JOE JACKSON CHART TOPPING & GIRL WATCHING

The hands spell nerves: balled into fists and rammed into the pockets of the pinstripe jacket. The elbows jerk and the knees twitch, the face is contorted into a frown of concentration; Joe Jackson is making sure the set starts off right.

Around and behind him, his band rampage through "One More Time" with the fierce economy that characterizes Jackson's music; a lesson learned from reggae and Dr. Feelgood, everything taut and mobile.

"Spiv Rock" say the buttons and stickers: a Jackson joke that A&M Records took seriously. "Look Sharp!" says the album cover: a Jackson joke that I took seriously. Thursday night at Dingwall's: pay attention! Joe Jackson is the name on 1979's first great first album. A tall thin man with a truculent baby face, a domed forehead and a short coxcomb of hair, a Leo (you can always spot Leos: they all look as though they ought to have their pictures stamped onto eggs), a mod.

ALL RIGHT, I've had it! Will the yobbo who put gum on my shoes step up here?

"After all, you gotta look sharp."

, my name son me cover or ims vary sharp magazine. The lady's not bad, either.

Not a displaced 6'0's mod, not a kid living a vision derived from old Small Faces album covers, but a 70's mod.

His album title is an appropriate play on words: Jackson has a sharpness modified by a mild, self-parodying belligerence. On record he sounds a touch like Elvis Costello, but his stage demeanor is more reminik:ent of Lee Brilleaux or Graham Parker.

"Crisp" is the word that comes to mind when you dip into the adjective satchel for something that describes his singing. It's articulate, matter-of-fact, down-to-earth, economical,' precise, untheatricah forceful and assured as well, but "crisp" does it better.

The same adjective will also perform sterling service to describe his band: Graham Maby bobs and weaves stage right, punching out riffs, fills and comments that simultaneously underpin and lead Gary Sanford's-jabbing remorseless rhythm guitar while Dave Houghton stays on the case in the engine room. On the album, Maby dominated most of the instrumental department with ease whereas on stage he's simply first among equals—behind Jackson, that is. And by the end of the number Jackson has unbent enough to open, his eyes and drag his fists out of his pockets as the applause washes oven him.

Crisply.

Joe Jackson gave the impression of having come from nowhere during the dying days of last year when A&M released his first single in England, "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", and s^nt him out on tour as support to The Pleasers (as obscure a means of warming an act up as could possibly be desired).

The single got Jackson a reputation as a man to be watched, though despite its excellence it didn't exactly send him careening to the heights of public attention, and the tour was conducted under conditions of such secrecy that I didn't even know it had taken place until a couple of months after it finished.

Joe Jackson didn't come from nowhere: he came from Portsmouth, England. He'd taken his demos round to United Artists, who'd declined to involve themselves in either his present or future activities.

However, they did put him onto Albion Music, who—as impressed by

My songs are all the songs of a survivor rather than cultivated hostility.

Jackson's songs as any rational people should be—signed him to a publishing contract. The Albionite who signed him, an affable, bearded fellow by the name of John Telfer, later became his manager.

From Albion, the demos went to producer David Kershenbaum, who immediately alerted A&M Records while simultaneously booking studio time. So it was that jackson took time out of his first day of recording to hop over to the A&M office to,—tadaaaa!— sign the contract.

Whammo! Suddenly there he was, kitted out with all the apparatus: manager, publisher, record company, ready to take his tilt at whatever people take their tilt at when they dive into the glitzy world of rock music.

So the single came out, the album came out and Jackson slugged his way through a minefield of club dates. A&M—whose U.S. offices sat up and looked sharp as soon as they clapped ear to tape—whisked him off to the States to launch the album. After that . . . who knows? He could be El Monstroso in the States by the time

Radio 1 start asking Joe whor and playlisting the next single.

But of course , right now Joe Jackson is onstage at Dingwall's explaining that he and his band have all got flu (the applause for the second number, the single B-side "The Fever", having just subsided), goodnaturedly fencing with the hecklers and getting set to run through his album material, a coupla new Songs (one of which, "I'm The s^Ian", is a hilarious and piercing attack on manufactured trends that I can't wait to hear on record), and a splendidly incongruous piano performance of the Burke-Van Heuses obscurostandard "Polkadots And Moonbeams."

Jackson's piano sits behind Graham Maby, and he occasionally rushes over to it to plunk out a hasty interlude. The basic trio sound of the band is so full, complete and appropriate, however, that the piano sequences seem like afterthoughts: they intrude rather than extend a lot of the time.

A&M's U.K. managing director, Derek Green, is over by the mixing desk. He i$ feeling no pain. In his white windcheater, beard and baseball boots, he's the living image of Record Magnate In Repose. "Good, inne?" someone enthuses.

