The New Cue #279 April 24: Edgar Jones
The New Cue #279 April 24: Edgar Jones
"If The Stairs had made it I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the story..."
Good morning,
Let’s get ready to start the week right, in the company of one of Britain’s most satisfying yet surprisingly unheralded singer and songwriters, someone who’s been toiling away in Liverpool firing out diamond-encrusted slabs of soul, psych, R&B, garage punk, dreamy jazz and stoned doo-wop blues for thirty years. Once you’ve heard him sing one of his songs, you never forget that full-bodied call. Think that’s all hyperbole? Check this 90 minute playlist of some highlights.
He’s Edgar Jones, aka Edgar Summertyme, aka Edgar ‘Jones’ Jones of The Jones, aka Edgar Jones of The Stairs, aka Edgar Jones of The Big Kids, aka Edgar Jones of The Isrites, aka Edgar Jones of Edgar Jones and The Free Peace Thing, etc…He’s played bass for Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, Ian McCulloch and for Lee Mavers with The La’s amongst others. But right now he’s simply Edgar Jones and he’s about to release his solo masterpiece, a collection of heartbreak Northern Soul thumpers called Reflections Of A Soul Dimension which is released this Friday. Have another bash on the first 45, Torture.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re hosting a release party for it on Wednesday May 3rd at The Social, in London’s West End. Edgar’s playing with his band and, unbelievably, there are still a handful of tickets available. Jeff Barrett from Heavenly is playing records, as is Ben Ayres from Cornershop, as are we. The Liverpool spoken word legend Roy (not a poet) is a doing a turn. What are you waiting for? Tickets here.
Ted convinced Edgar to download the Zoom app and our conversation is below. See you on Friday for our Recommender slot. Please tell your friends about us.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Edgar Jones
Hello Edgar.
Sorry lad, I didn’t realise I had to download the app so it took me a moment.
No problem. How are you?
Sound, sound. Bushy-tailed now that I’ve had some caffeine down me. Just been on the school run and I stopped to get a coffee on the way home.
How many kids have you got?
Two, but one’s 20-something and the other is eight. So as one was going to uni, the other was just getting on the scene. It’s great, though.
Tell us how you put Reflections of a Soul Dimension together.
Well, Steve [Parry, producer, label owner] was starting his Steropar label off and I got asked to listen to some of his projects. I totally loved them. I’m a big fan of his anyway because whenever I’ve been asked to do any musical jobs with him it’s always been like a holiday for me. He ploughs a similar furrow. James [Cole], his mate, is a great guitarist and suggested we record a single together. Totally up for that. So we recorded Place My Bets in a matter of minutes. They’re unbelievably quick
Place My Bets On You from Reflections Of A Soul Dimension
It was just the three of us, Steve on drums. It’s a great way to build a track, having the producer on the kit. Did that, popped out for a bite and said, ‘Let’s do a B-side when we get back.’ Sound. Came back and recorded the demonic Lord Give Me Strength.
Lord Give Me Strength, the latest B-side
It was amazing, really, we were done and dusted by 4:00 pm. On main session days, we’d do the rhythm track, I’ve usually come in with a tape of what the chords will be, and within an hour we’d be tracking the song. We’ll do the three-piece thing and then add some guitar and vocal overdubs but we never overdub over the main track. We make sure we get that right so it has the feel. We put the guitar part dead centre by James so that me and Steve can get a bit loose and juicy with the rhythm. Not too loose and juicy, obviously.
Obviously.
My vocals get done and then Steve works on it overnight. That’s when the real juicy stuff happens because he’s a multi-instrumentalist. Plays keyboards, horns. You name it, he plays it, or he’ll at least give it half a good go.
So you just handed it over to him.
I did, you know. He’s got impeccable ears. I totally trust him. I’ve worked with him before as I say, but also the conversations we’ve had about Bert Berns, Bacharach, H.B. Barnum, all the back-room boys who made these amazing records that we were thinking of - that made me trust that he was on the right track. It’s not the usual band approach, though.
No, not at all.
It’s refreshing for me. With Liverpool stuff, it’s often all about the guitarist. It was nice to meet someone who allowed me to escape that for once.
What kind of record were you hoping to make?
