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History||JamiroBand||About Jason Kay||Interview |
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The Face
May 1993
Boy Wonder
Ekow Eshun
He sings like Stevie Wonder, talks like Bob Dylan on speed, and his music has been a breath of fresh air on British dancefloors. Stardom beckons for Jamiroquai, but can he take the pressure?
Whew, but JK can talk. Like a market trader anxious to show off his wares, he's no sooner convinced you of the "Knock down bargain, you won't find a better offer, get it now, buy, buy, buy, never to be repeated" value of the goods in front of you, than he's rustling around behind his stall and sticking something else under your nose. It's exhausting and sometimes baffling. Especially as he's wont to leap from one topic to another, launching into a diatribe about the rainforests that, improbably, turns into a rant about road taxes and car clamping. He's got the sort of fog-horn personality you'd normally give a wide berth to in the pub. Yet close your eyes, let his words wash over you, and they actually start to make sense. Matched with a disarming sincerity, his flag-waving, trumpet-blasting, relentlessly opinionated character is surprisingly endearing. It sets JK, and his group Jamiroquai, in stark relief to the sort of bland, anodyne pop groups who currently crowd the charts. Even if, as we'll see later, it also leads to some interesting and embarrassing contradictions.It's a late April night at the Strongroom, the east London studio where Jamiroquai are recording their debut album, "Emergency On Planet Earth". JK's voice rises and falls over an elaborate Latin arrangement played by bassist Stuart Zender, drummer Nick Van Gelder and keyboardist Toby Smith. Although this is only the third time they've played the song, "Music In My Mind", the green light which signals a master recording is on. And as with most tracks on the album, JK is insistent that it be recorded "live", in one take. But even as it builds to a resounding conclusion, he's shaking his head.
"It's not right, it's just not right. We want a tune that has that feeel to it, and this ain't there." "We can overdub the high hats, Stevie Wonder did that all the time," suggests Nick Van Gelder.
"No man, I'm not going back with a track that ain't right, it's got to be bollocks right!" he answers, striding out of the studio. With only 28 days to go until the deadline imposed by the band's record label Sony, and only half an album recorded so far, the Strongroom has been the scene of frayed nerves, arguments and exhaustion. Keyboardist Toby is nursing a bronchial infection precipitated by stress. And JK is trying to acclimatise to new-found celebrity status, while delivering on the massive eight-album contract he signed with Sony at the close of 1992. "It feels like being on a runaway horse in a cowboy movie," he grimaces, "when you're being dragged along at the back, with your head bumping along the ground."
"When You Gonna Learn", the debut single by Jamiroquai, then the solo name of JK (born Jason Kaye), was released on Acid Jazz late last year. By rights it should have disappeared without a trace. Not, that's to say, through any fault of the record itself. Far from it, in fact. A vibrant inspirational funk track which harked back explicitly, some would say shamelessly, to the early Seventies sound of Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers and Gil Scott Heron, it was widely hailed as one of the most striking soul debuts in recent years. One that was all the more remarkable for coming from a white 22-year-old from Ealing, whose voice sounded disconcertingly like a woman imitating Stevie Wonder. But given the poor distribution and minimal promotion that bedevils many independent releases, it could very easily have slipped into glorious obscurity beside other outstanding British soul/funk tracks, such as McKoy's "Family". Instead, the record's brassy optimism struck a chord with club-goers getting steadily restless with the metronome beat of house.
The song became an underground hit and made Jamiroquai into the subject of a bidding war among the major labels. With a flurry of "next big thing" media interest ringing in his ears, JK signed a deal with Sony worth 100,000 pounds. If fully honoured by both parties, he'll now be making records until the age of 50. Transformed into a tight four-piece, with a live brass section that pushed their number to ten, Jamiroquai played Brixton Academy in front of 5,000 people and then watched as their major label, "Too Young To Die", quickly went top ten. The group have now arrived centre stage. Their name, derived from the Native American Iroquai tribe, and once the source of much perplexity, now rolls smoothly off most tongues. And the fur hat that JK has affected since his youth has lent him the sort of idiosyncratic cachet expected of pop stars. All of this has taken months rather than years. And, perhaps inevitably, such a speedy ascent has made JK the focus of a range of conflicting emotions. Mention Jamiroquai in the London jazz and funk club scene he hails from, and few are merely neutral. For most, there is respect at the singer's prodigious talent, and his success at taking funk to the heart of the mainstream. If some will admit to this only grudgingly, their reluctance can mostly be attributed to a strain of green-eyed scepticism.Still, others bear a more fundamental resentment. "He's very talented," comments one black onlooker. "As white people are at copying black people." That Jamiroquai's songs are packed with references to a black musical legacy of soul, funk, jazz and fusion is undeniable. And certainly, JK would hardly be the first white artist to be accused of "stealing" that tradition. From Elvis to Jerry Lee Lewis to Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark, countless white acts have been targeted as examples of cultural colonialism; the process wherby the mainstream looks to marginal black culture, and makes R&B, the blues or hip hop its own. As such, many black people have exhaled a weary sigh of deja vu at the group. To add further grist to the mill, their success also coincided with the decision by several majors to drop many talented black artists, including Courtney Pine and Omar.
Arguably much the same number of white acts have been dropped as well, at a time when record companies are feeling the sting of the recession. But this is immaterial. The popular feeling remains that JK has taken something which doesn't belong to him, and denies many black performers the opportunity of mainstream success. Such arguments may be valid in principle, yet they also suggest that it's somehow illegitimate for Jamiroquai to even think of making soul, or worse, to be any good at it. Given this, JK's response, when I put these claims to him, is surprising to say the least. Not only does he nod his head in sympathy, but he also launches into his own diatribe about the appropriation of black music.
"Has it been easier for me as a white artist?" he asks, taking a pensive drag on a cigarette. "From looking at what goes on , I'd say yeah. I know how black artists are treated in the business and it's diabolical. But I'd also say, look at techno and house, all that came from hip hop and house in Chicago and Detroit, it's a black thing. Look at Snow, 'Informer', what's that? It's all white people delving into heavy black roots, making dough out of it, keeping it going long enough to make a nice little scene. All of a sudden, you're blind to where it came from and it's a white scene!"
So where does that leave a group like Jamiroquai? "The bottom line is, I like the music and I'm doing it out of respect. If someone's trying to do something crap and make money out of it, like Snow, that's one thing. I'M not doing it to say, 'Hey I'm white and I can do this.' I'm actually trying to make music for everybody, and it you look at the crowd at my gigs, you'll see black, white, Asian, Chinese, every type of person, which is sweet." All of this is said at a scatter-gun pace which leaves no time for premeditation and underscores his sincerity and admiration for black culture. End of story. Or at least, it would have been if JK hadn't insisted on adding his own postscript, as though his mouth were running away with him.
"I've got soul, a feeling for what I'm doing. That's what black people are good at. Look at Jimi Hendrix, look at James Brown Get Down. He's doing what he's doing, without worrying about anything else. But a lot of white artists, especially today, haven't got it, it just ain't happening for them."
Does that mean that compared to them, you've got soul? "Yeah, of course. Because soul is the energy and emotion you put into something. That's why black music from the Thirties onwards is so fucking good. 'Cause it's come out of shit, out of cotton fields and singing in church. When the only thing you've got left is your fucking voice."
