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