Howard Jones has progressed from one man band to one man and his band, but in the studio it is still very much Jones alone. Prodigy's and Prophets are the preference, the product is Dream Into Action

"Such is the power of Pop music that by the time you read this you probably won't even remember who Howard Jones is or what he has done."
Chris Maillard, International Musician, December 1983.

Not a particularly prophetic piece from the typewriter of our own CM, and not one that compelled Howard Jones to renew his subscription. Chris' uncharacteristic burst of aggression added our name to what was then an increasing list of 'blacked' magazines and papers never again allowed in the company of Howard Jones or his entourage. Since then, however, Howard's learnt to live with criticism and with the release of his second album (third if you include the 12 inch remixes album) he's ready for a rematch — this time a friendly.

Location of the interview is London's Lyceum Ballroom where Howard's filming his latest video for Things Can Only Get Better. He'd spent most of the previous day filming dressing room shots and the camera crew had filmed the stage being set up. Today the band would play through various parts of the song time after time while the cameras moved about them. Illusionist Simon Drake, who made an outstanding contribution to Kate Bush's 1980 tour, has been hired to weave some magic over the proceedings and I'm roped into help him set up his 'flying bottle' routine. I'd love to tell you how he did it but I had to sign the Magic Circle's version of the Official Secrets Act. If you really want to know give me a ring in the year 2000 — that's when the contract expires.

For the final scenes members of the fan club are hauled in to give the video that live feel, and willingly burst into life as the cameras roll by. Howard is a picture of professionalism, as enthusiastic about the first take as he is about the last. The amount of hanging about Howard's done today he must have been bursting to get on the stage.

While taking one of the day's compulsory breaks we settle for a chat in his dressing room where his wife had been busy helping things run smoothly.

"I've wanted to do a performance video for a while — all the others have been conceptual ones. In the others I've always illustrated what the lyrics are all about quite graphically, but with this one there's no need to because I wanted it to be more fun; an entertainment video."

Producer of the video is former press officer Nigel Dick who got into video production through assisting Dave Robinson at Stiff. More recently he's produced Tears for Fears' Shout video and Big Country's Just a Shadow video, and where Howard's usually more involved with the script, Nigel's done the bulk of the work.

"I was very happy to let Nigel do it, though he did consult me at every stage. I've just been finishing off the album so time didn't really allow me to get more involved."

Like most current Pop successes, Howard believes that videos play an important part in the musician's progress.

"Gone are the days where you can just be a good player and a good songwriter — it has to encompass other things no was well, which I quite enjoy. I enjoy the video side and it is very important as it allows you to get an awful lot of coverage and the music is heard everywhere."

Easy to say in '85, but when he started he had a different kind of success in mind.

"I wanted to be one of the best keyboard players going. I've been playing since I was seven, I had classical lessons for 14 years, went to music college in the interest of furthering my Rock playing, and I think it helped a lot for pure facility in getting around the keyboard. I wanted to be a keyboard hero; my heroes were Stevie Wonder and Emerson, and Billy Payne from Little Feat. It was the thing in those days to be a great player — skills were highly rated when I was a teenager."

Needless to say, Howard strongly believes his technical background has helped his Pop future.

"I think it's helped enormously. People have quite a lot of respect for the fact that you can just sit down at a piano and give a version of a song. People seem to love that because it's a very intimate thing.

"Also, though, it has with many people got in the way when they've thought that musical skill was the most important thing, which it isn't; it's the songwriting."

This is true of many of the music profession's more technically perfect 'musos'; how many hit songs have the likes of Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola written? What makes Howard so different?

"Well when I started off I started writing very, very complicated music and I had a band that used to rehearse fanatically. It used to take us several hours to do one minute of music and I managed to get all that technical side out of my system. I started gradually simplifying everything getting back to the ingredients of the music and five people up there enjoying it... My songwriting went down from 20 minute epics to standard song formats. I found it a real challenge to organise things that way."

Why do it?

"Because more people can enjoy what you do. Not so that you can sell more records or things like that, but more people can enjoy it. I wanted to write music that my grandmother can whistle, and that's what I've pursued in the last five years."

"It was the thing in those days to be a great player — skills were highly rated when I was a teenager."

