Joe Jackson - An Englishman in New York

Among the many wayward children of punk, Joe Jackson is one of those who followed the most tortuous and surprising path. From angry working-class hero to elegant night-club crooner, the clumsy aggression of a failed rocker placed at the service of a polished, mature composer's eclecticism. His whole career is a slalom acceleration through the gates of genre, with no exceptions whatsoever.

Born in 1954 in Burton-upon-Trent (England) and raised on violin and piano, with studies at London's Royal Academy of Music to boot, David Ian Jackson — "Joe" to his friends — did everything he could not to become a "serious" composer, letting himself get swept up first by the punk wave and then by new wave, only to end up becoming... a "serious" composer after all, and not just in the popular field, as shown by his recent forays into classical music. After all, his admiration for George Gershwin speaks volumes: "I love him because he managed to keep one foot in the popular tradition, the other in the classical one."

Some traits of the character — the surliness, the stubbornness, the retro taste, the versatility — bring him close to rock's most famous "impostor", Elvis Costello, were it not for the fact that the latter, despite his efforts, always remained fundamentally anchored to his "Britishness", while Jackson found his promised land across the ocean. But trying to connect all the dots of such a baffling and indecipherable figure is mission impossible. So it's best to leave room for his story and his records.

Portrait of the artist as a young man

Yellowed photos from the Sixties in Staffordshire (and later in Portsmouth, where he'd move with his family) show a frail, ungainly teenager, grappling with asthma and devouring piles of books and records. The musician's makings are already all there: at 11 he starts studying violin, then dabbles in timpani, oboe and piano too. Growing up, he doesn't want to be a rockstar, but a composer. Maybe in jazz, where, at 16, he tries his hand with a trio, playing in pubs. Or else chasing the lure of progressive rock, which was enchanting the Cool Britannia of the Seventies with bands like King Crimson and Soft Machine. But he's a tough customer: "I was violently rejected by all the teachers and most of my classmates," he recalls. "I suppose I was one of those guys who couldn't care less about authority. The others were terrified of it, but I thought they were huge idiots, and they did nothing to hide it. I never respected anything or anyone just because others did."

In 1972 a scholarship in musical composition allows him to cross the threshold of London's Royal Academy of Music. But David Ian doesn't snub pop either — quite the opposite: together with small bands like Misty Set and Edward Bear he starts to experience the thrill of being a performer. It's the members of that latter group who stick him with the unpredictable nickname "Joe" (after the puppet Joe 90!), on which he'll build a career. He's their leader and tries to lead them to success under various names: first Edwin Bear, then Arms & Legs, with whom he'll also put out a single ("Janie") before trying his luck as a solo artist. "I don't know if I chose rock as a kind of payback," he'll explain. "I had no interest at all in becoming the new Mick Jagger, I just wanted to find something I could be good at and that suited me. Clocking in for a shift? No thanks. Better something absurd, like being a musician."

But David "Joe" also continues to be a budding Classical student: he plays piano in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and graduates in 1975 from the Royal Academy.

In the full swing of the (post-)punk era, the turning point arrives: on 9 August 1978, producer David Kershenbaum signs him to A&M Records, and in October oversees the release of his first single, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?”. It's a bombshell. A jittery, vaguely "vintage" pop-rock number that rolls along on sly, laid-back cadences before exploding into a blazing chorus, with a biting lyric that pokes fun at a story of betrayal (“There’s a lady that I used to know/ She’s married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told… Is she really going out with him”) and wonders why pretty women are drawn to "gorillas".

The single's quality convinces A&M to waste no time and release his debut album, Look Sharp! (1979). And Jackson can barely contain himself—in fact, he puts his shoes right on the cover: a sharp pair of white Denson sneakers, immortalized by Brian Griffin. "It wasn't meant to be the cover, but when we saw the prints everyone loved the idea, art director Michael Ross borrowed them, and I never saw them again," Joe would later recall.

The record is an explosive blend, fuelled by raging rhythm and an extraordinary versatility of sound. It ranges from lightning-fast pub-rock bursts (“One More Time”, “Baby Stick Around”) to irresistible Jamaican-flavoured reggae and ska vibrations (“Sunday Papers”, about the idiocy of the tabloids, and the more melancholy “Fools In Love”), from exuberant post-adolescent anthems (“Happy Loving Couples”, “Pretty Girls”) to wild punk'n'roll outbursts (the breakneck “Got The Time” and “Throw It Away”), right through to the jazzy inflections à la Steely Dan on “(Do The) Instant March” and the title track.

Jackson is the absolute star of the show, with his husky crooning and raw exuberance, blessed—besides talent—with a typically British wit in his lyrics, always sharp and "cutting," just like the album's title. Verses that alternate a romantic spleen in matters of the heart with a clear-eyed, caustic view of social issues, in line with that British tradition of acid commentary inaugurated by the Kinks.

It's not an easy album, though, and it takes a couple of months before the public catches on. But then it's a triumph: Look Sharp! storms the UK charts, breaking into the Top 40, and even causes a stir across the Atlantic, cracking the American Top 20. Complete with a gold record and a Grammy nomination.

Rock against racism

Less than a year goes by before the follow-up is ready: I'm The Man (1979) is the ideal sequel to the debut: a collection of urgent power-pop-rock (“Get That Girl”, “Friday”), magnetic reggae pulses (“Geraldine And John”), rough uptempo invectives (“On Your Radio”, “Don't Wanna Be Like That”) and fierce punk assaults (the frenzied title track). But the standout track is the single “It's Different For Girls”, where, over "nervous romance" cadences softened by soulful melodic touches, another amusing parody of male/female misunderstandings unfolds. With the usual role clichés turned upside down: it's she who's after easy sex, while he, who dreamed of a love story, gets handed the usual line—"it's different for girls"—with the opposite meaning to the one commonly intended (“Who said anything about love?/ No, not love she said/ Don’t you know that it’s different for girls?”).

The album's sound, recorded live in the studio, gets dirtier. The rhythm section rules, with Graham Maby's monster bass to the fore. And Jackson confirms all his omnivorous talent, even if, compared to the debut, he perhaps lacks the knockout punches. I'm The Man will also pay the price, chart-wise, for having come out hot on the heels of such a predecessor, missing out on the American charts, yet still placing more than respectably on the British ones (Top 20 for the album, Top Five for the single).