"Better," responds Green. "He was awful when he started." The enthuser opines that Jackson is A&M's best signing since the Pistols.

Ouch. "If he makes an album as good as Never Mind The Bollocks, I'd be delighted," mumbles Green ruefully (a foot on his sore corn, a footstep on his grave). The enthuser inquires how Jackson first came to Green's attention. "He didn't," retorts the magnate. **I was out of the country when he was signed."

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33

Such confidence and enthusiasm is moving beyond belief.

Still, Green's in the dressing room laughing it up backstage with Joe and the band after the set and things get sufficiently hilarious for a seat to

collapse under him, so we can assume that a good time was had by all. Must've been, because just as Jackson was moving into his herky-jerky idiosyncratic encore of Chuck Berry's "Come On" (take a pinch of the jStones' version, add a touch of reggae feel, double the line .lengths from four to eight bars and you got it), someone over by the toilet door broke out the amyl nitrate and stank the place out.

Flu or no flu, Jackson and his men laid out a show that says they know what they're doing; and even under par it's clear that they just need the last lick of polish in order to put on a real contender of a show. Look sharp!

First thing in the morning, Joe Jackson is smooth-faced and blinking in the leather jacket that he wears "for knocking about in." He is horrified at the notion of being photographed in siich a garment. "After all, you gotta look sharp," he smirks self-consciously. He refuses cigarettes, requests a can of shandy, settles down in a cold office with walls emblazoned with Stranglers propaganda..

The bass-driven arrangements which frame most of his songs derive from his reggae fixation—"Though having a very good bass player helps. That's the way I like to arrange things. It makes them more interesting. I started with Marley around the time of 'Burnin' '. Natty Dread was the first reggae album I bought.

"So I can't say that I got into it when I was a skinhead." Jackson assumes a studiedly "street" accent and demeanor. "All me mates woz into it an' all the 'ardest kids at schbol woz black an' 'at (sniff)." He returns to normal mode. "I wasn't a teenage Prince Buster fan. Basically I heard Marley and thought this is really good and since then I've been really into reggae."

So what were your teenage kicks?

"I was really into classical music, as it happens." He pauses briefly. "I was a slightly odd teenager.". He gives the word odd a savagely ironic twist.

"A normal teenager goes to youth clubs and tries desperately to pick up girls and plays football. I didn't do any of those things. I didn't play football because I've been a really bad asthmatic all my life. I didn't try to pick up girls because . . . ahhhhh ... I used to think that I didn't stand a chance, and I didn't go to youth clubs because the other kids who did go seemed to be pretty boring.

"So I started getting into music in my early teens. I thought this is great. I'll be an intellectual, not like the rest of them. So I was an odd one out all the way through my childhood and teens. I just felt rather ... odd." A ,chuckle of nervous embarrassment. "This is all good psychological stuff.

"I've got a very bad memory, actually. I find it very hard to pin down exactly what got me into music. What was the first song you wrote, what was the first record that turned you on and all that. I don't remember. It was all a very gradual thing, but I don't really think very much about the past.. It wasn't that painful, but I didn't have a particularly happy childhood and teenage. Then again, I don't think it was especially traumatic.

"I wasn't very much into rock music as a teenager. It may seem strange, But there it is. The first rpck music that I liked was the Beatles and Stones, but that was when I was about ten*, so even though I really liked all that stuff,1 I« wasn't really old enough tb think about forming bands or anything. So it was quite a while later that I came full circle and started liking rock music again and started getting into bands."

Jackson ended up doing three years at the London College of Music, and was rated as a highly promising young pianiSjt. So: an ex-child prodigy, hein?

"Sort of, .yeah. Not a prodigy in the sense that I could play concertos when I was ten, though. I mean, I taught myself most of my piano playing, and I was probably a better pianist then than I am now, actually." .

Though Jackson was born in Burtonon-Trent, he grew up in Portsmouth, where he lived until January of '78.

"It's not a particularly nice plage, but it's all right. I actually have quite an affection for Portsmouth. I go back there quite often, since my parents live dowrtthere . . , a lot of my friends and my girlfriend."

Jackson was highly taken with the first stirrings of the New Wave. "It was great. At first I thought this is ridiculous,

I used to really laugh at it, I thought it was really funny. The Damned I thought were great. They were the fifst punk band that I got into because they seemed so outrageous* They were totally over the top when I saw them on that tour they did with Marc Bolan. Ridiculous. They made me really laugh.

"And then I saw The Clash, and they made me realize. They knocked me out, and I thought shit,, they really mean it, these people. That was a definite influence.

"And the Feelgoods! They really started the New Wave, a lot more than most people seem to think. They wer6 definitely the first New Wave band. Everybody says it was the Pistols who started it, but I couldn't really see tbe Pistols happening without the Feel-. goods happening first."