Why does he do it? Opening his mouth when it would be better off shut, JK leaves himself open to ridicule. It's plainly absurd, after all, to compare the source of his talent with that of blacks in the Thirties, for some whom slavery was still a living memory. Yet it's almost as if he can't help it. In an interview with London club culture magazine Touch, he told black MP Bernie Grant, who'd compared racial conditions in Nineties Britain to those of Sixties America, to "sort himself out". "There's no point looking to the past," he explains to me. "It's been done and it never works, because whenever there's a militant black front, you'll get a militant white front." But, ironically, Bernie Grant is the Labout MP whose majority increased by the largest amount during the last election. Which suggests that he speaks with a good deal more authority and popular support than JK. As one established figure within the club scene scoffed, "He carries a lot of weight on his shoulders. Four hundred years of white middle-class oppression from Ealing."Who is JK addressing, I wonder? "When You Gonna Learn" and "Too Young To Die" are filled with exhortations for the politicians to stand back, for ordinary people to take control and make the world a better place. When I press him further, he heads off into a tremendous spiel about the rainforests, foreign debt and the burgeoning global population. But isn't he preaching to the converted? After all, who doesn't agree that all of these are great evils, that "something must be done"? The question, though, is what? And how much can a singer, whose records get radio airplay sandwiched between Take That and 2 Unlimited, really make any difference?
"I look at myself as a little person and the people who run the Government as big people," he says, leaning forward. "They hold all the cards and are saying, 'You can't do anything about it.' But I'm saying there's people who can't eat, we're having wars all the time, that the Government's taking the piss. And I'm trying to generate money which I can donate to Greenpeace and Friends Of The Earth and Oxfam, people who can help sort things out."
Born in Ealing, Jason Kaye [sic] is the only child of a single-parent family. He says he has never met his Portugese father and was raised by his mother, Karen Kaye, a nightclub jazz singer. Although he speaks of her working with, among others, Dizzy Gillespie and Ronnie Scott, she is not widely known, even among jazz aficionados. Mark Sinker, the knowledgeable editor of jazz magazine the Wire, professed ignorance when I asked about her, and the name Karen Kaye is not listed in even the most exhaustive jazz encyclopedia. While she didn't push her son into singing, she was, in other respects, a hard taskmaster. "She wanted me to find my own way and experience things for myself. At times I thought she was being so hard, like 'no you can't have any money, go and find your own, it's your problem'. All the time, push, push, push, go out there and realise you've got to deal with life." Even now that he's successful, JK hesitates before playing her his songs. "She has high expectations, and she can pick out if a note's flat or a song isn't right. So of course I'm jittery playing her stuff, because you don't wanna get your mum's 'you can do better son' slap round the ear, do you?" During his adolescence, their relationship all but disintegrated. "It was diabolical, down the dumps," he shudders. And from 16 to 20, he claims he was periodically thrown out of the house, to wind up living rough on nearby Haverstock Hill, or sleeping in squats without heat or light. Through all that time, he was trying to make music, singing into a four-track tape machine and supporting himself "by doing bits of crime and thieving and marijuana hustles". Only in 1991 did his fortunes improve. A chance meeting with Tunji Williams - younger brother of Femi from the Young Disciples, former manager of the Brand New Heavies, and current manager of Jamiroquai - led to a demo for Acid Jazz, which became the "When You Gonna Learn" single. Overnight success, then, has apparently taken years of graft in difficult circumstances. And along the way, JK's learned to say and do what he wants, heedless of others.
"I suppose I've got a bit of an ego on me," he admits with a grin. "But I've lived on my own a lot, so you learn to look after yourself and you just can't change. Anyway, I'd rather be like this, 'cause you gotta have a bit about you to get on, to have the confidence to get through."At present in the London club scene, stories are legion about Jamiroquai. They say JK is exploiting the rest of the group, who are unsigned to Sony. That he has arbitrarily sacked previous band members and studio staff. And they point to his two classic cars, a 1968 Mercedes and a 1972 BMW, as proof that behind his eco-consciousness is hypocrisy. The band, HE stresses, earn session fees and potentially lucrative percentage points of record sales; two cars hardly amounts to gross opulence; and, if musicians are hired and fired, such is the nature of business.
But while he shrugs away the tales, they're still indicative of the gulf celebrity has opened between him and the clubbers he used to rub shoulders with. "Friends treat you differently, they try to make out that because you've now got something, you're a bloody capitalist" he says, voice rising. "I'm just a guy who walks the streets, I don't want to be lauded or glorified. People think you want to be a star and have all the trimmings, like big limos or screaming girls. But that's bogus, it's false. Never mind what I've got, concentrate on what I'm trying to do."
How long can JK remain the angry young man of the pop charts? If the message in the music is all, then this surely presages some uncomfortable trade-offs with Sony. After all, the label's aim is to nurture a commercial pop product that will bring the smartest return on its investment. It's perhaps ominous that, with the ink still fresh on JK's contract, George Michael, frustrated by a similar lifetime deal, was suing Sony in search of an escape clause. So far Jamiroquai are ahead in the game. Sony initially attempted to foist on the group a middle-aged producer, more used to working with Erasure and the Pasadenas, to oversee the recording of "Too Young To Die". After dismissing him and scoring a top ten hit, they've now been given full artistic control over "Emergency On Planet Earth".
But until recently, their follow-up single was understood to be "Revolution", a live favourite whose title trumpets its militant message. Yet now, reportedly after pressure from Sony (the group deny this), the new single is "Blow My Mind". A breezy, mellifluous love song, the record should secure sizeable success as the summer approaches. Yet irrespective of whose decision it actually was, the track is a nakedly commercial choice. Containing lyrics like "Pleasure, Passion, tonight's the night I'm looking for your action," it sits uneasily with JK's stated intention "to keep a message in the music so I don't start going on about sweet nothings".
"No," JK says a day later. "I'm not perfect." We're in the dishevelled kitchen of his new Notting Hill flat. Although he's been here for a month, constant demands on his time mean he's barely had time to unpack, and cardboard boxes filled with food still litter the room. Away from the pressures of the studio, he's relaxed, sincere and likeable. So much so that he even smiles at the pitfalls of his loquacity. "It's difficult to explain myself at times, because I'm not as eloquent as I'd like to be. So yeah, I make naive statements in the middle of a rant, but then I'm not a person to try and hide things, I just say what I'm thinking at the time."At 22, he's still young enough to believe he can change the world. But mature enough to realise the strength of integrity needed to do so. "I think it's good to keep the youth in you, the kid who doesn't assume things or dismiss ideas," he grins. Still, he acknowledges, fulfilling the mountainous expectations now heaped upon Jamiroquai involves considerable pressure. Two years ago, his childhood friend - a talented, experimental techno musician called Ace - committed suicide. His death is now a salutary reminder of the price sometimes exacted by success.
"If he'd continued, he'd have been at the forefront of techno and house, and it was too much for him," reflects JK. "But people fuck up when they ain't happy with themselves and what they're doing. If you keep to the music, make sure you sing from the heart and believe in what you do, then you'll get through."
