Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Joe Jackson

Transcript

Joe Jackson · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Joe Jackson is an enigma. He showed up in
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: seventy eight seventy nine on the UK's new wave scene,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: all nervous energy and biting wit with hits like is
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: she really going out with him, putting him in the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: lot of his peers stayed in that lane, Jackson kept
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: moving into the jump blue swing of Jump and Jive,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: into the sophisticated, Latin tinged jazz sounds on night and day,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: into classical composition, into a music hall concept album under
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: an alter ego named Max Champion, and so much more.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: has probably cost him the kind of mainstream consistency that
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: turns an artist into a household name. But I can't
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: help but love the boldness of his approach, even if
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: it's made him, over the course of his career, a
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: little unknowable to fans. I was hoping by the end
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: of a conversation he might be a little more knowable,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if that really happened, but I
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: do think I have a bit of a better sense
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: as to why He's maintained a sense of mystery throughout
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: his career, and really, I think it's because he just
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't take himself all that seriously. On today's episode, I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: speak with Joe Jackson about his new studio album, Hope
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and Fury and dig into some of the songwriting on
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: it and some of his older albums. Plus, we discussed
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Joe's collaboration with his longtime, criminally underrated bass player Graham Maybe,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and get into what makes comedy an important part of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Joe's artistic sensibility. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Here's my interview with Joe Jackson from Amazon Music Studio
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: one twenty six grow Back.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I forgot we did this question.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: This is pretty cool, amazing.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Don't ask you want to think of you and I'm
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: not give the answer.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: That you want.
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: Mazing.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Wow, I've got this girl. Huh.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Such a great writ I don't even want to turn
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: it off.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Let me kurd light upould do it. I think he's thinking.
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: And we're not talking to God.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: A little stay sister, find me to be your guy.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Don't ask you want to think of you and I'm
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: not give the answer that you want me.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'll want to break it out. You gotta
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: do it, it's all. Yeah, damn, it's weird. It's weird
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: that you it's kind of strange that you picked that
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: one that you did that.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I always thought it could have been written about me,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: because like, I can't sing, I ain't pretty, and my
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: legs are thin, so you know that fits. Yeah, I'd
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: completely forgotten we did the version of that. Actually it's
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: but it sort of has this Afro Cuban vibe going
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: through it. So, I mean, if I ever do a
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: cover version of something, it's because I can see a
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: way to do it it's different to the original version. Yeah,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I don't see any point in that.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So you see, you definitely sense a way to do
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it different, But there's also probably something about it you
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: sense that must feel familiar in some way or feel
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: like it it fits also.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose. So yeah, it's more about you know,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: can I see a different way to do it that's interesting?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: And can I can I sing it and actually capable
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of singing it? I mean that was hard to sing.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you know that song from uh from one
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of First Way Back?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean it wasn't something that's Uh, I mean,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I don't I don't know. It's just I guess maybe
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I heard it on a radio somewhere or something and
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: thought I could see a way.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: To do that.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember. Now. It's kind of like a
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: last Fleetwood Mac classic, you know. Yeah, I mean it's
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: not what you think of when you think of Fleetwood makes.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: No not for a long time. It hasn't wrote. But
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Peter Green, who wrote that, was the you know, leading
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the band at the time. He did have a I mean,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm just spacing this based on
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Santana taking or doing or a Black Magic Woman. Oh
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: oh right, yeah, I was gonna say, oh, come on
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: by t by doing Black Magic Woman, which you wrote.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But I would feel like he had a bit of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a Latin flair.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Something. No, No, okay, you certainly do.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I'm a Latin music not Yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: When did that start?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: I'm telling you exactly because I was in London in
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight something like that. It was around the
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: time that I recorded my first album, Yeah, and I
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: went into a second hand record shop. I saw this
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: speed up LP. It was called Salsa Live by the
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Fania All stars, and I was intrigued by it because
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the cover art was a painting of Latin musicians standing
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: on the platform in the New York subway. And this
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: was in the seventies, and all the trains are covered
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: in graffiti and stuff, and they looked like gangsters, you know,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: with their instrument cases and like big broad brimmed hats
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: and stuff. And I thought, this looks really cool, and
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I took it home, listened to it, and I couldn't
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: make sense of it. I couldn't understand the rhythms. They
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: were alien to me. I was so fascinated by it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I started reaching out to everyone I knew in London,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: all the musicians I knew in London, Does anyone know
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: any Latin percussionists, any Latin musicians who can kind of
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: teach me about this music. And managed to find a
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: couple of people, and that's where it started. And then
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: when I got to New York, one of the things
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: that I was most interested in was the Latin music scene.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, the first tours I ever did
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: in the US, we would always be sort of based
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: in New York and we would have days off, you know,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: like the early eighties and I would be going to
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Latin gigs wow, and most of my band and crew
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: they wanted to go to CBGB's you know, which is
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: great too, right, And they didn't get it at all.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: They thought it was crazy. But it was an amazing
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: time for Latin music in New York. It was such
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: a vibrant scene. I just loved it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Where would you go at that time for Latin music?
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: If you remember, there was I mean I would go
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: to places like the Corso Latin Bore Room one hundred
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and twenty fifth Street. And then there was a thing
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: called Salsa meets Jazz Monday Nights at the Village Gate
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: in Greenwich Village, which was amazing. They would have a
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: couple of the top Latin bands in the city and
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: then they would have guest jazz soloists playing with them,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: people like Stanley Turrentine and nat Adalie and you know,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: like really great players. That was incredible. I went every week.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That's why I loved it. I never heard those guys
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: do anything Latin. And you know, I can recall you know,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: it's pretty yeah, yeah, pretty think of him as being
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: pretty smooth in terms of pretty soulful player.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, but there would also be people like
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Pachito de Rivera, who's both Latin and a great jazz player,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: you know. Yea, But I saw so many great artists there.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: I mean everyone who was Ray Bareto was my favorite.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I saw so many gigs. Barretto always had the greatest band.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: It was so exciting. Yeah, I couldn't understand why my
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: peers were not into this music. Yeah, was anyway?
