More Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo

Author:Paul Zollo
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306822445
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2016-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Joe Jackson

Night and Day

Berlin, Germany 2015

Before he ever wrote songs, he wrote chamber music. Expressing himself instrumentally—and with a beautiful range of music, whether orchestra or big band—has been a part of his musical soul since the start. The ostensible purpose of our talk on this day was to discuss his most recent project, The Duke, and the big band music it inspired. But as he is Joe Jackson, one of the great songwriters of our time, I indulged his generous spirit by inquiring about some of his own famous songs and his ideas about songwriting.

We spoke over the phone from his home in Berlin, where he’d recently moved. Asked why, he answered, “The cities that I have spent the most time and I know the best are London and New York. And I am kind of disillusioned with both in a way. And I find that Berlin is much more relaxed and more livable, at least right now.”

He was born David Ian Jackson on August 11, 1954, in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England, and spent his early years in the Paulsgrove area of Portsmouth before moving to Gosport, England, in his teens.

His first instrument was violin, but he switched early on to piano. He started composing instrumental music at fourteen before he ever wrote a song. “I came to songwriting fairly late,” he said. “I didn’t really start trying to write songs until I was a bit older, nineteen or so, and playing in bands. Before that I was trying to write chamber music first for various combinations [of instruments] that were around me at school. I wanted to be a composer.”

Asked to describe this early music, he said, “It was sort of a strange mishmash of jazzy elements with elements of composers I’d admired, like Bartok and Stravinsky. . . . It was not very good.”

At sixteen he started playing piano in bars and won a scholarship to study music at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He joined two bands, first Edward Bear and then Arms and Legs. In 1978 a demo found its way to A&M records, which signed him as the Joe Jackson Band. The debut album was the wonderful Look Sharp, with melody, jazzy songs, and smart lyrics. It was a little new wave, a little jazz-rock Steely Dan, and it was fresh and new. The single was a beautifully melodic ballad sung with great urgency, “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” From this song on, we knew he was the real deal.

Subsequent albums sustained this great fusion of smart British pop-rock with jazz and soul. He also was adept at stretching the content of pop songs, as he did with “It’s Different for Girls” from his second album, I’m the Man, in 1979.

In 1982 came the landmark Night and Day, the quintessential Joe Jackson album. Like some beautiful hybrid of Cole Porter, Cab Calloway, and Frank Sinatra, it was unlike anything that came before—well, except his previous albums. But it was the album of the time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.