What choice does he have, after all? He can stick to his guns, open his mouth, allow the to tumble out, but also shout "wake up" at the top of his voice. Or else he simply shrugs his shoulders and churns out more of the candyfloss pop that already clogs the charts. You suspect he'd rather give up altogether instead. And as he'll tell you himself, in a voice too loud to ignore, he's still too young to die.
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History||JamiroBand||About Jason Kay||Interview |
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The Face
November 1994
Lost in Space
Andrew Smith
Jay Kay shouldn't really be telling me shit like this. He and his band for - make no mistake, it is his band - have been working hard lately . Last Friday, they finished their second album. On Sunday, they filmed the video for the first single. On Monday, they were due to leave for a week's much-needed vacation in a shared Majorcan villa. Trouble is, this is the record company conference season, when all the major players gather their foot-soldiers together for a day or two of back-slapping and vigorous shaking of hands. Crucial to the success of these jamborees is a liberal sprinkling of stars. Jay, being currently one of Sony's biggest, was expected to attend. He didn't want to go, but the pressure was intense. In the end, Sony agreed to send a helicopter to ferry the Jamiroquai party to Torquay.
It must have been quite a do. Manager Kevin and drummer Derek [sic] gleefully describe how they went outside for a fag, then watched in astonishment as a fleet of limos rolled up, whereupon a small army of men in dark suits and shades leapt out and spent several minutes casing the area, lest a sniper be hiding behind a bush or something. Had Bill Clinton turned up unexpectedly? No. Eventually Mariah Carey steppedout and floated across the pavement into the building.
"Yeah," laughs Jay, "it was basically a homage to Mariah Carey and her husband Tommy Mottola [Sony president and chief executive officer]. At one point, I thought she was going to go into the 'God' bit. We had enough of that with a certain artist at the Brits: I just remember this guy going up, sniffing profusely - you know, 'I'd like to thank God...' and Columbia, and the little people who pick the leaves! These things are so funny. Mariah was going, 'And I couldn'a done it without all you guys in England, you all worked so hard for me!' Like, so that I can cruise up in a V-12 Merc and eat one course of lunch and then bugger off!" Jay laughs louder. "And I thought I wanted to give her one."
He always goes and spoils it, doesn't he? But the band had a good time, watching artists such as Cyndi Lauper present awards to the company tennis and fly-fishing champions, raucously cheering performances by Michael Ball et al, generally behaving, well, as a band should. What fun. Until, that is, the celebrations had ended and Jay and co found that their helicopter had flown away, to be replaced by a scrappy little minibus, which smelt as though someone had puked in it. The road to megastardom is not necessarily a bed of roses. No one knows this better than JK.
It¹s easy to see why Sony wasn't keen to let Jamiroquai be excused from the conference. It's been less than two years since their first single, "When You Gonna Learn" was released on the Acid Jazz label. To a club hardcore beginning to choke on an enforced diet of unmitigated house and still loath to accept techno as an alternative, its fizzing, popping basslines, snatched beats and razor-sharp horn patterns tasted sweet. Sweetest of all, though, was the singer's agile, ardent voice, which sounded to most like a female Stevie Wonder. It turned out, of course, to be a boy, a cocky 22-year-old Londoner named Jay Kay. If he could talk it like he walked it, was the consensus, he was going to be big.
By the following June (1993), Jay Kay was big. His maiden album, " Emergency On Planet Earth", had gone straight into the charts at number one, and he was being hailed as Britain's latest potentially huge star talent. But if Jay had been, in the words of one music writer, "a pop star waiting to happen", he was also a backlash waiting to happen. He was accused of plagiarism specifically , of wantonly ripping off Stevie Wonder of musical colonialism (this argument, that he was cynically benefiting from the suffering of past generations of black artists, got progressively more preposterous as it unfolded over the months) and of political naivety, or, worse, insincerity, in his harping on about environmental issues. Meanwhile, more astute critics pointed to the generic quality of the band's music, to the reverence it displayed towards its soul, funk and fusion sources: people like Wonder, Donald Byrd, Roy Ayers, Gil Scott Heron, Earth Wind And Fire. You could almost plot its every move on a graph. The songwriting hadn't matured enough to have acquired a flavour of its own. The lyrics seemed like well-meant nonsense Jay Kay, through all his dozens of interviews. did little to dispel this impression. And he wore silly hats. More than one interviewer left readers with the clear understanding that Mr K was little more than a gauche, jumped-up fool.
The reply to all this, "Return Of The Space Cowboy", has been six months in the making. The reverence is still there, along with the accompanying impression that Jay would benefit from surrounding himself with musicians prepared to push him harder, but a subtle evolution has taken place. The writing especially on tunes like the killer opening shot, "Just Another Story" and the infectiously breezy "Stillness In Time", is more accomplished: the arrangements are generally tighter and less amorphous, and Jay is slightly less inclined to resort to vocal gymnastics and pointless scats when he's not sure where a melody is leading him. Additionally, many of the lyrics betray an explicitly personal content. There's still no baring of souls - Jay's not ready for that, going out of his way to maintain a certain detachment, a coolness that's a million miles away from much of the soul he so admires. Nevertheless, it's far more satisfying than the vague, utopian generalisations of yore.
Some of the subterfuge, then, has been stripped away. "Return Of the Space Cowboy" is not the best album Jay is capable of making (though it could very well be the best album this incarnation of Jamiroquai will make), but it's a first, tentative step forward. Is JK, as he's somewhat deferentially known in the Jamiroquai camp, growing up?
We've made it to the villa near Formentor on the northern tip of Majorca and Jay's not here. He's gone for a spin in his swish black '72 BMW having preferred it to his new Aston Martin DB8 on this occasion. Jay likes motoring and, by all accounts, is something of a psycho behind the wheel. ("It was a terrible trip down," he will say later. ""We ran out of petrol in Barcelona and weren't sure what they call 4-star in Spain..." - he means unleaded, surely - "...then we fell asleep and got locked in a ferry car park. I took much longer than when I went to Rimini one time, but then the weather was better and I was doing 140 to 150 most of the time.") Suddenly, there is a rumbling in the distance, a throaty roar that gets louder until, finally, the BM pulls up and JK leaps out, all grins and fingerpopping. "Sorry, I forgot about you," he says, though you get the impression that he's improvising here. Trying to hold down a conversation with jay Kay is every bit as bizarre and frustrating an experience as it's reputed to be. He talks loudly, at a dizzy rate of knots, never finishes a sentence, never answers a question directly. Trains of thought twist and meander into all sorts of bewildering shapes, often culminating in fits of giggling or a burst of song. Sometimes he'll jump up and start dancing or pacing around the little porch. After five minutes, you find yourself wondering whether this is the result of an instinctive caginess, born of his days as a smalltime drug dealer and hustler (this shady past is confirmed by people who've known him - it's not all colourful myth-making). Except that, just as the thought has entered your head, he'll go and lay some gargantuan indiscretion on you. Perhaps his brain has simply gone a toke too far, been fried like an egg under a blowtorch.
