Joe Jackson

Simon Clark talks to musician and writer Joe Jackson

You can't miss Joe Jackson. He's tall. Taller than I expected. And lean. Tall and lean, with peroxide blonde hair. And when he talks he speaks with a faint mid-Atlantic drawl that might go unnoticed in London but in Portsmouth, his home town, sets him apart from the crowd.

To people of a certain age Jackson is still fondly remembered for a string of hit singles  - 'Is She Really Going Out With Him?', 'I'm The Man,' 'It's Different For Girls,' and 'Steppin' Out'. But his body of work is remarkable for both its quality and its eclecticism. It includes, for example, several film scores (among them Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker) and a non-traditional 'Symphony No. 1' which won the 2000 Grammy (after four previous nominations) for Best Pop Instrumental Album.

Author of a well-received book, A Cure for Gravity, which he describes as 'a book about music thinly disguised as a memoir', JJ is also 'one of us'. Forest Online, he confided in an email last year, is "a ray of light in the gathering darkness". A social smoker, he subsequently joined our Supporters Council and moved back to Britain, giving the Big Apple and its draconian smoking ban an imperious 'thumbs down'.

Strangled

According to Jackson, "20 years ago New York was freer, more open, more exciting than London, but now that has reversed. So many things in the New York have been squeezed and strangled, especially the nightlife. I know a lot of people in the nightclub industry who have been harassed in a million different ways."

The rot, he says, began when Mayor Giuliani closed topless bars. "You may or may not think that's important, but, this is New York! Giuliani, and now Bloomberg, have had an agenda to 'clean up the city' and make it friendlier to big business and tourists. Sure, New York is cleaner and safer than it was ten years ago, which no-one can complain about, but it's also a hell of a lot less fun. The edgy, creative, 'bohemian' element has been forced out.

"If one person gets caught in a club with drugs the DJ gets fined, the promoters get fined, the whole club can be shut down. The city," he complains, "has been Disneyfied. Everyone I know feels the same. It's gone too far."

The smoking ban, he says, is not the only reason he decided to return to Britain but it was the final straw. "The character, the whole feel of the city, has changed, especially since 9/11. It's a depressed city.

"It wouldn't be so bad if we could let off steam a bit. I mean, it's illegal to dance in New York unless you have a specific licence which is almost impossible to get.  And there's a sour atmosphere. The smokers are resentful. They're not mixing with the non-smokers, most of whom didn't care about the smoke anyway. The bartenders aren't getting enough tips, so they're not happy. The whole thing is pathetic compared with what NY was like five or ten years ago."

Conflicting stories

We hear so many conflicting stories about the effects of the smoking ban it's difficult, I say, to distinguish fact from fiction. Jackson, who still has an apartment in the city, agrees.

"The situation in New York is being spun heavily by the anti-smokers.  They have the upper hand, obviously. They will tell you it's working just great, that people like it, and so on. But if you talk to bar owners or nightclub operators, most of them will tell you they're furious because their right to determine what they do with their own business is being taken away.

"They're definitely losing money. I've spoken to a lot of people and they say business is down 10, 20 per cent. Some places that used to be real smokers' havens are down 40 per cent. Bloomberg claims that the real purpose of the ban is to protect the health of employees but every bartender I've spoken to - and I've spoken to dozens - say they hate the ban because they're now obliged to be cops and enforce the law and do it for less money because they get fewer customers and less tips.

"The other thing is that every bar has to have a notice that says 'No Smoking' and there's a phone number to call to report violations. In other words, they're depending on people ratting on their neighbours to try and enforce a law which many New Yorkers are disgusted with. Most non-smokers I have spoken to think the ban is ridiculous."

Law-abiding

Contrary to media reports, Jackson believes resistance is growing. "A lot of bars and clubs, especially if they're in high profile locations, are too scared to let you smoke. But others are now defying the ban. They wait until eleven o'clock or so when the inspectors go home, and then let you light up."