By that time Howard was bandless and then came that fateful day when a friend lent him a drum machine.

"It was £50 worth and was called a Bentley — it opened up a whole new world to me. I just sat down with my electric piano and played along with it and started thinking to myself 'Wouldn't it be great to create a one man orchestra' hoping that they would bring out instruments enabling you to do that. They were just coming through at the time, things like the TR-808, so I got one of those and a couple of Prodigy synths — one for bass and one for lead. I had my Fender Rhodes underneath, and my Bentley and I actually went out at that point doing gigs because I thought it was no good sitting at home. Right from the beginning there were gigs and they were pretty horrific — very bad. Doing the gigs made me learn a lot, especially making a limited amount of things sound big arrangement-wise."

How did you do that?

"One of the big factors was using short sequences on the Pro One that would transpose through different chord changes. So you had one five or six note pattern that would change up through the whole song just by transposing it manually on the keyboard. Also I'd write patterns on the 808 that I could flick over from a verse pattern to a chorus pattern, so it was incredibly flexible. In a way it was too flexible because the songs were radically different everytime I played them and it was a bit undisciplined. I used to do loads of solos and things and it was all a bit indulgent, but I gradually trimmed it all down.

"Actually getting the Pro One was a big factor because I could play the bass with my left hand and the chords with my right, so really I had drums, guitar on the Pro One, bass, chord structures and lead lines with singing over the top, so really it was a whole band."

"The thing I really liked about the Pro One was the sequence facility that would trigger off an audio tone — drum machine — and it's still the only synth that does it and I still use it. There's no other synth that actually fulfils that particular function which is repeating a pattern triggered by an audio pulse."

Howard's buying didn't stop at the Pro One, however, and as new synths were launched onto the market he extended his shopping sprees.

"After the Prodigies I got a Moog Opus3, which is basically an organ with a filter. Then I got a Juno 6 which was a major leap forward but also a massive problem as I used to have to alter all the parameters manually in between numbers. I was already programming the Pro One so combining that the time between numbers was ridiculous. When the Juno 60 came out I was delighted. Soon I got a Drumulator after I'd done a tour with the 808, and you know how crummy the bass and snare are on that. We managed to Eq it to death to sound fairly reasonable, but when I got the Drumulator I used the 808 to trigger the bass drum and snare."

"My records wouldn't sound as good if it weren't for Rupert"

So how did a piano player get into all this programming lark?

"The only programming I was doing was with the Pro One, so I was still very much a player, and I still am. With the set up now the only thing that is sequenced is the Pro One, and I have the MSQs playing a sort of guitar part. It's still flexible — the sequenced part goes along with the structure of the song and I can switch it off at any time and divert to playing everything live with a drummer and bass player. I also like the sequencer because it's an instrument that plays synth unlike the way you can play it by hand. Because it goes internally into the synth the cut off times are minute, so you're not replacing anything because a pair of hands couldn't do it."

Like the majority of synth players, the introduction of MIDI opened up a whole world of new possibilities.

"The first album was done a lot using MIDI to linkup DX7s and Prophets, and on this album the whole of the rhythm tracks are all done before they touch tape. It's a fantastic system. It also means that with the KX5 I've got — the mobile synth — I can play any of my keyboards mobile, and we're working on a radio system so that it hasn't even got a MIDI lead. I'm trying to get to the stage where I can play the whole set from the KX5 and get my roadie to change the routing to whatever synth I want."

With the technology working in favour of someone like Howard Jones, with increasing possibilities for the one man band, now seems a funny time for Howard to bring in extra musicians, which is just what he's done. His brother has joined him for touring on bass, and he's also added a live drummer, backing singers and brass section. Why?

"A lot of people would say to me it's because the one man band thing doesn't work, but that's absolutely not true because it's been a raving success. It had worked so that was the time to stop and go on to something different; it keeps you fresh. I've still played everything on the album, though — mainly because I love doing it. Also the approach that I use with my instruments makes it sound different from what other people could do."

Apart from all the playing, Howard's also done all the programming of drum machines and sequencers, and trying out a few more recent pieces of equipment.