Then again, maybe he's a boy who's been forced to grow up too fast, who's been indulged too much. "The thing you have to remember about jay," suggests one old mate, "is that for the last 18 months, every day has been his birthday." There are, of course, alternative explanations. "I think he's a little bit mad, actually," says another associate, with the utmost earnestness. I can't make up my mind. As the interview progresses, this confusion becomes more and more pronounced, a fact not unrelated to his increasingly, er, enlightened and mellow state. At the end of the encounter, I'm not quite sure what's been said, or indeed if anything very much has been said at all. One thing I do know is that I'm not looking forward to transcribing the tape. When God created Jay Kay, he didn't have journalists in mind.
The "Space Cowboy", Jay - this wouldn't be someone you know, would it? "Ah, I knew we'd get around to him." He laughs a high-pitched, mock-sinister laugh. His accent is a surprise, very well spoken Southern English, not the wide-boy drawl one had been led to expect. "The Space Cowboy is just an analogy for getting high. The Space Cowboy is that little voice inside of you that gets you going."
Is he a good guy? Has the Space Cowboy got..."Horns?" Yes. "It could relate to the fact that I've spent a good portion of the last six months stoned, and now I'm coming back."
Was that a positive thing? "Yeah, sure. It's a bit of a haze, that period. But it's generally an analogy for good times. In a literal sense, though, I have been a space cowboy." Were you trying to escape something, or avoid having to deal with something? Jay rises, starts laughing again, but now the laugh sounds forced. He's uncomfortable with the implications of this question. He was expecting a pat on the back. For a brief moment, it looks as though he's going to take serious offence. "OK, yeah. Avoiding... like, having to do music. Like being me, which makes life harder than it needs to be." Then he's off on a tangent again, miming the angular beat to "Just Another Story" and saying something about the importance of LSD to his music this time around, which I can't quite follow.
Jay was born near Blackburn at the end of 1969. He was one half of a pair of identical twins, but his brother died at the age of six weeks, after which he was raised as an only child. ("It's weird feeling a connection with something that is now dead, but was connected to you," he muses, rather touchingly.) His father, whom he never knew, was Portuguese. The band were originally going to take their holiday in the Algarve, and Jay had thought he might try and contact his dad while he was there. He hasn't made up his mind whether he wants to or not. "If my mind wants it to happen, then it'll happen when the time is right," he says. Mrs Kay was a jazz singer and Jay credits her with having furnished him with the ability and drive necessary to have built his own career.
Was the decision to get a bit more personal on some of the new songs a conscious one? "Yeah, when it came to the lyrics, I thought, 'I have got to be brave.' The stuff on the first album didn't apply any more, I'd had far too much grief and personal battering in the meantime to carry on in the same way. Anyway, we'd been working solidly since the last one came out, there was nothing else to write about. I had to say to myself, 'Write about those struggles that you're having at this moment as opposed to shying away from it all and hiding behind the words.' The thing is, when you do that, you're always afraid you'll be misunderstood and then when people criticise the music, they'll really be criticising you as well. You see, last year, I was being asked about what I'd written all the time and I'm not an orator. I can't stand up and say, 'We shouldn't do this, we shouldn't do that."
Isn't that exactly what you were doing on "Emergency On Planet Earth", though? Songwriters often seem to resort to politics when they've got nothing of their own to say, when they're backing off from themselves. What's the point of a song whose lyrics could be spoken, straight out, as part of a conversation in a pub? Don't great songs, like great poems, gain their power from communicating insights that can't easily be expressed in plain, everyday language? Even if it's just a different angle on feeling good.
"I agree. But when I was younger, 16 or 17, I used to sit around lecturing people all the time. 'Think about this, think about that, it's terrible, we've got to do something.' After a while people would go, 'I don't want to hear about that any more, it's depressing: we're young we want to live and that's that.' It would start to diminish your confidence in the things you believed in. You'd be afraid to say anything important, because people would think you were a boring little shit. I'd be, like, 'No, I think we should talk about things like this.' But after a while, you lose the habit of talking about them, which is a shame, because it's a good habit, talking about things that people don't want to talk about. So I talked about them on that album. I couldn't say that stuff in a pub or club."
What have you learned from the struggles of last year, and from the hostility you've had to deal with along the way? "I'm sure I've learned a lot from it. What, exactly, I couldn't tell you. I'm refusing to talk about the race issue this year, about the idea that I'm not allowed to make the music I do because I'm white and haven't suffered enough, for one. The criticism didn't bother me." It didn't? There's a long pause. "But, then, it did in some ways, just because so much of it was such nonsense. I was amazed rather than outraged. Where did people get these ideas? They were stupid. And when you considered the situation, you realised that it was just not fair. Just not fair. I mean, I'm not having anybody over. I never said I was the best. I just wanna get on with it, really. I'm a singer, for fuck's sake, a guy who goes onstage. That's all. I felt like saying, 'What do you want to know about me?' I've got nothing, really, to tell you. And people would come along with this misconception that I'm a cocky bastard and that was also unfair."
You're not a cocky bastard? "Of course I am at times, but I don't like to think of it as cocky. That's just my drive. I'm not a cut diamond. I've got a lot of rough edges. The crap's there, thick droves of it and I'm not hiding it. People can't tell what you go through. People can't tell why, when they ask me for my autograph, I won't give them one, not because I don't like them, but because I can't understand what they want it for. People don't understand the conflicts that enter your life, the guilt trips about success and having money and shit. After a while, they do get to you a little, but when people were being critical of me, I was, like, 'Yeah, but I thought of that ages ago. Tell me something I don't know.' In the end, I thought, 'Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it! I'll just believe in myself."
Jay is almost spluttering with what appears to be a combination of anger and pain and righteous indignation. That stuff did hurt. Are you ever prey to self-doubt, Jay? "No, I think I've got an intrinsic fear of losing, that's all. I don't mean losing a game of cards. I mean losing out on the whole process of life, of being frustrated by life and left behind."
He gets up again, starts singing along with the music that's wafting through the doors from inside the villa. Embarrassingly enough, it's Stevie Wonder. Is it the fear that drives him? "Probably. I think it comes from being an only child, having only a mother and really no one else. I have no blood relations apart from her." Why's that? "My mum was adopted at six. Her mum died when she was that age, as a result of multiple sclerosis. She was looking after her mum, who was in a wheelchair, from the age of four. She's a worker, my mum. So I have this thing about work, about doing things right.
"I followed mum around a lot when she was a singer. It was always, like, 'It's only you, son. You've got to do it yourself.' I wanna make some ground. My mum's been fucked over by various things in life. She's very talented and has worked really hard and not got what she deserved and I want to make sure I get it." Are you close to each other? "Yeah, we're very close. I went through that phase where I was always angry with her, where she got ripped apart, really ripped apart. It's difficult: I'm Capricorn and she's Cancer. Then we got back together. I think she started to see what I was doing. The last gig we did at the Brixton Academy was the first of mine she's been to." Were you proud? "Oh, absolutely, because I was showing my mum what I did. For a long time, she had my back up, you know, when we started to do well. I was so excited and she showed no feelings about it at all. I was, like, 'Come on, I'm doing my thing now be pleased!' She only stayed for three numbers, then she was gone. I quite admired her for that, we have that kind of relationship. I just want her to be proud. There was a time when I don't think she was. That hurt. You know it did."