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Was there ever? I'm trying to. I mean, I guess
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: it didn't really come around in popular music until like
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Miami Sound Machine or something.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: You know, probably you got a bit of it with Santana,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I guess, But yeah, whose brother actually not a thing
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: about Yes, brother was in a band that I think
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: was signed of Fanya. Uh his brother was I think
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: in that group, uh Mallow or something, And I think
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: I think they were signed to Find You. But they
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: were like more they were kind of like Santana, but
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: even more like kind of more down the Latin.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Rock niche than even Santana was. You know, But nothing
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: from but find You didn't seem to really get too
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: much traction in mainstream music, you know.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: But I mean, uh, yeah, if if you see mainstream
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: as being Anglo American pop rock, which was most people did.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: But it is, but I don't know what it is.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: But I mean, you know, when I first started living
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: in New York in the eighties, I was going to
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Latin gigs and jazz gigs all the time, and that,
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: to me was the sound of New York, you know,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: to me it was it was a Latin and jazz
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: town rather than a pop rock town.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So that that's that was very much what fed into
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: my album Night and Day, which I thought no one
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: was going to like. Yeah, but it.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Was a huge departure from the first three albums.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons I thought no one wouldn't
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: like it.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And it's looking in hindsight, it was a it was
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: a quick you made that detour rap quick. I mean,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: it's the fourth album, but it's only three years later,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I guess that album, Yeah, but years were years back then.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Tell me about that, Well, they lasted a lot longer
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: than they do now, you know, I mean distance between
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: your third, first, and third and fourth albums. Yeah, looking back,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: it was just a few years. But at the time
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: it didn't seem like, oh, it's you know, we made
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: an album last week. Let's make another one this week.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It didn't feel like that at the time. Yeah, and
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: yet that's what you were doing. I mean the first
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: two albums, well just came out in the same Yeah.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah recorded months of I mean fun we recorded in
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: the summer of seventy eight and it came out in
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: January seventy nine.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: From the second one, I can't remember when were recorded,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: but I think it came out in September seventy nine. Okay,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean who puts that two albums a year?
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: The Beatles and the Beatles did yeah, you know, well
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: back then people did.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Was there a reason you did? Like, was there?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: No? It was just like, let's I weren't really thinking
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: about that much. I just had enough songs for another
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: album and everyone seemed to want to do it. Yeah.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: What was what was your relationship with A and M?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Like at that time it was pretty good.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, when they were a pretty good,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: pretty good label at the time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they had a lot of great people
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: and it was a really different era when the record
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: company made a difference.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's also like it was that A and
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: M was you know, it's like KRB Albert and Jerry Moss,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: that's the those are the founders. That's the A and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: M in it. And then you know, and it's a
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: it's a substantial label, you know, And I don't know
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: it was an independent and yet it wasn't independent, but
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: because those guys were such record you know, record industry guys,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: but they were also musicians, but there were also originally
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: did you meet them ever?
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: What were they like?
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Jerry must seemed like a pretty cool guy. I mean
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I met him a few times. Herb I only met
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: once or once or twice I think, and it just
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: seemed like incredibly laid back. Yeah. I don't know how
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: much they had to do with with my career, to
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: be honest, I don't think they were the people most involved.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting that also you were Courted the first
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: album before The Police is for I mean the Police
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: were label mates, yes, and their first album came out
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: after it. Court is your first album. It came out
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: before I thought it was.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I don't remember, well, it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Came out before yours came out, but you recorded yours
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: before it came out, and which is interesting just because
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: it feels like they were sort of the.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: You know more about this than me, I'll just shut
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: up and.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: You tell it like it is, I'll do about your career.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not know that, but yeah, we were
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: contemporaries and Squeeze as well. It was the other band
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: that we're like. But like I said, time was was
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: so much bigger than you know, the fact that someone's
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: first album came out six months before or after mine
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: might have seemed quite significant at the time. Yeah, it
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: certainly doesn't, you know.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess where I was going with the Police
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: comment was and kind of I think most people's popular imaginations,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: like it felt like they were the Police were sort
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: of the lead off to I'm sure it was happening already.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: You know, there was Madness and all those other groups
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that were sort of SKA tinged at the time.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think their first time came out the same
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: year as mine. I think Madness and the Specials.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I think the special Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But in
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: terms of in terms of I guess going back to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: popular music, I felt like the Police were sort of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: like the ones that sort of broke it that out
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of being local to whatever was happening. In the UK
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and made it feel worldwide, made it feel global or
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: at least transcontinental. But it must have been, like you know, obviously,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: if you've recorded your first album before that came out,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: that was a thing that was brewing, right, that sort
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: of SKA new wave.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think, like anyone else, I was
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: influenced by what was going on around me. And I
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: was in a certain place at a certain time, and
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I was, you know, twenty three years old. And even
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: though I wanted to think that I was just being
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: original and I wasn't part of a movement or you
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: know that sort of stuff. You know, I think, yeah,
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: I was very influenced by everything that was going on
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: around me. And if I listened to my first album now,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: but not that I do, to be honest, but it
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: just really sounds like London in nineteen seventy eight. You know,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: It's very much of its time and place, and I
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: think you can't avoid that.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't the intention, you did, want to know,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, apart from.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Her, Yeah, I felt like this is my thing and
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be compared to anyone else, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: you know, and I would do interviews in Spain or somewhere,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: and they'd say, so are you part of the new wave?
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And I'd say, what are you talking about? I don't
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: even know what you're talking about.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: You know, that term was particularly triggering for a lot
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: of artists, I think, you know.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like, you know, you don't want
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to feel like you just part of the cults, you know,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: ideology or something. You know, we all want to feel
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: like we're brilliant originals.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: What was playing live like at that time? Was there?
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Who were you? Who would you have been playing with
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: at that time, pre pre getting signed, pre your album?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Were you playing out, playing live, working out those songs?
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, only a couple of pub gigs. I didn't
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: have a regular band until I got the record deal
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: because I couldn't afford to pay them. So there's basically
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: the band that I made my demos with. You know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I called them up and said, hey, do you want
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to quit your whatever your job is and go on
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: the road and we can just about afford to pay
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: a living wage. So before that I was just doing
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: any kind of gig I could get, and not with
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: your not with the band, doing all kinds of stuff,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: you know, like I played in the Playboy Club and
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I played for a cabaret a duo called Coffee and
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Cream when I really cheesy. I did that for six
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: months to save up money, you know. That's how I
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: saved up money to make the demos that became my
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: first album.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Wait, were you in Coffee and Cream?
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: I was the piano player. Don't shoot me. I'm only
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: the piano player. Yeah, it was my choice, but I
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: would just do anything, you know. Before that, I was
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: in top forty cover bands and playing weddings and playing
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: in restaurants and playing jazz gigs. Just I mean, it's
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: really weird to think back to when I made my
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: first album. I was only twenty three, and I felt
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: like a veteran at that point. I mean, I did
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: my first paying gig when I was sixteen, you know,
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: so I was doing all kinds of gigs and I
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: felt like sort of culmination of this long journey making
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: an album.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I was twenty three, sixteen or twenty three. It's it's
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it's substantial.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Well again, when you're not age, it really is substantial.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, super substantial. What was your like, what was your
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: so if you're playing popular music at the time that
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: what was your repertoire pre.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well you know what whatever was in the charts,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: and just depending what kind of band it.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Was, remember certain songs you would loath to have.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I wasn't crazy about the Neil Diamond medley we did
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: with Coffee and Cream. But you know, I don't think
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: it's it's a bad thing to use the skills you
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: have to make money, No, and also you get it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: It's all experienced whatever you do, and and I think
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it it's a good groundwork. I think people don't have
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: it so much anymore. But but you know, when you've
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: gone on stage and had glasses thrown at you, buy
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: an audience of skin heads and things like that, you know,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: it does kind of toughen you up a bit, prepare
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: you for the long haul. And yeah, so I said
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: to me, it sounds like they're seen in the Blues
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Brothers where they have to have chicken wire in front
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: of the bed and they said, we longed for chicken wire,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: if only.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: There would have been an improvement. Yeah, what records were
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you listening to then? Formative Views that's sixteen to twenty
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: three making the first album.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: What were you ingesting? Let me think, David Bowie Stevie Wonder,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Joni Mitchell, Steely, Dan Little Feet, and I mean for
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: a while, when I was like sixteen seventeen, I was
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: into prog rock and I liked A Soft Machine was
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: a favorite band, and anything kind of jazzy I liked
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: as well, King Crimson and people like that. A lot
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: of that stuff I don't really like now, not to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: be honest, but and reggae music. Bob Marley, you know
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: in the late seventies that came that was huge in
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: England at the time, all that music, So I got
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: really into that.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Was it like Clapton doing it that got it huge
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: out there or was it legitimo was it already it
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: was huge?
