| My Music page |
| "The press in the UK just doesn't like me and never really has," says Jackson, without a trace of rancour. "And it puts me in the awkward position like a whiner. I get boxed into a corner where i can't really respond honestly without coming across as bitter, and i'm just not that kind of person." He has always been fiercely articulate, and in the finger pointing, late-1970's climate of class-conscious one-upmanship, his Royal Academy of Music training was viewed with intense suspician. Referring to what he calls this "sneering attitude", Jackson comments: "It says a lot more about their inverted snobbery than it does about any supposed snobbery on my part. Excuse me. I'm an articulate person, with a wide musical background. What was i suppose to do? Have a lobotomy?" Dismissed as aloof and cynical, Jackson, cussed to his core, carried on regarless. "To be called cynical by a journalist," he laughs, remembering some of the brickbats, "is like being called a racist by the Klu Klux Klan." Jackson sounds as fresh, and as angry, as ever.. "None of us ever thought this would happen," he says. "And if we were all fat and tired, or fucked up on drugs, we wouldn't be doing it." Joe Jackson Is Back - The Eclectic Side, People by Serena Kappes 3-11-03 For Joe Jackson, the word 'nostalgia' has always been a dirty one. "I always thought nostaliga was kind of a swamp that you might sink into and not be able to escape from" he explains. The result of this change of heart is the group's first album since 1980, "Volume 4". "This band always had great chemistry, and it just came back more easily than we expected," he says "The new cd really shows where we are now and not where we were 20 years ago." Jackson, 48, is certainly no stranger to change. In his more than 25-year career, he has flirted with 1940's jimp and swing music, post-punk new wave, symphonic music and jazz. "I don't see huge barbed-wire fences in between different kinds of music," he says "I'm more guided by taste and intuition than i am by rules." Joe Jackson: Volume 4 - Los Angeles Daily News, by Valley 3-14-03 In this welcome return to the garage, the onetime Playboy Club ivory-tickler reassembles his distinctive 1978 band in an unexpectedly bracing set that extends rather than imitates the fine first effort. Jackson and Band Show They've Held Up Very Well - The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, by Dave Ferman The sheer amount of time that has passed makes the original Joe Jackson Band's current reunion tour an improbable, I-Can't-Believe-They-Did-That treat. And it would be a shame if this reunion was just a one-shot deal. |
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| Joe Jacskon page 1 |
| Joe won Best Pop Instrumental Album for his 'Symphonoy No.1' cd at the 2001 (43rd) Grammy Awards |
| In Joe's Words cont... |
| He's The Man - Joe Jackson gets the band back together by Michael Corcoran - Austin American-Statesman 3-15-03 Jackson is doing things he's not used to doing, including a full day of 20-minute interviews. This chap has a reputation for crankiness, especially if critics start making generalizations. "About two hours ago i decided to make a game of it. Each interview has invariably begun with 'why did you decide to put the band back together?' he says in an affected drone. ' I try to give a different slant on the same answer each time. It's been a real challenge'. 'You know, when you're 23 years old and it's very easy to see the world as full of woe and so it's clever to put things down...Then you live your life and go through times of real woe and it's not so funny anymore.' Jackson Thrives - Pop - The Sunday Times/London by Dan Cairns 3-9-03 'The press doesn't like me' and Joe Jackson doesn't care. Looks like he's back with the band and feistier than ever. When Joe Jackson performed a series of gigs in Britain last summer he was described as looking 'reinvig-orated'. The clear implication was that the 47-year old had been in need of a boost. Yet this reaction both ingored the huge body of work Jackson has produce in teh 23 years since the band's swan song, Beat Crazy, and pointed up this country's historic inability to come to terms iwth one of its most intriguing musicians. |