Whether this is where it comes from or not, the drive Jay summons from somewhere is awesome and, if you happen to be in his band, no doubt a little intimidating. When he talks about the producer who was sent packing early on, or about Nick Van Gelder, the drummer who has since been replaced, there is no mercy in his voice. "Nick's focus and attitude weren't right. He was filling all the space, you can hear it on the last album... everything was rushed... it's as simple as that."
Jay is a perfectionist, prone to bouts of impetuosity, and known to be difficult to work with. The record contract is reported to be in his name, the other musicians operating as paid session musicians. They may be sacked at any time. This must make for an insecure working environment, one where people are reluctant to criticise or disagree. The last year has undoubtedly hardened Jay.
"I do want to see compassion. I do want to see people get a fair deal," he says. "I don't want to see people try to take it all like greedy bastards. I'm not like that. I'm not an unfair man and I'm not a greedy man. I won't cut my own throat, though, because others are trying to cut my throat all the time and it's taken this long to get some friends around me who are trustworthy." People are trying to cut your throat? "Yeah, from the word go. You know, when I'd written a song and I'd play it to someone and they'd be going, 'Yeah, right' and take it off the machine like it was a piece of shit. It'd be like, 'Ouch that hurt!' Then my wall goes up. This business is pretty fucking horrible. You have to be ruthless at times with people."
I notice that, even on the new album, you don't seem to write about relationships. "That's 'cause I don't really get many going."
Why, is it a question of time? "In a way. It's a question of maybe not being able to put the commitment in that I'd like to. It's just a complication that I don't really need in my life." Have you tried relationships? "Oh, yeah." Did you find that they... "Made me behave in ways I didn't really want to? Yes. As a bit of a wanker, really. I'd try to put girls off, I began to realise, because I wanted to do my own thing."
Are you sure that's what it was? Astonishment. "Yeah, yeah. It's a cling factor that cannot occur. I cannot operate properly like that, because I feel I have an obligation. Be nice. Not that I'm not nice. But to me, to have somebody with me, it's a different kind of niceness I want to show. I don't want to show average niceness, because that would be... average. If I'm going to get down with someone, then I'm going to get down with them. I'll know when that happens, because it'll just go 'click'."
Just like that? "Yeah. You see, I never take for granted that I'm going to be around at 60). I may not last that long. That may be why you're getting a chance now, being allowed to do what you want now. You best get as much out of now as you can."
At this point, the door to the porch swings open and more music wafts into the (by now) night air. This time, it's Donald Byrd. Ayo, the two-and-a-half-year-old son of Jamiroquai's manager, Kevin, toddles out and comes to sit on Jay's knee. He likes Jay, especially when he sings to him. With Ayo' Jay has nothing to prove. He goes inside and plays football with the child. He seems happier there.
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High Times
September 1995.
High on Jamiroquai
Greg Casseus
Jamiroquai's debut album, 1993's Emergency on Planet Earth, was an ecologically-minded, almost hippie-dippy maiden voyage. While still formative, its grooves left no doubt about the band's inspiration: the '70s jazz -funk of Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Earth, Wind & Fire. Lead singer Jay Kay wore a Dr. Seuss hat and wrote lyrics that were definitely green. Amid massive hype, it became a huge international hit and built a cult following in the US.
The follow-up, Return of the Space Cowboy, released late last year in UK (Jamiroquai's homeland) and only recently here, is a dramatic improvement, one of the most musically alive sophomore albums in recent memory. "Just Another Story" opens with an admission of Kay's drug-dealing days in London ("Pushin' that draw like you're superfly"), and by the time the title track rolls around at the end ("With the speed of cheeba/You and I go deeper/Maybe I'll have to get high to get by"), the first album is a distant memory.
Censorship seems to dog Jamiroquai (pronounced Jam-ear-oh-kwhy) wherever they go. MTV refused to air "When You Gonna Learn," off the first album, apparently deeming its eco-political slantunsuitable, and is predictably keeping its distance from the current "Space Cowboy" video, which shows Kay and the band prancing around an apartment with walls occasionally illuminated by fluorescent pot leaves. (Look for it on The Box.) And England's Radio One won't touch the bouyant second single, "Light Years." "They'll play techno like the Prodigy, but 'Light Years' is 'too hard,'" he gags." Can you believe that?"
Then there's the sequencing issue. The US version of the album moves "Just Another Story" to the end and replaces it with the mellower title track. "I chose that original sequence to give the album a certain flow," Kay says. "They [Work/Columbia Records] fucked it up, plus they added a live version of 'Light Years.' I don't understand it."
Despite these frequent run-ins with those who would alter his artistic vision, and his reputation as something of a control freak, Kay is an upbeat soul man who lives and breathes funky music and good bud. "The trick," he says, "is to write tunes that people recognize from the first few seconds. By the way, has anybody got a spliff?"
His request reminds me of the show at New York's Supper Club late in 1993 when Kay blew a joint passed to the stage by this writer. After exhaling, he signaled the band into "Blow Your Mind." This time we're rolling fatties at the HIGH TIMES photo session. As Jamiroquai's "The Kids" perculates in the background, the thoroughly baked Kay comments: "Hey man, let's try and bring back good, old, fresh and earthy Jamaican weed and not rely too tough on that hydroponic, indoor grown [stuff]. I wanna see a return to earthy weed. What's happened to the smugglers? That weed is the one, the fucking one. Brilliant, tasty, earthy. This chronic shit, I can only go so far with it. Burns my throat."
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Blues and Soul
September 17-30, 1996
Moving in the Right Direction
Susie McClelland
It's a Thursday lunchtime, and Jay Kay looks like he's just fallen out of bed. This is not the case though, rather he's just fallen out of his Ferrari, and scooted into the record company offices where his PR and assorted music industry hacks are waiting. He's an hour and a half late, but no one's going to hold it against him. At Sony HQ he's the prodigal son; one flash of that charming disarming grin and it's smiles, handshakes and kisses all round.
Jamiroquai have had a busy week. Monday saw them headlining the Kiss stage at the Notting Hill Carnival, something of a homecoming for the West London boys. The new single "Virtual Insanity" has hit the charts at number 3 and there's been the requisite flurry of photoshoots, meetings, interviews, and N. JK, despite a drawn appearance, is his ebullient self. The boy from Ealing with the big hats, big engines (alongside the Ferrari, he has an Aston Martin and a Lamborghini in the garage) and bigger attitude is currently livin' it large. With the London dates of the Jamiroquai tour sold out within hours, and the album "Travelling Without Moving" on the brink of chart domination for the immediate future, things are looking pretty good, surely?"Well, it's fantastic to get the single in at no 3. I always think these things are going to happen before they do. The last album, to me, didn't merit the success of the first one, although in terms of sales it did. There were some great bits in both of them, and you can't have whole albums that make you turn round and go yeah! If you get two or three tunes that you actually really like ... like I've got on this album, I've got nearly every tune I can go through and say it's alright. It's a definite progression from the second album. That's down to good pre-production, starting to write the music a long time before you hit the big studio. I just knew this one would be good..." Jay jumps up, lights his breakfast B&H, "Yeah, I had to make this one good."
And in light of the serious quantities of flack, he's not far wrong about that. Because ever since the first single "When You Gonna Learn" four years ago, JK sure has been on the receiving end. But then a twenty two year old with the persona and voice of a maverick angel, an eight album deal and a soapbox is bound to attract trouble. Jamiroquai was acid jazz's meteorite taking the genre into the corporate arena and remarkably still retaining cred. "Emergency On Planet Earth", the debut album with eco·vision and irrepressible funk sold 1.5 million copies. The Face magazine put Jay on the front cover, MTV slapped him on the back and on the playlist, people even thought he was Stevie Wonder for crissakes. Life, for Jason Kay was ever so sweet, or at least for a couple of months. The Sunday Times ran a feature on his classic car habit. Mixmag ran the equivalent on his relationship with drugs. Then came the backlash.
And Kay had certainly provided the ammunition. It's hard to take environmental advice from a cocky ex-dope hustler leaning out of a Smoke-billowing, monster-bucks sports car. With JK, it was social conscience on acid, and he did little to hide the fact.
Then came the inane verbal assaults, mainly in the white music press. Jamiroquai were guilty, apparently, of musical colonialism, in their "blatant exploitation" of black music. Looking back, the argument was facile and uninformed. Derivation is as old as the business itself, in fact everyone from Elvis to Pulp has referenced and back catalogued, paying dues in the process. Nevertheless such criticism takes it's toll.
"That argument is a load of cock [hold on, I can't print that] - OK complete and utter cockadoodledoo. It's just rubbish, a prime example of people looking so far into something they lose it. It's something I know about but it's got absolutely nothing to do with my music, you know. Every time I sit down and try and write a song, I don't try and look through four hundred years of colonialism and say 'oh, now I can write a song'. The implication is its only black people that can make music. Because, there was a guy that just wanted to make me look stupid. In a way he made himself look a racist, somebody that wants to keep black music exclusive for black people, so other people won't be inspired by it. There are millions of different people of every different creed and colour that's what the music we do is about. It's about all people being able to enjoy it, not a colour-coded few."
JK is on his feet again, pacing around the room. "...and with regards to the other stuff, I meant exactly what I said. It still sticks. I was talking on a scale there, it's planetary, not individually. It was heartfelt, it is heartfelt. I woke up one morning, I thought this is my first album, I'm going to write something here about what I feel, what I think. Consequently from writing things like that you question; you think, look at yourself now, driving a fast car, should I have this - what do people think. But then, hold on, can I have a life, can I enjoy myself, can I have a few things to enjoy myself with? If the car's part of the job then damn right. It's something I wanted since I was three and I'm going to drive a fast car, very fast, do what it's used for. Kick back and, lets face it, inspire myself."
That's the thing about JK, he's-well, he's intense. Angry, polemic and intense. He's a verbal freewheeler, and this can make his train of thought hard to follow. But no longer the wide-eyed spacekid hollering, "cheeba!" with little to plot but the next spliff.
"You engineer life for yourself. Well I do anyway. I try and engineer life for myself, try to lock all the bits into place, Try and learn every time there's a fork in the road, try and take the right fork, the fork you were supposed to take, all the time. That one, that one, not that one. Try to get where you want to go. I haven't got the full answer to where I want to go yet, but this bit's locking in nicely. I know it's all for something, it'll all turn out for something decent at the end of the day, that's what I mean."
His reflexivity is endearing. JK captivates a room with the same lyricism that captivates a 22,000 strong Carnival crowd. So what does he make of his success?
"Sometimes you think, hold on a minute is this all bullshit, what's it all about. Because sometimes it can make you feel stupid, you think why does everyone want to know about you for. Its really weird. At the same time, it can make you feel really proud. I mean sometimes I wake up and think interview, great. Someone's going to ask me what I think about things and I'm going to tell them."
Deep, dirty laugh, - and he tells me what he thinks about a lot of things. Like how, in the early days he was "slowly and surely spiralling into fair criminal activity"; like how he knows he's living fast and he may die young. "The number 36 has always held some relevance." he pauses. "But if it ain't that I hope that I live to be a good old Capricorn grand-dad. Nice and energetic." He wants to do well, he states, so he can provide for his kids, create a stability he himself never realised. (He never knew his Portuguese father, and his mother was a Jazz singer performing all over the country.) But his childhood, he is quick to point out, has shaped his future. "When I was a kid I was always set so many tasks and chores there was nothing left to do but sing."
He's on his feet again, pointing at an imaginary junior Jay. "Rake those leaves! [enter the violin chorus] No seriously, I just went about singing and muttering and mumbling . . . then later on when I started to trip out of my mind, I'd try and do a thirty two piece orchestra with my mouth. Everything from Johnny Guitar Watson to Stravinsky." He giggles at the memory. JK is not as coy as his record company would like on the subject of his Class A dabblings. With this in mind I asked him about the thinking behind a track on the new album, "High Times".
"It's about the current situation with crack, the ring that a lot of young kids - without sounding patronising - are falling into. It's just drugs, the street, and then selling your arse, and what I'm basically saying is don't do silly drugs."
But doesn't this sound a bit 'do as I do ...'
"Nowadays I try to stay away from those 'I don't know what the long term effects are' drugs. Well I've never done loads and loads of ecstacy, and that is the one drug around that you don't know about, you see, with acid you do. You know if you take too much you turn into a nutter, look at me I'm half way there. At least I managed to stop. But dope, it's no great big deal, the other drugs aren't worth taking because, simply, they're crap.""...anyhow, music makes a lot more sense than drugs. That's how I get my highs, that's how I want my highs. But the highs extend to more that that, they also extend to being in control of my personal life, and being in control of my personal life means being able to do music, and that is the drug. It's work, but it's not, because it's fun - it's pleasure. I get a buzz off this. The buzz is making the environment where you can do that all the time and no one can boss you about. The drugs are just a get through thing ... well they're not, they can also be inspirational but they become just a pain in the arse, just a bit boring."
So you are making a distinction. Are you drawing a line?
"I still haven't said anything! But you know it's a difficult business, every one needs to escape and sometimes you take the wrong turn - Oopsadaisy and it's a dead end. But that's alright because my car does a fantastic donut in the middle of the street, whips back down the other end to the main highway."
JK's laughing at his own analogy. And pretty soon it's contradictions-ville. After towing the anti-drugs line with aplomb, he quips, "Don't take drugs beginning with q. Do you want a Quaalude? Sorry mate.I don't take drugs beginning with q." Then it's off on a helterskelter trip through Jayland. He mimics an acquaintance of the past. "Wanta Quaalude, I've got some lude. Good tomazi -Temazepam." "Good job I don't like marzipan, because every time I hear about Temazepam, I just associate it with nasty cakes, wedding cakes, Battenburg. Battenburg is probably the worst cake in the world." Derrick, his drummer is creased on the floor. It's probably best not to laugh, but frankly JK is quite funny. We manage to halt the tangent though, and JK focuses on something else he's been saying no to, of late; the remix brigade. Sony commissioned David Morales to produce a cut of "Space Cowboy". The result was a dancefloor smash, and the exercise has been repeated on "Virtual Insanity". JK is reputed to be less than over the moon. "Yeah well, there were certain aspects of it I didn't like, but then he did a good job, everybody else liked it, what can I say?"
The Mad Professor is currently working on the new album's reggae(ish) tune "Driftin Along". Who else would JK sanction on the remix front?
"I'd like us to do them, and we are, which is why they're turning out 100 per cent better. We've got a couple of gems. We've got a mix of "Alright" which was done by Dj D-Zire [Jay's old mate Darren] and a mix that me, Derrick and Toby did of "Cosmic Girl". And we'll think of a couple of others to do.
"Trouble is though, you go on tour and they go 'now we've got to get a remix done, but you've got no time, so here's one we've done earlier.' And you go - I don't like it- and they go 'oh well it's out already.' So we're going to stop all that."
Jamiroquai have their critics. It's easy to build someone up in order to indulge in knocking them down. Time Out apparently had them scheduled for a front cover on Carnival issue and then pulled it, in conjunction with a pretty damning album review. Balancing mass appeal with musical cutting edge is difficult to envisage. But whilst those around are Brit-popping or drum 'n' spacing it JK and band are still trying to be true. Asked if they've ever considered a cover version, Jay gets animated.
"Gil Scott Heron's "Lady Day" and John Coltrane. That is really like, the one. I can really sing with it, I know it would really work with the line- up we've got. Bit of brass, perfect. Drums, rap off the beat no problem."
JK is half cocky fuckwit, half charisma on old school T's. And JK is a man held safe in the knowledge he possesses a voice both rare and sublime. It's a voice worth 3 million record sales and a voice that people want to listen to, whether it's on a melody or on hyperbolic overdrive.
"I just hope everybody likes the album. And the next one will be better. You know where you heard it first, as promised. They'll get better and better until one day truly, we'll make that tune that sits amongst the greats. It's got to be something that makes me get up and go yesssss! and jump ... I mean the thing is what I'm doing now, lets face it. What I'm doing now was only a vision in the first place so what ever you envisage you can make come true for yourself... Yeah! Visualisation."
I suppose at least he knows where he's coming from.
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Los Angeles Times
December 7, 1997.
Don't Stop the Insanity
Robert Hillburn
Jamiroquai's Jason Kay likes the rock star glitz brought on by the hit 'Virtual Insanity.' But he also wants his band 'to last for 15 or 20 years.'
"Excuse me, what was the question again?"
The first time Jason Kay, the leader of British soul-pop band Jamiroquai, loses his place during an interview because a pretty woman is walking by, you dismiss it as a gag by a playful pop star.
As he leans forward in his chair on the patio of a West Hollywood hotel and watches the woman until she moves out of sight, he sure seems to be exaggerating.
But Kay, 27, gets distracted by passing women nearly half a dozen more times during the hour-- and he's too good a showman to repeat the same joke so many times.
Clearly, Kay--who may be best known in this country as the guy who wears the funny hat in Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" video-- enjoys the life of a pop star. He recently bought a 42-acre country estate in England and he tools around back home in a dozen pricey sports cars, the spoils of having sold more than $125 million worth of albums over the last five years.
Part of Jamiroquai's appeal is that Kay radiates good times on stage. Through the group's music leans a bit too much on identifiable '70s soul and funk strains, Kay himself brings a winning sense of individuality to his concerts, where he combines moves as fluid as Prince's with a disarming sense of humor.
"You know what I love about this country?" he asked during the band's recent Universal Amphitheatre show, looking out of the crowd with the seriousness of a man about to share a profound discovery. "Gatorade!" he shouted, picking up a bottle and taking big gulps from it. "I love the stuff."
It's clear during the hotel interview that Gatorade isn't the only thing Kay likes to drink. It's midday and Kay winces at the bright sun as he takes off his dark glasses. He says he was "thrown out of the bar" the night before.
As soon as he sits down, he orders a bloody Mary. When the waitress returns with the drink, he frowns. "Oh, I'm sorry, baby. I forgot to tell you: I don't want any pepper in it. But just leave it here, I'm sure one of the others [in the band] will take it. Just bring me another one without pepper." He ends up drinking both. "Don't want anything to go to waste now, do we?" he offers.
Asked about his adjustment to the band's escalating popularity, Kay says, "What's not to like? I think too many music people are sullen, moody individuals who are either miserable in their music or in their personal life, sometimes both.
"When you do what you want to do, you should enjoy yourself. To me, music has always been about positiveness. . a reason to dance or have fun. It's easy being miserable. Music should help lift you out of your woes."
It's easy when watching Kay's love of the spotlight to think of him as the Liam Gallagher of British soul music.
As was the cocky Oasis lead singer, Kay was born in Manchester and seems wholly consumed with a legendary act that blossomed in the ' 60s. Instead of Gallagher and the Beatles however it's Kay and Stevie Wonder. But Kay isn't too keen on the Gallagher comparison.
"Don't like it" says Kay who speaks with the speed of his stage moves, often causing his words to run together. "Each to his own, I suppose, but my hang-up with Liam is that his attitude is wrong. You can't treat people like [ that]. Remember, the people you meet on the way up . . . Well, you know the rest. He's even called me a wanker once. I wasn't brought up like that."
He pauses briefly to watch yet another woman move along, but he doesn't lose his place this time.
"That doesn't mean you won't have your moment. Like, you've caught me in a bad time. I feel like a guy who has been running and running and running for the last seven years and it's time to sit back and reassess everything.
"Everybody's going, 'Isn't it great what Jamiroquai has achieved?' Well, to me, this is nothing. This is just a good foundation for a band I want to last for 15 or 20 years. I'm not interested in just being today's pop star. I want a career, like Stevie Wonder or Sting or Queen.
The more Kay talks, the more you sense a seriousness and ambition that aren't readily apparent from the group's music and concerts. But it's a trait that Jeff Ayeroff, who runs Sony's Work label with Jordan Harris, noticed when they began working with Kay more than two years ago.
"Jay is very serious about his music and his career," Ayeroff says. "He knows where he wants to be, and that's essential in an artist. Very few artists without his kind of drive succeed. The lackadaisical ones don't succeed, and the ones who don't have a sort of vision about who they are usually don't succeed." Kay grew up around show biz, watching his mother, singer Karen Kay perform in clubs around the world and hearing about her struggles with agents, managers and club owners.
"My mom was an incredibly talented woman who played on the same stage in Hamburg as the Beatles when she was 17," says Kay, who was raised by his mother when his parents split soon after his birth.
"She was into quality music and I grew up hearing . . . the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Dinah Washington. But she also suffered at the hands of [businessmen] who spent all her money."
When Kay started his own band, he remembered his mother's business encounters and vowed to concentrate as much on the business side of his career as on the musical.
Though he was enthralled by the dance-music world, Kay wasn't caught up in the turntable deejay or synthesizer focus of hip-hop and techno. He preferred live musicians who played in the style of ' 70s soul.
So he assembled Jamiroquai, whose core lineup of four other musicians is extended to 10 these days for live shows. The group's first album, 1993's "Emergency on Planet Earth," made Kay a star in England and much of Europe. The packages, whose lyrics dealt largely with the environment and other social issues, sold nearly 2 million copies.
The second album, 1994's "Return of the Space Cowboy," sold a bit over 2 million (as with the debut, predominantly outside the U.S.). By this time, however the lyrics were more party minded. Q magazine recently called "Return" one of the 25 best dance collection ever made. The group's third album, "Travelling Without Moving," has sold more than 6 million copies around the world and broken into the Top 30 in the U.S.
Many critics, however, have complained about the derivativeness of the Jamiroquai sound. It's a touchy point with Kay.
"What you basically had was these people saying here's this white guy plagiarizing black music," he says. "But I'm not like those people who build their songs around samples. We're writing songs ourselves and playing them. To me, it's like saying if we brought in a string quartet, we'd be plagiarizing Bach.
"Besides we never tried to hide our influences. When we first started doing interviews, I went on and on about how much I loved 'Innervisions' and how Stevie Wonder was my hero. So what happens? Next thing I'm reading this magazine and it says this kid thinks he's the new Stevie Wonder."
One of the joys of his life was meeting Wonder recently at an MTV event. "He was everything that I hoped he would be," Kay enthuses. "I introduced myself and he said. 'Oh, you the one who did "Virtual Insanity." Nice tune.' . . . . I thought, 'Wow, Stevie Wonder knows our tune.' It was like getting a gold seal or something."
Much of Jamiroquai's audience in this country found the band through MTV, which declared "Virtual Insanity" the video of the year. Besides the music, the video showcased the charm of Kay, who danced about like a free spirit under his furry Mad Hatter - style hat. (It's actually fake fur," he points out.)
Kay has been wearing colorful headgear ever since the days in England when he'd spend hours on the dance floor in clubs. The hats were like a signature that other kids remembered, and they also served a utilitarian purpose. The keep his longish hair out of his eyes, he says. He designs some of his own hats and has them made by a millinery in London.
But the band's music has improved since the first two albums. The high-stepping "Cosmic Girls" has humor and spice, while "Alright" has such a snappy, Bee Gees- driven pulse that it would have been one of the highlights of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack.
Ayeroff, of the Work label, thinks the success of the "Traveling" album in this country is a major breakthrough for the band.
"We're going to probably sell 1.5 million copies of this album [in the U.S.] but I think it really is just the beginning for him" he says. "I think for a long time Jay didn't believe that America was going to take to him, but seeing what's happening now, he knows he has an opportunity on the next record to be huge, and he's not going to let the opportunity slip away."
On the hotel patio, Kay stares at the bottom of the second bloody Mary glass and smiles.
"It's really been a hectic time," he says of his escalating U.S. success. "There weren't a lot of people who believed in us at first, but that's OK. You should have to prove yourself. I've got to a stage now where I can sit and take a breather. I can afford to not put out the next album until 1999. I want to take a step back as a musician and as a person. We've got the people's attention now, so we have to take it to the next level."
As if self-conscious about sound too serious about his work, Kay suddenly leans forward, turns his head and asks, "Now where is that waitress?"
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GRAMMY Magazine
April/May 1998.
Cat In The Hat:
GRAMMY Winner Jamiroquai's Jay Kay
Lets Down His Hair
Wyeth Kane
Jamiroquai's frontman and founder Jason "Jay" Kay figures people won't recognize him in America, modestly attributing most of his notoriety to his floppy chapeu that has become the symbol for his jazz-funk-pop fusion band.
"People stop me in the street now and again," he says, "but I can actually mostly walk about without my hat, because nobody knows who I really am. Its only recently, 'cause I've been on the TV without my hats on, that people have started to get to know my face, especially over in this country [England]. But in the States, I should think I can walk around most places I like, with or without a hat."
That may be a stretch. Jamiroquai has pulled off quite a hat trick. With a platinum album, a darkhorse GRAMMY win for Best Pop Performance for a Duo or Group and a bevy of MTV Music Video Awards, there is a growing body of Jamiroquai fans that could pick Jay out in any crowd.
"I go shopping in it," he says, laughing about the hat that has become his identity. "The thing you have to remember is that I was wearing those hats before I started music proper. I would go clubbing in those hats and stuff."
Without the musical goods, however, Jay could have walked around in a clown suit and it wouldn't have mattered. Thankfully, that's never been a problem for the band. The debut album, Emergency On Planet Earth, crashed into the charts at No.1 in June, 1993 making Jamiroquai the top-selling British debut act of that year.
At a time when machines and faceless, soulless vocalist threatened to take over the dance-club music scene, Jamiroquai arrived with a live act where--sacre bleu!--musicians actually played instruments and sang live. Fans of soul, funk and disco immediatly latched on.
Lanky and charismatic, Jay was a big part of the appeal. Loud and opinionated, he was known for brash statements that were immediatly gobbled up by the controversy-hungry British media.
The second album, Return of the Sapce Cowboy, went on to platinum sales in the U.K., setting the stage for the band's third album, its U.S. breakthrough Travelling Without Moving, which was supported by a long U.S. tour.
Despite the success of that record, the video awards and the GRAMMY nomination, there's still room for Jamiroquai to grow in the U.S. In a record industry that lately has seen more than its share of one-hit wonders and video-based "music" acts, Jay is acutely aware of what Jamiroquai needs to do to sustain its career.
"We want to to be an album band, and I think we arre, after three albums," he says. "There are a lot of bands coming in and out of the charts, and in some respects, I feel sorry for them because I think they are under the delusion that for having a hit single, you're going to be kept on and have a 10- or 12- or 15- year career in this business. And I think they are being a little naive to believe that."
Jamiroquai formed in 1992 in Great Britain, creating a massive underground buzz with When You Gonna Learn, which was initially released on London independent label Acid Jazz. Besides Jay, the band includes keyboardist Toby Smith, bassist Stuart Zender, drummer Derrick McKenzie, guitarist Simon Katz and didgeridoo player Wallis Buchanan.
Work has commenced on Jamiroquai's fourth album, which Jay anticipates dropping on the record company sometime in the fall. "But don't hold me to that," he says. "This one's going extra well. I've got three of what I would call great, great 'feels' out of it."
Fans of Jamiroquai's grooves on previous albums may be surprised at the new effort. "This album's going to be hardcore," says Jay. "I'm stuttering during making it, already. We're going to take a new direction on this one, so I'm gettin a bit rocky."
The energy may come from the new accessibility of work. With the 48-track studio under construction, "We're getting a bit prolific now that we've got all the equipment around us. I'm somebody who likes to get on with it and get things done."
That attitude extends to plans for 1998. Jay already has a full itinerary of how he'll spend the post-GRAMMY part of 1998.
"I'm going to be out on tour. And cooking, yes. Absolutely cooking. We do preproduction till basically the end of May, and at the end of May we go into my studio. Then we get whoever we need in, play it all at once live, and we may well have it sort of properly recorded and mixed within the space of about three months, which would give us a month off to go on holiday and do whatever we need to do."
Included in that schedule are plans for a few singles on film soundtracks (all hush-hush at the moment) and possibly a toe-dip into the acting waters for Jay.
"When I was a kid, I use to do a lot of acting, and obviously I haven't done it for a while. I get offered films every week--little film you know--and I think its about time. It's well within my capabilities", he laughs. "I've always been a bit of a Sir Laurence, anyway." Hats off!
