Latest Joe Jackson news

This page was last updated 9 May 2008. To send additions/corrections go to the contact page.

Joe on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

On Wed, 14 May 2008, Joe Jackson will be the musical guest on the American late-night TV talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Check your local listings for broadcast times.
See: official website; Wikipedia entry

"Rain" interviews and reviews

• Watch a 10-minute video interview which Lars Meijer conducted with Joe Jackson on his new album Rain. (The title cards with questions in Dutch are tranlated here.)
• Read an interview with MSNBC in which Joe talks – among other things – about the "Taco Bell" TV advert.
• Read about the technical aspects of recording "Rain" in an article in "Mix" magazine.
  
  Elsewhere in this Archive you can find:
• Links to more Joe Jackson interviews on "Rain"
• Links to (and excerpts from) reviews of "Rain"

New album "Rain" out in January 2008

Joe Jackson's forthcoming album will be entitled Rain and it will be released in Europe on 28 Jan 2008 (29 Jan 2008 in North America) on the Rykodisc label. Along with the CD containing ten new songs (see track listing) the release will include a bonus DVD directed and produced by Julie Gardner (the recording engineer who recorded the albums Volume 4 and Afterlife). With a running time of over 40 minutes, the DVD will feature recent live performance footage, behind-the-scenes footage and a rare television interview.

"We decided to let Julie Gardner, who we've worked with for years now," says Jackson, "to follow us around as we worked, playing a live show, rehearsing, and just talking about playing together and our long history together as band mates and just mates."

The DVD will consist of three live songs that Jackson performed at London's Islington Academy on 24 May 2007. The songs performed include "Invisible Man", "Wasted Time" and "Good Bad Boy", all of which appear on the forthcoming studio album.

Other DVD features include a rare interview on the German television show "Rockpalast", behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson with fellow band members Dave Houghton (drums) and Graham Maby (bass), footage of Jackson walking around Berlin, pointing out some of his favourite things about the city, plus footage of the band in the studio working on the new album.

The album was recorded in June 2007 in Berlin, Germany, at Planet Roc Studios. (The studios are located in the former broadcasting centre of East German Radio.)

(Source: press release)

JJ score for theatre piece "Stoker"

Joe is scoring a theatre piece called "Stoker", based on the life of Bram Stoker, the author of the original "Dracula" novel (see Wikipedia entry). The premiere will probably be in some kind of theatre workshop in early 2007. According to JJ's manager Mike Maska "it's a great script and the music is very cool."

One week of workshops took place in New York City in February 2007 and there will be more – again in New York City – in the autumn of 2007. These workshops are not open to the public.

(Source: Joe's management)

Upcoming TV appearances

Joe on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
See above for details.

Upcoming radio appearances

The World Cafe will be rebroadcasting Joe's session on Friday, 25 April 2008.
National Public Radio's World Cafe with host David Dye can be heard on nearly 200 stations in the US.
Find a station near you.

Previous news

Joe Jackson touring US and Europe in the summer of 2006

Joe Jackson went on tour with two of his original band members (Graham Maby on bass and Dave Houghton on drums) as the Joe Jackson Trio this June in the US and in Europe in July. He was touring just for the fun of it; there is no new album to promote.
See list of tour dates.

Joe Jackson in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"

Joe Jackson has a brief credited on-screen appearance in the new film The Greatest Game Ever Played as a piano player in an East London pub.

The film, which premiered in the US on 30 September 2005, tells the true story of Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur golf player from a working class family, who shocked the golf world when at the 1913 U.S. Open he battled his idol, the defending British champion Harry Vardon.

Joe Jackson & Todd Rundgren tour

Joe Jackson recently toured the US and Europe together with Todd Rundgren (April to July 2005). The string quartet Ethel was the opening act. See list of tour dates.

The concerts featured an opening set by Ethel, followed by a Joe Jackson solo set (just JJ and a piano) and a Todd Rundgren solo set (Todd on acoustic guitar or piano) plus a couple of songs played together by all in the encore section.

Female artists cover Joe Jackson songs

US label Skipping Discs released an album entitled Different For Girls made up entirely of Joe Jackson songs performed by women artists and female-fronted bands. Release date: 28 Sept 2004.

More info at the Skipping Discs website

CD with JJ reading from "A Cure for Gravity"

In 1993 Joe Jackson read from his autobiographical book A Cure for Gravity at Germany's literature festival "Göttinger Literaturherbst" (see this page for more info). Now a CD with a recording from this event has been released. Joe Jackson and the German musician Heinz Rudolf Kunze are reading a total of four chapters (two in English, two in German).

More info from the publisher

JJ sings on William Shatner album

The album "Has Been" by William Shatner and produced by Ben Folds, features Joe Jackson on vocals on the track "Common People", a cover of the Pulp song. See this page for more info.

