- For the heavy metal musician of the same name, see
Howard Jones
(heavy metal musician)
| Howard Jones |
| Background information |
| Birth name |
John Howard Jones |
| Born |
23 February 1955 |
| Origin |
Southampton, Hampshire, England |
| Genre(s) |
Pop, Rock, New
Wave, Synthpop |
| Occupation(s) |
Musician, Singer, Songwriter |
| Instrument(s) |
Keyboards, Synthesizer,
Vocals,
Drums,
Percussion,
Piano |
| Years active |
1983 to Present |
| Label(s) |
Elektra |
| Website |
http://www.howardjones.com/ |
Howard Jones (born John Howard
Jones, 23 February 1955) is an English singer and songwriter.
He is the eldest of four boys (brothers Roy, Martin, and
Paul). His birthplace is Southampton, England, and he spent his
early years in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire,
and attended the Royal Grammar
School, and then spent a year at the Royal Northern
College of Music in Manchester. He now lives with his family
in Somerset.
|
Contents
- 1 Early
career
- 2 Major
label recording career
- 3 Independent
recording and producing career
- 4 Current
activities
- 5 Discography
- 6 External
links
|
Early career
Jones took piano
lessons from the age of seven and joined his first band at fifteen.
When he was young, he used to give piano lessons. One of his clients
was a girl named Jan Smith, whom he later married. Whilst working with
her, a vehicle crashed into their van, injuring Smith.
She claimed compensation and used the money to buy Howard a synthesiser,
a Moog
Prodigy. He was sent two synthesizers by accident, and he liked the
combination of the two so much that he paid for the extra one. He
appeared as a solo artist in local venues in High Wycombe, before
inviting a mime artist called Jed Hoile, who used
to do improvised choreography while doused in white
paint as Jones played behind him. After a well-received John Peel
session he obtained support slots with China
Crisis and OMD before signing
to WEA in the summer of 1983.
Major label recording career
After a promotional frenzy, his first single
called "New
Song" was released in September 1983 and reached the UK
top five and U.S. top 30. He subsequently had three
more hits
over the next twelve months and a UK Number 1 album, Human's
Lib. This album went gold and platinum in a number of
countries. He acquired a hardcore fanbase made up of both starstruck
teenagers and more mature music lovers, who saw the musicianship which
went into the electronic sounds of his songs.
His mother and father, Thelma and John Jones, ran his fan club. Jones
was a close temporal and stylistic contemporary of Nik
Kershaw, and the two musicians were often conflated in the
affections of the contemporary pop audience. However, both were
accomplished musicians and wrote intelligent pop music with lyrical
difference to most pop chart fare.
Jones was known as a respectable face of pop,
combining innovative synthesizer music with strong feelings on animal
rights and life's excesses. Philosophy, spirituality and humanistic
ideals were all lyrical themes.
In the summer of 1984, he released a single called "Like To
Get To Know You Well", which he said was 'dedicated to the original
spirit of the Olympic Games'. Although it was not an
official Olympic anthem for the
Games in Los Angeles that summer, it caught on and was a huge worldwide
hit. The sleeve featured the song title in ten different languages;
while Jones sang the title line in French
and German on the extended version. The
song appeared in the film Better Off Dead
and the computer game Grand Theft
Auto: Vice City Stories.
Jones' second album was a ground breaking 'remix' album. It
contained six songs, all but one of which had been previously released,
but which appeared in elongated formats, including the multilingual
version of "Like To Get To Know You Well". The album was called The
12 Inch Album and the sleeve featured a miniature Jones
standing next to a 12-inch ruler.
When he released his second studio album, Dream Into
Action, in 1985 he introduced his own backing band, including
female backing vocal trio Afrodiziak. Afrodiziak featured Caron
Wheeler (who went on to greater success with Soul
II Soul) and Claudia Fontaine (who became a
renowned backing singer). Playing bass guitar, meanwhile, was Jones' own brother Martin,
who had to have an extra string added to his instrument to play some of
Howard's bass lines, which were originally played on a keyboard
without regard for the range of a real bass guitar. One of the singles
released from this album, "No One Is To Blame", was later re-recorded
and featured Phil Collins as drummer and producer.
Dream Into Action was a huge hit worldwide.
In July 1985, Jones performed at Wembley Stadium as part of
the Live
Aid concert, singing his 1984 hit "Hide And Seek" while playing a piano
belonging to Freddie Mercury. He also
embarked on a major world tour-hitting countries such as Japan,
Australia and the US where Jones was selling out huge arenas.
Independent recording and
producing career
Jones had his last UK Top 40 hit in 1986 with 'All I Want' but
continued to be very successful in the US. He concentrated on
production, songwriting and running a successful vegetarian
restaurant called Nowhere. He had more hits on the Billboard
charts in the U.S. into the early 1990s, including "Everlasting Love" (1989, his
second #1 hit on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart after
"No One Is To Blame"), "The Prisoner" (1989), and "Lift Me Up" (1992).
Jones' recording contract with Warner
Bros. Records/WEA was cancelled after the release of In The
Running and The Best Of Howard Jones. He
responded by starting his own record label, dtox, and producing an
album in his own studio The Shed which was made
available only at gigs and through his website. Artists affiliated with
Howard's Dtox label include Martin Grech, Dba, Shaz Sparks and The
Itch (Robin Boult).
In 2001, Jones played keyboards for Beatles
legend Ringo Starr for Ringo's All
Starr Band tour. The 2001 All Starr Band line-up consisted of ex-Supertramp
frontman
Roger
Hodgson, dance-music percussionist Sheila E.,
former Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter and King
Crimson/Emerson, Lake and Palmer
singer-bassist Greg Lake. Jones fulfilled two
life-long ambitions on this tour: to play live in a band with a member
of the Beatles and to play Karn Evil 9 live. Keith
Emerson’s classic keyboard arrangement is regarded as one of
the most difficult keyboard pieces ever written.
On 20 September 2003, Jones played a unique, sold-out 20th
Anniversary Concert at the Shepherds Bush Empire, London,
commemorating the release of his first single. The gig, which drew fans
from all over the world, consisted of four sets: Acoustic, Retro,
Electronic and Full Band, featuring music from his 20-year career. He
was joined by friends Midge Ure (Ultravox) and Nena, as well as his mime artist, Jed Hoile. A
recording of this concert has since been released on DVD.
Current activities
Jones has continued to tour and write new music, more recently
collaborating with Robbie Bronniman (Dba) to co-produce music for the Sugababes
and his 2005 studio album Revolution of the Heart.
He has been busy in the past few years touring the world -
playing gigs
in the U.S., Italy,
Germany,
Sweden
and other countries. He has been putting the finishing touches to a new
acoustic album, a second album of piano solos and remixing some tracks
from his last album. He played a number of nights at the Edinburgh
Festival in Scotland in 2006. The same year Jones did a vocal for the
song "Into the Dark" by Ferry Corsten for L.E.F..
In October 2006, he released the song "Building Our Own
Future" as a podsafe
track, as one of several established artists looking to use podcasts as a
new means of promoting their music and tours. The song debuted at #1 on
the Pod Music Countdown
(PMC Top10) October 29, 2006 and spent four weeks at the top of the
chart.
The electro DnB
producer, John
B, remixed
Jones' song "For You See Me" on his 2006 album, Electrostep.
Jones embarked on a tour of Australia in 2007, beginning at the
Kedron-Wavell RSL club in Brisbane on March 22 and concluding on
April 5 at The Regal, Perth.
Jones is currently recording his next album although a
possible release date has not yet been announced
Discography
For a list of Howard Jones releases, see Howard Jones discography.
External links
