Howard's Ends

Nice boy Howie Jones splits hairs with Huw Collingbourne.

I seem to have this terrific knack of saying the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. Take the other day, for example. I turned up to do this interview with Howard Jones - a man whose hit songs, New Song, What Is Love, I 'd Like To Get To Know You Well and Things Can Only Get Better have gained him a reputation as a writer and musician who deserves to be taken very seriously.

I was under the impression that far from being a deeply serious person, however, Howard was in fact a rather jolly pop singer who was famous for his haircut as much as anything else.

That's why I began our conversation with an air of frivolity which was, unfortunately, received by Howard with all the gleeful enthusiasm that most men would have reserved for a hefty knee-jab to the groin.

"Fantastic haircut, Howard," I began. "Must have a great sense of humour to go about like that. I bet you get a bit miffed when people keep going on about how silly it looks . . ."

I noticed Howard wasn't chuckling. In fact, he looked decidedly . . . miffed.

"Who goes on about my hair?" he glowered at me from beneath a sheepdog fringe.

"Well, you're famous for it," I said. "People are always saying it. In magazines and - "

"I've never come across anybody in magazines saying my hair's silly," he said, casually brushing away a multi-coloured wisp of the long, lank tresses which had become momentarily entangled with the shaved bits around his ears.

I coughed, shifted my feet and clicked my knuckles, trying to think of something to say which might thaw the frosty atmosphere which was rapidly developing between us.

I couldn't think of anything, so I decided to stick to my guns and go back on the offensive. "Did you ever have any other sill . . . er, any other hair-dos before this one?"

"I've had lots of different styles," he told me.

"Such as? Punk or mohican or . . ?"

"No. Just variations on my present style. I have a hairdresser who looks after it for me. My hair's naturally a sort of brown colour so I had it dyed about four years ago, and since then I've been experimenting with it, trying out lots of different things."

'Well, maybe one day you'll come up with something . . .' No. I didn't say that. I just thought it.

Howard was growing impatient with me. He'd expected a serious interview. He muttered something about the lyrics of his songs. Had I read them? I said I'd heard the words of his singles, but I didn't think I could quote them verbatim. He told me he thought I should have read them. Then we could have talked about them in a serious way. I said I didn't really want to talk about them in a serious way. His expression looked as though I'd kicked him in the groin again. Or as if he was seriously contemplating the practicality of effecting such a manoeuvre upon me. I decided to humour him. I'd talk about his family life.

"I gather you live in High Wycombe with your wife, Janet . . ." I began.

"Maidenhead," he corrected. "We've just moved."

"How big a part does your wife play in your career?" I went on.

"I don't have a career," he said.

I was getting nowhere.

"Then what do you have?" I persisted

"If you're talking about my music, that isn't my career it's my life. Janet plays a very big part in it. But it's not a career. I don't just do this as a way of making money, you know. When I say it's my life, I mean it."

"But you must have other interests?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what sort of things do you do when you're not involved in music?"

"Ordinary things. I watch telly."

"Any hobbies?"

"l don't believe in hobbies. Hobbies are things that people don't take seriously. I've never had any hobbies. Music was never a mere hobby. I used to study classical music at college in Manchester. That wasn't a hobby. It was all leading towards what I'm doing today."

"Isn't that all a bit insular?

"Do you think your readers will understand the word 'insular'?"

"I think they might."

"Well, what kind of life isn't insular, in some way? Can you think of a life that is really all-encompassing"

"A person's life doesn't have to be all-encompassing for them to be interested in more than one thing. It sounds to me as though there's nothing that interests you outside your music. Is this the case?"

"That's an odd conclusion to draw. What I'm saying is that most people have a career which is just a way of existing, it's secondary to them. But to me, music is the most important thing - It's what I live and breathe."

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Jones story, Howard began living and breathing music at the tender age of seven, when he started learning to play classical piano. But he didn't devote himself to the music of the Immortal Greats, as he already had his eye firmly set on the fame of the pop charts. In his late teens (he's now 30), he began taking his electronic keyboard and his wife's ironing-board, used as a stand, around the pubs and clubs of High Wycombe.

Gradually, he attracted an enthusiastic circle of admirers, though there were one or two dissenters amongst the crowds, too.

"Well, that was only to be expected," Howard says, "because most pub bands play revamped '60's stuff. And here was I, on my own, with a synthesiser.

"I never got all that much trouble, really. I mean, normally people heckle a one-man performer more than they'd heckle a group, because they're scared that if they heckle a whole band they might get beaten up. Whenever anybody shouted at me, I just ignored them.

"Somebody once threw a glass at me, which was I bit more difficult to ignore. Luckily, it was only plastic."

On another occasion, whilst supporting the gloriously boring group, Marillion, Howard was continuously abused with a variety of choice swear words as well as an assortment of missiles hurled from the depths of the audience. It's the sort of treatment that would make many a Northern comic give up the ghost, never mind a less hardened creature such as the sensitive Howard.

"How do you manage to cope with the abuse you occasionally receive from audiences?" I asked, innocently.

Howard thought for a moment, then that by-now familiar expression of distaste congealed upon his face once more. "l don't get abused by audiences," he said. "I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times things like that have happened."

Resisting the temptation to put this claim to the test, I suggested that since he had encountered audience hostility a few times, he must have developed some sort of survival technique.

"The Marillion audience started throwing things and shouting so I walked off. Then some of them started calling for more, so I came back on again. I think some of them liked me. It was just the people in the front rows who didn't "

"Looking ahead to the future, what do you intend to do when your music is no longer so popular? In more basic terms, what are you going to do when your fans start to go off you?"

"I've thought about that, and I realise that sooner or later it's bound to happen. it happens with everyone, so I've set myself a time limit. At a certain stage, I'm going to give up, whatever happens."

"When you start to become unfashionable will you change your image? Wear new clothes? Get a new haircut? Do a Boy George, in other words?"

"But my image is changing all the time anyway. Admittedly, so slowly that people hardly notice. I don't believe in extreme changes. When a person dramatically alters their image, it's usually because somebody's been getting at them, or because they aren't quite so successful as they once were. They do it as a sort of over-reaction. It's like people wanting to join the army when their girlfriend leaves them, the 'joining the army' syndrome.

"A lot of pop stars deny that they even have an image, but I admit that I do have one because it's something I've thought about and worked at. It's not the sort of thing I'd change overnight.

"Initially, I didn't intend to have any image at all. But then I realised that by saying I wasn't going to have one, I'd somehow made a decision about the sort of image I was going to have. The fact of just thinking about your image at all makes you have an image.

"After that, I kept trying things out to see what suited me. I once wore what's become known as the 'equality costume' - one side I was dressed as a businessman and on the other side I was dressed as a punk. That was a bit extreme, really. I couldn't go on wearing that for very long, so I experimented with other ways of expressing myself. And now I think I have a style which represents the real me."

On the basis of the outfit he was wearing when I spoke to him, I'd say the real Howard Jones is dark and baggy with the odd bit of glitter. It's the sort of style which suggests that either Howard or his tailor has a very keen sense of humour. If the humour is Howard's, it's pretty well hidden.

He obviously takes his music seriously, claims that he hopes his lyrics can change people's lives and seems hurt and astonished when I suggest that the vast majority of people who have heard his songs on the radio probably couldn't repeat more than one or two words from the choruses. He's right when he says that thousands of people have bought his albums and listened to them time and again. Maybe his ideals ('breaking down barriers' he tells me) do have some effect.