"I've used the new Emulator a lot — I hated the first one because the sound quality was diabolical. This new one's fantastic and the sampling's so easy to do, and the way you can change sounds afterwards is really good. There was a lot of bass sounds which came with the disk and I used those in combination with DX7s over the top. I sampled my voice a lot, hums and ahs, and bits of me and Rupert (Hine, producer) singing together for different tones. It played a really big part for the vocal textures on this album. The disk with the piano I use a lot, too, because the piano's got so many harmonics, mucking about with the filtering you can get the piano to sound totally unlike one but still really rich as a sound. Also we took things off records but didn't just leave it like that — you change it."

Also used for sampling, this time of a more percussive nature, is the studio AMS.

"The AMS is such great quality for reproduction, and we sample in things like Calor Gas bottles, pots... on I'd Like To Get To Know You Well there was a whole collection of things like aerosol cans hit with bits of metal triggered individually using the Pro One.

"For more traditional drum sounds I've used the SDS7 a lot. Near the end of a track we'll often replace bass drum and snare to see how it fits in with the sound, and maybe put in a real ambient sounding drum — it depends what mood the song is."

Before polishing the material in the studio the basic songs have to be written, and demos play an important part to Howard.

"I wanted to write music that my grandmother can whistle, and that's what I've pursued in the last five years"

"I'd never write in the studio because by the time you get there the song should have gone through two or three demo stages and been honed into something that's going to work.

"I've just got the new Akai 12 track, which is brilliant. I'd never had a multitrack before. I always had all my machines going and put it straight onto cassette and never did any overdubs. With this it's so easy to use; it's all combined in one unit, you've got a time code track and a control track so it's like a 14 track really, and it's great to take on the road and just record everywhere.

"It's really simple to use — when I got it I didn't even read the manual. I was desperate to get these songs down and I just went for the record button and bunged them in. I don't fuss about with the Eq or anything like that because I'm in too much of a hurry to get the idea down, but it's all there. It's got memories too so it will go back exactly to where you want on the tape and it'll cycle things. You can edit the cassette as well because it's got this block at the back."

The Akai is too new an acquisition to have affected the songwriting on his latest album, so for that it was down to a more basic writing format.

"Recently I've been doing it on piano. If a song sounds good on piano you know it'll sound good when it's orchestrated with your instruments. When you're writing on things that sound really good, like drum machines that sound good on their own, you can get distracted and end up writing a song that's just got a great drum machine sound. You actually get off on the sounds you were using and not on the song, and people will always be getting off on songs, not sounds.

"It's the lyrics that come first — I write them when we're travelling mainly. I just have a big book that I write any ideas down in straight away. I learnt my lesson about thinking I'll remember it."

With the songs written and demoed he then locks himself in the studio with his producer, Rupert Hine.

"I always have to be extremely careful about explaining this side of it because there are producers who do everything, and the artist really just sings and contributes a skeleton of a song. With me I do all the playing, all the programming, all the singing and writing, but Rupert's input to me is still very considerable. He puts the icing on the cake — and a considerable icing. I'm not talking about a cursory contribution, it's a great contribution. My records wouldn't sound as good if it wasn't for Rupert."

Strangely for a chap like Howard, and a producer like Rupert, there's been no large investment in a Fairlight or similar beast. Why?

"I've avoided it deliberately because everyone uses them. I think it leads people to work in a certain way. The way I've got things is that things are constantly changing in the chain, so if any little bits of gadgets come out you can replace them and throw things together in a strange order every time you set up. I prefer that because you always stumble across something you wouldn't have. The only thing I'd use a Fairlight for is the sampling, and I've got that with the Emulator."

Even though at one point the Emulator was set up to create brass section lines, when it came to the final recording a real four piece section was brought in.

"I had all the parts written but they just weren't punchy enough. We got the brass section in and they got the idea straightaway and it just sounded 200 times better. I'd hate to see musicians disappearing, but you can't halt progress."

There's certainly no stopping Howard Jones' progress, anyway. Apart from his blossoming solo career, he's co-written a tune with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics for imminent release, and he's been asked to perform with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock at the Grammy awards. Beyond that he's got the usual string of personal appearances, European tours and interviews lined up to promote his latest recording; a treadmill he's more than happy to stick with.

Such is the power of Pop music that by the time you read this his latest single would probably have been a massive hit, reminding you even further who Howard Jones is and what he has done.