Joe Jackson Suffers No Fools

he was exceptional at it. By eighteen, he'd earned a scholarship to London's Royal Academy of Music, and by his early twenties he had a d with A and M Records. His first album, Look Sharp, was released in nineteen seventy nine. It was daring, the mix of pop and punk with addictive, sardonic lyrics. By the time he moved from the UK to New York City in nineteen eighty two, Jackson was being approached by fans in public. I should know. I

was one of them. Gutsy, clever and unparalleled. His boldness ushered in the new wave era of the late nineteen seventies and set the stage for experimentalists of today like Lady Gaga, But unlike many of his successors, Joe Jackson didn't set out to make music from the start. No, I don't no ambitions to be a musician. So I was probably like thirteen or fourteen. Was your family music

or your parents not at all. I'll come from a musical desert, Portsmouth on the south coast of England, but yeah, a lot of sailors and not a lot of music really, um and my parents were not musical at all. Is I don't know where it comes from. It's a big mystery. I'm the total odd one out. And it began how for you? It began when I got the opportunity to escape from school sports by joining a violin class. And I didn't like sports because I was an asthmatic as

a kid, a terrible asthma, was always sick. I don't really get it anymore, but I need to get beaten up all the time. So basically sports period was the excuse to beat me up, and then I had this opportunity to get out of it. You hated as so much, you're willing to take up the violin, yeah, which is which is saying something, I believe me. But the violin is like a sort of medieval torture instrument, and you can just imagine a bunch of snot nose, the eleven

year old kids scraping away. And then of course you were walking around carrying a violin case, so you still got beaten. But in the meantime, I sort of discovered that I was fascinated by music. So I got really interested in music and learned the music theory and all that stuff really early on. It's a good thing. Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, And and I switched to piano pretty soon. Did you play guitar piano before a guitar. I've never played guitar, never. Never.

I don't understand it. I think it's a really weird instrument. I don't understand why people think it's easy. Actually, I think a keyboard is much more logical. But by the time I was about four teen, my hero was Beethoven. And then I let you listen to classical music, and yeah,

I was like really really into it. And then I got interested in jazz, and then I got interested in apart from rock music again, which I hadn't really been interested in since I was a kid, because when I was ten, I loved the Beatles and the Kinks and so on. So in a way. That's my real roots is British pop music. But I went on this kind of roundabout route back into the pop world gradually and into writing songs. So how old were you when you started writing? Well, my teens, I suppose when you wrote

for what? Just for yourself? And was there an eye towards you getting a group together even as a solo acting performing well? Um not. For a while I was convinced I couldn't sing. I still sometimes wonder actually, But I was writing songs and trying to get people to sing them, people I was playing in bands with, and it never sounded right. They never phrased it how I wanted or anything like that. So I started singing myself and it sounded terrible, but I just stuck with it.

Sheer desperation. You kept telling people from the key would no do it like this? Yeah exactly, And they couldn't get it. Yeah, And so they'd say, we'll sing it yourself, you know, yeah, Yeah, you had to be had a band. Eventually had a band. What was it called Joe Jackson band? Okay, it's always yeah, well it keeps it simple. I'm glad actually that it was never a band. Identity you know, um in terms of what, well, in terms of not,

I've never been in that situation. Oh yeah, I liked it so and so, but I didn't like him solo kind of thing because I've always been solo. Um and uh yeah. So my basic motivation was shared desperation and you get out of Portsmouth. When with my late teens I went to the rural Academy of Music, I got what I guess you'd call a scholarship and did three years at the Royal Academy Music, where I didn't fit in at all. I just wanted to play in rock and roll bands. But so I did everything I could.

