Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson started off learning to play the violin but soon switched to piano. From the age of sixteen he played in bars, and won a scholarship to study musical composition at London's Royal Academy of Music. Jackson did not like the prospect of being a serious composer, and moved towards pop and rock.
Jackson's first band was Edward Bear, not to be confused with the 1970s Canadian band fronted by Larry Evoy, which had a mid 1970s hit with "Last Song". The band was later renamed Arms and Legs, in order to avoid confusion with the Canadian group. Arms and Legs dissolved in 1976 after two unsuccessful singles. Although he was still known as David Jackson while in Arms & Legs, it was around this time that Jackson picked up the nickname "Joe", based on his perceived resemblance to the puppet character Joe 90.

Joe Jackson, as he now called himself, then spent some time in the cabaret circuit to make money to record his own demos.

In 1978 a record producer heard his tape, and got him signed to A&M Records. The album Look Sharp! was recorded straight away, and was released in 1979, quickly followed by I'm the Man (also 1979) and Beat Crazy in 1980. He also collaborated with Lincoln Thompson in reggae crossover.

The Joe Jackson Band was very successful and toured extensively. After the breakup of the band, Jackson took a break and recorded an album of old-style swing and blues tunes, Jumpin' Jive, featuring songs of Cab Calloway, Lester Young, Glenn Miller, and most prominently, Louis Jordan.

Jackson hit paydirt with 1982's Night and Day, an album that paid tribute to the wit and style of Cole Porter (and indirectly to New York City). Night and Day was Jackson's only album to reach the Top 10, peaking at #4, and the cuts "Steppin' Out" and "Breaking Us In Two" were chart hits, the latter of which was widely notable for the borrowed opening melody from Badfinger's "Day After Day". The tracks "Real Men" and "A Slow Song" have pointed obliquely to the city's early 80s gay culture[2]. Jackson would call New York home for the next twenty years, incorporating the sound of the city into his music throughout the 1980s and beyond.

Jackson recorded the #20 album Body and Soul, also heavily influenced by pop and jazz standards and salsa, showcasing the #15 hit "You Can't Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)". The album was a modest commercial success and is widely regarded among audiophiles as a digital recording of the highest quality.[citation needed]

Jackson followed with Big World, a three-sided double record (the fourth side consisted of a single centring groove and a label stating "there is no music on this side"), which was recorded in live sessions (although it is not a live album). The instrumental "Will Power" set the stage for things to come later, but before he left pop behind he put out two more cerebral and celebratory albums, Blaze of Glory and Laughter & Lust. For some years he drifted away from the pop style, going on to be signed by Sony Classical in 1997, which released his Symphony No. 1 in 1999 for which he received a Grammy Award.

In 1990, thrash metal band Anthrax recorded a cover of Jackson's "Got The Time" for their Persistence of Time album, which got considerable airplay on MTV.

Jackson is also an author, having written A Cure for Gravity, published in 1999, which Jackson has described as a "book about music, thinly disguised as a memoir". It traces his early musical life from childhood until his twenty fourth birthday. Life as a pop star, he suggested, was hardly worth writing about.

Whilst 2000's Night and Day II lacked any radio-friendly individual tracks, it succeeded in displaying fine lyrics and some elegant songwriting, as is usually the case with Jackson's work.

Joe Jackson's new cd - "Rain"- Out January 29th!