A glimmer of hope, perhaps? Not necessarily. "Most people are law-abiding. You can't fight City Hall, as the saying goes. But bad laws do get repealed. It will be interesting to see how it goes. It would be great if New York turned out to be the place where the tide was turned back."

What has happened in America, says Jackson, is the result of a "very persistent, well-organised, well-financed propaganda war" against smoking. "Health authorities are quite deliberately trying to establish an anti-smoking culture and to a great extent they've succeeded.

"It's become very politically correct to be anti-smoking and it's seen as being progressive. To me it must be very much like what happened in the States in the Twenties when Prohibition came in because the prohibitionists had convincing arguments. I mean, alcohol is dangerous and I'm sure that by persistence and scaring the hell out of people with statistics they were able to whip up enough support to get Prohibition passed.

"That's what's happening now with smoking. Prohibition lasted for 12 years but eventually had to go because it just wasn't workable. A similar thing might happen with tobacco, I don't know. I just wish they'd make up their minds. If you're going to make smoking illegal, make it illegal. Otherwise we have a right to smoke and have social places where we can smoke."

Free market

Like Forest, Jackson supports restrictions. He'd even support a ban on smoking in restaurants that don't have more than one room. "I wouldn't even mind seeing smoking banned in pubs and bars if there was some system of exemption or a licence so that some or half of them could be smoking.  Ideally, though, the free market should sort it all out.'

It's the anti-smoking lobby's total intransigence, their refusal to compromise, that most annoys him. "The pub I was in last night, in Portsmouth, had three bars. One of them - where they serve food - is non-smoking. The other two, which allow smoking, had really good ventilation systems. They weren't smoky at all. You've got to be a fanatic not to be happy with that. Modern society should have high tech ventilation systems and respect people's freedom of choice."

Ironically, for someone so outspoken on the subject of smoking, Jackson has only ever "dabbled". An asthmatic teenager, he tried a cigarette "now and again" but it only became a habit in his thirties. "Even now I smoke very moderately and sometimes I go for a week without smoking at all." He usually limits it to the evening and "only when I've got a drink". He prefers cigars to cigarettes and rarely inhales. (Truth be told, he prefers drinking to smoking and is a member of Camra, the real ale people.)

"People say to me, 'If you've got such a moderate smoking habit why don't you give up?', but that's missing the point. We all have pleasurable rituals in life and to me a cigarette or cigar with a drink completes the ritual. Yeah, I suppose I could give up, but I don't want to and I don't see why I should.

"I don't think I'm wildly excessive about anything but I am a bit of a hedonist, I suppose. I think it's alright to go over the top now and again as long as you're reasonably in control overall.'

Health conscious

He is, he says, extremely health conscious. "I eat a healthy diet. I exercise regularly. I just think life's all about balancing things." Has he considered the health risks of smoking? "Yeah, very much. I thought maybe I should stop because the stuff you hear is terrifying. But I've done a lot of research and I've concluded that the health risks are overblown."

Overblown? "I'm not a doctor or a scientist. I'm a man in the street, but I've made a point of trying to find out about this issue for quite a few years now and there are so many questions which are still not answered and so many things that just don't ring true from my own experience and that of people I know.

"For instance, we're now told that an 'estimated' 50 per cent of smokers will die of smoking. Firstly, a few years ago they were saying 'a third,' so how come it went up?  And secondly, what exactly do they mean by 'smokers'?" He discovered they mean long-term smokers, people who have smoked 20 to 40 cigarettes a day for decades.

"I then decided to ask everyone I know how many people they've known in their lives who died from a smoking-related disease - parents, uncles and aunties, teachers, parents of friends, whatever. I've spoken to loads of people and the answer is nearly always one - sometimes none, occasionally two, but the average would be less than one.

"If 50 per cent of all smokers die early we should all know dozens of people who have died of smoking. But we don't.  Not only that, most of the smokers who die have all sorts of other unhealthy habits, and most of them still make it into their 70s.  But you never hear about any of that from medical authorities."