I mean, I played in jazz big bands. I played piano for a theater group. I mean I did all kinds of things, top forty pop bands, playing piano in restaurants and pubs. Anything I could do. Um. I think I was a great believer in the that the old adage of whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger, even though I don't think i'd heard that yet. But but a very shot an approach to it. You do, who

would try anything? Yeah, anything absolutely any work yeah, and then learning something and hopefully making a few pounds to live on. I never expected to have money. I mean, I figured, well, if I'm going to be a musician and forget about that. I wasn't that worried about it really, as long as they had enough to just about live on. So by the time I actually got the record deal with A and M and made my first album, I felt like I was this sort of seasoned professional, you know,

who'd been around forever and done everything. And I was twenty three. Well how did that happen you? When you've got to deal with A and M? How did they find you? Through a guy called David Kershenbaum who was he was acting as a kind of unofficial talent scout I think for them, um, and he ended up producing

my first couple of albums. And well, yeah, it all happened just sort of like overnight, really after many years of slugging away playing gigs and like naval bases and weddings where fights broke out and all the rest of it. But I'm really glad I did all that stuff look sharp as your first out. That was the first album.

And what happens then, Well, all of a sudden, I was working regularly, you know, I was able to keep a band together, going to all kinds of places that I never thought I would go to, all over Europe and the States, and uh it was great fun and a bit scary at the same time because you're so young. Yeah, you know, I didn't really know anything. Did you have a manager? I had a manager, somebody who relied on

that helped you. Yeah, yeah, he was okay. I don't think he was already all that much more prepared for it than I was, to be honest, But we just kind of blundered through. And when you became successful, was

it what you hoped it would be? Uh? Wow? It was both like way way better than I ever dreamed and way worse at the same time, because well, I mean I never thought that I would have that kind of audience or those kind of opportunities or make any money, you know, So it was it was amazing unfamiliar with the feeling there you go in my business as well, Yeah, you don't go into something like making music or acting. I guess assuming that you're gonna success is more of

a stranger than failure. Yeah, well, I think you have to. Well, I gradually learned over time that you have to have your own definition of success. Right, you know, because otherwise you're always trying to chase someone else's And I mean to me, if you can do something you love and you've got enough to live, you know, just to live on and have a reasonably enjoyable life, you know, what's

what's wrong with that? Who were people that you admired them, that all of a sudden you're one of them, you're in rooms with them, you meet them. Oh no, well, you know that's never really applied that much to me. Um My heroes have always been people who were mostly dead a bit opening. It wasn't around could be get him to come to the opening of the party. Now he's gone, okay, And I would like to talk too much about people you might say my peer and you know,

I don't know. I mean, I may or may not have things in calm with them, but that's not what I looked to for inspiration. I look I suppose more to the past. Yeah, now when you do, when Luke Sharp comes out, is there a way that you I mean McCartney once told me that he said that they would go to the studio and they'd record two songs in the morning, go to the pub, have fish and chips, and a paint and a cigarette, come back and to

do two songs in the afternoon. They were on the clock in the early days, and they had cut records, and then then then it's a while before we're going to take a year to do Sergeant Peppers, you know. But in the early days was work and what changed for you and albums like that? I mean, the studio was only available for at certain times, and I actually had to go in and try to work in the morning, which was first possible. I don't, oh why, but I never was a morning person even as a kid. I couldn't.

I just couldn't drag myself out of bed man as a kid. And one of the reasons I became a musician is in the hope that I wouldn't have to get up early in the morning. And that's actually true, but none pleaves me. But anyway, it was a bit like that near early days. But I've always been a quick worker anyway in the studio. I mean, I don't I don't see why people should take years to make

an album. I think it's silly, to be honest. But were things that were available to once you became successful that you didn't have before that you're excited about being able to make another album, basically to be able to keep going to to do another tour. And I mean that's what it's all about. What was songwriting like for you? Running out when you wrote the songs and look sharp, how long did they take? Well? It still comes in

fits and starts. I quite know how to describe it, because sometimes I'll get on a role and I'll write a lot, and other times I don't know anything quite a long time. And that's gotten to be more the case actually in recent years. I take longer and longer, but more fussy because you know, I think some of the early stuff is pretty lame, quite honestly. I mean some of it I still like, and I think it

was the best I could do at the time. But I tended to just like if I had an idea for a song, I kind of like throw it together and think, well, that's all right, I guess, and right, so let's move on, and it would get recorded and released.

