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Preview interview, Grand Opera House, York, May '05
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Added by Jens
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Friday, 27 May 2005
Preview: Joe Jackson & Todd Rundgren, featuring Ethel, Grand Opera House, York, June 2
by Charles Hutchinson, yorktwenty4seven.co.uk, may 27 2005
Joe Jackson plays York for the first time in his long career. CHARLES
HUTCHINSON tries to find out more from this reluctant interviewee.
JOE Jackson readily admits he is not the most enthusiastic interviewee.
"When the first question is, `tell us about your new album, Joe, you
know they haven't bothered to listen to it," says the peppery English
singer-songwriter, with a characteristic crunch, on the line from New
York City.
In the words of Joe himself, you better look sharp when the chance
comes - after weeks of email exchanges with his tour manager - to
discuss his new live show: a night of individual sets by improvising
string quartet Ethel, Jackson and American songwriting sorcerer Todd
Rundgren that culminates in an encore flourish where all three perform
together.
The British segment of the tour starts in his home city of Portsmouth
on Monday and arrives at the Grand Opera House on Thursday for Joe's
first performance in York, 26 years on from his first hit, Is She
Really Going Out With Him?.
So, with no new album on the block, there should be no problem with the
first big question. Here goes. Joe, how come you and Todd are doing
these shows together? "Everyone asks me that and it's boring," he says.
Oh dear...
...Thankfully he means the answer is boring, not the question. "You
want amusing anecdotes, but there's no great story about how it came
about. I'm just glad it did," he says.
"Ethel had played on my Night And Day II album in 2000, and with me and
Todd, it involves lots of tedious names you've never heard of! Let's
just say it was a blind date!"
That blind date was more a mιnage a trois, because Jackson and Rundgren
shared a stage with Ethel one summer evening last August, closing out a
memorable night at the Delacorte Theater in New York City's Central
Park.
"It worked so well that we had agents and promoters besieging us. They
were sleeping on my doorstep. Terrible!" says Joe, laughing at his
recollection.
Joe, Todd and Ethel have taken their show on the road in America this
year, and eight British shows over the next week will lead into five
weeks of touring Germany, Holland, France, Belgium, Spain and Italy.
"Joe, you are a bigger name in Britain than Todd, so..." the question
is curtailed. "If that is true," interjects Joe. "It's hard for me to
be objective because, to me, Todd is a legend and many years ago
everyone who started a band revered Todd, and I think that's still the
case, and it's certainly not a competition between us."
Back to the question. Would the running order swap for Britain with
Todd coming on before Joe to do the likes of Love Of The Common Man, I
Saw The Light and Bang The Drum? "No, I'll still play my solo set
before Todd, then we play together at the end. That's partly because of
my respect for Todd and his seniority over me [Joe is 50, Todd 56], and
partly because he plays louder than me and it works better this way."
A DVD of Joe and Todd's New Jersey show will be released on Todd's
label after the tour, and whatever Joe does next it will not include
another reunion for the original Joe Jackson Band, which reconvened in
2002 after two decades apart to make Volume 4.
"It was great to get back together again: the deciding factor was that
I felt we had a great album in us and we had enough songs to make a
great album, and if we didn't have that, I wouldn't have done it. I
didn't just want to do it for nostalgia," he says.
"I didn't particularly rate our third album, Beat Crazy - even
Beethoven did a few duds - but people expected us to come back after
two years. Instead it was 20, and it was a one-off. The stake has been
driven into the vampire's heart!"
Joe believes "people have made too much" of his reputation for often
changing tack in a career that has embraced New Wave rock, reggae,
minimalist jazz funk, piano ballads, instrumental albums, film
soundtracks and Jumpin Jive, his "musical vacation" in Forties swing in
1981. "That reputation reduces me to a cartoon, and I certainly don't
change for change's sake," he says.
"Critics take Jumpin' Jive much more seriously than I do, and it gets
debated as if it was some great, meaningful thing, when it was just a
bit of fun, something off the wall. I've always been eclectic, and some
things I do mean more than others."
He had planned to add a Disney movie score to that credits' list.
Instead, he will appear in only one scene playing piano in The Greatest
Game Ever Played, performing Hello Hello Who's Your Lady Friend, a
vintage song from 1913 that also features in the Jackson and Rundgren
shows.
"I was originally supposed to do the whole score but it didn't work
out. They drove me nuts, so I walked out because I just wasn't the
right person," he says. "That experience with Disney has taught me I
have to be careful what projects I work on. I can't deal with that
thing of six men telling me they want me to write something sappy."
You wouldn't disagree with him, would you?
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