Jools glad to be out of time
YOU somehow cannot imagine two such contrasting Mancunian institutions as Elsie Tanner and the Haçienda club occupying the same time and space.
But Britain’s best-loved purveyor of boogie woogie piano, Jools Holland assures me that the much-mourned Coronation Street actress Pat Phoenix did indeed darken the door of the hippest club ever.
Not only that, Holland was at her side and has a nice anecdote too.
Tell all, Jools.
“We did a Tube special at the Haçienda and Pat Phoenix came to it,” he recalls.
“I remember being at the stage door with Pat and she had this very beautiful coat on, and all these fans were there and she was signing all their things.
"Afterwards, somebody said ‘Why did you spend so much time with them?’ She said ‘See this beautiful coat? They paid for that’.”
Holland feels the same way about his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra.
He’s immensely grateful that the public allow him, by packing out theatres, to carry on this glorious exercise in overstaffing.
Even in the heyday of the big band it was the economics of touring with so many musicians that killed off the concept.
Doing the same thing today, with a 20-piece band, should be commercial suicide.
“It’s the public that pay for my orchestra,” Holland explains. “It’s not like some people who might have a hit record and then go out on tour to make the most of it.
"We’re on tour all the time, and then we make records of what we’ve been doing live.”
His delving into roots music, the rich assortment of talent he has assembled through over 200 editions of Later with Jools Holland and his occasional musical travelogues of the USA suggest Holland has a mission to inform.
“Not really,” he says. “What’s driven me is a love of music, of wanting to play my own music, wanting to play what I mean and mean what I play, play what I love and love what I play. Through that, the other things have come around.”
The Informer
Holland has a new album, The Informer, in which old standards like Honey Hush and St Louis Blues jostle with new songs in his bouncy, boogie and ska-infused style.
One song, Fat Fred, gives Holland’s idealised view of the kind of pub where a knees-up round the old Joanna is guaranteed.
“I used to go to a pub where there was a man called Vic who played piano, and every time he played, the place lit up and came alive, and it was beautiful to be there. That’s what this song’s about,” he says.
“Everyone would get up, and they had one song, but the moving part of it was that it was ‘their’ song.
"One huge, very camp man used to come in with his mother, had a little poodle, and used to sing Don’t Laugh At Me (‘Cause I’m A Fool), which was rather poignant.
"And there was a well-dressed old lady who would sing a song about bullocks in a field. It was a song full of innuendo, and I never heard it before or since.
“Now if people go for a night out, they get some horrid karaoke machine. I can’t tell you how much I hate the sound of a karaoke machine.”
Many of the songs from The Informer feature Ruby Turner, of whom Holland is in awe.
“She’s of another age – one of those singers who can holler the blues, sing a ballad or sing a gospel song,” he says.
“There are people who can do one of those things but not all three. In that regard she’s something like Bessie Smith.”
One review of Holland’s 2007 autobiography, Barefaced Lies and Boogie-woogie Boasts, said: “It’s hard to imagine that a more optimistic man walks the planet.”
But then life has dealt the 50-year old ivory-tinkler a good hand. Born in Blackheath, South East London, the working class lad realised at the age of eight that he had a natural gift for the piano and by his early teens was playing in pubs.
Squeeze
At 15, he met Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford and together they formed Squeeze. From 1981 to 1986, he was co-presenter, with the late Paula Yates, of TV music programme The Tube and did other TV work including music documentaries Walking To New Orleans and Mr Roadrunner, meeting some of his music heroes such as Fats Domino and Dr John.
The Jools Holland Big Band came along in 1987, later dubbed the Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, while Holland became ever more a household name through Later and his New Year’s Eve TV fixture, the Hootenanny.
The former member of Squeeze is now something of an establishment figure (he has an OBE, is Deputy Lieutenant of Kent and he and his second wife Christabel live a tiara’s throw from Buckingham Palace) and a guardian of England’s heritage to boot.
Rochester
He played concerts at Wells and Rochester cathedrals last year, CDs of which are being sold through cathedrals in aid of the upkeep of these buildings.
The same CDs are also being given away as a bonus disc with The Informer.
Even his new music is steeped in the style of a bygone age. So, own up Jools Holland, were you born too late?
“Although I love the music of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s – that roots music, the ska stuff, the swing, gospel and blues – I thing I’d rather be around now, because I can play it my own way and there’s nobody else doing it,” he says.
“There were lots of people doing it back then and the competition would have been a lot stiffer.”
Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra play the Apollo on Friday and Saturday, November 21 and 22. His new album The Informer is out now.
Published: Tue, 21 October, 2008
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