Always mindful of his look, Jackson appears on the cover sporting a roguish gangster moustache. Or rather, a "spiv" — apparently a breed of criminal, a thieving fence found roaming the British wild. A curious symbiosis that, in musical terms, Jackson himself would dub "spiv-rock". Meanwhile, critics place him on the podium of an ideal triumvirate of unconventional new wavers, completed by Elvis Costello and Graham Parker.

New exotic flavours season Beat Crazy (1980), adorned with a colourful cartoon cover and credited to the Joe Jackson Band. A full-blown tribute to those syncopated Jamaican rhythms that weighed so heavily on the English songwriter's musical upbringing and that, in those years, also captivated other British giants like Clash and Police. Hence the reggae-rock pulses of the poignant title track, with Jackson and Maby trading vocals, of the jittery "Mad At You", and of the more reflective "In Every Dream Home (A Nightmare)", which tells of the troubled existences of a supposed actor or worse (“Is an actor so they say, or maybe worse”) and of a model "who seems never to work, even though from the clothes she wears you can tell she's not poor," concluding that "inside every dream home lurks a nightmare."

The tribute to Jamaica is even more explicit in "Battleground", the track dedicated to Linton Kwesi Johnson, the Jamaican singer and poet, pioneer of the "dub poetry" genre. Following that spoken-sung style, Jackson intones an ode to the brotherhood of black nigger and white nigger (“Black nigger stares/ White nigger sighs/ I like your music/ I like your style/ I crack a joke so why don’t you smile”), championing "Rock against racism", the political and musical campaign born in England in 1976 against every form of racism. A typical ska groove drives "Pretty Boys", embellished by a fine harmonica solo, while evocative organ and piano touches lift off the sophisticated, vintage-seventies-flavoured "Crime Don't Pay", but Jackson also proves himself a superb melodist, crafting a chill-inducing torch-song like "One To One", which digs once again into the recesses of romantic relationships, amid a troubled quest for intimacy and honesty (“One to one is real and you can't hide”).

The ambition (and presumption) is already evident in the liner notes, where Joe states that "this album represents a desperate attempt to make sense of rock&roll". And indeed tracks like "Biology" — the first of many reflections on the body/soul contrast, which would later be the subject of an entire album — and "Fit" — on the theme of homosexuality, with explicit lines like "Don't laugh, but there are people in this world, born as boys and fighting to be girls" — are further proof of an evolved rock sound, in which the mod-punk frenzy of the early days is gradually giving way to the jazz-blues versatility that would burst forth on the next two records. And where the musical packaging is less seductive, the witty refinement of the lyrics always makes up for it, as in the "metaphysical" musings of "Someone Up There" (“Someone up there makes the sun and sea/ brought my girl to me/ makes the wind and rain… No messing with the hand of fate”).

Jackson, in short, confirms himself as a refined and sharp-tongued songwriter, holding forth with ease on delicate topics — from racism to feminism, from homosexuality to romantic relationships, not to mention the usual social commentary — but above all he reaffirms the full talent of a complete musician and a performer on a strong upward curve, able to range from spoken-word pieces to hushed crooning all the way to those swelling crescendos of vibrant intensity that would become his trademark.

Beat Crazy won't go beyond no.40 on the charts, but it will be the springboard for the stunning one-two punch that follows.

Under the Stars of Jazz

But while Beat Crazy was really a desperate attempt to stay clinging to the rock gospel, the following albums would mark a definitive turning point. "I don't come from rock," he states, "and I want people to know it: at 13 I was listening to Beethoven, at 14 to the Beatles, at 15 I was studying violin and piano, at 16 I adored David Bowie, at 17 I was wild about Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, at 18 I got excited about punk, I never thought of becoming one of those rockers who spit on their parents and family, but I was fascinated by the inner spark that drove the Sex Pistols".

So, having tossed aside the post-punk "gangster" mask, Jackson transforms himself into a refined jazz-blues interpreter, fronting a veritable orchestra. Struck on the road to 1940s jump blues by his compulsive listening to Louis Jordan, the former spiv puts together a new band in the style of Jordan's Tympany 5, with a horn section (Pete Thomas on alto sax, Raul Oliveria on trumpet and David Bitelli on tenor sax and clarinet), pianist Nick Weldon and drummer Larry Tolfree, leaving bass and backing vocals to his trusty Maby. With this line-up he records Jumpin' Jive (1981), a collection of classics mostly by Jordan himself and Cab Calloway, masterfully rearranged, ranging from big band grandeur to swinging jazz and jive charts.

Jackson's retro vocal style pairs perfectly with evergreens like the propulsive title track, the sly "We The Cats (Shall Hep Ya)", built on a fun call & response between singer and band, and the blues-inflected "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" (all by Calloway), while he also refreshes forgotten hits by "king of the jukebox" Jordan, such as the slow, hushed "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" and "San Francisco Fan", then shape-shifts on "You Run Your Mouth" and even cuts loose in irresistibly tipsy divertissements — the parody of "What's The Use Of Getting Sober (When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again)" — while the stunning percussive whirl of "How Long Must I Wait For You" shows off the full power of the big band to which the whole record would be credited, Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive.

The record is rounded out by two tributes of a different stripe: "Symphony Sid", a Lester Young tune with words by King Pleasure, and "Tuxedo Junction", a lush tribute to Glenn Miller. "When my father was my age, jazz wasn't a respectable music. It was played in dives like brothels, not at Carnegie Hall", Jackson writes in the liner notes, quoting Jordan directly, who — "like us, wasn't aiming for purism or jazz fans". It's an old passion of his, but one fully in step with the new British currents of the time, the ones that would lead a swarm of artists, from Aztec Camera to Sade to the Style Council, to dip into the reservoir of jazz, soul and bossa nova to forge fascinating new musical hybrids.

Jackson's jazz infatuation paves his way to America. Jumpin' Jive, in fact, not only reaches No. 20 on the British charts, but also sparks plenty of curiosity across the ocean, crossing into the Top 50 and thus fueling a new, successful tour that lasts the entire summer.

Landing in America is a revelation. Night And Day (1982), night and day of unstoppable excitement. The Englishman in New York is no alien, but a curious traveler wanting to grasp the soul of the Big Apple. "As with Woody Allen, for Joe Jackson too New York is a city in black and white, pulsing to the melodies of Gershwin", writes Andrea Spinelli. "The Man" travels through its smoky nighttime atmospheres, its chiaroscuros, its neuroses, but above all its hundred musical voices. Jackson ideally revives Gershwin's melodies, but also Duke Ellington's orchestras, Marvin Gaye's soul and Cole Porter's musicals, paid tribute to right from the album's very title. On top of that, he lets himself be drawn in by Latin fascinations — the salsa of Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barreto — and by the possibilities offered by an eight-piece combo, in which piano, bass, horns and percussion rule, while new sound technologies (synths and drum machines) forge a seductive "urban pop" shell. Guitars thus disappear, the last trapping of that post-punk season which the restless Jackson has by now left behind. Sumptuous yet never over-the-top arrangements oversee this pot-pourri.

