Jackson, Joe

Jackson, Joe, music’s great chameleon, able to go from reggae to jive to new-wave to classical, with authority; b. Burton-upon-Trent, England, Aug, 11, 1955. By the age of 11, Joe Jackson was playing the violin and convinced his parents to invest in a piano. He started writing songs in his teens while continuing his classical studies on oboe and percussion. Jackson attended the Royal Academy of Music on a scholarship, studying both jazz and classical music. In 1974, he earned a degree in composition. This led to work with cover bands and as the piano player at the Portsmouth Playboy Club. In the mid-1970s, however, he got caught up in the energy that was welling up in the London punk scene. He started writing songs in a punk/new wave style, and got a publishing contract from Albion Music in 1976. His demos attracted the attention of A&M records, recently flush with the success of the Police and Supertramp.

Jackson signed on with A&M and recorded his debut album, 1979’s Look Sharp, in just a week and a half. He called his brand of new wave “spiv-rock” (spiv basically translates as lazy), although his vocals got him lumped in with predecessors Graham Parker and Elvis Costello. His songs had the lean sound of the new wave, but with an underpinning of humor. The song “Is She Really Going Out with Him” became a surprise hit in the summer of 1979, peaking at #20. The album also peaked at #20 and went gold.

Six months later, Jackson followed that same year with I’m the Man, though the record could have been called Look Sharp II. The songs were nearly as inspired. The songs “On the Radio” and “It’s Different for Girls” became hits on rock radio. The album hit #22 on the charts.

Tired of the comparisons with Costello and Parker, Jackson started to work with reggae artists. He produced three tracks with Lincoln Thompson working with Jackson’s band. He cut a three-song single with an A-side cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come.” Then he made 1980’s Beat Crazy, infused with ska and reggae. The album sold disappointingly. At the end of the world tour for Beat Crazy, Jackson disbanded his group, although bassist Graham Maby would remain with him for many more years.

Still working to assert his own identity, Jackson cut the audacious Jumpin’ Jive album in 1981, a tribute to the music that his father loved. Recorded with a septet that included three horns, the record brought the music of Louis Jordan, Lester Young and Cab Calloway to an audience that thought pop music started with The Beatles (or perhaps Chuck Berry). He toured, playing nothing but swing. The album got virtually no airplay, and certainly had no hits, although it forecast the swing music revival of the mid-1990s by over a decade.

In 1982, Jackson moved to N.Y. and settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Rather than just picking a stylistic discipline for his next project, he set himself several paradigms: he wouldn’t use guitars, he would use some of the jazz flavors he’d picked up in school, and he’d write songs that would make Cole Porter proud. With that in mind, he released Night and Day, a slick sophisticated pop album 180 degrees from Look Sharp.The song “Stepping Out” rose to #6 on the charts, followed by the ballad “Breaking Us in Two,” which rose to #18. The album hit #4 and went gold.

Jackson’s next challenge was scoring and writing songs for the 1983 Debra Winger film Mike’s Murder. Neither the film nor the album did especially well, though it had some interesting songs, including the Spencer Davis flavored “Memphis.” His next project, rather than a radical departure, took ideas from his previous records and expanded on them, combining the Jumping Jive horns, the rawness of his early work, and the slick popcraft of Night and Day. With cover art modeled after a Sonny Rollins album, the music for Body and Soul was recorded predominantly live in the studio. The propulsive “You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)” became a #15 pop hit. The album rose to #20.

Jackson took this live-in-the-studio approach one step further for his next album, 1986’s Big World.Before a select audience on three consecutive nights, the album was recorded live directly to two-track tape. While the experiment was a sonic success, the album failed to generate a hit and stalled at #34.

Reaching back to his college experiences, Jackson tried his most daring experiment yet in 1987 by recording a classical album. The piece, Will Power, featured a 50-piece orchestra. The record predominantly mystified Joe Jackson fans. Classical fans generally rejected it out of hand. The record sold dozens. Still, it led people to take him more seriously as a composer. Francis Ford Coppola hired him to score his 1988 film Tucker.

Back on the rock track, A&M released the double-live album, 1979-86.Each side captured a different tour. Finally back into the studio for a rock record, Jackson cut a semi-autobiographical concept record, 1989’s Blaze of Glory.It sold moderately well, and “Down to London” became a minor hit on rock radio.

Jackson changed record companies and in 1991 released Laughter and Lust, one of the most snide pop recordings ever made. A vociferous detractor of MTV and how image had taken over the music business, he made a tongue-in- cheek video for the record, but even the catchy “Hit Single” failed to become one. After three years, he put out an album that fused pop, classical, and show tunes. Called Night Music, the album sold poorly, but paved the way for Jackson’s next project.

After nearly a decade of poor sales, Jackson renounced pop music and went back to what he had studied in college, classical composition. In 1997, he released the daring, edgy oratorio, Heaven and Hell that put everything he’d done previously into a musical osterizer and blended it well. The album was arranged as a series of “songs,” but played by a combined small chamber orchestra and rock band. It featured artists ranging from pop singers Jane Siberry to violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Opera diva Dawn Upshaw does a brilliant duet with folk-pop singer Suzanne Vega! Needless to say, there were no “hits.”

Jackson’s decision to renounce “pop” music is not surprising. It’s likely that future projects will continue to mix elements of jazz, classical, and rock music in unexpected ways.

Discography

Look Sharp! (1979); I’m the Man (1979); Beat Crazy (1980); Jumpiri Jive (1981); Night and Day (1982); Mike’s Murder Soundtrack (1983); Body and Soul (1984); Big World (1986); Will Power (1987); Live…1980-1986 (1988); Tucker (1988); Blaze of Glory (1989); Laughter and Lust (1991); Night Music (1994); Heaven and Hell (1997).

—Hank Bordowitz