"Has Been" Press Release

Bonus CD with "Afterlife (lim. ed.)" in Holland

In the Netherlands Afterlife has been released as a limited edition with a second CD. This has almost the complete Amsterdam Heineken Music Hall concert from May 2003. See these pages for track list and ordering information.

New song "In 20-0-3"

Joe wrote this song to send up Mayor Bloomberg and the New York smoking ban, but also to help those fighting to get the ban repealed and to prevent similar bans elsewhere. All proceeds from CD sales will go to activist groups FORCES, NYC C.L.A.S.H., and FOREST. This single can be ordered now from Joe’s website and will ship by 16 February. For ordering info see this page.

New live album in March 2004

The live album Afterlife from the reunited Joe Jackson Band's recent tour will be released by Ryko on 16 March. Orders placed through Joe's website, however, will be shipped by 16 February – one month before the CD will be available in stores.
The live recordings are from the concerts in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Diego.

• Aug 2004: On Tuesday, 24 Aug 2004, Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren share the bill for a special concert at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in New York.
• April 2004: For his graduate thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University's Theatre department, Andrew Hamm is staging a concert performance entitled "Joe Jackson's Night and Day." They are doing every song from both "Night and Day" albums as a two-act music theatre piece, featuring singers, actors, stage combat, and dance, backed by a live six-piece band. The dates of the show are 16 and 17 April 2004 at the RF&P Forum in the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond.
  "Joe Jackson's Night and Day" website
• Aug 2001: Universal Music in the US re-releases Joe Jackson's first two albums as remastered CDs with bonus tracks. "Look Sharp!" includes "Don't Ask Me" and "You Got The Fever" – both outtakes from the Look Sharp recording sessions – while "I'm The Man" includes "Come On", a live recording from Joe's first American tour.
• Sept 2000: Joe is playing piano and providing additional vocals on three tracks of Rickie Lee Jones's album "It's Like This".
• Aug 2000: During the Gavin Triple A Convention in Boulder, Colorado, Joe performs a 55 minute set with just himself on grand piano and Graham Maby on bass.
• July 2000: The new book by Don Breithaupt and Jeff Breithaupt, entitled "Night Moves – Pop Music in the Late '70s", features a foreword by Joe Jackson.
• June 2000: Joe is a guest at Rickie Lee Jones' Seattle concert.
• March 2000: Joe performs three songs by Kurt Weill during a 13-hour concert marathon in New York's Symphony Space marking the composer's 100th birthday.
• Oct-Dec 1999: Joe promotes his book "A Cure for Gravity" in bookshops in Britain and the US, reading passages from the book, doing question and answer sessions and signing books and CDs.
• Oct 1999: New CD "Symphony No. 1" is released by Sony Classical. It's not a traditional symphony written for orchestra. It's a large-scale instrumental piece in four movements, but written for several soloists (including electric guitar and electric violin) against a backdrop of keyboards and percussion.
• July/Aug 1999: Joe plays a string of "just-for-the-hell-of-it" shows in New York City with Graham Maby (bass) and Gary Burke (drums). The dates are at The Bottom Line and at Joe's Pub.
• Jan 1999: A&M Records in the US have re-released the 1981 album "Jumpin' Jive". The album has been remastered and repackaged, with new liner notes written by Joe.
• 1998: "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" is featured on the soundtrack of the film "There's Something About Mary".
• Sept 1997: A specially arranged concert at Sony Music Studios in New York is filmed for a later TV broadcast in the PBS "Sessions at West 54th" series.
• Sept 1997: A&M Records in Europe release a compilation CD of Joe Jackson's song material in its "Master Series" which includes three tracks previously not available on CD: "Don't Ask Me", "You Got The Fever", and "Out Of Style".
• Sept 1997: A&M Records in Europe release a 2CD compilation of Joe's music, entitled "This Is It". It includes one track previously unavailable on CD: the song "Tilt" from 1980.
• July 1997: American choreographer David Dorfman uses the music of "Heaven & Hell" as the basis for a dance piece, premiered in North Carolina on 8 July 1997 and performed at various venues across the US, culminating in a successful and critically-acclaimed week at the Joyce Theater in New York in October 1998.
• Dec 1996: The soundtrack album of the US television series "Party of Five" includes the song "Stranger Than Fiction" by Joe Jackson.
• May 1996: A&M Records in the US release a Joe Jackson compilation entitled "Greatest Hits". (The 1990 'best of' compilation "Stepping Out" had been released in Europe, Canada and Australia, but not the US.)
• May 1996: Joe's cover of "The Harder They Come" is included in the compilation CD "Rock 'N' Reggae - Roots Of Rock", making it available on CD for the first time.
• Feb 1996: Joe Jackson sets up his own website.
• Oct 1995: Joe contributes a track to the XTC tribute album "A Testimonial Dinner – The Songs Of XTC". The track is "Statue Of Liberty".