Jackson knocked around a few bands in Portsmouth: Edward Bear were a straightforward top-40 working men's club band who changed their name after a Canadian group called Edward Bear got an album out. Then

there was Arms And Legs.

"Arms And Legs was the pro/ original material/recording type of act. It evolved out of Edward Bear, who were a shameless pop band. I played piano and I used to sing a couple of soqgs; but I wasn't the actual lead singer. When I left Arms And Legs I went, through an intense period of getting my writing and singing together, because I wanted to do it for me rather than for a band. Just ego, I guess. Just ' becoming aware of what I had to offer and thinking that I had to be able to do morfe than this."

From Arms And Legs, Jackson played piano in the Portsmouth Playboy Club and worked as musical director for a cabaret act called Coffee And Cream while saving up enough money to record his demos and have them pressed up into album form. The demos went around to United Artists and . . . we've done this bit. Onwards.

It is appropriate that Jackson got his first in to what is laughingly referred to as The Big Time through his Albion publishing contract, because—even over and above the excellence, of his band and his not inconsiderable strengths as a performer and vocalist— his songwriting is his most striking calling card.

"So this is what happened to powerpop," mused a friend to whom I played Jackson's albqm. The comment is less cynical and less misguided than it would first appear: the songs have energy, wit, melody and solid harmonic structures. His lyrics are defiant, idealistic, ironic (just how ironic some of them are didn't hit me until after I'd written the album review in the NME). Hence, some of the analyses therein included are a trifle simplistic: a fact Jackson points out with ill-disguised glee.

'The lyrics that I write change constantly. I've got a song that I'm working on right now called 'It's Different For Girls', which is a phrase that you hear a lot. It reverses the stereotype relationship: in this song the girl just wants a fuck and it's the bloke who's getting all sensitive. 'X

"I want to get right away from all that macho shit, but at the same time I don't want to do the Elvis Costello god-I'vebeen-hurt-in-love thing either, even though songs like1 that do try to put forward a realistic approach to relationships.

"I think my songs are all the songs of a survivor rather than, as you pointed out, cultivated hostility.

"Take 'Happy Loving Couples'. What that song isn't is taking a slap at easy target: let's-knock-marriage. It's easy to knock. If I haven't got a girlfriend and he has then he's a cunt. There's the line wanna be really wanna be what my friends pretend to be—all

these, couples who pretend to be so happy; maybe their relationship isn't as good as what I want. It's saying that I don't want a false relatiqnship. 'Is She Really. Going Out With Him?' is intended to be humorous: you can't take an opening line like that seriously.

"The only really bitter song there is 'Fools In Love.' It's about when you split up with your girlfriend and you think what a load of shit all that turned out to be." ■

Recording bores Jackson, which is why he keeps his records sophisticatedly basic (apart from the odd vocal harrpony, there's, little or no overdubbing on the album). Apart from a slightly more extrovert onstage role for Sanford, what you hear onstage is what you hear on the Look Sharp! tracks aund vice versa. Song writing and performing are (the buzzes; recording is a chore.

He used to have a synthesizer and a clavinet, but he's cut his onstage equipment back to one battered electric piano and a pocketful of mouthharps. "What we didn't want when we were recording the album was your typical '77/'78Ne\y Wave band sound, where you've got this very middley Ramonestype guitar going ramalamalama all tne time. We wanted to get right away from that and have more of a reggae mix, where you have a very upfront bass and drums and the guitar is very thin and keeps going in and out doing chops and things. Some of the songs could probably have done with a bigger guitar sound, but that's on reflection after having done a few months of gigs. I think that thin guitar sound works, though, because it makes it more distinctive, gives it more character. The idea is to leave a lot of gaps to let the song really come through."

And that leaves the States.

"I don't really know much about the States and I can't really comment on things I dqn't know much about. I haven't been there (At the time this interview took place—Ed.) and I don't know what the average American rock fan is really like. One gets the impression that the average American rock fan must be mentally retarded. I've been told that L. A. is four years behind London and that New York is two years behind London. Why that is--or whether that's true—I don't know."

Jackson's view of the current scene in England is that "there seem to be lots of culty little bands around and each one of them seems to have about two good songs. There's no one artist about who you canthink of as really good and who you'd want to have an album of—just all these silly little bapds. Actually^ I'm sure some of them are really good, but none of them seem to be . . going anywhere."

Joe Jackson is going somewhere (and I don't just mean the States, smartass). While I would prefer to have a diarrhetic rhinosaurus sit on my sandwiches than to finger anyone as the future of rock 'n' roll (or anything even faintly resembling same), anyone wanting to pip Joe Jackson for "Best First Alburn Of 1979" is going to have to go somfe to do it. So hey, ace, shut your face.

And look sharp! v

Reprint courtesy New Musical Express.