Just looking back, I don't really have any serious regrets about anything, but I think I've been too prolific and made too many records that if I had taken a bit more time in between you know, I might have made a couple less records, but they would have been better. So that's more how I work nowadays. But I think I was a bit more workaholic in the early days, you know, like I felt like I had to be

doing something new and putting something out. But when you say you would release songs early on that you look back on them now and they might not have been something you would consider now, you know. Obviously that's that hindsight thing is tricky, but that would apply to probably things I've done in my life as well. But well, you can't. You can't know, you can't. And also, you know, we're supposed to move on, we're supposed to progress and

get better as artists. Otherwise, why are we doing it? Why? I think? But what's what's an album that when you when it came together, you thought, I really am proud of this, this really represents here's one I thought for the most what we got it right? Most of them. At the time I did it, I generally felt excited about it and like I've done the best I could. And it takes a little bit of distance to be able to say, well, looking back on it, this one really wasn't so good as this one. Um, But I

think I'm more consistent these days. I think my last two albums have been among the best I've done, partly because I took a lot of time over them and actually throughout stuff that I didn't think it was good enough, or I rewrote stuff that I thought was a bit too obvious, or have been done before or whatever. In the earlier days, you had done videos like everybody to support your work, and then you stopped making videos correct

for a little while, I did. I thought, I mean, this is remember this was or something, and the video thing it got very big, very quickly, and I think that I didn't really take it all that seriously. I thought, well, all right, yeah, we'll make a video. Might be a

bit of fun. And then more and more it's just seemed like you couldn't even have a single without a video, for instance, And I heard stories about young bands not getting signed because there wasn't enough money for a video, whereas before that, you know, a record would have been enough actually, and things like that. And I started seeing more and more videos that I thought were stupid and nothing to do with music, and I decided, in my almighty hubris and arrogance to to not only not make videos,

but to sort of make a protest about it. And I wrote that was published in Billboard. I think saying video is killing music and we shouldn't do it. And there was only one other artist that I'm aware of who made similar comments, and that was Bruce Springsteen because he didn't make videos for a long time, and he said when he finished the song, he felt like he painted the Mona Lisa, and if he had, if he had to make a video, it was like he had to draw a mustache on it. And I thought that

was great, and that's how I felt too. I felt like, well, why should I do this? It's it's silly. You know. This did my career absolutely no good whatsoever. But if you had it to do over again, you might have done things differently About that. I don't know. I mean, I think I probably it's like you can't hold back the sea, you know, the waves, you know. I still think a lot of videos are stupid and a waste of money, But eventually got talked around to it and did a couple more a bit later on, but I

think was the last video I made. I haven't done it since the only time I see videos nowadays, it's like on the exercise at the gym, you know, and like one video after another, and it's quite amazing. I mean, what I sort of said was happening all those years ago, it really has sort of triumphed, which is that the videos are now used purely to distract you from the music exactly, you know, which a lot of the time is so lame to enhance a week song. Yeah, and

that's true. And a lot of the videos now seemed to be basically soft porn, like pushing candy to Yeah, and uh, it's that, you know, I'm all right with that, but it doesn't change the fact that the songs suck. It's masking something, that's masking something. When did you first come to the States? What was your first trip here?

It was actually before my first album was released. The American division of A M. Records wanted me to come over and just meet people and kind of schmooz and some one and that was, believe it or not, in nineteen seventy eight. I think I was back in sevente to do my first American tour. I met you then you did, I don't remember, Oh yeah, was going to n y U and Gary my roommate, he was my

roommate in college. And beyond Gary and I come to uh, we come to the Binnie Bomb in the East Village and there you were sitting there eating and you back then, and I don't want to characterize you, just not in a pejorative way. You were very, very kind of imposing. You know, you were sitting there eating and you your album was this big album and when New York in the East Village the kind of epicenter of self conscious