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Bob Marty really broke broke through. And there was
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: that Bob Marley Live album, which is a great live album.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I think that that was a big hit. Suddenly it
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: was all over the radio and it was It's just huge,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: and then everyone was, you know, every record company was
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: signing reggae artists all of a sudden.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And did you did you notice other people? Were you
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: aware of the of the other like the Madness and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: all those other sky bands that were sort of cropping
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: up around.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I remember going to see one of the
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Specialist first gigs in a pub in London was fantastic.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: It was packed. I remember saying to my friend, was with,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: these guys are going to be huge any they know
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: which they were, you know, But Madness is a band
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: that have really had longevity, and I think they're underrated actually.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I mean they're very very popular in England especially, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, there's there's a real depth of
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: songwriting and musicianship there actually in some of their later stuff. Yeah, yeah,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I'm a fan.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: There is on your first few records too, and I
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: feel like you maybe, I think I read that on
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: your first few records you sort of embarrassed with the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: songs to a certain degree.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: What now I am? Now, Yeah, I mean some of
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: those songs are pretty silly and pretty immature, I think,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: but that's you know, of course, that's what you get
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: when you're twenty three. Some of the songs I still
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: like can still play kind of cliche sort of just
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I became over the years as a writer
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: much more particular about what I put out and much
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: more critical of myself. It used to be like, well,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I got an idea sort of knock it into some
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: sort of shape recording, and that was it.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I didn't really think about it much. And there's a
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: good side to that as well. But if you're going
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: to keep going for decades, which I somehow managed to do,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: that's wasn't good enough for me in a way. I mean, nowadays,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: I'm my own worst critic. If I start working on
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: something that starts to remind me of something I've heard before,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: you know, whether it's someone else's or mine, then it's
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: scrap it, you know, start again, or twist it in
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: some way. I read somewhere that when Bruce Springsteen released
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: a Born in the USA album that he had sixty
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: songs and it was a really difficult job to narrow
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: it down to whatever it is, ten or whatever twelve
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: on the album. I thought, my god, I can imagine
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: being in that situation, having that many songs and finding
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: it that hard to I mean, my latest album has
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the nine songs that's it, but.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: It sounds like there could have been many.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: But there was a lot of other like you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: was going down streets that turned out to be couldest
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: acts you know, along the way. So half Wreckage of
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: finished songs by the roadside along the way.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Do you ever revive a bad idea in the end.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like you've okay, maybe I've fown
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: that way too soon, or coming back to it and
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: it ends up actually working out.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and the opposite. You know, something I'm really
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: excited about. This is a great song, and you know,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I sort of live with it for a while and
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: think nah, nah, and I might Actually, I mean, I've
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: done things like scrap the whole lyric of a song
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and just put it aside, and then get an idea
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: and start again with a different lyric. Finally it's a song.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's no real sort of pattern to any
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: of it. Actually, how hard is that?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Because I mean, you might, even if it's a bad lyric,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: you must, at some point, on some level muscle memory,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: even just at the muscle memory level, get.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Set on the lyric even if it's bad, you know, yeah,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: but there'd be something about it that, you know, over time,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: I figure out what it is that's bothering me and
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: why it's not good enough. You know, it's very hard
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: to explain because it's not scientific. It's not you know,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: it's not an exact science, it's very much. I mean,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: I've been asked to you right from the head or
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: from the heart, and it's neither. It's something else, and
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: it's something like intuition. It's intuitive. So it's like a
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: question of taste as well, you know, And so you
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: can only rely on your own taste and your own
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: intuition because you're the artist. That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you feel like you must feel then, like
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: your taste has evolved quite a.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Bit from Yeah, I mean, it does get harder to
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: be as prolific as I was, for instance, back in
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the eighties, where I seem to be constantly recording new
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: albums and touring, and from my point of view now,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: the quality of it is uneven. You know, I made
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: at least three albums too many.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I think which ones would not make the cut if
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you were now deciding.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: You know what, I don't want to say because some
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: so someone will say to me, oh, this album of yours, bloke,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: it's my favorite album. I love it. What am I
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: going to say? No, you're wrong.
• 24:17
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: If someone likes it, then great, but just for me.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: But because I'm entitled to an opinion, about it too. Yeah, right,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And some of the albums are better than others just
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: for my own taste, but I don't want to spoil
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: anyone else's enjoyment of any of it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: What about musically, like stepping out once you once you
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: get to there, you're really you're you're really stretching out musically.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that album in general, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: sort of it was really kind of starting a new
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: chapter where I feel like I was being more myself
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: and not so much influenced by what was going on
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: around me at the time. And and like I said,
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: it was bringing in a lot of those influences which
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I thought were more New York influences of jazz and
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Latin music rather than rock and roll. And even leaving
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: out the guitars, I still meet people who say there
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: were no guitars on night and day? Really, And I said, well,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: did you hear any that no one seemed to notice?
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Which is funny. Had this idea of it's just it's
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: all keyboards and percussion, And like I said, I didn't
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: think anyone was going to like it. I thought it
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: would be a really hard sell, and I was going
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: to do it anyway. Definitely stretching out musically because I
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: was capable of that, you know, I mean on the
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: first couple of hours, was a case of deliberately simplifying it,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: which a lot of people were doing at the time.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: You know, it felt like the thing to do at
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: the time. Even if you were you could be a
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: very good musician, but you'd play really simple deliberately, right,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean my band was a pretty damn
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: good band, you know, but it was just keep it
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: really really simple. And I just stopped even thinking about that.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: That was that likely a reaction to the progra that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: was popular and all that, you know, sort of being
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: tired of it, people being sort of probably tired of
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the frips of the world.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that going back, yeah, to the beginnings of
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: punk and all that. Yeah, it was, And at the
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: time I thought it was all great fun. I didn't
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: take it seriously at all. It just punk bands just
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: made me laugh, so I thought it was great. Really.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I had I once had a beer with Joe's Strauma
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: from The Clash, who was a great guy, and we
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: talked about how how critics especially lacking and they lacked
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the humor a gene, you know, he was saying, how
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: that when when they were writing songs for the Clash,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: him and Mick Jones, they would be cracking each other
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: up because they were, as we say in England, taking
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the piss, you know, mocking making fun of and then
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: the reviews were come out excororating social political anger and
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: protesting this, and they'd be laughing for more. I was like, yes, exactly,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I felt exactly the same way. It was amazing how
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: seriously it was all taken.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and people critics that you were taking yourself seriously
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: a lot often right, like you right.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Well, they have no sense of humor. It's been my
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: observation over the years. It's the one thing that they
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: missed consistently. Yeah, as you know, they take everything at
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: face value and take it very seriously. It's funny.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Would you read reviews then or now?
