me think, David Bowie Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Steely, Dan Little Feet, and I mean for a while, when I was like sixteen seventeen, I was into prog rock and I liked A Soft Machine was a favorite band, and anything kind of jazzy I liked as well, King Crimson and people like that. A lot of that stuff I don't really like now, not to be honest, but and reggae music. Bob Marley, you know in the late seventies that came that was huge in England at the time, all that music, So I got really into that. 00:19:13 Speaker 1: Was it like Clapton doing it that got it huge out there or was it legitimo was it already it was huge? 00:19:17 Speaker 2: Yeah, Bob Marty really broke broke through. And there was that Bob Marley Live album, which is a great live album. I think that that was a big hit. Suddenly it was all over the radio and it was It's just huge, and then everyone was, you know, every record company was signing reggae artists all of a sudden. 00:19:37 Speaker 1: And did you did you notice other people? Were you aware of the of the other like the Madness and all those other sky bands that were sort of cropping up around. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I remember going to see one of the Specialist first gigs in a pub in London was fantastic. It was packed. I remember saying to my friend, was with, these guys are going to be huge any they know which they were, you know, But Madness is a band that have really had longevity, and I think they're underrated actually. I mean they're very very popular in England especially, but I think, you know, there's there's a real depth of songwriting and musicianship there actually in some of their later stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm a fan. 00:20:21 Speaker 1: There is on your first few records too, and I feel like you maybe, I think I read that on your first few records you sort of embarrassed with the songs to a certain degree. 00:20:32 Speaker 2: What now I am? Now, Yeah, I mean some of those songs are pretty silly and pretty immature, I think, but that's you know, of course, that's what you get when you're twenty three. Some of the songs I still like can still play kind of cliche sort of just I mean, I became over the years as a writer much more particular about what I put out and much more critical of myself. It used to be like, well, I got an idea sort of knock it into some sort of shape recording, and that was it. 00:21:01 Speaker 1: You know. 00:21:02 Speaker 2: I didn't really think about it much. And there's a good side to that as well. But if you're going to keep going for decades, which I somehow managed to do, that's wasn't good enough for me in a way. I mean, nowadays, I'm my own worst critic. If I start working on something that starts to remind me of something I've heard before, you know, whether it's someone else's or mine, then it's scrap it, you know, start again, or twist it in some way. I read somewhere that when Bruce Springsteen released a Born in the USA album that he had sixty songs and it was a really difficult job to narrow it down to whatever it is, ten or whatever twelve on the album. I thought, my god, I can imagine being in that situation, having that many songs and finding it that hard to I mean, my latest album has the nine songs that's it, but. 00:21:55 Speaker 1: It sounds like there could have been many. 00:21:57 Speaker 2: But there was a lot of other like you know, was going down streets that turned out to be couldest acts you know, along the way. So half Wreckage of finished songs by the roadside along the way. 00:22:11 Speaker 1: Do you ever revive a bad idea in the end. Do you ever feel like you've okay, maybe I've fown that way too soon, or coming back to it and it ends up actually working out. 00:22:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and the opposite. You know, something I'm really excited about. This is a great song, and you know, I sort of live with it for a while and think nah, nah, and I might Actually, I mean, I've done things like scrap the whole lyric of a song and just put it aside, and then get an idea and start again with a different lyric. Finally it's a song. I mean, there's no real sort of pattern to any of it. Actually, how hard is that? 00:22:46 Speaker 1: Because I mean, you might, even if it's a bad lyric, you must, at some point, on some level muscle memory, even just at the muscle memory level, get. 00:22:54 Speaker 2: Set on the lyric even if it's bad, you know, yeah, but there'd be something about it that, you know, over time, I figure out what it is that's bothering me and why it's not good enough. You know, it's very hard to explain because it's not scientific. It's not you know, it's not an exact science, it's very much. I mean, I've been asked to you right from the head or from the heart, and it's neither. It's something else, and it's something like intuition. It's intuitive. So it's like a question of taste as well, you know, And so you can only rely on your own taste and your own intuition because you're the artist. That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah. 00:23:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, And you feel like you must feel then, like your taste has evolved quite a. 00:23:41 Speaker 2: Bit from Yeah, I mean, it does get harder to be as prolific as I was, for instance, back in the eighties, where I seem to be constantly recording new albums and touring, and from my point of view now, the quality of it is uneven. You know, I made at least three albums too many. 00:24:01 Speaker 1: I think which ones would not make the cut if you were now deciding. 00:24:05 Speaker 2: You know what, I don't want to say because some so someone will say to me, oh, this album of yours, bloke, it's my favorite album. I love it. What am I going to say? No, you're wrong. 00:24:17 Speaker 7: You know. 00:24:19 Speaker 2: If someone likes it, then great, but just for me. But because I'm entitled to an opinion, about it too. Yeah, right, And some of the albums are better than others just for my own taste, but I don't want to spoil anyone else's enjoyment of any of it. 00:24:36 Speaker 1: What about musically, like stepping out once you once you get to there, you're really you're you're really stretching out musically. 