Anybody who knows anything about vintage/classic/great music knows the name Eddie Jobson. With his blonde, youthful looks, stellar keyboard playing, clear violin slicing on his transparent violins and composing, production and label running, the lanky Mr. J. is a very busy guy indeed.
Playing in Curved Air in his late teens, then moving on to man the keys for Roxy Music, forming UK with John Wetton, Allan Holdsworth and Bill Bruford, touring with Jethro Tull, followed by two decades plus of scoring TV shows, films, commercials, earning Cleo awards and running his own studio…well, the list goes on and on.
Jobson hadn’t been on a stage in 27 years, but over the winter of 2008, he took his UKZ project out for a one-night world tour in NYC, which was seen and loved by Eddie Jobson fans who came in from as far away from Africa to see him play. Lucky for us, Jobson has opted to play more shows.
He’s currently out for a six-date tour with a project he calls UZ — playing with the likes of drummer Simon Phillips, no less! And he rejoins Curved Air in the middle of August for a festival in England — almost the very same way he came to join that band 40 years before by replacing Darryl Way for the gig.
I caught up with Mr. Jobson to talk about the UZ dates, as well as his history (including those crazy jumpsuits from Tull’s ‘A’ tour. He also gave me an exclusive for Vintage Rock readers (because that’s just how I roll for you folks!) on UK.
It was 27 years since you stepped on stage earlier this year and now I get the pleasure of seeing you twice in the same year. Tell me about UZ and how it differs from UKZ. Or is it part and parcel of the same thing?
UZ is a totally flexible project that can morph into different guises according to which members are in the band at the time. This is primarily an instrumental project, almost the ultimate tribute band to the various people playing with me. For instance, if a famous singer comes in for a night to sit in, we all have the virtuosity that we can transform ourselves into being the ultimate cover band for that singer.
So the songs that you might play would be…
I can throw in more obscure tracks, tracks that never get played — Curved Air, Roxy Music. I’ve just tried to put together the best group of players I can for the tour at hand and would be open to whomever wants to play with us, well known or not.
How long is this tour out for?
Six dates, all in a row.
Since I’m doing this interview for Vintage Rock, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you a few questions pertaining to your vintage past…which might actually pertain to your future. I’ve heard rumors about remixes of the UK albums; in fact, I think last time we spoke you mentioned as much. What’s the status of these possible remixes?
I’ve licensed them from Virgin World Wide and remastered them for 30th anniversary editions. They’ll be released on August 11 through Globe Music. So, we’re promoting all these things, tying it together with the “Eddie Jobson is back again” thing, playing live…like these UZ shows.
The second part of my UK question, and the one that I know is on a lot of people’s minds — is UK going to reform and play some shows?
I guess you’re going to get a little exclusive here, but yes John (Wetton) and I have discussed it. Whether it will be as a guest with the UZ project or we take a step forward and call it UK, recording, playing. Either or any of those scenarios could take place in the future.
Everyone who knew I was going to talk to you, from my editor at Vintage Rock to a few friends, remembers those thin jumpsuits on the Jethro Tull A tour when you were the ‘featured’ keyboardist. Tell me about them…and playing with Jethro Tull.
They were actually very strong fabric, but the idea (and the blame) goes to Ian (Anderson), though we all tried to snazz them up a bit, personalize them. The thing was, we had just entered the 80s, and I was in the middle of starting my Green green album when Ian called, asking if I’d play on his solo record. That’s the A album actually, that started out as Ian’s solo album. I was recording with drummer Mark Craney, who has since died unfortunately, and I asked Ian, “Shall I bring my drummer over?” So we laid everything down and it had a different sound and when Chrysalis (Tull’s record label) heard it, they said this is the direction we’d like for Jethro Tull, more modern, etc. So it was put out as a Jethro Tull album and then we toured. But I got to tell you, that was the most fun I’ve ever had on tour. There was no pressure on me as such, and Ian gave me the spotlight. He was comfortable leaving the stage for five minutes during my solo spot. It was a terrific group of guys — an amazing band and everybody treated me so well. Every night we went out and played huge arenas.
How about your keyboard rig this time around? On the UKZ tour it was massive.
We completely rebuilt it because we had a few tech problems. We were running everything through software and they were so many different things happening, it didn’t always work that well. And I wanted to make it lighter; for the UKZ show, it was 2,500 pounds of freight! This new rig runs off of two laptops and can go on the plane as well as baggage with my tech, of course. It’s portable, no freight charges. But it was quite a challenge; it took four months to get it down to this. I worked with an inventor in Texas who makes a VAX 88 keyboard. It folds into two halves and we can get that down to a carry-on bag.
Over all, how do you find it being out there now?
Two years ago, when I decided that I would go back on stage again, I would form a project or two in advance of what I was doing. I decided to put everything else on hold — the TV work, scoring film, all that kind of thing — and focused on making this work. There’s a huge group of tasks that have to be accomplished though — creating what a band is, stylistically finding the right guys to play with, graphics and web site names and logos, creating music in the right way, recording it, making it work for what it’s meant to be. It’s just a necessary component to get on the road to make a living and fund itself. I just wanted to make it as cost effective as possible, so that means looking at different ways to perform with different people.