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Back then I would, Yeah, Nowadays I don't. I avoid
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: them Yeah yeah, yeah, because that could just drive you crazy. Yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: If you pay too much attention to any of that stuff,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: you they're not not being able to create anything. Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Joe Jackson. I always
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: found it funny, you know, critics just the as if
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: new wave wasn't bad enough a term, it's like, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: then critics moved on to some point.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, like sophistic pop okay, sophisto pop likes
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: pretty pullity and you okay, and and uh it was.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I think they threw in, who's the band that made that?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Uh Steve, Steve McQueen was the Prefabs, pre Fab Sprout. Yeah,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and they were great.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, album was great.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: That was amazing. But then you know their clients fist
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: pop pop sound terrible. You know, it's like it's a
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: terrible name.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it is.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I guess I should bring up at this point that
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Sonny Rollins just died, yes, ninety six or something, it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: was ninety five, ninety six. Yeah, he got, he gotn't
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: played for quite quite a while. He was still playing
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: a still sorry.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw him again, Like going back to the
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: days when I was first living in New York in
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the eighties, I saw Sonny Rollins perform a couple of times,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: and I was absolutely blown away he had been back then,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean one of the shows that I
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: saw he did was one of the most powerful performances
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I've ever seen, you know, by by a jazz musicians.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Certainly my hair was standing on it. You know, he
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: was really special.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Wow, what do you know? What? Where was it? Do
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: you remember?
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah? It was the bottom Line, which was a great venue.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: It was long gone unfortunately.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Is that it was that because I know you also
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you inspired for Body and Saul by his volume.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't It was just, you know, we were
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: trying to think of a cover concept and we felt
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: we tried something with that classic blue note look, sort
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: of homage to that, which other people have done since then.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe they had done before then, but if so, I
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: wasn't aware of it. But it was more just just
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the look of it, you know. It wasn't just the
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: fact that I was a fan of Sonny your Eyes.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: It's still an amazing album cover.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like it. A few years later, Rolling Stone
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: published a little thing with they put the Sunny Rollins
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: album in Mind side by side. They busted me, you know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: apparently I ripped it off and they're revealing to the
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: world this terrible ripoff that I did.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Me play something from the new album any particular song
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you like off the album? Do you have a favorite?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: No? I would never even if I did. I wouldn't
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: tell you. But now I'm always reluctant to pick favorites.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I feel like that's not my job. But if I
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: didn't really like every track, I wouldn't put it out
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: that way I feel about it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm play this made God laugh as.
• 31:00
  Speaker 8: Everything still side, which means you never know what's coming next.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Of luck, the stroke of ten, the freaking, the flash
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: of fame.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: So now down.
• 31:18
  Speaker 7: But that's not to it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: To listen to why the wise man said another day
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: another song, SA say where you could be wrong?
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: You made shot life when you told in your pants.
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: Come on, you know it's true, and you make shot not.
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: When you made you out of your pance moreful you.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: So I love the I love the It's a great
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: song and you celebrate on it. It's also a great
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: performance by your bass player by Grant.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Oh It's yeah, Well he's always great, Gray.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I mean that I would say that sounds amazing, isn't it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you about him? But yeah, what
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: one did? What was the genesis of that song?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: It was a quote that I read somewhere and I
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: can't remember who who it was, but they said, if
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: you want to make the God's laugh, tell them your plans.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: And I thought that was really interesting. The more I
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: thought about it, and more I thought it was a
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: happy thought, because you know, we all need to figure
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: out that we can't control everything. And the sooner you
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: realize that, the better, because it makes life less stressful
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and generally, you know, nicer if you can do that.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: It's funny because yeah, there's been a couple of people
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: interpreted as a sad song, and I don't think it
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: is at all. But that was the origin of it actually,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: after I had written the song, and and by the way,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: no song is all about the lyrics. It's just that
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: that's what we all end up talking about, you know.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: But having written a song, I decided to try and
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: find out where i'd heard this quote. And turns out
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Woody Allen said something very similar, but he got it
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: from an old Yiddish proverb which I'm not going to
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: try to say in Yiddish, but it because man plans
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: and God laughs, you know. So it's been around for
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: a while, this idea.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Are you always aware of the sort of the meta
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: text of a set of lyrics that you write or.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Meta text? Do I have meta texts? I'm not sure,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: there's always layers to it. I find it very difficult
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: to I mean, I don't write I don't want to
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: write songs that are didactic telling you what to think.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: You know, this is that what it is. And like
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I said, songs are seventy percent music anyway. Yeah, I think,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: you know, for me anyway, I mean, I think there's
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: a tradition of songwriting that's different that it's more about storytelling,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: it's more about lyrics. It's more of a folk tradition.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: That's not really what I do. And I think for
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: the most part, it's the music that really moves people,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: and the words kind of tag along afterwards, and sometimes
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: they're you know, worth thinking about. I mean, I certainly
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: try to write the best lyrics I can, but it's
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: I'm really primarily a music guy.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people listen for different things. Some people
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: are lyrics people, some people are I tend not to be,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't either. I kind of take in
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the whole thing, you know. Yeah, and if the lyrics
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: are particularly interesting, they'll draw me in at some point,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and bad lyrics can probably ruin out an otherwise a
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: good song.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: No. On the contrary, this is one of the reasons
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I think music is more important the lyrics, because there's
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of songs I really like that. If I
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: really think about the lyrics, they're pretty stupid. It don't
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: even make sense or anything. Not to mention the fact
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: that there's a lot of music I really love, where
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the words are in a language that I have no
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: idea about.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: What's often.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a good thing.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Removes that he's sort of critical.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the lyrics might be terrible. I might be listening
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: to some music from Serbia. You know it was the
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: worst lyrics ever. I would never know. I'm just enjoyed it.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: And sometimes you know, like the class like just like Joe,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and then we're singing, you know, like such an accent
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: did make every other word.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: That's the thing I could never understand about Shane mc gowan,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: because he wrote great lyrics and when he sang, you
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: couldn't understand a word. Amazing.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I know, I know, I didn't know he was even
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: revered as a songwriter until he passed away, and then
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it became.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Really turn to songwriter reed. But it was I mean
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: I envied him in a way because I saw the
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: poke's live once and I think he sang on about
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: three songs and he would say thank you very much,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: and everyone would cheers, like, yeah, good old drunk, shambolic Shane,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: not making any sense. We love it, you know, I thought, oh,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: that's a good gig.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Did you ever did you ever get to know him?