00:24:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, that album in general, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just sort of it was really kind of starting a new chapter where I feel like I was being more myself and not so much influenced by what was going on around me at the time. And and like I said, it was bringing in a lot of those influences which I thought were more New York influences of jazz and Latin music rather than rock and roll. And even leaving out the guitars, I still meet people who say there were no guitars on night and day? Really, And I said, well, did you hear any that no one seemed to notice? Which is funny. Had this idea of it's just it's all keyboards and percussion, And like I said, I didn't think anyone was going to like it. I thought it would be a really hard sell, and I was going to do it anyway. Definitely stretching out musically because I was capable of that, you know, I mean on the first couple of hours, was a case of deliberately simplifying it, which a lot of people were doing at the time. You know, it felt like the thing to do at the time. Even if you were you could be a very good musician, but you'd play really simple deliberately, right, you know. I mean my band was a pretty damn good band, you know, but it was just keep it really really simple. And I just stopped even thinking about that. 00:26:09 Speaker 1: That was that likely a reaction to the progra that was popular and all that, you know, sort of being tired of it, people being sort of probably tired of the frips of the world. 00:26:18 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that going back, yeah, to the beginnings of punk and all that. Yeah, it was, And at the time I thought it was all great fun. I didn't take it seriously at all. It just punk bands just made me laugh, so I thought it was great. Really. I had I once had a beer with Joe's Strauma from The Clash, who was a great guy, and we talked about how how critics especially lacking and they lacked the humor a gene, you know, he was saying, how that when when they were writing songs for the Clash, him and Mick Jones, they would be cracking each other up because they were, as we say in England, taking the piss, you know, mocking making fun of and then the reviews were come out excororating social political anger and protesting this, and they'd be laughing for more. I was like, yes, exactly, I felt exactly the same way. It was amazing how seriously it was all taken. 00:27:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, and people critics that you were taking yourself seriously a lot often right, like you right. 00:27:26 Speaker 2: Well, they have no sense of humor. It's been my observation over the years. It's the one thing that they missed consistently. Yeah, as you know, they take everything at face value and take it very seriously. It's funny. 00:27:41 Speaker 1: Would you read reviews then or now? 00:27:44 Speaker 2: Back then I would, Yeah, Nowadays I don't. I avoid them Yeah yeah, yeah, because that could just drive you crazy. Yeah. If you pay too much attention to any of that stuff, you they're not not being able to create anything. Yeah. 00:27:58 Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Joe Jackson. I always found it funny, you know, critics just the as if new wave wasn't bad enough a term, it's like, and then critics moved on to some point. 00:28:14 Speaker 2: Like, you know, like sophistic pop okay, sophisto pop likes pretty pullity and you okay, and and uh it was. 00:28:24 Speaker 1: I think they threw in, who's the band that made that? Uh Steve, Steve McQueen was the Prefabs, pre Fab Sprout. Yeah, and they were great. 00:28:35 Speaker 2: I mean, album was great. 00:28:36 Speaker 1: That was amazing. But then you know their clients fist pop pop sound terrible. You know, it's like it's a terrible name. 00:28:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it is. 00:28:48 Speaker 1: I guess I should bring up at this point that Sonny Rollins just died, yes, ninety six or something, it was ninety five, ninety six. Yeah, he got, he gotn't played for quite quite a while. He was still playing a still sorry. 00:29:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw him again, Like going back to the days when I was first living in New York in the eighties, I saw Sonny Rollins perform a couple of times, and I was absolutely blown away he had been back then, you know. I mean one of the shows that I saw he did was one of the most powerful performances I've ever seen, you know, by by a jazz musicians. Certainly my hair was standing on it. You know, he was really special. 00:29:25 Speaker 1: Wow, what do you know? What? Where was it? Do you remember? 00:29:29 Speaker 2: Yeah? It was the bottom Line, which was a great venue. It was long gone unfortunately. 00:29:34 Speaker 1: Is that it was that because I know you also you inspired for Body and Saul by his volume. 00:29:42 Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't It was just, you know, we were trying to think of a cover concept and we felt we tried something with that classic blue note look, sort of homage to that, which other people have done since then. Maybe they had done before then, but if so, I wasn't aware of it. But it was more just just the look of it, you know. It wasn't just the fact that I was a fan of Sonny your Eyes. 00:30:09 Speaker 1: It's still an amazing album cover. 00:30:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. A few years later, Rolling Stone published a little thing with they put the Sunny Rollins album in Mind side by side. They busted me, you know, apparently I ripped it off and they're revealing to the world this terrible ripoff that I did. 00:30:29 Speaker 1: Me play something from the new album any particular song you like off the album? Do you have a favorite? 00:30:36 Speaker 2: No? I would never even if I did. I wouldn't tell you. But now I'm always reluctant to pick favorites. I feel like that's not my job. But if I didn't really like every track, I wouldn't put it out that way I feel about it. 00:30:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm play this made God laugh as. 00:31:00 Speaker 8: Everything still side, which means you never know what's coming next. 00:31:09 Speaker 1: Of luck, the stroke of ten, the freaking, the flash of fame. 00:31:16 Speaker 4: So now down. 00:31:18 Speaker 7: But that's not to it. 00:31:20 Speaker 4: To listen to why the wise man said another day another song, SA say where you could be wrong? 