Summary.
Despite being announced as a "gangster" at the time of his fibrillating
debut, Look Sharp (1979), Joe Jackson was the most eclectic
and erudite of them all, and he proved it by taking on
calypso, gospel, soul, jazz and, last but not least, classical, in a series
of works that include symphonic works and that peaked with the
lieder of Heaven And Hell (1998).
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Joe Jackson is one of the musicians who emerged alongside punk rock, yet had nothing to do with punk itself, representing a new generation of rock intellectuals, as rebellious as they were ambitious.
Joe Jackson made his debut with the melodic, jazzy spiritual Is She Really Going Out With Him (1978) and the driving hard rock of I'm The Man (1979), presenting himself as the inventor of "spiv-rock," a melodic rock for hustlers who live by their wits (the spivs).
The gangster image soon gave way to that of a complete, professional musician, capable of spanning calypso (Look Sharp, from the 1979 album of the same name on A&M) to gospel (On Your Radio, from the 1979 album I'm The Man), soul (It's Different For Girls) to reggae (Beat Crazy, from the 1980 album of the same name), swing (Jumpin' Jive, the 1981 tribute album to Louis Jordan) to funk (Memphis, from Mike's Murder, 1983), thanks in part to versatile collaborators like bassist Graham Maby. His eclecticism excelled particularly when he allowed himself to spontaneously and naturally express immediate, emotional outbursts. His passion for the wildest exotic hybrids and his romantic 1940s-style crooning, however, bore the greatest fruit in the poignant ballad.
From this perspective, his greatest achievement was Night And Day (A&M, 1982). From Breaking Us In Two to Real Men, including the lively Steppin' Out, Jackson reached the mature form of his songwriting.
Much more jazz-oriented, Body And Soul (A&M, 1984) nevertheless doubled down on that achievement with You Can't Get What You Want and Be My Number Two. Jackson then returned to socially conscious themes on the three live sides of Big World (A&M, 1986), moving between a waltz (Forty Years) and a tango (Atlantic Tango), funk (Right And Wrong) and country (The Jet Set), though he increasingly failed to excite.
By the mid-1980s, Joe Jackson had earned a small (very small) place in music history for his ability to absorb, process, and reinvent genres of the past, whether reggae, rhythm and blues, or jazz (his favorite).
However, his detached and ironic work began to include highly ambitious compositions, clearly beyond his means, such as the classical music of Will Power (A&M, 1987), including an overture for two pianos (Will Power) and a Symphony In One Movement (for a fifty-piece orchestra), the soundtracks for Tucker (A&M, 1988) and I'm Your Man (1992, a strongly electronic work), and the autobiographical concept album Blaze Of Glory (A&M, 1989), too laden with ambition to be truly listenable.
The new decade opens with Laughter And Lust (Virgin, 1991), with Jackson once again in the singer-songwriter role and songs only barely passable, such as Hit Single and Obvious Song. Yet much of the album is "mainstream rock," just as he has always made.
Night Music (Virgin, 1994), on the other hand, returns to the idea of pop-classical music, presenting four piano nocturnes that are practically movements of a single work, along with six songs no less pretentious. The attempt fails, but less resoundingly than the failure of his peer Costello with Juliet Letters.
Too intellectual and snobbish to be an artist, the new Jackson is a music professional who can adapt to any trend or whim, but he retains the drawback of never truly conveying emotion or convincingly owning his music.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Jackson was ready for a new career and it happened.
The song cycle Heaven And Hell (Sony, 1998), inspired by
Kurt Weill and equally referring to pop, jazz, Debussy, Stravinsky and
minimalism, pens realistic vignettes for
Dawn Upshaw, Jane Siberry, Joy Askew and
Suzanne Vega.
Symphony No 1 (Sony, 1999) in four movements is even more ambitious,
and completes the transformation of the rebel rocker into a classical composer.
Night And Day II (Sony, 2000)
Volume IV (2003) and the live Afterlife (2004) document a
"reunion" of sort, as Jackson returns to his original rock'n'roll sound
accompanied by the old partners of his early years.
Jackson reunited the original guitar-less Joe Jackson Band that eventually recorded
Rain (2008), one of his most conventional albums. The songs were
unremarkable but covered the usual territory of
jazz (the instrumental The Uptown Train, Invisible Man),
pop (Rush Across the Road, Waste of Time),
soul (King Pleasure Time) and rock
(Citizen Sane, Good Bad Boy).
Later albums include:
The Duke
(2012),
Fast Forward
(2015),
Fool
(2019),
Mr. Joe Jackson Presents Max Champion in 'What a Racket!'
(2023).