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Or no? No, no, did you get did you ever
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: get to know many peers or like as in terms
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of beyond you know you mentioned having a beer.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: I mean I met quite a few people. Andy Partriy
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: is just a bit of a bit of a friend
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: of XTC, someone that I think you have a lot
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: in common with someone no one ever compares me to
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: musically very different. No, I think we have a lot
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: in common. Really, yeah, yeah, and yeah Joe's trauma was
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: was a great guy. I was really sad when he died.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: I can't believe he's actually not with us still. But
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: I can't say, you know, it's I don't hang out
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: up with a whole bunch of my peers. I'm not
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: friends with these people. I mean, I don't mean that
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: in a dismissive what it's just not the way it's
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: turned out.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: What do you find yourself listening to primarily these days.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Whole kinds of stuff. I'm really all over the map,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of jazz, a lot of Latin music. Still
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: listening to a lot of music from Colombia, which I
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: think some really interesting music coming out Columbia. I got
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: into early jazz in recent years, so listening to people
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: like Rahines, Sydney Beshet, Jery Rollmorton. Late twenties, early thirties
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: jazz I really love and late fifties early sixties jazz
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: are the two eras that I really love. But I mean,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: I don't hear a lot of interesting stuff in the
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: pop rock, the Anglo American pop rock world. Yeah, I
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: don't think it's that great. I mean there's some things
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: from outside of the Anglo American sphere, you know. Yeah,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: some interesting music from I mean like Stromai from Belgium.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I think it's really cool. Wow. Yeah, you know, that's
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: a band from Berlin called Zed. I really like, you know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Rosalia from Spain is really interesting. So there's some some
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: some you know, original things breaks through here and there.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know there was the band the band was sorry,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: was the band from Berlin? You said, Okay, I don't know, Z.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: But the other two Stroma and Rosalie. I mean they're
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: they're really I don't want to say I'm on guard,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: but they do things outside of what they're contemporaries that's
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: interested in their their sort of vocabulary as musicians seems
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: extra you know, extra extraordinary perhaps, so.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: That must be with Draji to that, right, Yeah, it
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: feels very different, right, It's not just something that you
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: can easily put a label on and you know, file
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: it and it's this, this, this, and it's for these
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: people and that's more interesting area. But it's harder to
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: pin it down. Yeah, in just a minute, we'll be
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: back with more from Joe Jackson. It's funny that early
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: on there was this sort of keep it simple philosophy. Yeah,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you eventually ditch it and then it really is. So
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: it feels like, you know, in a weird way. Probably
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: that's probably what you heard in the prog rock when
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: you were young that you enjoyed, even though you don't
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: like it now the presentation of it maybe. But yeah,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: well this goes back to when I was, you know,
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: fifteen or something like this, and I because it's because
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: I had a classical training, you know, so I learned
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: to read music when I was eleven, and it's no
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: big deal, you know, So I think that I kind
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: of maybe there was a couple of years where I
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: turned my nose up at pop music, and but then
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: I started to get interested in it again. And the
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: things that interested me were the things that I thought
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: were musically more sophisticated. But then after a while there
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: were things like people like David Bowie. You know that
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: that would have brought me back more towards pop music.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Because it blended a bit of the sophistication of.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also started to think, well, you know,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be stuck up about anything. I mean,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: all kinds of music, can you have something good about them?
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: So I think that's been my attitude ever since.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Do you keep up with your sort of classical training?
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Is that as a muscle that you've continued to I
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: think it's just kind of part of the arsenal of something.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: It's just in there. So do you practice practice a lot?
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: I play quite a lot, so I guess it's all
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: practicing in a way. YEA, yeah, I mean I don't
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: practice scales and stuff like that for hours like I
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: did when I was a teenager, but and you what will.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: You pick up like a piece you haven't played and
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: just try to get through it occasionally.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one's the last. I mean did so it's kind
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: of cool. Well, I'm not recently, to be honest. I
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: mean technically I was probably much better at eighteen than
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: I am now. Yeah, But in terms of being able
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: to improvise and be creative at the keyboard, I was
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: not very good then. I think I'm still getting better
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: at that.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: So you weren't early on, you weren't good at improvising.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: I mean I tried, you know, but I think I've
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: gotten better, but I think I'm still learning. I think
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: my playing is still still getting better. Yeah.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that must have been. It must have been great
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: then being around guys like her and Jerry Marson. I
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: guess Quincy Jones would have been at A and M
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: at that time, or at least.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, I wasn't hanging out with these people, but
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I mean I was aware that I was with a
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: fairly cool record label, you know, and other acts that
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I liked. I like Squeeze quite a lot, and some
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: of the things that were really interesting I picked up
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: on a M, like they had yellow Magic orchestra from Japan.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: I remember picking up a couple of their records from
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: the A and M officers and really enjoyed them.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know they're on an MS. Yeah, how did
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: you find your guys? How did you find your band?
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Well, they were local guys. The bass players of the
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: drummer Graham maybe Dave Olton. We're local guys that, I mean.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Graham I met when I was eighteen or something, so
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: we were playing in different kinds of bands together, and
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Dave Olton was playing with, you know, other people I
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: knew and you know, so we all grew up in
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: the same area around Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: But by the time I made my first album, I
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: was living in London and Gary the guitarist, was in London,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: who was someone that I met then. So yeah, it
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: was just a kind of pretty organic kind of thing.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: It's pretty wild that those guys were just around and
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I mean they were they're really great players. Yeah, did
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: they have him? Did they have their own things going on?
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: What were there?
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: What were they at when you kind of fot were
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: they were they? What were their ambitions?
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Just I don't know what Actually, you have to ask them.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I suppose just doing gigs, whatever gigs they could get,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: and doing part time jobs and scraping by.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: And how do you typically work with them?
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Dave?
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Dave's still around often, right, not always, but I mean, well.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: He hasn't wanted to tour for quite a long time. Yeah,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: he's kind of was. I mean the reason I broke
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: up my first man was because he didn't want to
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: tour anymore.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Is that what happened?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And rather than just replace him and carry on,
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, maybe it's time for a break, take
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: some time off and rethink. But he came back on
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: board later and we did a couple more albums and
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: tours together, and then he kind of dropped out again.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: So I've had a sort of procession of drummers, some
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: eight ones actually, so Doug Yol, who's I'm working with now,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: been working together for about ten years.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: How does it work when you bring something to your
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: band it? How do you work with them?