It’s kind of like a blurred line. Some people call it big city soul, which is the division of northern soul that’s not the small studios who made a record with blood, sweat and tears in half an hour. These were more clinically made records. So you’ve got the soul side, but you’ve also got the pop side which would be for example Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman or something. We were trying to make a record in that blurred line between the two. Nobody’s done anything like this for quite a while, we thought it could be quite exciting to do something like that in this day and age. Obviously, when they made those records it took a team of twenty people: you had the writers, the singing star, the band, producers, backing singers…but we just had the three of us. We wanted to recreate that glory because people always say ‘why don’t they make records like that anymore?!’ Well, OK, let’s have a go.
I think it’s your best collection of songs. Is that fair?
I think it is too, definitely. In the last ten years my lyrics have matured loads. That’s been nice for me to feel proud when singing every line on the LP. And musically, I’ve just been taking stuff in like a sponge and it’s all pouring out of me.
Lots of songs about romantic turmoil.
Yes! Yes. Ah mate. There’s every aspect of it. I was looking at A Little Touch Of Schmilsson In the Night, which is a collection of olde world songs which Nilsson sequenced with a couple meeting, breaking up and one of them dying in the end. Part of me was thinking I should sequence this album like the arc of a relationship but…nah. I was talked out of it, rightly. But there is a lot of that romantic trauma. Hopefully my wisdom from the trauma will rub off on some of those sad young men out there.
The Walls Came Tumbling Down from the new new album
Let’s travel back in time, please, and talk about young Edgar. Tell us about where you grew up and what you were into, please.
I grew up in the suburbs of Liverpool, a place called Childwall. I had older brothers and sisters so, musically, I was very lucky. My brother was my hero, six years older and seemed to know everything that I needed to know. I was eight when he was 14, 15 and that was when punk was happening so I got to hear all that from a very early age. My brother had every record I could possibly want, so when I was 14, 15 I found my path getting into 1960s stuff, starting off with Yardbirds, Beatles, Stones, Hendrix etc. Then when I was 16 there was a club in Liverpool called The Hangout which I wasn’t old enough to get into but they’d make these tapes, and that was Richard Norris who had the Bam Caruso label. These tapes were amazing. They had The Standells, Chocolate Watchband, Sonics…all that flipped my wig.
The first time I saw you was in that French documentary about Liverpool from 1992, with Shack and Ian McCulloch, which became a Holy Grail of music documentaries.
Oh God, aye.
You pop up smoking a spliff, talking about music in your bedroom.
It’s doing the rounds again, someone tagged me in the other day, but I can’t watch myself. It’s hard enough watching myself here on Zoom.
Edgar interviewed for the documentary film You’ll Never Walk Alone in 1991
But that’s a brilliant film and you’re great in it. Jamming with a load of people in a bedroom bashing drums, playing guitar in your house, singing at some squat party, the bit where you’re stoned, laughing along to Rainbow on TV…
I was just a kid, man. I think The Stairs were just about to be signed or had just been signed.
In that documentary Liverpool feels like a scene, you, Mick Head, Ian McCulloch out together. Was it real?
Yeah, Liverpool has always been nice like that, even bands of different ilks huddle. There’ll be the odd snide word but that’s humanity, innit? I was quite in awe of the Pale Fountains as a youngster. My brother followed all those groups everywhere, so I was in deep early on even as a kid. But Liverpool is becoming just as fertile now. I keep discovering new Liverpool bands on the way up and in the next few years I think there’ll be a break out of bands. I really dig Casino, who are like a soul thing which is great for me.
When The Stairs appeared you were out there on your own though, musically. The only beat group in the UK.
There was no one else with us, no. It was lonely! I mean, The La’s were really, but you’d never see Lee Mavers in a shirt with more than a two-inch collar. We fully embraced the 60s, they just liked the music.
What are memories of The Stairs?
Just chaotic loveliness. Ged’s [Lynch, guitarist] Syd Barrett humour and way of seeing the world was 100%, he was naturally weird. Sometimes I had to explain how the world actually was to him because he didn’t know. He was doing his best. And Paul [Maguire, drummer] was just a lovely geezer, my right-hand man. I wouldn’t have liked to manage us, though.
The Stairs’s Weed Bus video from 1991
Highlight?
I always liked the fact we got Weed Bus A-listed at Radio One for two weeks before they realised that the lyrics weren’t really their kind of thing. I even buzz off some of the disasters. Like, we toured America, did a college tour of the East Coast…without realising that the colleges were off on holiday. So, we literally played a gig over there to two people. It was the full Spinal Tap experience.
Subsequently you played bass with Paul Weller, Lee Mavers in The La’s, Ian McCulloch just after The Bunnymen, Johnny Marr…who’s the toughest boss?
Erm…hmm. They were all pretty sound. Lee Mavers wasn’t going through his best band leader phase. I think John Power had a lot to do with the work ethic and productivity of The La’s. It was frustrating by time I was there, you know. I’d say Lee Mavers was the best songwriter of them, which is quite something to say – putting him above Weller. It was such a shame though because I really wanted to get my teeth into those songs but it wasn’t happening. Johnny Marr was a very lenient boss, and Weller was too in a way. There was only one occasion where he thought I was playing bit busy on the chorus to Into Tomorrow. And he told me!
Edgar playing bass with Paul Weller on BBC’s Jools Holland in 2000
So presumably you’ve rehearsed all the great lost Lee Mavers songs that’ll never be recorded for proper release?
The likes of Minefield, Raindance, I Feel Like I Know, Why Do I Feel Like I Do…they are all brilliant tunes. We didn’t rehearse with any focus. We just played the verse and chorus around and around, sometimes for half an hour without stopping. It was a crazy way of working. If a song’s not working I’ll often find a way of looping the part that’s not working until we get it. But playing a whole song continuously for half an hour, you know…it’s a real shame, man. Such good tunes and a departure from the first album.
Edgar ‘Jones’ Jones and The Jones’s video for The Way It Is, from 2007
You must have been happy to see Mick Head scored his first top ten last year with Dear Scott.
Absolutely. I mean, I thought it was going to happen with Pacific Street in 1984! My brother went to see The Paleys, heard them do a Love cover and by the end of the week there were three Love albums in our house. I followed that musical path because of them. I’m an avid reader of sleevenotes and I love following a pathway to the next album.
Is his late career success an inspiration?
Yeah, it’s great to have help on the production and realisation side, because I’ve been working alone for so long. I can make a record alright, but it really helps to have that production focus.
Do you feel frustrated that your music isn’t more widely known?
It is a bit, yeah, but I was a stupid git growing up. If The Stairs had made it I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the story. I’m happy to have grown up musically under the radar a little bit. It’s suited what we’ve done. There’s a body of work to discover now. I think it might be a new thing, you know.
How?
The Beatles were, like, 18 or 19 when they started coming out. Scott Walker was barely twenty when he recorded Scott 1. I think we have a thing where people reach their potential when they’re a lot older now, there’s so much distraction going on. It’s definitely taken me a little longer to reach my potential! There’s things going on now with what I do that I’d never have been able to do when I was twenty. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s not more that I can do later in life.
What are your musical plans?
I’m raring to get going on another LP with Steve. I had more than an album’s worth of songs when we went in to record the album but I wrote more than half of it during the sessions, I was so enthused by it. It just got my muse right up, the potential of what we can do. It really has. There’ll be a lot of soul involved but it’ll cross over to that Scott Walker-middle of the road vibe more. I’m dying to get going on it and play live as much as I possibly can.
Looking forward to seeing you at The Social for the launch.
Yeah! Yeah! It’ll be the three of us, which is good because I’ve just been doing these solo acoustic shows otherwise. Between now and The New Cue gig I’ve got some time that I’m going to spend most mornings in the rehearsal room with my bass guitar really getting the singing right. With The Stairs I used to be just able to busk it a bit, humming the melodies. But this I have to get the singing right, I have to throw my whole being into it. It’s difficult shit otherwise, man. Looking forward to the challenge. I can do them, but I want to be able to perform them by time I see youse guys.
Reflections (Of You And Me) by Edgar Jones, from the new album.
Thanks Edgar, really appreciate your time.
I’m disappointed you didn’t ask me the retrogressive question.
What do you mean?
People accusing me of making music of the past, you know.
There’s only good music or bad music.
Exactly. I see it as a lineage, you know what I mean? It doesn’t have to stop when the commercial market says time’s up. We all belong to a lineage and you continue to draw from that, hopefully improve it.
I didn’t think about it being retro, it’s just a great album.
Thanks. In the ‘90s I used to get asked that question a lot. A lot. Ha! Glad that we’ve moved on from that. Anyway, thanks for your time Ted. Cheers lad.
TK