A Cure For Gravity - Hardcover

Jackson, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1891620509 ISBN 13: 9781891620508

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 1999

Synopsis

A renowned composer and one-time pop star's charming, funny, inspiring memoir of becoming- and evolving as- a musician.

Since the release of his first smash bestselling album Look Sharp in 1979, Joe Jackson has forged a singular career in music through his originality as a composer and his notoriously independent stance toward music business fashion. He has also been a famously private person whose disdain for the rituals of celebrity has led some to call him effete and self-important.

That reputation is bound to be shattered by A Cure for Gravity, Jackson's enormously entertaining and self-revealing memoir of growing up musical, from a culturally impoverished childhood in a rough English port town to the Royal Academy of Music, London's punk and new wave scenes, and the brink of pop stardom. Jackson describes his life as a teenage Beethoven fanatic; playing his first piano gigs to audiences of glass-throwing skinheads; and life on the road with long-forgotten club bands. Throughout, he finds a hundred excuses to share his thoughts on musicians past and present, on record companies and critics, on why music is like both sex and religion (and why it isn't), why he loves Shostakovich and The Prodigy and hates Brahms and Brian Eno, and how music saved him from becoming "one of those sad bastards you see milling around outside the pub at closing time, looking for a fight."

In 1992, Jackson decided to "retire from the pop world." This book evolved as he tried to figure out what to do next. Far from a standard-issue celebrity autobiography, A Cure for Gravity is an intelligent, passionate book about music, the creative process, and coming of age as an artist.

About this title

About the Author

Joe Jackson's internationally bestselling albums include Look Sharp, Night and Day, Blaze of Glory, Jumpin' Jive, Body and Soul, Laughter and Lust, Night Music, and Heaven and Hell. He has also composed music for film, video, and television, including scores for Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker, and James Bridges' Mike's Murder. A graduate and now a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, he divides his time between New York City and Portsmouth, England.

Reviews

To the credit of popular 1980s British singer/composer Jackson ("Is She Really Going Out with Him?" "Steppin' Out"), there is little melodrama to this bookAhis hit recordings, beginning with Look Sharp in 1979, receive only brief mention in the final chapters. Instead, Jackson presents a portrait of the artist as a young geek, detailing the quiet undulations of his life as an intensely introspective, gifted musician growing up outside of London, studying at conservatory and touring around in much derided bar bands. We see the 14-year-old Jackson obsessing over Beethoven's Eroica symphony ("As the fanfare comes to a halt, there's a pregnant pause: What's this lunatic going to do now?"); we see him on his way to the Royal Academy of Music ("As the ferry docked, the workers poured like a sluggish plague of locusts through the Dockyard Gate, and I boarded the London train"); and we see him pouring beer on drunk women during bar fights in obscure locations. Fellow musicians, no matter their chosen genre, may see themselves in Jackson's accounts of pathetic pub gigs and unpleasant music industry dealings. Jackson is an easy, natural writer, sometimes an excellent one. He is often funny, and though a bit digressive, the book is worth reading for its style alone. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One of New Wave's original ``angry young men,'' Joe Jackson highlights his journey from Portsmouth, England to the Royal Academy of Music to pop star in this lively musical memoir. Jackson, who emerged in the late `70s as a contemporary of Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, and went on to score pop success with such songs as ``Is She Really Going Out With Him?,'' ``Steppin' Out,'' ``Breaking Us in Two,'' ``Jumping Jive,'' and ``I'm the Man,'' has proven to be one of rock's most enigmatic performers. In fact, he's often been accused of being confrontational and pretentious. The latter trait is evidenced early in A Cure for Gravity, and often slows down the flow of the book, as Jackson eschews the linear autobiographical route for sometimes lengthy digressions into a form of music criticism (on subjects that range from Steely Dan, whom he calls one of his biggest influences, to Beethoven). It's not that his views aren't interesting, as he clearly knows his material; it's that they disrupt what is a sometimes comical, dead-on portrayal of coming of age as a musical outcast. Growing up in a portside town as a young asthmatic, Jackson was gawky and unathletic, a deadly combination that often attracted what he calls the ``hardnuts'' (bullies who ostracized him for being different). However, by the time he was a teenager, he'd discovered his musical gift, first playing solos in local pubs (despite being underage), then looking for bands to showcase his talents. His tales of the horrible gigs he had to take early on, as in a Greek restaurant where his group backed up a screaming singer and a belly dancer, are often as hilarious as those in The Commitments. Jackson has a remarkable recollection of his days as a struggling musician, and those anecdotes not only entertain, they make Jackson remarkably human, a characteristic not even his fans have always seen. A Cure for Gravity should be required reading for anyone who's ever attempted to start a band, either for fun or to make it as a professional musician. And even those who've only thought about it as a passing fancy will find much delight in this touching musical journey. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Showbiz bios written by the subject without benefit of professional writing assistance are few, and those that make the claim of unassisted authorship plausible are fewer. Jackson says his bio is entirely self-penned. Those who find his music richly nuanced and characterized by an independent spirit and a prickly, self-assured aesthetic will probably find his introspective self-portrait enriching. Those who find his music a little too meticulous or maybe boring won't even notice it. Jackson chronicles his progress from the gritty English port town of Portsmouth to matriculation at the Royal Academy of Music to a pop-music career. He first got international attention and chart success during the punk^-new wave heyday, but Jackson has more to ruminate about than a five-year spasm of teen-music trends. His knowledge of and flair for music make him hard to pigeonhole; how many other pop stars would bring up the second Shostakovich string quartet? Only he, perhaps, can do himself justice, which is what he certainly tries in this literate volume. Mike Tribby