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: How do you work Make a demo of some sort
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: and say we'll listen to this and kind of get
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: familiar with it, learn the chord changes, learn learn the parts.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: In some cases there'll be things that that really suit
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: them and sound great, and other times it doesn't really
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: work and we have to negotiate. So it's kind of like, well,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: that doesn't seem to work for you, what can you
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: do that's along the same lines, And so it becomes
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: collaborative to a certain extent, but I have the final
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: say because someone has to and it should be the
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: guy whose names on the record. So people have asked me,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: as you're burning democracy, and it's not as a dictatorship actually,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: but it's what they call it nine dictatorship where the
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: dictator is not a bad.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Guy anti.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Sir?
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Can we please change this? Can I change this part?
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: It's not suitable. I mean, so you you have the demo,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: it's pretty fleshed out, and they mostly learn it how
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: you presented it.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: But there's always some things that change along the way.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: And I quite enjoy that that process because I do
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: want people to feel like they're involved in it and
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: they're not just you know, like session guys or something.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: I'm very particular about picking the people who I like
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: their personality, both as people and as players, you know,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: and trying to find ways to especially in a live situation.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: I was trying to find ways to make everyone in
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: the band shine, you know, give each player share of
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: the spotlight. Yeah, that's one of the really fun things
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: about playing live. I think.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the begs parts, those they're not that fleshed, are
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: they are the flesh?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: Some of them are, Yeah, some of them are. But
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: there's Yeah, there's this baselines part of the song as
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I conceived it, you know, so so I you know,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: some of the baselines are what I've written. Some of
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: them are Graham doing something along the lines that I
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: ask him to do, because I know him well enough
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: that he's generally going to come up with something I like. Yeah, so,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: and if I don't like it, I'll tell him that
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: that's my prerogative. But yeah, it's it's hard to explain
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: it because the question comes up quite a lot, you know,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: how much, say, do the musicians have in the creation
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: of their own parts? And it's it's not like black
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: and white, This is kind of somewhere in the middle.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: How much does a song come to you when when
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: fully formed? How much do you kind of hear the
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: full thing a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah, I
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: don't know why, but I don't think in terms of well,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I have this few cores and what do I do now?
• 47:10
  Speaker 7: You know?
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I tend to sort of hear whole the whole kind
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: of sound world in my head if you like, hard
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: to describe with us sounding a bit kind of pretentious.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Let's play. Maybe I'm not sorry for sure, it's im agreeable.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Whatever you whatever you like, Okay.
• 47:40
  Speaker 6: Hello cruel mode. I'm not going away, so I might
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: as well at my side.
• 47:52
  Speaker 8: For other dancer I never gave, and for every damn
• 47:56
  Speaker 8: wild That'll failed to say, for every little fat I didn't.
• 48:06
  Speaker 6: Chase, for every little fool just like my face, I
• 48:17
  Speaker 6: know that you.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Die, I know that you want it. I know that
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: you need leave it alone.
• 48:27
  Speaker 6: Because I'm not gonna say that I'm not sorry.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not sorry at all.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry at.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: All for every cause.
• 48:51
  Speaker 7: That I didn't support in any love that I broke
• 48:54
  Speaker 7: saying what I thought for every California dude I let
• 49:05
  Speaker 7: the love to observe.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: I had an attitude I feel seen.
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: For every FLYNT choose to fly and all the crocodilechies.
• 49:19
  Speaker 6: I refuse to cry.
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: That you.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: You so.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saying no, it's funny to because I haven't
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: actually listened to that for a while and and because
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: we've been were what is it, twelve shows into our
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: tour now, and we're playing this song live and it
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: sounds different.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: How's it change?
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Well, it's things just just sound different, you know. Yeah,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: it's funny. Yeah, they're here now, and I think, well,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: the bass sounds different, the drums sound different, the balance
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: between the guitar and the keyboard sounds different. But in
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: a way that's we're not it. We're not really changed
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: the song, you know. But yeah, it's funny. It's just
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: hard to explain. It just takes on a different life live.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I think, does it feel good to hear it the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: original way?
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: I think that's pretty good.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think we're doing some little different things
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: to it now. Yeah yeah. Interesting?
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Is that kind of Is that worth investigating for you?
• 50:31
  Speaker 8: Ever?
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: That will have? The way a song changes live, I.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Don't know, it just sort of evolves. I Mean, one
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: thing I do find is that very often things get
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: better as a tour goes on, and you think, oh,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: I wish we could record the album now. And I
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: actually did that once on an album called Fool for
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: a few years ago. That's what we actually did. Finally,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: we did a one month tour where we played all
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: the new songs, and then the idea was wherever we
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: finished up, assuming it was somewhere where there was a studio,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: you know, the day after the Life Our show, we
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: would go in the studio and record the album. It
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: turned out to be Boise, Idaho, which I love because
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: everyone was saying, what the hell are you doing recording
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: an album there? It's actually not a bad place. We
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: did the album in a week, wow, you know, did
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: some of the vocals later in New York and mixed
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: it in New York. But that was great. But it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: so logistically so hard to do that. So this album
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: was quite different because so we actually I did some
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: demos for it that turned out really well, and we
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: ended up using a lot of the demo tracks on it,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: including some of the lead vocals, which I didn't expect,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: you know, I thought I was going to have to
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: do them all over again. But I was listening to
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: them and thinking, wait a minute, I don't know how
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: to do this any better, so we may as well
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: keep it. So we saved some time. I don't like
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: to spend a lot of time in the studio anyway
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: always or just because generally I don't know. So some
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: of the lead vocals on there are from Yeah, the
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: demo vocals, that's that's amazing, but you know, I couldn't
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: figure out why you're do them any better.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: That's great though. A lot of times I hear, you know,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: people will down the line put out a demo of
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: a song, yeah, and.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: You're here like, wow, the demo is actually.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Better than that, you know, But I think it's maybe
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: hard to believe that.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: For something else, right, you know, But it's very interesting
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: of what happens sometimes if you if you don't have
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: much time and you've got to just get it done
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: and not be too fussy, and you're telling yourself, well,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: it's only a demo anyway, and I guess that in
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: that process you're kind of relaxed in a way, but
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: at the same time you're not you're not wasting any time,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: so you kind of, whether you realize it or not,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: you're actually zeroing in on what's important, which you can
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: lose sight of if you've been too long in the studio,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: which a lot of people do. So I think it's
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: quite an interesting lesson in there somewhere.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that song I'm Not Sorry musically pretty cool, Yeah,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: did it. But it's cool because it's because there's an
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: aggressiveness to it. But then there's you know, the sort
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of like Latin harmonic thing going on. And usually those
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: two things aren't aren't melded together. But that's that's even
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: in your music, those things, because there's songs that are
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: viewers that feel acerbic and have like a more of
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a that kind of aggressive feel, and then there's songs
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: that are of course have had Latin grooves. But it's
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: it feels rare that those two things kind of converge.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting angle. I think maybe because it's it's
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: actually quite humorous, you know. I mean, it strikes some
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: people as being angry, but it's it's really more more humorous.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: There's a bit of a kind of you know, deffun
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: attitude it. I mean, it's very different, and it's a
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: bit of a kind of anti cancel culture sort of idea.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I quite like the idea just saying, you know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not sorry, whatever it is. If you've had some
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: problem with me, I'm not sorry. And there's a line
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: in the song that goes, don't apologize to someone who
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: just wants to make you their bitch. You know. It's
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: like the last thing you should do is apologize. So
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: that's that's the message, but it's I think done in
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: a rather humorous way rather than an angry way. There's
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: one song on the album I'm I'm not going to
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: say it's my favorite, but I'm particularly proud of in
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: certain ways. It's called an End of the Pier and
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: the idea that I had for the song, I got
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: to a point where I thought it's over ambitious. I
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: don't think I could pull this off. And I more
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: or less, you know, I might be exaggerating a bit,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: but like shut myself in a room for a week
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: and you know, with a rhyming dictionary and a phosaurus,
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: and just worked on it and reworks it and reworks
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: it until I thought, wait a minute, yeah it works.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: I did pull it off. Wow.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: So I.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: You know, if you want to know, you haven't asked.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: If you want to know my favorite lyricist, there are
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: people like I Regressing, Johnny Mercer, Lorenz Hart, Colporter, you know,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: all those guys just just the the the brilliance of
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: the wordplay and I just love that, you know, and
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: the wit I love so. I like the idea of
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: being a craftsman when it comes to, you know, crafting
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the words of the song, even though I'm saying that
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: they're not as important as the music. Ultimately, I don't
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: think they are. It's the music that still is what
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: moves you. I think.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting though, But those guys like Johnny Mercer
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: and that like they are, you know, there's a lot
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: of clever world but they're fairly earnest songwriters.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, but they also can be very witty
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, very funny, which I think is really
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: lacking in a lot of a lot of songwriting. Yeah.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Can we talk about the Duke Ellington album that you did?