00:31:33 Speaker 6: You made shot life when you told in your pants. 00:31:39 Speaker 7: Come on, you know it's true, and you make shot not. 00:31:44 Speaker 6: When you made you out of your pance moreful you. 00:32:00 Speaker 1: So I love the I love the It's a great song and you celebrate on it. It's also a great performance by your bass player by Grant. 00:32:07 Speaker 2: Oh It's yeah, Well he's always great, Gray. 00:32:09 Speaker 1: I mean that I would say that sounds amazing, isn't it. I want to ask you about him? But yeah, what one did? What was the genesis of that song? 00:32:20 Speaker 2: It was a quote that I read somewhere and I can't remember who who it was, but they said, if you want to make the God's laugh, tell them your plans. And I thought that was really interesting. The more I thought about it, and more I thought it was a happy thought, because you know, we all need to figure out that we can't control everything. And the sooner you realize that, the better, because it makes life less stressful and generally, you know, nicer if you can do that. It's funny because yeah, there's been a couple of people interpreted as a sad song, and I don't think it is at all. But that was the origin of it actually, after I had written the song, and and by the way, no song is all about the lyrics. It's just that that's what we all end up talking about, you know. But having written a song, I decided to try and find out where i'd heard this quote. And turns out Woody Allen said something very similar, but he got it from an old Yiddish proverb which I'm not going to try to say in Yiddish, but it because man plans and God laughs, you know. So it's been around for a while, this idea. 00:33:31 Speaker 1: Are you always aware of the sort of the meta text of a set of lyrics that you write or. 00:33:39 Speaker 2: Meta text? Do I have meta texts? I'm not sure, there's always layers to it. I find it very difficult to I mean, I don't write I don't want to write songs that are didactic telling you what to think. You know, this is that what it is. And like I said, songs are seventy percent music anyway. Yeah, I think, you know, for me anyway, I mean, I think there's a tradition of songwriting that's different that it's more about storytelling, it's more about lyrics. It's more of a folk tradition. That's not really what I do. And I think for the most part, it's the music that really moves people, and the words kind of tag along afterwards, and sometimes they're you know, worth thinking about. I mean, I certainly try to write the best lyrics I can, but it's I'm really primarily a music guy. 00:34:41 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people listen for different things. Some people are lyrics people, some people are I tend not to be, and yeah, I don't either. I kind of take in the whole thing, you know. Yeah, and if the lyrics are particularly interesting, they'll draw me in at some point, and bad lyrics can probably ruin out an otherwise a good song. 00:35:03 Speaker 2: No. On the contrary, this is one of the reasons I think music is more important the lyrics, because there's a lot of songs I really like that. If I really think about the lyrics, they're pretty stupid. It don't even make sense or anything. Not to mention the fact that there's a lot of music I really love, where the words are in a language that I have no idea about. 00:35:22 Speaker 1: What's often. 00:35:24 Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a good thing. 00:35:26 Speaker 1: Removes that he's sort of critical. 00:35:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, the lyrics might be terrible. I might be listening to some music from Serbia. You know it was the worst lyrics ever. I would never know. I'm just enjoyed it. 00:35:37 Speaker 1: And sometimes you know, like the class like just like Joe, and then we're singing, you know, like such an accent did make every other word. 00:35:46 Speaker 2: That's the thing I could never understand about Shane mc gowan, because he wrote great lyrics and when he sang, you couldn't understand a word. Amazing. 00:35:55 Speaker 1: I know, I know, I didn't know he was even revered as a songwriter until he passed away, and then all of a sudden it became. 00:36:01 Speaker 2: Really turn to songwriter reed. But it was I mean I envied him in a way because I saw the poke's live once and I think he sang on about three songs and he would say thank you very much, and everyone would cheers, like, yeah, good old drunk, shambolic Shane, not making any sense. We love it, you know, I thought, oh, that's a good gig. 00:36:26 Speaker 1: Did you ever did you ever get to know him? Or no? No, no, did you get did you ever get to know many peers or like as in terms of beyond you know you mentioned having a beer. 00:36:36 Speaker 2: I mean I met quite a few people. Andy Partriy is just a bit of a bit of a friend of XTC, someone that I think you have a lot in common with someone no one ever compares me to musically very different. No, I think we have a lot in common. Really, yeah, yeah, and yeah Joe's trauma was was a great guy. I was really sad when he died. I can't believe he's actually not with us still. But I can't say, you know, it's I don't hang out up with a whole bunch of my peers. I'm not friends with these people. I mean, I don't mean that in a dismissive what it's just not the way it's turned out. 00:37:18 Speaker 1: What do you find yourself listening to primarily these days. 00:37:22 Speaker 2: Whole kinds of stuff. I'm really all over the map, a lot of jazz, a lot of Latin music. Still listening to a lot of music from Colombia, which I think some really interesting music coming out Columbia. I got into early jazz in recent years, so listening to people like Rahines, Sydney Beshet, Jery Rollmorton. Late twenties, early thirties jazz I really love and late fifties early sixties jazz are the two eras that I really love. But I mean, I don't hear a lot of interesting stuff in the pop rock, the Anglo American pop rock world. Yeah, I don't think it's that great. I mean there's some things from outside of the Anglo American sphere, you know. Yeah, some interesting music from I mean like Stromai from Belgium. I think it's really cool. Wow. Yeah, you know, that's a band from Berlin called Zed. I really like, you know, Rosalia from Spain is really interesting. So there's some some some you know, original things breaks through here and there. 