He's even more scathing about the risks of passive smoking and the extraordinary claim, by the British Medical Association, that 'there is no safe level of environmental tobacco smoke'.

"That's absurd. It's like saying if I went into a pub once a year and someone is smoking on the other side of the room, I could get cancer! The more research I do the more obvious it is that the whole secondhand smoke thing is a fraud.

"I can't understand why there aren't more doctors and scientists coming out and saying something about it, because ultimately it's a misuse of science which is detrimental to science. Sooner or later the tide has to turn because it can't keep on indefinitely like this, surely?"

Anti-smoking crusade

Jackson also sees the anti-smoking crusade as being more about politics than health. "In the States practically every time you turn on the TV you see ads for drugs of some sort and, increasingly, ads for so-called smoking-replacement therapy - nicotine patches, nicotine gum and the rest of it.

"To me it's not some sort of crackpot conspiracy theory to say that tobacco companies have obviously shot themselves in the foot in certain ways and are out of favour, and along with this huge wave of anti-smoking propaganda you see the pharmaceutical industry cashing in on it, and if you dig a little deeper you find that the pharmaceutical industry is actually a major supporter of anti-smoking crusades.

"It's just a question of joining the dots. When you look at things like smoking bans you ask yourself who benefits, politically or financially. It's certainly not the smoker or the neighbourhood bar. The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion dollar business and they have an enormous stake in people giving up smoking and getting their nicotine from them instead of the tobacco companies.

"And a lot of ex-smokers want antidepressants, too. I think people should shift their sights a bit from tobacco companies to pharmaceutical companies if they want to see what's really going on."

Protest song

This is not the first time Jackson has spoken out. In May last year, shortly after the smoking ban was introduced in New York, he wrote a well publicised article for the New York Times. In November, shortly after returning to Britain, he wrote another for the Daily Telegraph. A couple of weeks ago he penned a third for the Independent on Sunday.

Now he has gone a step further. With the first anniversary of the NY smoking ban imminent, Jackson is releasing his own, very personal, protest song.

In 20-03 was written, he says, to send up Mayor Bloomberg and the NY smoking ban but also to help those fighting to get the ban repealed and to prevent similar bans elsewhere. "When I feel strongly about something I have a hard time sitting around doing nothing. If I feel angry about something I have to speak out. I've always been this way.

"I'm one of those songwriters who writes about anything and everything. I've written songs about things that are funny, things that I think are sad. In this case I wrote a song about something that made me angry. I tried to make it humorous at the same time, otherwise it doesn't work so well."

Available for download ($0.99) or on CD ($3.99 plus p&p), all proceeds will be split between Forest, our US counterpart Forces, and NYC Clash, a group campaigning to reverse the New York ban.

"Hopefully it helps keep the issue alive and will help people connect with one other. Maybe it will help Forest and Forces and especially NYC Clash because they are directly fighting the New York ban. If it achieves any of those things, that's great."

Angry young man

Twenty-five years ago Jackson was sometimes described as an 'angry young man'. Fast approaching 50, has the angry young man become a grumpy old man? He considers the question - and laughs.

"I'm not pissed off about life. I'm pissed off about this anti-smoking propaganda and people wanting to deny us freedom of choice. The agenda is being set by the zealots, unfortunately, and people get swept along with it. I doubt that any of the people who support smoking bans have looked into the facts of secondhand smoke. It's just a politically correct bandwagon that keeps rolling on."

The prospect of Liverpool and other UK cities banning smoking horrifies him. "I don't feel like a place is civilised unless they let me smoke, and if they don't let me smoke I feel really insulted. I hate the whole nanny state thing. OK, they're entitled to inform us and educate us about things, but after that leave us alone!"

Published exclusively on Forest Online in March 2004
Smoker 

"Forest is fighting for the rights not only of smokers but of non-smokers too when it challenges arrogant ministers and petty-minded bureaucrats."

Felix Dennis
publisher
_____