The nine tracks follow one another almost without a break, feeding the idea of a concept album. Though split into two parts (side A, more frenetic, about the night, side B, more reflective, about the day), the album is in fact pervaded throughout by a sinuous nocturnal mood, which takes hold from the very first notes of "Another World", the percussive carousel that welcomes us into the "new world". The freshness of the sounds doesn't hide Jackson's critical eye, which still deals in social commentary as he wanders bewildered through the streets of "Chinatown", to the rhythm of an orientalist jazzy-pop marked by piano and exotic percussion, disguising himself as an ethno-funk guru à la Byrne (even in his jittery vocal delivery) to denounce the aberrations of the "TV Age" ("Tv rules/ pretty soon you won't be able to turn it off at all"), becoming himself the "Target" ("Someone could smile at me then/ shake my hand then gun me down") amid a forest of bongos and congas.

But what sends the album into glory is the single "Steppin' Out", practically the quintessence of the lightest, most innocent soul of the 1980s. A radiant melody that cuts through the pulsing electro-pop stride of glamorous keyboards, between a ringing piano and a mighty bassline, searching for a way out of the oppression of the big city (“We so tired of all the darkness in our lives/ with no more angry words to say/ can come alive… get into a car and drive/ to another side/ me Babe – Steppin’ out/ into the night/ into the light”).

After the binge of side A, the "day side" turns toward melancholy, with more pensive, bitter tones. "Breaking Us In Two" is a languid piano ballad that echoes Steely Dan's "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", while the sardonic salsa jingle of "Cancer" offers the less than reassuring warning that "everything gives you cancer".

The two closing ballads strike straight at the heart. The epic "Real Men" brushes against an almost "Spectorian" climax with its solemn (synthetic) string orchestration and piano cradling Jackson's invective against the "war of the sexes". "Slow Song" is a desperate hymn to the "slow", a last bastion against the tyranny of frantic, inhuman music (“And I’m tired of dj’s…/ I’m gonna tell him to…/ Play us a slow song”), but also a lucid portrait of loneliness and frustration: seven minutes enriched by piano, Hammond organ and an intense vocal performance, which builds pathos and explodes in a liberating final plea.

The album would become his definitive bestseller, storming the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic. The same year also saw the release of Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly", another nocturnal flight under the stars of jazz. And America's long night would shine bright once more.

Galvanized by his success, Jackson issues thunderous statements about the "death of rock", anticipating Sting's famous remark by several years. And he continues his escape from the fetid basements of punk, chasing the velvety atmospheres of the jazz label Blue Note on Body And Soul (1984). The tribute is plain from the cover itself, which echoes Francis Wolff's famous shot for the album "Sonny Rollins Vol. 2", released by the label in 1957, and from the title, which quotes the jazz standard brought to success by Coleman Hawkins's sax in 1939. In the full swing of the eighties epic, in the era of the most plastic and synthetic pop, Jackson obsessively chases the "pure" sound, hiding away in a deconsecrated church, entirely clad in wood, which Vanguard uses for its classical recordings. With him, a handful of fearless orchestral players: besides the usual Maby, former Blondie man Gary Burke on drums, Vinnie Zummo on guitar, Ed Roynesdal (keyboards and violin), Tony Aiello (sax and flute), Michael Morreale (trumpet and flugelhorn), plus two deluxe backing singers in Ellen Foley and Elaine Caswell. Even the recording techniques, using just two traditional microphones, reveal the will to depart as far as possible from the decade's artifices. The result would be one of the finest recordings in rock history, to the delight of audiophiles.

For everyone else, though, what matters most is the sheer musical quality: an ideal evolution of the sound honed on the previous record, this time heading toward soul and rhythm & blues. The hit single "You Can't Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)" is its ideal manifesto: a snappy funk number, launched at a gallop by the horns, with the rhythm section providing rock-solid counterpoint and instrumental virtuosity galore, including dazzling bass and guitar solos over beds of sax and Hammond organ. All the fun this extraordinary ensemble has playing together comes through in "Cha Cha Loco", which, as the title suggests, drives along on intoxicating Latin rhythms, with the horns in fine form: practically an invitation to dance, much like the possessed beat of "Go For It", which is perhaps the only link back to his beginnings, ending up feeling a bit out of place in this context.

But what really gives the album its shine are above all sumptuous orchestral arrangements and top-class ballads. On the first front, "Loisada" (Hispanic slang shorthand for "Lower East Side") stands out, an incredible three-part instrumental suite, with a hushed intro for piano and xylophone, a poignant entrance of trumpet and sax sketching a deeply mournful melody, a progressive interlude that slowly fades, giving way to an explosive crescendo and final implosion. But no less refined are the opening "The Verdict" (inspired by the Paul Newman film), pompous and epic with powerful drum hits punctuating the vocals and jazzy horn intrusions, and the construction of "Heart Of Ice", which starts out subdued amid filigrees of sax, insinuating guitars and brushed drums, before opening up into a triumphant orchestral finale.

Among the ballads, pride of place goes to “Not Here Not Now”, another heart-melting slow song, with elegant piano chimes shaping a precious, moving melody, a chill-inducing flugelhorn solo and a superb performance from Jackson in the guise of the inconsolable crooner, whisky glass eternally perched on his grand piano. “I don't wanna cry”, he sings, but the effect is exactly the opposite. Equally wrenching and anything but “happy” is the single “Happy Ending”, a duet with the magnificent Elaine Caswell on counter-melody vocals, another melodic triumph punctuated by piano and sax; while “Be My Number Two” is indeed a “number two”: almost a sequel to Night And Day's “Breaking Us In Two”, yet still exquisitely refined, with its piano phrasing framing the sweet melody and the horn section exploding at the close.

Physical and spiritual at once, just as the title suggests, Body And Soul ideally closes the trilogy devoted to rediscovering the sounds of the past, begun with the swing manifesto Jumpin' Jive and continued with the tribute to jazz stars on Night And Day. The album will crack the Top 20 in both Britain and the US, helped along by a grueling two-year tour that leaves Jackson drained, even contemplating retirement.

