Making plans for Joe

Looking forward to seeing Joe Jackson at Birmingham Symphony Hall this evening.

Joe has been a guest at several Forest events including our 35th anniversary party at Boisdale of Belgravia in 2014 where he is pictured above.

The first time I met him was in Portsmouth, in a pub close to his home. He lived primarily in New York and we met after he had written articles about smoking bans for the New York Times and Daily Telegraph.

He wrote a song, ‘In 20-0-3’ about the NYC ban, appeared on the Today programme, and wrote an essay, ‘The Smoking Issue’.

I persuaded him, against his better judgement, I think, to appear on a panel at a fringe event at the 2004 Labour Party conference. Other panellists included Health Secretary John Reid and the subject was the proposed smoking ban. I wrote about it here:

To Brighton to attend a meeting organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research, an influential left-wing think tank that has commandeered – with Channel 4 – an entire hotel for the whole of this week's Labour party conference. Tonight's speakers include Health Secretary John Reid, Dr Richard Smith (former editor of the British Medical Journal) and our own Joe Jackson.

I can tell from his body language that Joe isn't enjoying the experience. He later compares it to visiting the dentist but it's important he’s here and afterwards he’s approached by several journalists. One of them, a medical correspondent for a leading national newspaper, reveals a healthy scepticism about the 'threat' of passive smoking. "So why don't you write about it?" asks Joe. "I can't," she replies. "I'm just a reporter."

The venue for the event was a hotel on the Brighton seafront that had been dubbed the Health Hotel because it was the location for a series of public health related fringe events.

It gave me the idea for a rival Freedom Hotel, a concept that was eventually launched as the Freedom Zone at the Conservative conference in Birmingham in 2008.

Anyway, back in Brighton in 2004 Joe did a great job and I’m convinced his contribution that night - and the letter he wrote which was signed by several other musicians and artists and published by The Times the previous day - helped steer Reid towards a compromise on smoking in public places.

(Exemptions for pubs that didn’t serve food may not have been the compromise we wanted or were calling for but it was short of the comprehensive ban that was introduced by Reid’s successor Patricia Hewitt who tore up the policy that was in Labour’s 2005 election manifesto.)

After the Brighton event, which took place on a Sunday evening, Joe and I had a drink and a bite to eat in a local cafe and I remember it because I still had a five-hour drive to Plymouth for a meeting with the local council the following morning. I arrived at my hotel at 4.00am.

The following year Joe took part in another fringe event, this time organised by Forest, at the 2005 Labour conference that was also held in Brighton.

That was the event attended by David Hockney who grabbed all the headlines but the presence on the panel of Joe, Claire Fox and Daily Mirror columnist Sue Carroll, who died sadly in 2011, were equally important to its success.

After the event we all went for dinner at Havana, a Cuban-inspired restaurant where smoking was still allowed inside, and it was one of the most enjoyable evenings of my career. I’ll never forget it.

As for Joe’s music, I bought his second album, ‘I’m The Man’, when I was a student in 1979 but meeting him in person encouraged me to listen to his more recent work and I can honestly say that ‘Rain’ (2008) and ‘Fool’ (2019) are among my favourite albums of the last 15 years although, in truth, I don’t buy many albums these days.

Belatedly I also read his memoir, A Cure For Gravity, which is brilliantly written and and warmly recommended.

I wish he’d write more because I also enjoy the posts he occasionally publishes on his website, ‘What I’m Listening To’.

Funnily enough it turns out we have a mutual love of XTC and I was interested to read his comments on the band here.

Anyway I’m looking forward, as I say, to tonight’s concert. The last time I saw Joe and his band was at the London Palladium (where they are also playing next Sunday) and they were phenomenal, if loud!

I remember too seeing him on a double bill with Todd Rundgren in 2005, I think, when we visited him (briefly) backstage.

Tonight’s concert was originally scheduled for March but the European leg of the tour was postponed due to Covid so when I booked tickets for Birmingham Symphony Hall I didn’t anticipate that the Commonwealth Games would be on.

As it happens my daughter has spent the past year working for the 2022 Commonwealth Festival, ‘a celebration of creativity across the West Midlands’.

During the Games she’s a volunteer coordinator which means she helps the volunteers with their schedules and advises them on how to answer queries from spectators and other members of the public.

Today she’s working from 12.00 to 10.30pm so will miss the concert. Pity. I think she would have enjoyed it.

Below: my daughter in her Commonwealth Games uniform