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, what made you?
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: What brat can you do? That was about twenty twelve,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: I think, yes, I think it was. You did a
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Duke album. Yeah, and it's pretty cool.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really proud of it. And it actually is
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: a Joe Jackson album, you know. I mean, I I
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: did the arrangements, I was the producer, I did the
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: keyboard playing, programming, I did some of the vocals. The
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: only thing I didn't do was write the original source material. Yeah,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: you know, right, yeah, So it was now idea I
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: had for a long time because I'm a huge fan
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: of Ellington and he is. One of the reasons that
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: he's inspiring to me is because of the way that
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: he constantly reworked his own material, different versions of his
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: own songs, which I've always done. It's one of the
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: things that keeps things interesting, you know, touring after so
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: many years.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Even the classic to take the A Train, it's like
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: there's yeah, there's many versions.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: Yea, many versions of everything. For a long time, I'd
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: had ideas about what you could do this Ellington tune
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: with this kind of nomraigement whatever, And I can't remember
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: at what point I said, you know, I want to
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: try and do a whole project of this. And then
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: I started to make some rules for myself, because this
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: is one of the things you have to do to
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: create anything, is to set limits. You can't be limitless,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't work. So one of my rules
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: was no horns, because I mean, I want to pay
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: tribute to Ellington, not compete with answer, right, So there's
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: no horns, and none of the songs have a traditional
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: swing rhythm, you know, so they're all different grooves and
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: different kinds of sounds.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: Was that a struggle playing to the rhythm session that
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: you're going to play some tunes naturally?
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: No, which is crazy to say, Yeah, but that was
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: the whole idea. And sometimes if you give yourself the guidelines,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: that's actually inspiring. It's not limiting. You know, it opens
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: up possibilities. You know, seems contradictory, but it doesn't close
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: down possibilities. And so I found myself of thinking, well,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: what other directions could we take this? I mean, Caravan,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: for instance, is sung by sus Sandy Him who's a
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: singer from Iran, and as she did the translation of
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: the lyrics into Farsi. So you know, I thought that
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: was such a cool idea. I mean, no one had
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: done that, but it seemed to me, in a way
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: an obvious thing to do. And again, Perdido, I had
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: this idea of it having a kind of Brazilian groove.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: And there was a band from Holland I really like
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: called Zuko one oh three with a Brazilian singer Lillian Vera,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: who also did the translation into Portuguese of the lyrics.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: You know, So so it was like let's just try
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: just doing all kinds of different things with Ellington that
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: hadn't been done before, and different kinds of grooves using
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: electric guitar and electric violin and and just you're getting
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: away from the horns. And I think it turned out great,
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: and I'm very, very proud of the album. Actually, yeah,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people didn't quite know what
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: to make of it, but there you go.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: I think that's fine. It kind of reminded there was
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: like Mingus at some point put out an album where
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: he was like a lot of his sort of more
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: well known tunes, but there was like you know, with
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: with a band that was not really fit, not not fit,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: but now she would think, you know, it was like
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: there was like a I think it was in the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: mid seventies, and there was like a bit of a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: shredder of a guitar player doing like pork you know,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: good bye porn and things. It's like, yeah, it was
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: kind of kind of like defamed the songs, but in yeah,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, you know, critically defamed the songs. But it's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: kind of interesting. You know, let's you hear jazz in
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: this kind of interesting modern context, right and putting caravan
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: back in like into like a Middle Eastern sort of context.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Is interesting too, because that's obviously the inspiration for the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: melody and things as it driven you crazy that I mean,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like for a lot of years, a lot
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: of decades, you've you've been ducking into jazz, yeah, and
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: making like really great records based around jazz tunes or
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: jazz arrangements, and it doesn't stick in the sense of
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: when people think Joe Jackson, they don't necessarily think jazzy.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not a jazz musician. I'm a jazz fan, and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: I can fake it a bit. I can play decent
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: jazz piano, but I'm not gonna, you know, go up
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: against the people who devote their whole lives to playing
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: jazz piano, you know what I mean. So yeah, I'm
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: I'm a I'm a jazz fan, and I like bringing
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: in different influences and seeing what you can fit with
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: what other you know, which pieces of the jigsaw you
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: can fit to which other pieces. I mean, I think
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: that's kind of what I do. You know, I don't
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: I can't really staying in a very specific genre. And
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: it's not a decision, you know, it's just the way
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: it comes out. The way it comes out comes from
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: who you are, and you know, so I'm just someone
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: who's had very very broad musical experience and interest, and
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: so what interests me is is finding ways to put
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: these different things together in a way that works. That's yeah,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: I mean that probably sums it up as good as anything.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: It feels like I feel, it feels like a good
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: summation of all the most of your work, you know.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's almost it's kind of like
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: being a co largist rather than a portrait painter or
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: a landscape pounds paint or something like that. Maybe.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So you're twelve dates and doing eighty date tour.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Roughly twelve dates and an eighty date tour.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: I think if if you put the North American tour
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: or Europeans altogether, it's about eighty shows. Yeah, I think
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: we're about twelve shows in point.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, I feel dancing.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: If I thought about it, it probably would try not
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: to think about it. I mean, really it sounds cheesy,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: but on the road it's just you have to just
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: concentrate on today. But you just think about today. I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: don't think about the gigs. We already did or what
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: we're doing tomorrow. It's just really concentrate on today and
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: it's going great, and it's we're at that kind of
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: magic point of the tour where we got over some
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: of the initial nerves and glitches and so on, and
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: we're really enjoying it and it's just getting better.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah. Do you what makes a good show
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: for you?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Do you feel like it?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: How do you what makes a good show for versus
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: a bad show?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Well? I think it goes with that saying that it
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: would be a show where I feel like I performed
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: well and the band performed well and we didn't screw
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: everything up. But beyond that, it's just something you can't define.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: It's magic. It really is magic. It's something that happens
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: between between the band and the audience and everyone and
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: some nights it's just it's magic. I can't explain it
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: any better than that, and that's why it's great.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Do you do you have to think about the audience
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: in terms of set list?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: Do you do? Oh? Yeah, I try to be as
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: objective as I possibly can. But how will this come across,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: you know, to someone sitting in the you know, the