The World Live

Yet the inscrutable Joe doesn't just stay the course — he doubles down. With another ambitious project: a double LP (though, in truth, only one side of the second record actually has music on it) featuring no fewer than 15 new songs, recorded live in front of a select audience at the Roundabout Theatre in New York City, January 22-25, 1986. The choice is driven by a desire to capture the sound live and direct (onto a two-track digital master, with no subsequent mixing), but otherwise the record bears none of the usual hallmarks of a live album: the audience, in fact, is asked not to applaud and to stay as quiet as possible.

Big World serves as an ideal summa of the path Jackson had taken in a career still young, yet already rich with achievements. This time the lineup is a four-piece in which guitars make a comeback: echoes of the rock sound “buried” a few albums earlier resurface, starting with the fine galloping opener “Wild West”, complete with Morricone-esque western touches and a formidable closing build-up, through to the Eastern-tinged cadences of the whirling “(It's A) Big World”, and even into the hard-rock jaggedness of the frenzied “Tonight And Forever”. But “Right And Wrong” also marks something of a return to the past, delivering a furious political broadside, albeit through more controlled funky tones softened by piano phrasing, just as “Hometown” recaptures the power-pop bite of his early days to plunge nostalgically back into the places of memory and childhood. More jazzy and retro, “Soul Kiss” showcases the full instrumental power of this new, fabulous ensemble.

Elsewhere these exercises in adult rock come across as a little stiff and anonymous (the title track, “Precious Time”, “Survival”, “The Jet Set”, “Man In The Street”). So it's the genius of this standout melodist that shines through most forcefully, whether conjuring the exotic spell of “Shangay Sky” — a gorgeous pianistic elegy tinged with the scent of the East, that would have delighted David Sylvian — or casually unleashing two breathtaking ballads back to back, “Fifty Dollar Love Affair” and “We Can't Live Together”: the first, dragged into some smoky Parisian club by the nostalgic spell of the accordion, takes on a thousand shades thanks to guitar embroidery and abrupt shifts in rhythm; the second is a sumptuous, utterly desperate torch-song about impossible love, heightened by Jackson's forlorn crooning, by backing vocals and orchestral flourishes, complete with a splendid guitar solo and a collective explosion at the close. Set against these masterpieces, the other ballad, “Forty Years”, suffers only from coming afterward, but lacks nothing to hold its own, with its delicate music-box interplay of piano and voice in service of an elegant piece.

Jackson's boundless eclecticism, then, triumphs once again, even allowing room for a rousing “Tango Atlantico”, casqué or not, confirming a talent only partially recognized by public and critical acclaim alike. While Big World still manages to find a place in the Billboard Top 40, the spotlight gradually begins to dim on the English composer's work, condemned to a fate of growing obscurity, especially over the following decade — not least because of his cantankerous, reserved nature, which will always keep him at a safe distance from the glare of the music business.

Before the curtain falls on the Eighties, though, there's time for one last album, Blaze Of Glory (1989). A return to poppier sounds, but in a minor key. Jackson seems to be grappling with precisely the issue that serves as the album's (hazy) concept: the struggle of second-generation rockers forced to reckon with middle age. Those who want to be “Nineteen Forever”, as he wryly puts it on the album's best track, an “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” updated for the age of (late) synth-pop. Indeed, the whole album suffers from a somewhat halfway production, already sounding dated, perhaps, for standing on the threshold of a new decade. So much so that “Discipline”, a portrait of a yuppie set to a dully plodding drum machine, sounds almost like a hopelessly late parody of Gary Numan.

And yet Jackson still manages to be utterly singular, as when he drops a Stevie Wonder-style harmonica right in the middle of a soliloquy about his longing to return to London “to be the king” (the exuberant, nostalgic “Down To London”), or when he turns yet another romantic ballad into an austere classical lied (“Sentimental Thing”), or again when he brushes the electro-sirtaki of “Acropolis Now” across brain-teasing progressive patterns. Perhaps more cloying, but no less sophisticated, is the nocturnal jazz of “Rant And Rave”, with a dazzling piano solo. Elsewhere, though, the album loses its shine, content merely to indulge its author's virtuosity (“Tomorrow's World”, “Me And You Against The World”, “Evil Empire”).

The title track, finally, serves as the ideal manifesto of the concept, a disenchanted meditation on the fleeting nature of glory, told through the “tragic story” of the rise and fall of young Johnny (a textbook live fast, die young rockstar parable). A reasonably evocative track, complete with gleaming brass in the finale.

Although a “minor” album (sales-wise too), Blaze Of Glory ideally closes out Jackson's finest stretch, as he would go on to gradually abandon pop-rock in search of new stimuli and musical challenges, including ambitious forays into Classical music.

Jackson's magical Eighties decade is also rounded out by three film scores. The first, Mike's Murder (for James Bridges' 1983 film of the same name starring eighties muse Debra Winger), offers a handful of instrumental pieces, with a few enjoyable moments (“Cosmopolitan”, “Memphis” and the “Breakdown” that would earn a Grammy nomination); the music for Will Power (1987), born from reworking the soundtrack composed in 1985 for a Japanese film, veers decisively into Classical territory, with lengthy orchestral scores (“Symphony In One Movement” brings together fifty musicians); while Tucker: The Man And His Dream (1988), Francis Ford Coppola's film chronicling the exploits of automotive pioneer Preston Tucker, provided the occasion for another foray into the jazz-blues epic of the 1950s.

And crowning a memorable run, there also comes an exhilarating live double album, Live 1980/1986, recorded over the course of four different world tours with as many different bands: the 1980 Beat Crazy Tour with the original post-punk trio, the 1982-1983 Night and Day tour with a keyboard-dominated quintet, the 1984 Body and Soul tour with a full horn section, and finally the 1986 Big World tour with a more electro-rock quartet. The thrill of these performances, in which Jackson also displays his full virtuosity as pianist, saxophonist and keyboardist, was captured on a cult videocassette, “Live In Tokyo”, recorded entirely in Japan.

Running Away From Songs

For Jackson, the new decade starts off as an uphill struggle. Serious personal troubles — a failed marriage and a bout of depression — plunge him into despair, just as the music scene around him is shifting at breakneck speed, swiftly sweeping aside the icons of the previous decade.

