453 Hello Howard Jones - New Song

Chart  entered  :  17  September  1983

Chart  peak  : 3

Number  of  hits  :  14

This  guy  was  never  a  critics'  favourite  with  many  taking  great  pains  to  exclude  him  from  the  New  Pop  canon.

John  Howard  Jones  was  born  in  Southampton  in  1955. His  family  moved  around  a  lot  and  Howard's  first  band  was  a  prog-rock  outfit  Warrior  in  Canada. After  returning  to  England  he  took  a  piano  course  in  the  Royal  Northern  College  of  Music  but  dropped  out  due  to  its  perceived  musical  snobbery.He  moved  to  High  Wycombe  and  played  in  local  jazz  funk  bands  while  working  in  a  cling  film  factory  and  as  a  piano  teacher.  Early  in  1981  he  started  performing  as  a  solo  synth  act  with  a  mime  artist  Jed  Hoile  "interpreting"  his  songs. He  eventually  came  to  the  attention  of  David  Jensen  who  offered  him  a  Radio  One  Session  ( Allmusic  wrongly  attributes  this  to  Peel ). On  the  back  of  this  he  got  support  slots  with  China  Crisis  and  OMD  and  the  major  labels  became  interested. He  signed  for  WEA.

Dave  Rimmer's  book,  Like  Punk  Never  Happened   focussed  largely  on  Culture  Club  but  Howard  might  have  been  the  more  appropriate  subject. Outside  of  the  rock  world  he  was  the  first  eighties  pop  star  who  had  no  grounding  in  punk. At  28 and  a  married  man, he  was  a  late starter  from  the  Home  Counties  and  his  interest  in  Buddhism  and  self-improvement  suggested  an  early  seventies  mindset.

Howard  told  Smash  Hits he  made  "optimistic  music  that  provokes  thought". That  might  be  all  well  and  good  but  he  had  a  bloody  cheek  calling  his  first  single  "New  Song"  when  it  rips  off  Solsbury  Hill  no  end  in  its  melodic  structure,  another  tell-tale  pointer  to  his  affiliations.The  lyric  promotes  his  views  on  "personal  revolution"  but  there's  also  a  lot  of  defensive  prickliness -"not  under  the  thumb  of  the  cynical  few/ Or  laden  down  by  the  doom  crew"  - that  recalls  Adam  Ant  or  Kevin  Rowland. Like  them  the  staunchly  vegetarian  Howard  was  personally  abstemious.

 I  quite  like  the  synth  break  in  the  middle  of  the  song  but  elsewhere  it's  marred  by  his  horrible  pub  singer  drone. His  appearance  on  Top  of  the  Pops   with  the  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other  haircut  and  Hoile  prancing  around  with  his  plastic  "mental  chains"  killed  any  interest  I  might  have  had  in  him  though  it  obviously  worked  for  many.