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Most nights, early on, we're ignored, which is good. A bad gig is where they unplug your amps in the middle of a song and throw them out into the car park, and you can forget about getting paid. Hopefully, as the evening rolls on, we'll get scattered applause, a few shouts of "bollocks," and "get off," some drunk howling like a wolf at the back, and a few people dancing. And that'll be a good gig.

But tonight the drinking seems more reckless than usual, and the drunks are not happy drunks. They're oi-what-are-you-lookin'-at drunks, shut-up-when-you're-talkin'-to-me drunks, drunks in imminent danger of getting Out of Order. Even the laughter has an aggressive edge. The barman with the hooks for hands has taken on a sweaty, psychotic look, and his two Alsatians are barking. By the time we're halfway through the second set, we're getting nervous. There's something in the air here that we've come across before. We can almost smell it.

Right in front of me a quartet of rough girls is getting seriously plastered on vodka and lime and vodka and blackcurrant and vodka and vodka. And one of them thinks it's very funny to come over now and again, make faces at me, and bang on one of my keyboards, to sow-like squeals of delight from her pals. By the third set, the ladies have been joined by a couple of guys who've drunk enough to make the ladies look good, and something's got to give. The point of no return comes when we hit the Scottish Medley.

And what is the Scottish Medley? Our third set is meant to be rabble-rousing good fun, and on a good night, it is. It includes songs by Elvis and the Beatles that everyone knows, a 50's rock'n'roll medley, and a lot of jokey, clowning stuff, including me slipping behind a curtain and re-emerging (to wild applause and hoots of laughter) as Angus McSporran, wearing a long false ginger beard and a kilt (actually a tartan skirt which used to belong to my mother). We start with "Donald, Where's Yer Troosers?" I play a couple of jigs on an accordion, and we end with a rousing chorus of "Auld Lang Syne."

This is too much for the Vodka Girls. They have to know what's under the kilt. The one who's been banging my keyboards all night bounces up and starts tugging at it, revealing the rolled-up burgundy flares underneath, and I've had enough. I shove her away; she throws a vodka and orange over me; I throw a pint of bitter over her; and whooosh! the Pen and Parchment Club erupts. A bruiser who wants to defend the honor of the ladies starts a fight with a guy who says they're just a bunch of slags and they were asking for it. Another guy wants to fight him, and another tears off his shirt, revealing rippling muscles, just wanting to fight anyone. Chairs start flying and we escape under the bar hatch and out to the car park just as the dogs are set loose....

We lock ourselves in the van. We could be here for some time. At some point we'll have to go back in, pack up our equipment--or what's left of it--and try to get some money out of these bastards....

"You started this!" says Graham.

"Me?!" I say, incredulous. I didn't start anything! Suddenly I feel like throwing up. All I ever wanted to do was to play the piano. All I ever wanted was to make beautiful music, like Beethoven, like Charlie Parker, like the Beatles, performer and audience merging into one entity...

"Another gig bites the dust," says Mark, and we all groan.... Then we just sit in silence. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I imagine I'm up in the sky somewhere, looking down on this scene, looking for some sort of pattern, some sort of sign that it's all worth it. It doesn't work. I open my eyes again. I'm sitting in a Transit van in Basingstoke, and I'm thinking: how the hell did I get mixed up in all this?

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1891620509
• ISBN 13: 9781891620508
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288