Besides, an album like Laughter And Lust (1991) does little to keep the memory of those remarkable years alive. It's a mediocre effort, most notable for a sarcastic streak aimed at the music business: "Hit Single" pokes fun at record labels desperate to churn out chart hits, yet its sound hardly strays from that of countless conventional pop-rock productions of the era. Even the energetic outburst of "Obvious Song", aimed at the superpowers' arms policies ("you don't have to be hippie to believe in peace"), ends up musically mirroring its own self-mocking title. And while "Stranger Than Fiction" and "It's All So Much" try in vain to recapture the rock freshness of his early work, the lifeless "Trying To Cry" and "Drowning" show that Jackson had run out of ideas on the ballad front too. Better, if anything, is the successful cover of "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac, driven by charging percussion.

Paradoxically, it's precisely the poppiest record of the last ten years that reveals how traditional songs had become a ball and chain for Jackson - much like the one on the cover, which portrays him as a bizarre convict. He would explain this clearly a few years later: "Once I passed 40, I no longer felt like competing with much younger artists who had more energy and aggression. But above all, I started to see the 'three-minute song' formula as too tight a cage for my creativity."

So the English musician takes a three-year break. And when he returns to the studio for Night Music (1994), he's already thinking like a classical composer. Hence four nocturnes for piano and string quartet ("Nocturne" nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4), chamber arrangements, long instrumental themes, and vocal contributions from Máire Brennan of Clannad, with whom Jackson duets on "The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy", a kind of "Celtic folk pièce" rounded off with Gaelic flute. On the whole, though, it all sounds rather sterile and unengaging, much like the anemic synth underpinning many of its textures.

The goal of capturing the sound of dreams, catching music's quietest and most ethereal nuances (the nocturnal "Lullaby", the dreamlike close of "Sea Of Secrets"), proves rather overambitious - perhaps even beyond the reach of a composer as versatile and gifted as "The Man", who, all things considered, is still more at ease when he turns to pop ("Even After").

Curiously, confirming the elective affinities between these two "heretics" of new wave, around the same time Elvis Costello would also try his hand at a classically-inclined project with his "Juliet Letters".

This new direction is fully realized with his move to Sony Classical, which immediately yields Heaven & Hell (1997). A cycle of songs about the seven deadly sins, preceded by a prelude in which Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg's possessed violin shines. Certainly pretentious, but at times also captivating, the album features a cast of guest stars, including Suzanne Vega, Brad Roberts (Crash Test Dummies), Jane Siberry and Joy Askew. The summa of all his ambitions is the complex electronic pièce "More Is More" (on the sin of gluttony), sung by Jackson himself, as is "Song Of Daedalus", an impetuous ode to pride with a triumph of violins that culminates in a reprise of the prelude's theme, and the menacing "Right", on wrath. Lust, by contrast, is entrusted to the purity of Suzanne Vega, who plays the fallen angel ("Angel") amid latin-jazz interjections where classical singer Dawn Upshaw takes centre stage. Jane Siberry's other angelic voice digs through the tortuous depths of envy ("The Bridge"), while Roberts' dark baritone intones the languors of sloth on "A Bud And A Slice". Greed, finally, takes on Askew's voice and the mephistophelian guise of the arms dealers of Tuzla, one of the cities ravaged by the war in Bosnia.

Amid swirling violins, computer-processed electronic sequences, ethereal female vocalizing and Latin rhythmic counterpoints, Jackson outlines his concept of a modern classical symphony, blending the sacred and the profane in every sense. Too much for rock critics, who won't forgive him for it. But plenty of others will appreciate it, including some American newspapers that will hail it as a miraculous, impossible union of classical and pop.

In 1999 Joe Jackson published his autobiography "A Cure For Gravity: A Musical Pilgrimage", in which he clarifies the meaning of his musical journey: "Today I'm still making music, but I'm no longer a pop star, if I ever was one. I'm simply a composer, which is what I'm interested in being above all else."

The Nineties close with the release of a new, ambitious instrumental project, Symphony No. 1 (1999), a symphony in four movements, each representing a stage of life (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age), performed not by a classical orchestra but by a ten-piece band of jazz musicians and rockers, including Steve Vai on guitar and Terence Blanchard on trumpet.

It's pictorial, abstract music, tied to the mental states of each stage of life: thus, in the 17 minutes of "First Movement", all the euphoria of childhood blossoms, opening with Wessell Anderson's alto sax solo, though a sense of mystery and anxiety about the future also surfaces, amid tense atmospheres and sudden horn explosions. Adolescent restlessness takes on the nervous jazz inflections of the convoluted "Fast Movement", while the arrival at adulthood is marked by the slower, more reflective cadences of "Slow Movement", perhaps the best episode, with Blanchard's monster trumpet solo over a blanket of strings and keyboards. Closing things out is "Last Movement (Variations)", an ode to old age that is anything but resigned, with drumming percussion punctuating a radiant melody and a poignant choral coda in which all the instruments burst in.

Jackson's Classical music is as cross-pollinated as his popular music was: it contains the jazz musician's sensibility, pop's melodic flair, and even the rock fibre of certain progressive symphonies. This time, critics will begin to admit that yes, perhaps even a former child of punk can legitimately aspire to this kind of composition. And winning a Grammy Award, in the Best Pop Instrumental Album category, will ideally seal this newly recognized Jacksonian status.

Return (and farewell) to New York

But, true to the chameleonic Bowie-esque maxim "if something works, throw it away", Jackson wrong-foots everyone and, at the dawn of the new millennium, unexpectedly returns to pop, dusting off his Eighties hits plus a few covers in live format on Summer In The City (recorded live in New York with just his piano and a bass-drums rhythm section), and even releasing an unforeseen sequel to his 1982 masterpiece. But the New York of Night And Day II (2000) has changed - it's a hellish city ("Hell Of A Town"), an increasingly chaotic urban jungle on the verge of paying a tragic toll in death with the sacrifice of its Twin Towers, immortalized on the cover (a striking black-and-white shot by Jackson himself, taken from inside a taxi). The Englishman returns to tell its story with the same old love, but with a more wistful, disenchanted eye: after the tense opening portrait, scored for pizzicato strings and Latin percussion, "Stranger Than You" dissolves the frenzy into sinuous electronic arrangements to describe life in the cosmopolitan metropolis where no one ever feels like a stranger ("a town where there's always somebody stranger than you"). Syncopated electronic textures also run through the album's finest achievement: the Middle Eastern-tinged "Why", which Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim's gorgeous voice drags down into an abyss of infinite sorrow. Recalling the bond with the first installment, the piano chimes of "Glamour And Pain" arrive, quoting the legendary "Steppin' Out" over near-disco cadences, with drag queen Dale DeVere holding forth on the disappointments of a woman in crisis. Rounding out the team of star voices is the ever-magical, husky-throated Marianne Faithfull, who drags the poignant "Love Got Lost" (for piano and strings) into decadent operatic atmospheres.