bullshit coolness in New York, and there you are. Me and Gary walked up to you and I said, excuse me, can I ask you a question? And you looked up and you and looked up at me and you went no. And you could just tell you were like sick. I didn't make it. I wouldn't do that anything kind of fake news. Well it might as well be, as far as I'm concerned, because I certainly don't remember. Of course you don't remember. It might be it was one of countless people who might have been in a bad mood

or who knows what was happening. He was sick of fame and it was just acting like I was sick of fame from the beginning. I mean, I look, I love performing and connecting with people through music, right, but I'm not interested in being a celebrity that way. So and I think like, especially in the early days, I was very defensive a lot of the time because I just felt like, you know, so much of what was going on around me was sort of phony and and bullshit.

And it did take some getting used to, you know, being stared at and people coming up and there's sort of weird things where someone would come up and say, Hey, my friend tells me you're someone called Judge Jackson, and I've got a bet with him. It's worth twenty bucks to me, So are you aren't you? You know that kind of you think? And then people would say, why do you have a problem with that? They're your fans, they love you. When did you move to New York

and get home here? Um N two? I had a sublet here for four months and I was really in love with New York and made I'm called Night and Day. Here. Where did you recordinating? It was a student called Blue Rock in Soho. It's long gone actually, as are most of the studios in the city. But so yeah, it was actually in Soho, and at that time, Soho didn't have a whole lot of shots, even the New York

that I fell in love with. And I don't want to start getting into all that because I'm sure that anyone younger, if anyone who wasn't here in the eighties, rolls their eyes. I'm the same way, the old New York, the old New York. So you moved here in two and you'll record night and day. How long did it take you to record that album? It was all done within a month, I'm sure like most of my albums, did you did you have a sense of what you

were onto when you recorded them? Not at all? And actually, to this day, I'm surprised that that's well my most successful album ever because it was a bit of a departure from the earlier ones, which were more like I guess what you would call rock and roll and had guitars in them. And I've broken up that band. I

mean it broke up because the drummer left. But anyway, I had this crazy idea to do an album no guitars, and I was really interested in, um, let's say, non rock and roll music, like a lot of the time when I was in New York, I would be going to check out Latin music or things that were more like in the direction of soul funk, and you know, even the early beginnings of hip hop all interested me more than rock and roll at that time. You like to go to clubs, and yeah, and jazz clubs. I mean,

I've always been a big jazz fan. So I wanted to make an um that was a bit jazzy and had Latin rhythms in it, and my keyboard and all keyboards, keyboards and percussion and no guitars, and so what's what's what? What? What Spanish club were you win? The Motivated? What Latin club were you in? What we were listening to? The

Inspired cancer? Um yeah, yeah, Well that was what I saw as something that was starting to happen then, which has happened a lot more now, which is a kind of like terrible, all encompassing obsession with anything to do with health and the possibility of any kind of risks in ones health becoming dominant to the point of sort of like sucking all the fun out of life. Um. So that was about that when it was supposed to be tongue in cheek. I don't know, But what made

you put it through a Latin beat like that? I don't know. It's just I just thought it would be fun, you know, I mean it's funny. People say why did you do this? And why did you do it this way all that way? And usually it's just well, I just thought it would be fun. But occurred to you, Yeah, I thought it would be worth a try. Why not? What the hell coming up? Joe Jackson reflects and what it was like working with Francis Ford Coppola. To hear from another musical legend as well as pianist. Take a

listen to my interview with Billy Joel. I know what good piano ling is, and I'm not good. My left hand is lame. I'm a two finger left hand piano player, as opposed to post somebody who knows what they're doing with the left hand. I never practiced enough to use all my fingers on my left hand, so I just play octaves, bass notes. My right hand tries to compensate from my left hand being so gimpy, so I overplay on my right hand. My technique is horrible. I can't

read music. I never really don't read music I used to, but I don't anymore. I forgot how here our entire conversation that here's the thing, Dot Org, this is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. For a kid raised in what he calls a musical desert, Joe Jackson is unbelievably prolific. The English singer songwriter released his nineteen studio album Fast Forward in two thousand fifteen, which was recorded in four different cities across America. Currently touring nationwide,

he considers his newest work to be some of his best. Still, he looks back finally on the albums that propelled him to fame, Look Sharp and Night and Day, and the creative freedom that got him there. I think I just allowed myself to allowed myself to stretch a bit more and be a bit more sophisticated, because the first couple of albums, it was very much the thing of the time was to strip everything down and to their absolute basic raw essentials, you know, And I think I've gotten

a bit tired of that. It's only so far you can go with that, basically, So I just allowed myself to stretch out a bit and use more chords and so on, because I knew them all already anyway, you know what I mean. It was like I just discovered if minor servants or something. But it was just I just thought, well, I'm just going to not think about what anyone might think of this and just do do

what I want to do. And there's a lesson in this where because it was my most successful album, But a lot of that has to do with timing and other stuff. Being still a relatively new artist that people were interested in, um, interested in knowing what I was going to do next, um Still signed to a record company that was very strong, really on a roll at that point, was willing to spend some money, able to do a really big tour. I mean, we toured for

a year off the album. A lot of things circumstantially got me the kind of attention for that album that I wouldn't inevitably wasn't going to get later on. It's really no more complicated than just needing to feel comfortable being in your own skin. And what happened if the night and day we did, everybody approach you and saying we were deluged with you, order to do this now, and do this now, we're now. I think people have sort of gotten a message even by then that. But

I've also I've always said this. I mean, it's hilarious when you hear artists say, well, yeah, you know, I know that album of mine wasn't a success because it was bad, but you know it was I was forced into it somehow. It was the influence of the Bracle company or the producer or this or that. And I think, what what do they do? Come in the studio and put a gun to your head. You do what you want for a lot of people. And I see it.

And I've met people at this and I'm not going to name names, but you know that they're just like so obsessed with hanging onto They're a certain level of of success defineding you know, numbers and amount of their time and print space and however you define it. Yeah. So after that album you had, you moved here, you were living here, Yeah, I mean, after being on the road for a year and that and that in has a couple of ballads in there, you know, real manners

on that album. It's just so powerful to them at a time of aids and aids is royal ing in this city and royally in this country, and your music just is so honest and from the heart that and so romantic. I think that's one of my better albums, you know, so I don't have a problem of playing those songs. What's the next album you made? After Night and Day? That was Body and Soul? And again, you know, I thought, well, okay, I did the album with keyboards and percussion, so now I am going to do an

album with a horn section. And everyone said, oh, he made a Latin album. Now he's done a jazz album. You know. It's the kind of thing that it's been making you roll my eyes through my whole career, really, but there you go. When did Coupler call you? That was late eighties or eady nine. I think was he the first person to asked you to get involved in a movie project? No? I did one movie's called before that for a film called Mike's Murder Um where they

ended up. There was actually a soundtrack album was released, but my music was cut from the movie the end, so that was a bit of a disaster. What was the experience like with couple That was fantastic. I mean it was really the high point in my film scoring career, and it was all downhill. It's actually something that in more recent years I've pretty much come to the conclusion I'm not cut out for it. I mean, I would do it again under the right circumstances with the right director,

but I'm not cut out for Hollywood. Well, the last film score I did, actually, I quit fairly early on the project because they wanted me to make rough demos of everything I wrote and send them to them on

a daily basis pretty much. And everything I did was then sort of nitpicked to death by his kind of committee about seven or eight people, and no one really knew what they were the wrong guy, yeah, you know, the director didn't really know what he wanted that they're The way they heard my ideas was completely different to what I thought that happens. Yeah, And and in the end, I said, look, this is just it was driving me insane.

I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I mean, I just felt like everyone was trying to cover their houses and you know, I don't know, I didn't feel there was any career process him whatsoever. How much of your music stayed a couple of movie, um, most of it. Yeah, Yeah, And the recording was actually in London because I think it was just cheaper too. But I spent a lot of time with Francis and his um, what do you

call it his ranch? I think in northern California, and I spent much more time with him than I thought I would, and it was a much more interesting creative process because he's a very musical guy and he had good ideas, you know what I mean. He kind of knew what he wanted, but he also was willing to give me some freedom as well. And you just don't get that really, um alone with a great director, you know what I mean? Whatever became of the of the project Stoker that you did? Oh right, well, I mean

that that's languishing. It's a play. It's a musical theater piece that I've been working on and off for years with a with a writer and a director, and it's I think it's a great piece. It's it's about the life of Brown Stoker and how he created Dracula, where the ideas came from and so on. What inspired you

to do that? Well, the script that they came to me, the writer and the director, Um and the writer Raymond Hardy had written it as a play originally, and they thought that it could be musicalized, and we've done a lot of work on it, but we've never been able to get anyone to to put up the money to produce it or you know, it's just we've had so many near misses. I mean, I don't know if it's ever going to happen at this point. OK. I hope.

So it'd be great in your life. I would assume someone as gifted as you have you been approached by other people who wanted you to produce them as well. Yeah, a few, and have you done. No, No, I'm not interested. It's hard enough to to make my own records, dealing with other people's ideas and other people's egos, especially if it's a band you know, but banned politics, and it also it's going to involve record company politics and all this sort of thing. And I know, I just I

don't know the patience for it. So no mentoring for you, No, not really, No, I don't. I don't think I'm cut out for that somehow, I don't think. I don't think I have the patient story. Actually, I mean, I don't know. Maybe if something will happen when I'm older, I have no idea. Maybe maybe I'm good at it and I don't know, I just never really I only mentioned in terms of passing it on you know some great Yeah. Well I just think it's all there in the whatever

work I do. And example, Yeah, yeah, Graham maybe has been your basis for years, Yeah, on and off, but mostly one. And how does that collaboration survived where others haven't. Yeah, I don't know, It's just just just works out that way, mainly mainly because he's an amazingly fantastically brilliant bass player and he's never really changed, you know, So I don't really need anyone else. I mean, I may do Calvium, for instance. I worked with Christian McBride, who's an amazing

jazz bassis. Um Graham can't do what he does because he doesn't play acoustic bass or one thing, you know. So, I mean I have worked with other bass players here and there, but I always seem to come back to Graham and uh. We were on the road together again the last couple of years, which is great after all this time. I mean I think we were teenagers when we first met. Do you have to do anything now? Two? Because you still sing very well I listened to on

YouTube viewers. I take pride and still because a lot of people's voices are shot by the time they get to this. Remember what there are things that you have to do. Yeah, well, I haven't ruined my voice over the years. I've been very careful with my voice and and I actually learned a lot of techniques fairly early on. And you can belt, did you not ruin your voice and your belts? Because I don't do it all the time, And I as I warm up my voice before I say,

then I warmed down after I sing. And I have a lot of little tricks that I learned to sing without straining my voice. And I find that I can. I can do it as long as I don't, you know, try to do a show every night for months on end and get some rest her in there. I think my voice sounds pretty fresh, and I sing much better now than I didn't here any days. Actually, well, let's just say as well as you sang in the early days,

it's like it carried away. In those early days, you sounded pretty damn good at m say, well, I was never a natural singer like some people just burst into song in the shower. You know, I've never been that guy. I don't sing unless and that's another reason I think I haven't read my voices because I only sing if I really have to, if i'm making a record, orf i'm touring. That's I don't sing any of the time.

And when you divide your time between a couple of places you live, Berlin as one of the places that you live by how did that did that the feelings for that city developed? I think I find in Berlin something that I found in New York back in the eighties, which is I don't find free very much in New York Now. I mean it's it's very free. You basically do anything you want. Um, it's relatively cheap, so therefore you get a good mix of people. You get a

lot of young, creative people. There's a buzz to it that it's nice to be around. Um, it's very relaxed city. I think it has a very good quality of life, and it has great bars, and it's a city that's very interesting, UM in a lot of a lot of ways. But it's also very easy to live in and very relaxed to live in, and um kind of a pleasure to be And I always feel very free there. It's funny. David Bowie said the same thing when he lived there in the seventies, when it was surrounded by a wall.

You know, it's always had that. It's always been a very very tolerant place and a sort of oasis of freedom. And it's a special place. I like it very much. I'm not there all the time. I still have so many connections in New York, and I'm back here quite a lot. When you tour next, are you gonna come here?

You're gonna come to New York? And are now? Um? Well, we did, I mean the last couple of years played I think five shows in New York and we finished up back in July with a show at the Apollo, which was fantastic to play there, and I thought we were done, you know, but everyone seems to want to do it again. So I think we're going out again in June to play a whole bunch of places we didn't get to the last time around it, which will probably not include New York as because we've really done,

like I said, five shows. I think you know you've written something, You've done some classical composing as well. Correct Well, I wouldn't really call it classical. I wrote a symphony which was an instrumental piece in four movements that structured like a symphony, but I didn't want to sound like classical music. And it's not an orchestra. I mean people have compared it to some of Frank Zapper's instrumental music, for instance, and it won a Grammy. A complete fluke.

I mean, I'm still astonished by this. It won't the Grammy for Best Pulp Instrumental Recording. So there I was with a Grammy for a record. Were you there when you won? No, I was actually on tour in the UK. I thought, I think I was in Scotland. I would get I would have given a lot of money to see your Grammy acceptance speech. I mean, I remember my calling me, let's say you've just wont a Grammy, and I said, oh, I literally thought he was fuck off. Yea,

that is what I said. Symphony Number one released by Sony Classical in two thousand, I believe or two thousand and one. I'm not sure now. But the great thing about it is that you're able to be referred to as a Grammy winning artist and some people like that. You know, I can't remember the last well, actually I do remember the last time I watched the Grammys, Like, I don't know what year it was, it was quite

a long time ago. And a friend I was watching with said, look, if you're just going to get solved upset and throw things at the team strain and cursed, why don't you just, you know, just don't watch it. And I thought, you know what, You're right, And I haven't watched it since. Are you a music listener? Do you have music other than your own in your life? Yeah, all the time. What do you like? Yeah, I'm a big jazz fan. Actually I do, probably listen to more

jazz and anything else. But yeah, I mean I'm all over the map really. I mean, lately I've been into Colombian music and listening to a lot of African music as well. I don't listen to a lot of Anglo American sort of pop mainstream music. Everything. Most of its crap, quite yeah, And I mean there are exceptions, okay, but I think in general it's not a great time for British or American pop music. I just don't do to throw on music from the old days of music you

listen to and play it like the British pop music. Yeah, yeah, I mean I still actually listen. I still put on a Beatles album. Yeah, and the Gym No, I still love all that stuff, and the Kinks I love as well, and a lot of the other you know, bands that have been forgotten that I used to love when I was ten. But but yeah, I'm also I'm very interested in music from other other countries and it often seems to me to be more vibrant and and more interesting.

And I'm always trying to find something, you like, some new artists out there that's really interesting. And it does happen now and again, you know, it's not happening every week, and it's not always from the States or from the UK either. When you talk about jazz, and obviously, I mean I've heard the jazz influences and a lot of

your music. You ever think about exploring that more, like if you ever wanted to, you know, go to jazz at Lincoln Center and play with Wynton Marsalis or record an album with something like that fuse your where you feel like you don't really want to mix your thing with somebody else's thing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I did do this album the Duke a couple of years ago, which was a Duke Ellington tribute album where I got to work with some pretty cool people like

Regina Carter, the violinist, and well a whole bunch of people. Actually, Igy Pop is on there as well, like this. Mary and Faithful was one of your recent albums. She was on Night and Day two and another album of mine that didn't do very well. Um, but in fact we're merry and faithful seeing things that My favorite lyre she ordered the coffee says there'll be a merger before it gets cold? Is that the lyric? Yeah, she's supposed to be. She's a businesswoman who's has no life. Really, Um, I'm

quite proud of that song. Actually, I like that. It's a good one, and it was a fantastic to work with Mary Anne. She's a real character. I loved her. Yeah. So the Duke, which was Duke come into with no horns and really radical new arrangements, and I thought that was a very good Joe Jackson album. Actually, I mean, the only thing I didn't do on it was right

the original compositions, but I did the arrangements. I produced it, I sang, I played keyboards, and so on, you know, and I got some fantastic people to to play on it, so that was coming fairly close to jazz. But I'm not even sure it was a jazz album actually, even though I'm a huge Ellington fan and I'm a big jazz fan, and I can play jazz piano a bit, you know, not bad, but I'm not good enough to get up there with you know, like major jazz players

and jazz played jazz. Plus what's the point, you know? Um, If I have anything distinctive to offer, it's as a writer. So I should really get on with that. I should really get back to it. Anything now, I'm sure you're familiar with you and the people who you work with, who who manage you and stuff of this kind of album oriented revival thing they have now. Frampton did the show with us, and Frampton talked about how they go to the Beacon and they reenact they play Frampton comes

alive people see. I just saw Steely Dan do that recently. They did the whole of Countdown to Ecstasy, which was great in a way, But would you do that with the night and day life? I don't, I don't think so, I don't really want to be honest at least in a row. Well, I don't. I don't know if I would or not. I guarantee you would, but I guarantee you would. To live in New York in the nineteen

eighties and beyond, music was changing. I can honestly say that right after your biggest album's broke it was when music my music consumption changed radically in six and I literally turned off popular radio and never turned it on again. Ever. That's one of the reasons why I think it's you know, when when I say I don't think it's a particularly great time now, I don't think it's just because I got older. Actually, I mean it might be in some way, but but you know, I was just completely fed up

with pop music altogether. I wasn't interested. And then it started to get more interesting again in the nineties. I think there was a lot of really cool stuff coming out of the UK, especially at that time, and um, can you name one act that was a big trigger for you? The Prodigy. I liked a lot of electronic stuff, Chemical Brothers, that kind of thing, and I like the so called brit pop bands as well. I like Oasis, I like Pulp and Blur, um Talvin Singh. I thought

it was amazing. I like a lot of drum and bass. I'm writing down furiously everything I got Joe Jackson in my eye line for the next few minutes. I'm seriously scribbling down all your recommendations. Yeah. Well, but I'm a believer that in the were the way we live now because of the Internet is that everything is new now. People are starving for that music. They're starving for that music I never dying for. I have no idea what

to say to that. I can't be objective, go back to bed because you no. No, I mean, I don't know it's flattering, you know, but I think my last album is pretty damn good too, you know. So that's what I wanted to play a lot what do you do? Another thirty minutes of what do you do? Whatever the hell you want to do. I mean, I was going to say, if I ever did do that, I would certainly play a lot of new stuff as well. I mean, not to get too much into it, but I'm a

huge Steely Dan fan. So I mean that show where they did the whole album, and they also did a lot of other stuff that they didn't do anything that I've figured this out afterwards. It didn't really occur to me afterwards. But nothing they did was produced any later than And I thought that was kind of amazing. And I don't think I would be able to allow myself to do that. But but but the thing is that I turned off popular radio and I turned on classical

radio and something happened. That music teaches me that that other music lives in the same way as well. You're the same as Monsart, You're the same as Brahms, You're the same as Britain. We have to lay that. We have to keep playing it again and again and again, and every time you hear it, if it's good music, you hear something different. Yeah, that much I go on with, Yeah, that's one of the way ways I know that something is good. It makes me want to listen to it again.

Be much. We could stay stare and maybe we got a hour maybe then weet see you at always something breaking us, always something breaking, Nassis. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to here's the thing