Howard Jones called me from his tour bus on the way to Salt Lake City for a date on his “Things Can Only Get Better Tour,” named after one of his biggest hits off one of his defining albums from the 1980s, “Dream into Action.”
Jones will be headlining a performance at Artpark on Aug. 12, along with a group of curated peers from the 1980s: Wang Chung, The English Beat, Modern English, and radio personality Richard Blade.
“It’s been a fun night of music,” Jones noted enthusiastically. “You never know what to expect when you go out, but I have been seeing a lot of dancing and smiles in the audience.”
Jones is far removed from the days when he had to bring a caravan of buses to his club gigs. By the early 1980s he was a synth pioneer with a slew of hit singles from his first two albums, including “New Song,” “Like to Get to Know You Well” and “What is Love?”
It was the remake of “No One is to Blame” that became his biggest hit in the U.S, reaching number 4 in 1986. I told him I preferred the original version, not the radio hit reworked by Phil Collins.
“I was actually the one that pushed him to do that. I knew it was a good song that resonated with my fans, but I needed a version that was a little more radio-friendly, and Phil did an amazing job. We are performing Phil’s arrangement of the song on this tour, and it has been well received.”
Jones acknowledged that the version on “Dream into Action” is his fan base’s favorite, but having the opportunity to present it to the fans of the other bands on the bill, it made sense to perform the radio version.
In recent years, Jones has focused on performing stripped-down versions of his songs, and he noted that “if the equipment ever broke down, I could always slip over to the piano and perform just about anything.” There was one song he thought might be challenging: “Stand Up,” his brand-new synth-driven single.
Musically, it relies heavily on the classic synth sound of the 1980s. Thematically, the song is meant to encourage people to use their voice to speak up about the things that are important to them. It led to me asking if he feared being labeled as “too political” in today’s climate.
“It’s not a political song, and if you look over the common themes in my music you will notice that I always write from a humanist point of view.”
“I’m not trying to tell people what to think. I’m trying to encourage them to think for themselves, to stay hopeful, to stay connected. If that overlaps with politics, it’s only because politics affects people’s lives. But the core of it is always human beings trying to do their best,” he said.
Before the conversation ended, I noted that I found his music during a challenging time in my life, and that I wore out my cassette versions of “Dream into Action” and “Human’s Lib” listening to them in my Walkman while skateboarding and nursing a heartbreak.
“I appreciate you telling me that; that’s the kind of thing you want to be able to do as a musician.”