When Jackson himself takes the microphone, surrounded by the usual electronic percussion, he instead seems a little rusty and fails to get tracks off the ground that are undoubtedly sophisticated but soulless ("Dear Mom", "Happyland"). Nor does the bold half-classical, half-electro-rock hybrid of "Just Because" quite come off, while the sparse pianistic litany of "Stay" closes the album on a note of nostalgia.

Overall, though, while falling short of the heights of its first installment, Night And Day II manages to avoid the sad fate of forced sequels, finding its own logic in the musical syncretism of the 2000s-era Jackson, shaped by his forays into jazz and Classical music and by a broader, more cross-cutting view of the concept of "song".

This was England

But, just to contradict ourselves once again, in 2003 Jackson reaches even further back, reuniting the members of his old band – Graham Maby, Gary Sanford and Dave Houghton – to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his debut, Look Sharp!. And he makes peace with rock, after having showered it with insults throughout the Eighties ("it's conservative, it's sexist and it insults the audience's intelligence"). Because, he explains, "every now and then, at least once in your life, you have to look back in order to move forward in a better way".

A comeback whose sincerity is hard to gauge, that of Volume IV (the fourth chapter in the ideal sequence Look Sharp!–I'm The Man–Beat Crazy), recorded in just ten days in an attempt to capture all the instinct and immediacy of this reunion. The fact remains that the songs are indeed direct and punchy, starting with opener "Take It Like A Man", where Jackson puts his piano phrasing at the service of a sparkling pop-rock, moving through the cocky ska of "Thugz r Us", the biting pub-rock of "Dirty Martini" and the lush funk of "Fairy Dust" (garnished with a few pianistic flourishes), before arriving at the Beatlesque suggestions of "Still Alive" (a sort of survival anthem with a gait reminiscent of "Ticket To Ride") and the final punk charge of "Bright Grey". These are songs that are hardly innovative, but taut and catchy enough, with the guitars back in action and the hellbent drummer Houghton dragging the band along behind him.

Jackson also rediscovers a taste for the simplicity of romantic ballads like "Chrome", "Blue Flame" and "Love At First Light" — the kind to be sung at the piano late at night, as the club empties out, the mood turns more intimate and melancholy grabs you by the throat.

Volume IV is a post-dated snapshot of the England of 25 years earlier, still drunk on punk fury and already ensnared by wave's first fascinations. This was England. And we liked it quite a lot…

A world tour will follow, captured on the live album Afterlife (2004), and, a year later, another series of concerts, this time alongside Todd Rundgren and the Ethel string quartet.

Singin’ in the Rain

The new album Rain (2008) doesn't rewrite the story of this Leonard Bernstein of pop, but if anything confirms the class and craft of an artist whose passion still comes through in his songs. Today's Jackson is no artist on the way out who has lost the urge to play — quite the opposite, he still manages to scatter a few melancholy breezes worthy of his finest work, the kind that demand you turn up the volume and pay closer attention. "It always seemed to be raining," he recalls, "while I was working on these songs, and it rained every day while we were recording them. I love rain and I don't understand why so many people automatically associate it with something depressing. What would we do without rain?"

With the help of the piano, once again elevated to the role of lead instrument (guitars are entirely absent), Jackson skilfully crafts rain-soaked yearning pieces like "Invisible Man", a big ballad that leads straight back to Night And Day ("Too Tough"), lively harmonic ups and downs ("Citizen Sane"), impeccable slow numbers fit for a handkerchief ("Wasted Time", "Solo, So Low"), jazzy flourishes in Steely Dan territory ("The Uptown Train") and sly winks to rock'n'roll's origins ("King Pleasure Time", "Good Bad Boy"). All of it an affirmation of the sheer enthusiasm of still being around, also evident in the continuation of the Joe Jackson Band reunion, present almost in full on this record, recorded amid the gloomy avenues of Berlin, where the English musician would settle permanently, irritated by the zero-tolerance "no smoking" prohibitionism of Rudolph Giuliani's New York.

An album that longtime admirers will not fail to appreciate, while everyone else should be duly warned that the roads leading to Joe Jackson run through other, far more luminous destinations than this one.

Three years later comes another live album, Live Music (2011), recorded with a three-piece lineup (alongside Jackson, the ever-reliable Maby on bass and Houghton on drums). The setlist alternates original songs and covers, drawing heavily from Night And Day (5 tracks), but also digging up some striking rarities, such as the punky "Got The Time", in the meantime turned into a metal anthem by Anthrax.

Among the covers: the Beatlesque "Girl", stripped down into a retro piano-song, an amusing reinterpretation of the Bowie-esque "Scary Monsters" and a lively rendition of "Inbetweenies" by the late Ian Dury.

The Duke's new clothes

In 2012, five years on from Rain, Joe Jackson returns to the studio to seal his tribute to one of his great idols, Duke Ellington. But there's no mere emulation in the ten tracks of The Duke (2012). "I have great reverence for him, but this record isn't meant to be a deferential tribute," Joe clarifies. And to prove it, he strips out of Ellington's instrumental arsenal its central pillar: the trumpets. The result is an album that reinterprets the legendary jazz composer's repertoire, making it sound entirely new. An ambitious undertaking, for which Jackson enlisted an all-star cast of musicians, including violinist Regina Carter, bassist Christian McBride, guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, Questlove and other members of the Roots, Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim, r'n'b diva Sharon Jones and Brazilian vocalist Lilian Vieira (Zuco 103), as well as none other than Iggy Pop, who duets with him on "It Don't Mean A Thing (If You Ain't Got That Swing)".

From the very first piano chimes and electric arpeggios of opener "Isfahan", a fine instrumental theme running over five minutes, you can tell the mood is exactly right: a velvety evening of classic, timeless jazz, tinged however with an electronic tension that brings it closer to certain contemporary productions, poised between modern classical and world music. Because the percussion and violins of "Caravan", for instance, are pure musical cosmopolitanism, especially alongside the mesmerizing vocalizations (in Farsi) of the ever-magnificent Sussan. And the standard "Perdido" becomes steeped in sensuality and Brazilian saudade, thanks to Vieira's radiant interpretation. But the roots remain firmly planted in the American tradition, as reminded by a vintage r'n'b number like "I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues", entrusted to the vocal cords of soul diva Sharon Jones and enriched by some incredible orchestral work, recalling the most manic Steely Dan.

To his own voice, still unmistakable even if no longer as rasping as it once was, Jackson instead delivers a trio of heartfelt tributes: the swinging "I'm Beginning To See The Light", the aching, vivid "Mood Indigo" and a romantic, desperate "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" — perfectly suited to his crooning. Something of a mere divertissement, on the other hand, is the closing duet with a cavernous-voiced Iggy Pop on "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)", swept along by the orchestra and backing vocals over intoxicating swing cadences. Rounding out the picture are two other successful instrumentals: the spirited "Rockin' In Rhythm" and the sly "The Mooche/Black And Tan Fantasy", embellished with superb guitar inlays.

Produced by Jackson himself, recorded and mixed by Elliot Scheiner (Steely Dan, Bob Dylan, Sting), The Duke is the best possible tribute Ellington could have received in 2012, while at the same time being a record that bears its author's signature through and through.

For his return to an album of new material after seven years, Jackson pulls off a surprise project: a record split between four cities and two continents. Originally conceived as a collection of EPs, Fast Forward (2015) is in fact built around four sessions of four tracks each, recorded in four different places: New York, New Orleans, Berlin and Amsterdam. The image of fast-forwarding captures well the restlessness of the ex-Spiv, forever on the move between genres and sounds. Sixteen songs that rekindle the spark of a pop creativity that had lain dormant through years of erudite research and crossbreeding between classical music and jazz.

What's most surprising is Jackson's voice, which really does seem to have benefited from that facelift - alas, a less successful one - on the English musician's now dramatically plasticised features. Joe has rediscovered the brightness of his vocal cords, that euphoric, skewed timbre that seduced us on our journey into the night, into the light. And hearing the opening of "Fast Forward" is a gut-punch for anyone still haunted by those songs: six minutes of the best Jackson-sound, topped off with a poignant violin solo courtesy of jazz muse Regina Carter, telling us how we need to move fast forward in order to read the future.

Surrounded by heavyweights like Bill Frisell on guitar, Brian Blade on drums and his longtime bassist Graham Maby (alongside Carter herself), Jackson plunges back into his beloved/despised New York - the city to which he already dedicated two concept albums ("Night And Day" and "Night And Day II") - this time also via a surprising cover of "I See No Evil" by Television, pioneers of CBGB's and of the Big Apple infected by punk's earliest germs. The New York chapter closes with the driving "If It Wasn't For You" and the hazier "King Of The City", on which Jackson sits at the piano, cradled in languid night-club atmospheres.

The foray among the canals of Amsterdam, on the other hand, stands out for greater instrumental complexity, featuring Stefan Kruger and Stefan Schmid of Zuco 103, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and fourteen-year-old vocalist Mitchell Sink. It's a set in which the airy arrangements shine alongside the pop solidity of "A Little Smile" and "Poor Thing", but above all in the latin-jazz groove of "So You Say", with yet another melodic feat steeped in oceans of melancholy. Rather more questionable is the choice to split the vocals on "Far Away" with the fresh-faced Broadway child prodigy Sink: a somewhat Nikka Costa-like effect, though the song itself works regardless, with its enchanted harp intro and celestial harmonies.

Berlin is by now Jackson's second home, and the feeling really comes through on the EP recorded with Greg Cohen on acoustic bass (Tom Waits, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan) and Tindersticks drummer Earl Harvin. The Steely Dan-esque chorus and the biting riff of "Junkie Diva" (Amy Winehouse?) take no prisoners, but the emotional climax is "If I Could See Your Face", a contrite meditation on cultural differences inspired by a tragic 2008 news story (the murder, at her brother's hands, of a sixteen-year-old Afghan girl accused of wanting to follow Western customs). It's a precious track musically too, with an organ solo by Jackson that marries counterpoint technique (including a quotation from Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor") with scales typical of Arabic music, sublimating the concept of integration on a purely sonic level. Berlin, though, is also the home of cabaret, and the tribute is paid through a cover of a 1930s German standard, "Good Bye Johnny", delivered in a booming, declamatory voice.

Joe's journey ends where it began, in the United States, but folding back into the deep South of New Orleans, a land steeped in jazz and poetry, with its stories of assorted humanity teetering on the edge of the abyss. It's perhaps the chapter most marked by local musical traditions, helped along by the presence of local artists, including three members of funk band Galactic and a horn section led by saxophonist Donald Harrison. Out of it come the uptempo "Neon Rain", the ravishing soul of "Keep On Dreaming", the funky-jazz-flavoured horns of "Satellite" and the triumphant closer "Ode To Joy", a tribute to the celebrated "An die Freude" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, complete with a 5/8 rhythm and a theme entrusted to electric guitar.

Almost an hour and a quarter of music that ideally serves as a summa of the entire Jackson universe. The Man returns centre stage, full of ideas and with an unexpected verve, bidding well for the unmissable Italian leg of his "Fast Forward Tour", expected in March 2016.

Recorded right after the end of the long tour (103 dates), the following album, Fool (2018), highlights the current band's tight chemistry; the sound is slightly leaner, more direct, even sharper-edged, while still honouring the stylistic unpredictability already explored in the recent past.

The lyrics are shrewd reflections on life's fundamental themes, filtered through a literary lens that alternates comedy and tragedy, in an attempt to draw a first emotional tally of a life lived without compromise.

The eight songs on Fool are the result of very careful selection: each track is a piece that fits perfectly into one of the artist's most colourful mosaics, ranging from the graceful romanticism with unusual Beatles-esque echoes of "Dave" to the aristocratic, Donald Fagen-like rhythmic phrasing of "Friend Better", through to the more typical twists and turns of "32 Kisses".

In a class of its own is the enchanting rumba-paced ballad that closes the album, "Alchemy", a sensuous, velvety song enriched by a spellbinding piano solo.

Once again Jackson relies on the piano to mark out lyrical passages of extraordinary strength and beauty, with that synoptic, flexible touch that has become familiar ("Big Black Cloud"), and, careless of political correctness, he delivers one of the most epic refrains ever, singing in curt, nervy tones about the ethical and social confusion of our times, entrusting the gritty sonic syntax of "Fabulously Absolute" to a vintage synth and a razor-sharp guitar sound.

Even on the more introspective tracks the musician unleashes energy and harmonic vigour - it's hard not to think of the album Night And Day when Joe strikes up "Strange Land": a song of dark, melancholy tones, almost akin to resignation.

The surprises don't end there: Joe pulls off a stroke of genius on the exuberant title track, where, over an almost ska-like rhythm, he weaves in oriental atmospheres courtesy of sitar sounds, as well as a rousing instrumental refrain in a latin-jazz vein, seasoned with elegant piano and bass solos over which good old Graham Maby slips in a quote from "Don't Stop The Carnival".

Fool is almost a new Look Sharp!, an album that returns to the themes dear to the musician with a self-awareness and balance that refuse to bow to the flattery of the modern star system. And it's precisely in this outsider's stance that the charm of this new chapter in his discography resides.

Even more disorienting is the new chapter that, five years later, adds another piece to the varied musical mosaic of the English composer: Mr. Joe Jackson Presents: Max Champion In “What A Racket!” (2023), entirely devoted to music hall, a genre English pop has often flirted with, from the Beatles to the Kinks. It's a collection of humorous and sentimental little songs for voice and orchestra, apparently written by the mysterious character in the title. It's an ironic, amused tribute - from the ever-sharp-witted The Man - to "the first form of mass entertainment created by the working classes", whose origins are to be found "in the pubs and streets of mid-19th-century London".

Jackson presents a small 12-piece orchestra performing 11 tracks, all credited to the enigmatic Mr. Champion, who - by his own account - was born in 1882 in London's East End and embarked on a musical career abruptly cut short by the First World War, before fading into obscurity and then resurfacing from 2014 onwards, when his scores were brought back to light. A leap through time, then. And it's hard not to be swept up in the period atmosphere right from the overture of "Why Why Why", a reflection on the futility of life set to an orchestration so giddily tipsy it would make even the best Tom Waits envious, much like the festive sarabande of the title track. For a moment you really feel transported to the red velvet seats of some early-20th-century theatre, where prostitutes and aristocrats would mingle to sing along with the superstars of the day. Tracks like "The Sporting Life" - a comic parable on indolence towards sport - and the equally sharp "Health & Safety" are a rollicking mix of energy and pronounced British humour.

Music-hall songs portrayed everyday Victorian life with satirical undertones, but they also touched on darker subjects, such as street crime. Many were marked by veiled sexual content, handled through double entendres, metaphors and wordplay. Hence the voyeuristic pantomime of "The Shades Of Night", in which the protagonist wanders the city watching scenes of intimate life through windows, and the ambiguous "The Bishop And The Actress", which explores relationships between seemingly opposite worlds, while behind the string-laced, heart-wrenching ballad "Dear Old Mum" lies a ferocious lyric telling how "Mum" had 10 children, "all happy and clean", until they started dying one by one while Mum drank gin and carried on with her little games.

What A Racket! is a hard record to judge. Halfway between polished musicological excavation and divertissement, between theatrical performance and satirical allegory, it thrives above all on Jackson's inexhaustible vitality, between engaging piano performances, surreally emphatic period-style vocals and booze-soaked pub choruses. It's an ambitious yet, at the same time, unpretentious undertaking, with no aim beyond mocking the moralists - of that era as much as today - who have always looked down on music hall as a "disreputable" genre. What it certainly proves is the intact form of the sixty-nine-year-old English composer.

Three years pass before Joe Jackson returns to the studio, this time for an album that restores the latin-jazz, pop-rock and funky-soul cadences of Night And Day. A musically refined work, Hope And Fury opens itself up to conflicting opinions due to the disenchantment and irony with which the artist tackles hot-button topics. In truth, Joe Jackson has not given up his role as an ironic chastiser of contemporary socio-political mores - just look at the lyrics of the furious latin-funky-soul "I'm Not Sorry" - and he remains one of the most skilled at sketching characters and stories in little more than three minutes, as proven by the cinematic, theatrically noir-tinged pop-tango of "See You In September".

The fact that Jackson has chosen to come across as outwardly playful, as in the mexican-flavoured rock'n'roll of "Do Do Do", while at the same time once again embracing working-class causes in the splendid, shifting melody of "End Of The Pier", is like a hall of mirrors, where the deceptively pleasant sounds conceal a far deeper and sharper undercurrent.

That Hope And Fury is not immune to cliché is no contradiction - they're the very same clichés the author pillories in the pop-punk-ska-rumba of "Welcome To Burning-By-Sea", but they're also the clichés that have made his style so recognisable: the brilliant piano touch that shines on "Fabolous People" or the elegant pop-jazz brushstrokes of "Made God Laughs".

Hope And Fury is a record that musically offers more than one reason for appreciation, even allowing for any sophisti-pop excesses, which in fact deserve praise for their lean, gutsy sonic staging.

The less brilliant lyrics are tasked with recounting the chaos of contemporary civilisation, in language poised between populism and rebellion, and it's tempting to think that the cover image - Joe Jackson sipping coffee while a fire spreads behind him - was chosen symbolically, a warning to a society that seems to have sacrificed humanity on the altar of a god of economic wellbeing as fatuous as it is unreal, leaving us, in the end, with nothing but hope and fury.

Eternally against the grain, immune to every trend and cliché, this gangly anti-rocker keeps hopping restlessly from one genre to another, at times flirting with megalomania, but - and this is the miracle of it - without ever slipping into the superficiality that such chameleon-like behaviour often entails. On the contrary, backed by his own "look sharp" ethos, he has always managed to dig deep into the authentic spirit of every style. From punk to reggae, from rock to blues, from pop to jazz, from swing to Afro-Cuban, from soul to film scores all the way to classical music, there is virtually no musical territory his omnivorous genius hasn't touched and explored in depth. Just as his versatility as a musician, singer, lyricist, composer, arranger and conductor is almost unmatched in the pop-rock field. Names like Zappa, Rundgren, Oldfield and precious few others come to mind, but none of them has managed to sustain such a standard of quality for so long.

Even though his fifteen minutes of fame are long over, even though many will keep dismissing him as mannered and pedantic, Joe Jackson will always remain a precious refuge for those who refuse to be lured in by the latest next big thing and would rather trust the timeless breadth of his music. An oasis where one can always replenish on lightness, class and intelligence. And that's no small thing, if you'll pardon the understatement.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro ("Fool", "Hope And Fury")

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