00:38:27 Speaker 1: I don't know there was the band the band was sorry, was the band from Berlin? You said, Okay, I don't know, Z. But the other two Stroma and Rosalie. I mean they're they're really I don't want to say I'm on guard, but they do things outside of what they're contemporaries that's interested in their their sort of vocabulary as musicians seems extra you know, extra extraordinary perhaps, so. 00:38:53 Speaker 2: That must be with Draji to that, right, Yeah, it feels very different, right, It's not just something that you can easily put a label on and you know, file it and it's this, this, this, and it's for these people and that's more interesting area. But it's harder to pin it down. Yeah, in just a minute, we'll be back with more from Joe Jackson. It's funny that early on there was this sort of keep it simple philosophy. Yeah, you eventually ditch it and then it really is. So it feels like, you know, in a weird way. Probably that's probably what you heard in the prog rock when you were young that you enjoyed, even though you don't like it now the presentation of it maybe. But yeah, well this goes back to when I was, you know, fifteen or something like this, and I because it's because I had a classical training, you know, so I learned to read music when I was eleven, and it's no big deal, you know, So I think that I kind of maybe there was a couple of years where I turned my nose up at pop music, and but then I started to get interested in it again. And the things that interested me were the things that I thought were musically more sophisticated. But then after a while there were things like people like David Bowie. You know that that would have brought me back more towards pop music. 00:40:21 Speaker 1: Because it blended a bit of the sophistication of. 00:40:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also started to think, well, you know, I don't want to be stuck up about anything. I mean, all kinds of music, can you have something good about them? So I think that's been my attitude ever since. 00:40:33 Speaker 1: Do you keep up with your sort of classical training? Is that as a muscle that you've continued to I think it's just kind of part of the arsenal of something. 00:40:42 Speaker 2: It's just in there. So do you practice practice a lot? I play quite a lot, so I guess it's all practicing in a way. YEA, yeah, I mean I don't practice scales and stuff like that for hours like I did when I was a teenager, but and you what will. 00:41:03 Speaker 1: You pick up like a piece you haven't played and just try to get through it occasionally. 00:41:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, one's the last. I mean did so it's kind of cool. Well, I'm not recently, to be honest. I mean technically I was probably much better at eighteen than I am now. Yeah, But in terms of being able to improvise and be creative at the keyboard, I was not very good then. I think I'm still getting better at that. 00:41:30 Speaker 1: So you weren't early on, you weren't good at improvising. 00:41:33 Speaker 2: I mean I tried, you know, but I think I've gotten better, but I think I'm still learning. I think my playing is still still getting better. Yeah. 00:41:43 Speaker 1: Yeah, that must have been. It must have been great then being around guys like her and Jerry Marson. I guess Quincy Jones would have been at A and M at that time, or at least. 00:41:52 Speaker 2: I mean, I wasn't hanging out with these people, but I mean I was aware that I was with a fairly cool record label, you know, and other acts that I liked. I like Squeeze quite a lot, and some of the things that were really interesting I picked up on a M, like they had yellow Magic orchestra from Japan. I remember picking up a couple of their records from the A and M officers and really enjoyed them. 00:42:17 Speaker 1: I don't know they're on an MS. Yeah, how did you find your guys? How did you find your band? 00:42:26 Speaker 2: Well, they were local guys. The bass players of the drummer Graham maybe Dave Olton. We're local guys that, I mean. Graham I met when I was eighteen or something, so we were playing in different kinds of bands together, and Dave Olton was playing with, you know, other people I knew and you know, so we all grew up in the same area around Portsmouth on the south coast of England. But by the time I made my first album, I was living in London and Gary the guitarist, was in London, who was someone that I met then. So yeah, it was just a kind of pretty organic kind of thing. 00:43:04 Speaker 1: It's pretty wild that those guys were just around and I mean they were they're really great players. Yeah, did they have him? Did they have their own things going on? 00:43:14 Speaker 2: What were there? 00:43:15 Speaker 1: What were they at when you kind of fot were they were they? What were their ambitions? 00:43:20 Speaker 2: Just I don't know what Actually, you have to ask them. I suppose just doing gigs, whatever gigs they could get, and doing part time jobs and scraping by. 00:43:29 Speaker 1: And how do you typically work with them? 00:43:33 Speaker 3: Dave? 00:43:33 Speaker 1: Dave's still around often, right, not always, but I mean, well. 00:43:38 Speaker 2: He hasn't wanted to tour for quite a long time. Yeah, he's kind of was. I mean the reason I broke up my first man was because he didn't want to tour anymore. 00:43:48 Speaker 1: Is that what happened? 00:43:49 Speaker 2: Yeah, And rather than just replace him and carry on, I thought, well, maybe it's time for a break, take some time off and rethink. But he came back on board later and we did a couple more albums and tours together, and then he kind of dropped out again. So I've had a sort of procession of drummers, some eight ones actually, so Doug Yol, who's I'm working with now, been working together for about ten years. 00:44:16 Speaker 1: How does it work when you bring something to your band it? How do you work with them? 00:44:21 Speaker 2: How do you work Make a demo of some sort and say we'll listen to this and kind of get familiar with it, learn the chord changes, learn learn the parts. In some cases there'll be things that that really suit them and sound great, and other times it doesn't really work and we have to negotiate. So it's kind of like, well, that doesn't seem to work for you, what can you do that's along the same lines, And so it becomes collaborative to a certain extent, but I have the final say because someone has to and it should be the guy whose names on the record. So people have asked me, as you're burning democracy, and it's not as a dictatorship actually, but it's what they call it nine dictatorship where the dictator is not a bad. 00:45:11 Speaker 1: Guy anti. 00:45:15 Speaker 2: Sir? 00:45:16 Speaker 1: Can we please change this? Can I change this part? It's not suitable. I mean, so you you have the demo, it's pretty fleshed out, and they mostly learn it how you presented it. 00:45:27 Speaker 2: But there's always some things that change along the way. And I quite enjoy that that process because I do want people to feel like they're involved in it and they're not just you know, like session guys or something. 00:45:38 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:45:40 Speaker 2: I'm very particular about picking the people who I like their personality, both as people and as players, you know, and trying to find ways to especially in a live situation. I was trying to find ways to make everyone in the band shine, you know, give each player share of the spotlight. Yeah, that's one of the really fun things about playing live. I think. 00:46:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, the begs parts, those they're not that fleshed, are they are the flesh? 00:46:10 Speaker 2: Some of them are, Yeah, some of them are. But there's Yeah, there's this baselines part of the song as I conceived it, you know, so so I you know, some of the baselines are what I've written. Some of them are Graham doing something along the lines that I ask him to do, because I know him well enough that he's generally going to come up with something I like. Yeah, so, and if I don't like it, I'll tell him that that's my prerogative. But yeah, it's it's hard to explain it because the question comes up quite a lot, you know, how much, say, do the musicians have in the creation of their own parts? And it's it's not like black and white, This is kind of somewhere in the middle. How much does a song come to you when when fully formed? How much do you kind of hear the full thing a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah, I don't know why, but I don't think in terms of well, I have this few cores and what do I do now? 00:47:10 Speaker 7: You know? 00:47:10 Speaker 2: I tend to sort of hear whole the whole kind of sound world in my head if you like, hard to describe with us sounding a bit kind of pretentious. 00:47:21 Speaker 1: Let's play. Maybe I'm not sorry for sure, it's im agreeable. Whatever you whatever you like, Okay. 00:47:40 Speaker 6: Hello cruel mode. I'm not going away, so I might as well at my side. 00:47:52 Speaker 8: For other dancer I never gave, and for every damn wild That'll failed to say, for every little fat I didn't. 00:48:06 Speaker 6: Chase, for every little fool just like my face, I know that you. 00:48:18 Speaker 1: Die, I know that you want it. I know that you need leave it alone. 00:48:27 Speaker 6: Because I'm not gonna say that I'm not sorry. 00:48:31 Speaker 1: I'm not sorry at all. 00:48:35 Speaker 2: I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry at. 00:48:38 Speaker 1: All for every cause. 00:48:51 Speaker 7: That I didn't support in any love that I broke saying what I thought for every California dude I let the love to observe. 00:49:06 Speaker 1: I had an attitude I feel seen. 00:49:14 Speaker 7: For every FLYNT choose to fly and all the crocodilechies. 00:49:19 Speaker 6: I refuse to cry. 00:49:28 Speaker 5: That you. 00:49:31 Speaker 1: You so. 00:49:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saying no, it's funny to because I haven't actually listened to that for a while and and because we've been were what is it, twelve shows into our tour now, and we're playing this song live and it sounds different. 00:49:51 Speaker 1: How's it change? 00:49:52 Speaker 2: Well, it's things just just sound different, you know. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, they're here now, and I think, well, the bass sounds different, the drums sound different, the balance between the guitar and the keyboard sounds different. But in a way that's we're not it. We're not really changed the song, you know. But yeah, it's funny. It's just hard to explain. It just takes on a different life live. 00:50:17 Speaker 1: I think, does it feel good to hear it the original way? 00:50:20 Speaker 6: Yeah? 00:50:20 Speaker 2: I think that's pretty good. 00:50:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:50:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think we're doing some little different things to it now. Yeah yeah. Interesting? 00:50:29 Speaker 1: Is that kind of Is that worth investigating for you? 00:50:31 Speaker 8: Ever? 00:50:31 Speaker 1: That will have? The way a song changes live, I. 00:50:35 Speaker 2: Don't know, it just sort of evolves. I Mean, one thing I do find is that very often things get better as a tour goes on, and you think, oh, I wish we could record the album now. And I actually did that once on an album called Fool for a few years ago. That's what we actually did. Finally, we did a one month tour where we played all the new songs, and then the idea was wherever we finished up, assuming it was somewhere where there was a studio, you know, the day after the Life Our show, we would go in the studio and record the album. It turned out to be Boise, Idaho, which I love because everyone was saying, what the hell are you doing recording an album there? It's actually not a bad place. We did the album in a week, wow, you know, did some of the vocals later in New York and mixed it in New York. But that was great. But it's so logistically so hard to do that. So this album was quite different because so we actually I did some demos for it that turned out really well, and we ended up using a lot of the demo tracks on it, including some of the lead vocals, which I didn't expect, you know, I thought I was going to have to do them all over again. But I was listening to them and thinking, wait a minute, I don't know how to do this any better, so we may as well keep it. So we saved some time. I don't like to spend a lot of time in the studio anyway always or just because generally I don't know. So some of the lead vocals on there are from Yeah, the demo vocals, that's that's amazing, but you know, I couldn't figure out why you're do them any better. 