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: twentieth Rowe. I'm always thinking like that.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: That's amazing. I'm excited to come out tomorrow smart.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: I believe that.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, tomorrow, they see you guys.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, it should be good. That's a good venue,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: played a couple of times before, so it should be good.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I'm excited. Man. Quite a different attitude on I'm Not
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: Sorry that on Battleground.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Oh oh god. Yeah, well that's one of those songs
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: I'd rather forget big.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: Was it ernest at the time or was at the time,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Guess it was. But so that was a that was well,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: you dragged it out of me, know that. That's one
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: of the albums that I don't think is one of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: my best. Was Beat Crazy because the first two albums
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: are basically the same album. You know, Really Be Crazy
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: was kind of like trying to mix it up and
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: do something a bit different, but without really quite knowing
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: where I was going. So it's a bit of a
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: confused album. I think he's got some interesting ideas on it,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: you know, some good bits, but I don't think it
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: worked very well. I think that was probably another reason
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: why when Dave the Drummer wanted to leave that I
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: decided to kind of just break out the band and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: rethink rather than just kind of carry on.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: You realized it wasn't gonna that was broken. I wasn't
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: gonna get better in that form. Yeah, at least at
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: that point.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, we we got back together again twenty years
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: later or whatever it was to do the four album,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: which was actually the best album we've made as a band.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: I think it's a good album. You know, it's a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: good it does. I mean, it's just it could you
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: can't compete with nostalgia. That's the thing. I mean a
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: lot of people said, well it's good, but although it's
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: not as good as look sharp though, you know, well, yeah,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: they don't want it to be. That's good in a way.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: You know, it's hard, Like you say, it's hard, just
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: too many memories built up.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: And you can't compete with that. But I mean as
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: an album of songs and the playing the band was,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: you know, playing much better. And I think it's a
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: good album.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, we hold on, We'll hold on, We'll play
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: I guess do do do y fabulous people?
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: That's good.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: This is why I shout and making instead over. I
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: was taking my time.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: I've joked in the bag.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: This is why they're using bacon.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 8: The kind of stuff is making me fatter about the day,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 8: right right right, Coming from the song.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: I grave and then I'm not avery one.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: We're out of the from the mirror. It's getting out
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 6: of a clearer They.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Saying is to laugh.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: This is the place I'm stuck with. I wish you
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: lots of luck with your iPhones over the grass, Yeah,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: I think again, written.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Chicily. Yeah, I mean that's a really silly song. Yeah,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: it actually came came to me in a dream. Doesn't
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: that sound like the pretentious artists. I woke up one
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: morning and I head, oh, do do do do? Dude
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: are stuck in my head and I thought, what the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: hell is that? That's really dopey, but it's stuck with me,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: and I thought, maybe it's a really silly song and
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: what the hell is it? And then I thought, do
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: ray Me. Oh, I wouldn't if I could do a
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: dough ray me song. That's different too, but use different
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: rhymes and you know meanings to dough a deer a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: female deer, right, So it's a dough ray me song.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: And it was just have fun with the words with
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: the wordplay and just do something really really silly and
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: it's funny. A friend of mine listened to it and
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: he said, this says like it could be a kids
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: song written for kids. That never occurred to me. I
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: don't have kids, And I thought that's interesting thought. And
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: I thought about it, and I could not have written
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: this song but when I was back when I was
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: in my twenties, because I was too serious like so
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: many young people, you know, you take yourself way too seriously,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: and you're in your twenties. So I had to you know,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: all this time had to go by for me to
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: be able to write a kid's song, which is kind
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: of interesting.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: It's great some of the some of the best kids
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: songs aren't necessarily written, yeah, you know, for kids. It's
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: not like, you know, I don't think there's like a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: great kids song.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: Actually I'd never really thought about it.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: But so it's like Randy Newman might be one of
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: the more successful ones in modern times, but it's like
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: it's not like he's specifically ever thought of himself someone
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: write songs.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: For kids, you know, just that it's funny. I mean,
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: I thought it had a place on the album that
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: there was a place in the office, something just really
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: completely silly and yeah, you know, just humorous. And it
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: doesn't it doesn't mean anything really, it's just wordplay, having
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: fun with words.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: And yeah, although I said that there must be there's
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: probably something like, you know, like there's some dissatisfaction with Yeah.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: There's a sort of self deprecating thing about it. I
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: was trying to think of all the different meanings of
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: these sounds. Do ray me far? You know, Yeah, it's
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: just fun to write. It's fun to play with me,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: me me when I look in the mirror, you know,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: oh my god. So it's like making fun of myself
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: in a lot of ways and just just having a
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: bit of fun. So it balances some of the more
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: serious moments on the album, although I do think it's
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: generally a pretty upbeat album.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you do you feel like? Do you ever?
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Do you ever That's maybe a bad way of phrasing it,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: but do you ever wish your band had been more
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: of a band in terms of not having your name
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: on it?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: No? I wish to be really really glad that it
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: wasn't that. Okay, yeah, because I don't get stuck with that,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: you know, Well, I like so and so, but I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: like X the band you know better, right, they cannot
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: they cannot throw that at me because it's always just
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: been I always felt like, no, I'm just going to
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: take responsibility for myself. It's not going to be a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: band name and then I have to change it or
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: try to live it down or whatever. You know. I
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: think that was the right decision in the first place.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's uh. I'm happy to hear it, man, And
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: thanks for all the music over the years, you know,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: even the ones you don't like.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all right. It's a good album, right, some
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: good ideas on anything it does. I mean, I quite
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: like the title track. Yeah, that's kind of fun. We
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: thought about reviving it for this tour because somehow I
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: haven't done it. We may do, who knows.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: If you can add that or oh well, you know,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I've made my ma. Well great, nice to
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: meet you man, Thank you it too. In the episode description,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: you'll find a linked to playlist of some of our
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: favorite songs from Joe Jackson. Be sure to check out
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see all
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: around the news, and be sure to follow us on
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: Instagram at the Broken recod Broken Record is produced and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Pollinay. Broken Record
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  Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond.