HOWARD JONES
Pop Singer

Imagine polished, melodic, 1980s Top 40 synth-pop and you're probably thinking of the sound of an artist like Howard Jones. Although his most astronomical success was with 1980s radio hits ("Things Can Only Get Better," "No One Is to Blame," "I'd Like to Get to Know You Well," "Everlasting Love," etc.), Jones has been crafting new material and touring all these years. In the early 1990s, Jones expanded his live/recorded performances to incorporate acoustic piano, including "unplugged" re-workings of his synthesized hits, often with a backing guitarist. We recently spoke with Jones by phone before leaving England for his current U.S. tour, which begins in Cleveland with two separate piano/guitar shows.

— Michael David Toth

What attracted you to synthesizers in the first place?

It's that I wanted to be — and still want to be — innovating and treading a path where other people haven't gone before. Rock 'n' roll is supposed to be an alternative, the opposite of conservatism and the maintaining of status quo. But actually, it's completely stuck in these old-fashioned values. It really isn't good for society if the supposed alternative is so actually entrenched in old thinking. For me, I've got to present music to people in a new way.

Being raised in a 1960s optimistic cultural climate of future promise through technology, how do you feel about technology now that we're actually living in the 21st century?

Technology can be great, but like everything else, there are two sides to it. So, the ideology of using technology in music is quite important to me because of the way that it can be a servant of human values. When electronic music started, people wanted to use it in a way that did sound like machines, or that the machines were controlling the humans, like the whole Kraftwerk thing. But I didn't come from that angle. My angle was [that] this is great technology, but it still has to be at the service of us bringing our humanity through the technology.

Growing up, what musical artists especially inspired you to want to make music?

I was an avid radio listener, and every night I would fall asleep listening to the radio, where you got a really eclectic mix — the Beatles, the Stones, the Hollies, the Who — loads of bands as they were really getting going. Then I moved to Canada and was exposed to a lot of American influences like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and keyboardists like Stevie Wonder.

I can easily make a connection between you and, say, the Hollies, but do you see ways in which Joplin or Hendrix influenced your musical style and philosophy?

Everybody that touches or affects you leaves an impression. Hendrix had his virtuosity, but he also had his freedom of expression. I'd never want to sound like anybody, but there's a bit of everyone I've listened to in there. There's no such thing as being original, but it is important to find out what is different about you and the way you mix everything together.

You're rather vocal about your Buddhist philosophy as a central part of you as a person and an artist. At what point did you formally adopt Buddhism and why?

I've been practicing properly for 13 years, so that means I chant every morning and evening. But it goes back earlier. In my early 20s, I was very interested in philosophy, and it seemed the prevailing philosophies in society weren't answering any of the questions that I had. So I looked elsewhere, to Eastern thought and religion, and ended up settling on Buddhism.

Recently in the news, they were talking about reconstructing those giant, ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan that were destroyed by the Taliban. Some Buddhists apparently think it's inconsistent with Eastern ideas of impermanence and don't feel they needed to be preserved. What's your take, and how might that relate to your views on preserving or revisiting 1980s music?

The kind of Buddhism that I practice doesn't put any sort of meaning on statues or effigies of the Buddha, because the Buddha is inside of us, not outside. As far as I'm concerned, I think it's terrible to destroy things like that, but if they have been destroyed, then construct something new and different. We don't have to recreate the past. And with the 1980s, the '80s are gone, past. I don't think about the '80s hardly at all.

(Originally published in The Cleveland Free Times, January 10th, 2007)