00:52:14 Speaker 1: That's great though. A lot of times I hear, you know, people will down the line put out a demo of a song, yeah, and. 00:52:22 Speaker 2: You're here like, wow, the demo is actually. 00:52:24 Speaker 1: Better than that, you know, But I think it's maybe hard to believe that. 00:52:27 Speaker 2: For something else, right, you know, But it's very interesting of what happens sometimes if you if you don't have much time and you've got to just get it done and not be too fussy, and you're telling yourself, well, it's only a demo anyway, and I guess that in that process you're kind of relaxed in a way, but at the same time you're not you're not wasting any time, so you kind of, whether you realize it or not, you're actually zeroing in on what's important, which you can lose sight of if you've been too long in the studio, which a lot of people do. So I think it's quite an interesting lesson in there somewhere. 00:53:03 Speaker 1: Yeah, that song I'm Not Sorry musically pretty cool, Yeah, did it. But it's cool because it's because there's an aggressiveness to it. But then there's you know, the sort of like Latin harmonic thing going on. And usually those two things aren't aren't melded together. But that's that's even in your music, those things, because there's songs that are viewers that feel acerbic and have like a more of a that kind of aggressive feel, and then there's songs that are of course have had Latin grooves. But it's it feels rare that those two things kind of converge. 00:53:44 Speaker 3: You know. 00:53:45 Speaker 2: That's an interesting angle. I think maybe because it's it's actually quite humorous, you know. I mean, it strikes some people as being angry, but it's it's really more more humorous. There's a bit of a kind of you know, deffun attitude it. I mean, it's very different, and it's a bit of a kind of anti cancel culture sort of idea. You know, I quite like the idea just saying, you know, I'm not sorry, whatever it is. If you've had some problem with me, I'm not sorry. And there's a line in the song that goes, don't apologize to someone who just wants to make you their bitch. You know. It's like the last thing you should do is apologize. So that's that's the message, but it's I think done in a rather humorous way rather than an angry way. There's one song on the album I'm I'm not going to say it's my favorite, but I'm particularly proud of in certain ways. It's called an End of the Pier and the idea that I had for the song, I got to a point where I thought it's over ambitious. I don't think I could pull this off. And I more or less, you know, I might be exaggerating a bit, but like shut myself in a room for a week and you know, with a rhyming dictionary and a phosaurus, and just worked on it and reworks it and reworks it until I thought, wait a minute, yeah it works. I did pull it off. Wow. 00:55:16 Speaker 1: So I. 00:55:19 Speaker 2: You know, if you want to know, you haven't asked. If you want to know my favorite lyricist, there are people like I Regressing, Johnny Mercer, Lorenz Hart, Colporter, you know, all those guys just just the the the brilliance of the wordplay and I just love that, you know, and the wit I love so. I like the idea of being a craftsman when it comes to, you know, crafting the words of the song, even though I'm saying that they're not as important as the music. Ultimately, I don't think they are. It's the music that still is what moves you. I think. 00:56:03 Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting though, But those guys like Johnny Mercer and that like they are, you know, there's a lot of clever world but they're fairly earnest songwriters. 00:56:12 Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, but they also can be very witty and you know, very funny, which I think is really lacking in a lot of a lot of songwriting. Yeah. 00:56:22 Speaker 1: Can we talk about the Duke Ellington album that you did? 00:56:25 Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, what made you? 00:56:27 Speaker 1: What brat can you do? That was about twenty twelve, I think, yes, I think it was. You did a Duke album. Yeah, and it's pretty cool. 00:56:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really proud of it. And it actually is a Joe Jackson album, you know. I mean, I I did the arrangements, I was the producer, I did the keyboard playing, programming, I did some of the vocals. The only thing I didn't do was write the original source material. Yeah, you know, right, yeah, So it was now idea I had for a long time because I'm a huge fan of Ellington and he is. One of the reasons that he's inspiring to me is because of the way that he constantly reworked his own material, different versions of his own songs, which I've always done. It's one of the things that keeps things interesting, you know, touring after so many years. 00:57:18 Speaker 1: Even the classic to take the A Train, it's like there's yeah, there's many versions. 00:57:21 Speaker 2: Yea, many versions of everything. For a long time, I'd had ideas about what you could do this Ellington tune with this kind of nomraigement whatever, And I can't remember at what point I said, you know, I want to try and do a whole project of this. And then I started to make some rules for myself, because this is one of the things you have to do to create anything, is to set limits. You can't be limitless, you know, it doesn't work. So one of my rules was no horns, because I mean, I want to pay tribute to Ellington, not compete with answer, right, So there's no horns, and none of the songs have a traditional swing rhythm, you know, so they're all different grooves and different kinds of sounds. 00:58:08 Speaker 1: Was that a struggle playing to the rhythm session that you're going to play some tunes naturally? 00:58:13 Speaker 2: No, which is crazy to say, Yeah, but that was the whole idea. And sometimes if you give yourself the guidelines, that's actually inspiring. It's not limiting. You know, it opens up possibilities. You know, seems contradictory, but it doesn't close down possibilities. And so I found myself of thinking, well, what other directions could we take this? I mean, Caravan, for instance, is sung by sus Sandy Him who's a singer from Iran, and as she did the translation of the lyrics into Farsi. So you know, I thought that was such a cool idea. I mean, no one had done that, but it seemed to me, in a way an obvious thing to do. And again, Perdido, I had this idea of it having a kind of Brazilian groove. And there was a band from Holland I really like called Zuko one oh three with a Brazilian singer Lillian Vera, who also did the translation into Portuguese of the lyrics. You know, So so it was like let's just try just doing all kinds of different things with Ellington that hadn't been done before, and different kinds of grooves using electric guitar and electric violin and and just you're getting away from the horns. And I think it turned out great, and I'm very, very proud of the album. Actually, yeah, I'm sure a lot of people didn't quite know what to make of it, but there you go. 00:59:42 Speaker 1: I think that's fine. It kind of reminded there was like Mingus at some point put out an album where he was like a lot of his sort of more well known tunes, but there was like you know, with with a band that was not really fit, not not fit, but now she would think, you know, it was like there was like a I think it was in the mid seventies, and there was like a bit of a shredder of a guitar player doing like pork you know, good bye porn and things. It's like, yeah, it was kind of kind of like defamed the songs, but in yeah, I'm sure, you know, critically defamed the songs. But it's kind of interesting. You know, let's you hear jazz in this kind of interesting modern context, right and putting caravan back in like into like a Middle Eastern sort of context. Is interesting too, because that's obviously the inspiration for the melody and things as it driven you crazy that I mean, I feel like for a lot of years, a lot of decades, you've you've been ducking into jazz, yeah, and making like really great records based around jazz tunes or jazz arrangements, and it doesn't stick in the sense of when people think Joe Jackson, they don't necessarily think jazzy. 01:00:55 Speaker 2: I'm not a jazz musician. I'm a jazz fan, and I can fake it a bit. I can play decent jazz piano, but I'm not gonna, you know, go up against the people who devote their whole lives to playing jazz piano, you know what I mean. So yeah, I'm I'm a I'm a jazz fan, and I like bringing in different influences and seeing what you can fit with what other you know, which pieces of the jigsaw you can fit to which other pieces. I mean, I think that's kind of what I do. You know, I don't I can't really staying in a very specific genre. And it's not a decision, you know, it's just the way it comes out. The way it comes out comes from who you are, and you know, so I'm just someone who's had very very broad musical experience and interest, and so what interests me is is finding ways to put these different things together in a way that works. That's yeah, I mean that probably sums it up as good as anything. 01:02:01 Speaker 1: It feels like I feel, it feels like a good summation of all the most of your work, you know. 01:02:06 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's almost it's kind of like being a co largist rather than a portrait painter or a landscape pounds paint or something like that. Maybe. 01:02:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, So you're twelve dates and doing eighty date tour. Roughly twelve dates and an eighty date tour. 01:02:20 Speaker 2: I think if if you put the North American tour or Europeans altogether, it's about eighty shows. Yeah, I think we're about twelve shows in point. 01:02:28 Speaker 1: Yes, I feel dancing. 01:02:32 Speaker 2: If I thought about it, it probably would try not to think about it. I mean, really it sounds cheesy, but on the road it's just you have to just concentrate on today. But you just think about today. I don't think about the gigs. We already did or what we're doing tomorrow. It's just really concentrate on today and it's going great, and it's we're at that kind of magic point of the tour where we got over some of the initial nerves and glitches and so on, and we're really enjoying it and it's just getting better. 01:03:00 Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah. Do you what makes a good show for you? 01:03:05 Speaker 3: Like? 01:03:05 Speaker 2: Do you feel like it? 01:03:07 Speaker 1: How do you what makes a good show for versus a bad show? 01:03:10 Speaker 2: Well? I think it goes with that saying that it would be a show where I feel like I performed well and the band performed well and we didn't screw everything up. But beyond that, it's just something you can't define. It's magic. It really is magic. It's something that happens between between the band and the audience and everyone and some nights it's just it's magic. I can't explain it any better than that, and that's why it's great. 01:03:40 Speaker 1: Do you do you have to think about the audience in terms of set list? 01:03:42 Speaker 2: Do you do? Oh? Yeah, I try to be as objective as I possibly can. But how will this come across, you know, to someone sitting in the you know, the twentieth Rowe. I'm always thinking like that. 01:03:56 Speaker 1: That's amazing. I'm excited to come out tomorrow smart. 01:04:01 Speaker 2: I believe that. 01:04:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, tomorrow, they see you guys. 01:04:04 Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, it should be good. That's a good venue, played a couple of times before, so it should be good. 01:04:11 Speaker 1: I'm excited. Man. Quite a different attitude on I'm Not Sorry that on Battleground. 01:04:18 Speaker 2: Oh oh god. Yeah, well that's one of those songs I'd rather forget big. 01:04:25 Speaker 1: Was it ernest at the time or was at the time, And yeah, I. 01:04:29 Speaker 2: Guess it was. But so that was a that was well, you dragged it out of me, know that. That's one of the albums that I don't think is one of my best. Was Beat Crazy because the first two albums are basically the same album. You know, Really Be Crazy was kind of like trying to mix it up and do something a bit different, but without really quite knowing where I was going. So it's a bit of a confused album. I think he's got some interesting ideas on it, you know, some good bits, but I don't think it worked very well. I think that was probably another reason why when Dave the Drummer wanted to leave that I decided to kind of just break out the band and rethink rather than just kind of carry on. 01:05:12 Speaker 1: You realized it wasn't gonna that was broken. I wasn't gonna get better in that form. Yeah, at least at that point. 01:05:17 Speaker 2: I mean, we we got back together again twenty years later or whatever it was to do the four album, which was actually the best album we've made as a band. I think it's a good album. You know, it's a good it does. I mean, it's just it could you can't compete with nostalgia. That's the thing. I mean a lot of people said, well it's good, but although it's not as good as look sharp though, you know, well, yeah, they don't want it to be. That's good in a way. 01:05:42 Speaker 1: You know, it's hard, Like you say, it's hard, just too many memories built up. 01:05:46 Speaker 2: And you can't compete with that. But I mean as an album of songs and the playing the band was, you know, playing much better. And I think it's a good album. 01:05:56 Speaker 1: Yeah right, we hold on, We'll hold on, We'll play I guess do do do y fabulous people? 01:06:05 Speaker 2: That's good. 01:06:13 Speaker 1: This is why I shout and making instead over. I was taking my time. 01:06:17 Speaker 4: I've joked in the bag. 01:06:20 Speaker 1: This is why they're using bacon. 01:06:22 Speaker 8: The kind of stuff is making me fatter about the day, right right right, Coming from the song. 01:06:34 Speaker 1: I grave and then I'm not avery one. 01:06:42 Speaker 6: We're out of the from the mirror. It's getting out of a clearer They. 01:06:45 Speaker 2: Saying is to laugh. 01:06:48 Speaker 1: This is the place I'm stuck with. I wish you lots of luck with your iPhones over the grass, Yeah, I think again, written. 01:07:00 Speaker 2: Chicily. Yeah, I mean that's a really silly song. Yeah, it actually came came to me in a dream. Doesn't that sound like the pretentious artists. I woke up one morning and I head, oh, do do do do? Dude are stuck in my head and I thought, what the hell is that? That's really dopey, but it's stuck with me, and I thought, maybe it's a really silly song and what the hell is it? And then I thought, do ray Me. Oh, I wouldn't if I could do a dough ray me song. That's different too, but use different rhymes and you know meanings to dough a deer a female deer, right, So it's a dough ray me song. And it was just have fun with the words with the wordplay and just do something really really silly and it's funny. A friend of mine listened to it and he said, this says like it could be a kids song written for kids. That never occurred to me. I don't have kids, And I thought that's interesting thought. And I thought about it, and I could not have written this song but when I was back when I was in my twenties, because I was too serious like so many young people, you know, you take yourself way too seriously, and you're in your twenties. So I had to you know, all this time had to go by for me to be able to write a kid's song, which is kind of interesting. 01:08:15 Speaker 1: It's great some of the some of the best kids songs aren't necessarily written, yeah, you know, for kids. It's not like, you know, I don't think there's like a great kids song. 01:08:25 Speaker 5: You know. 01:08:26 Speaker 2: Actually I'd never really thought about it. 01:08:28 Speaker 1: But so it's like Randy Newman might be one of the more successful ones in modern times, but it's like it's not like he's specifically ever thought of himself someone write songs. 01:08:35 Speaker 2: For kids, you know, just that it's funny. I mean, I thought it had a place on the album that there was a place in the office, something just really completely silly and yeah, you know, just humorous. And it doesn't it doesn't mean anything really, it's just wordplay, having fun with words. 01:08:54 Speaker 1: And yeah, although I said that there must be there's probably something like, you know, like there's some dissatisfaction with Yeah. 01:09:03 Speaker 2: There's a sort of self deprecating thing about it. I was trying to think of all the different meanings of these sounds. Do ray me far? You know, Yeah, it's just fun to write. It's fun to play with me, me me when I look in the mirror, you know, oh my god. So it's like making fun of myself in a lot of ways and just just having a bit of fun. So it balances some of the more serious moments on the album, although I do think it's generally a pretty upbeat album. 01:09:33 Speaker 1: Yeah, do you do you feel like? Do you ever? Do you ever That's maybe a bad way of phrasing it, but do you ever wish your band had been more of a band in terms of not having your name on it? 01:09:45 Speaker 2: No? I wish to be really really glad that it wasn't that. Okay, yeah, because I don't get stuck with that, you know, Well, I like so and so, but I like X the band you know better, right, they cannot they cannot throw that at me because it's always just been I always felt like, no, I'm just going to take responsibility for myself. It's not going to be a band name and then I have to change it or try to live it down or whatever. You know. I think that was the right decision in the first place. 01:10:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh. I'm happy to hear it, man, And thanks for all the music over the years, you know, even the ones you don't like. 01:10:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all right. It's a good album, right, some good ideas on anything it does. I mean, I quite like the title track. Yeah, that's kind of fun. We thought about reviving it for this tour because somehow I haven't done it. We may do, who knows. 01:10:44 Speaker 1: If you can add that or oh well, you know, oh yeah, I've made my ma. Well great, nice to meet you man, Thank you it too. In the episode description, you'll find a linked to playlist of some of our favorite songs from Joe Jackson. Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see all around the news, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken recod Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Pollinay. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music expec. Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond.