by Tabatha Reed

So says Joe Jackson, singer-songwriter, pianist, composer and producer, whose eclectic recording career has spanned over 25 years, across almost as many studio albums, film soundtracks and live concert recordings.

Born David Ian Jackson on 11th August 1954, in Burton-on-Trent, England, Joe's family moved to Portsmouth when he was a year old, and it was there that he spent his childhood and early adult life.

Priority number one for Joe as a youngster was the avoidance of school sports at any cost. By happy chance, violin lessons helpfully coincided with sports lessons, during the course of which the 11-year-old Joe quickly discovered a nascent musical talent. This evolved into a love of classical music in general, Beethoven in particular, and a growing fascination with the piano. Having persuaded his parents to buy him an upright piano, at first spending time dabbling with improvisation, playing with and without music, Joe finally began formal piano lessons at the age of 15. By 16, Joe was playing his first, nervous gigs; at 18 he was playing piano with local club bands. He had won a scholarship to study piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and here he remained for three years, although becoming gradually more disillusioned. Joe's final exam was taken in percussion, which - to his surprise - he passed. As Joe noted wryly in his 1999 autobiography: "A struggling rock songwriter and keyboardist with a degree in percussion. It was too ridiculous."

After a brief spell with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, and a short recording contract with a band boasting the somewhat dubious name of Arms & Legs - who released 3 unsuccessful singles - in 1977 Joe brought together the three musicians who would collectively become the Joe Jackson Band: Graham Maby (bass), Gary Sanford (guitar) and Dave Houghton (drums).

Moving to London and signing to A&M Records in 1978, swept along on the New Wave movement, the Joe Jackson Band quickly recorded their debut album, "Look Sharp", an infectiously hook-laden piece of pop in which Joe, lyrically, discovered his voice, which he himself described as "wry, ironic, not too serious about anything, but hard-nosed, and stripped of all sentimentality".

Touring constantly over the next 3 years, the band released two further albums: "I'm the Man" (1979) and "Beat Crazy" (1980), the latter with its reggae influences the first sniff of a change in musical direction for Joe. Following the breakup of both the band and his first marriage, Joe focused his attention on new projects and threw himself enthusiastically into his next album, "Jumpin' Jive" (1981), a collection of jump-blues and swing tracks which covered classics by Louis Jordan and Cab Calloway. Inspired by New York, the city where he had by now settled to live, Joe wrote and recorded "Night and Day" in 1982. It was a best-seller, and remains his most successful album to date.

Continuing to tour and record throughout the 1980s, in 1984 Joe released the critically acclaimed "Body and Soul"; this was followed by "Big World" (1986), and "Blaze of Glory" (1989). A live album, "Live 1980-86" released in 1988 featured new treatments of old songs, covering four band line-ups. Joe also found time to venture into the arena of film, composing the scores to "Mike's Murder" (1983) and Francis Ford Coppola's "Tucker" (1988). In 1987 an album of instrumental compositions entitled "Willpower" further underlined his diversity, yet at the same time putting a wider distance between his newer material and the rawer sounds of his 1979 debut. Joe was evolving, and intriguing many of his followers; but such experimentation was bemusing and baffling some of his fanbase. Where had "Look Sharp" Joe disappeared to? Signing to Virgin Records in 1991, Joe recorded the album "Laughter and Lust", a return to a somewhat more mainstream style, combining edgy, heartfelt lyrics with smooth and shifting melodies. The accompanying world tour left Joe exhausted, however, and jaded with the music industry. He took time off to re-think; a 2 year spell at the end of which he had rediscovered his passion for music and was ready to create once again, although now, more than ever, this had to be on his own terms. Such an extended period of introspection resulted in "Night Music" (1994), a collection of gentle, soul-searching songs and Nocturnes.

The release of "Heaven and Hell" in 1997 saw Joe signed to Sony Classical and producing some of the most personally satisfying music of his career. With guest vocalists Suzanne Vega, Jane Siberry and Brad Roberts adding contrast and colour, the album was challenging and eclectic, and yet, as Joe pointed out: "Most of my stuff has been fairly mainstream pop but with different colours brought in from here and there". These different colours emerged once again as a jazz-influenced "Symphony No. 1" in 1999, for which Joe won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album.

He was by now also working on "A Cure for Gravity", an autobiography - or, as Joe put it, "a book about music thinly disguised as a memoir" - which was published in 1999 to positive reviews. By turns intensely moving and outrageously funny, the book, intercut throughout with brief present-time thoughts and reflections, took the reader up to the point of Joe's first success in 1978.

In 2001 Joe recorded the follow-up to his 1982 success: "Night and Day II", an album he still considers to be his best. His output over the past decade had been diverse and original, moving further forward creatively each time. Joe observed his style as being "like a musical collage, taking elements from a lot of different places, but with a definite purpose - all of those elements are there for a reason". Two live concert albums, "Summer in the City" (2000) and "Two Rainy Nights" (2002) further reflected and offered new perspectives on this unique collage.

In 2002 Joe delighted both new and old fans of the original Joe Jackson Band lineup by reuniting the classic Jackson/Maby/Sanford/Houghton lineup for a 25th anniversary one-off album and tour. The end result was "Volume 4", an upbeat and direct, sometimes searingly confessional collection of songs that by turn moved and thrilled the listener. The accompanying tour was resoundingly successful, prompting the release of its live offshoot "Afterlife" (2003), a recording that captured perfectly the mood and excitement of those live shows.

Upon completion of the Volume 4 tour, feeling disillusioned with New York, a city in which he had lived for the past 20 years, Joe relocated back to the UK, where he still owned a house in his home town of Portsmouth.

So what next for - as one reviewer described Joe, to his amusement - "the impossible bastard son of David Bowie and Noel Coward"? There are possibilities of further film soundtracks, and naturally more studio albums; for whichever direction Joe chooses to take it will be a fascinating journey for his fans. Because, as Joe says: "In the end, music doesn't have to make sense: you just have to believe, and good stuff happens".