He's got a little old. Joe Jackson was an artist from the beginning who didn't care much about youthfulness. On his new studio work "Fool", the British stylist looks back on his career, which began forty years ago with the album "Look Sharp!", and on a good century of classical songwriting from George Gershwin to the Beatles and Kinks to the present day.
When we face Joe Jackson in a Berlin hotel in December, he has visibly aged compared to the last interview we did with him. He seems exhausted and moves sluggishly (he had slept badly the night before, we learn afterwards). Thus the snapshot of his appearance stands in stark contrast to the power and vitality that his new album "Fool" exudes.
eclipsed: You went to the studio right after the last tour. That's more like making jazz records. Is "Fool" a pop album in a jazz suit?
NEIL YOUNG - The Indomitable
Even as a young singer, as a representative of the hippie generation, Neil Young didn't mince his words. And he has remained the most controversial, sometimes in the best sense of the word uninhibited spirit of rock music: The Canadian, who turns seventy on November 12, shows no signs of age-mild. In the following we show why it is so important that "the old man" is still there.
JEFF LYNNE'S ELO - Alte Schule
Joe Jackson always surprises the interviewer anew, answers some questions as succinctly as possible or not at all, others in epic breadth. But the Englishman's career from the late seventies to the present day has also been so exciting. If you thought he was firmly on a certain musical steamer, he had long since hired somewhere else again and set off in a new direction.
As an intellectual New Waver with the Joe Jackson Band successfully started into the music business, his spectrum expanded: Swing, blues, jazz, classical. His last album "The Duke" (2012) was dedicated to the work of Duke Ellington. Jackson, a cosmopolitan for many years, has many sources of inspiration - not only musical - as his new work, the four-city album "Fast Forward", proves.
eclipsed: Originally you wanted to release four different EPs instead of one complete album. Why did you bundle the material and publish it?
For seven years Joe Jackson has not released an album with his own songs. In between there was only a tribute to the great Duke Ellington. In the past decades the Brit has poached in different districts: He tried everything from pop to jazz to classical music. Fans of his filigree songwriter pop were frightened away by this bottomless versatility with increasing duration - even though his last original song cycle "Rain" is still underestimated today. That "Fast Forward" would become such an inspired, wonderful, in its versatility surprising "song album", however, would probably not have expected even the greatest admirers of his art.
eclipsed at ROCKPALAST
"You never yelled at us!"
The Rockpalast is alive! Even 34 years after the first official programme, the most respected live music programme on German television offers a platform for famous bands and up-and-coming acts alike. The second series of Rockpalast DVDs is currently being released. We took this opportunity to compile our own DVD with "Palast" treasures and to recall the concerts of the artists presented there.
GROBSCHNITT
Dream of the "Omma"
The Wendehälse of Rock
with Genesis, Yes, David Bowie, Queen, Chicago, Mike Oldfield, Styx, Scorpions, Barclay James Harvest, Fleetwood Mac, Jefferson Airplane, Santana..
