Interview: Before Tampa show, Howard Jones discusses new music and vegetarianism

In the grand scheme of things, Howard Jones is pretty young for a classic rock artist. And yet, the 68-year-old new-wave superstar has lived more in his seventh decade than many of his peers have in their whole lives.

Mr. “No One Is To Blame”—who performs with Culture Club and Berlin at the MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre this weekend—has spent the last decade working on a tetralogy of albums, centered around communication, the way people treat each other, and getting involved in the things we care about.

Tickets to see Berlin play Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Saturday, July 15 are still available and start at $24.95.
The fourth and final installment, Global Citizen, hasn’t come to fruition just yet, but Jones believes that his time on the road this year will provide him with plenty of time to ponder.

“Realistically, I’ll get started on it at the beginning of next year,” he told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “This’ll give me a good chance to think about what the process is going to be about making it.”

HoJo already has a thought in mind about the composition process. When a new song idea comes about, the melody generally comes first. He’s always thinking about what’s going on in the world though, so one way or another, there’s really no shortage of ideas.

“But with this next album, I’m thinking about working in a different way, and actually writing lyrics first,” he revealed, later explaining his appreciation for taking care of business from different perspectives. “There are some comfortable ways of working that sometimes need to be disrupted, and I’m always thinking of that,” he added.

And even with a long wait ahead, Jones has already finished work on a different kind of album. Last year, he told CL that he was working on a less-improvised follow-up to his instrumental Piano Solos (For Friends and Loved Ones) series.

“All the pieces were composed at the piano, and then edited in Logic,” he explained. Everything has been mixed, and even the album’s vinyl pressings have been packaged. The only step left is to wait for Jones’ longtime music theory friend Peter Noke to translate the album’s MIDI files to sheet music, in an effort to cater to his musician fans.

“I want people who create music and play piano to actually play the pieces themselves at home,” Jones added. “Obviously, every time anybody plays the actual sheet music, it’s their interpretation of the piece, and it always sounds different to what I composed, and I’m very excited about that. I’ll probably invite people to send recordings of what they’ve done with the pieces.”

Outside of music, Jones—a devout vegetarian for decades—founded Nowhere, a vegetarian restaurant in New York City that used to bring in the likes of Madonna and Michael J. Fox. Within a year, a fire (which didn’t burn the restaurant down) served as a symbol to Jones to close up shop and focus only on his music.

“I think I visited it about four times,” he recalled. “I was touring and making records.”

Nonetheless, Jones’ eating habits didn’t really change. Cutting out meat was no issue for him as a young man, he eats plenty of tofu and nuts, and he doesn’t really have an answer for people struggling to break into vegetarianism, other than persistence.

Jones also won’t tell us where exactly his flashy jackets come from (we assume they’re not real dyed leather), but for this tour, his son is custom-making the apparel. “That’s the way to be really original, so my son Jasper is making t-shirts for the band and for me, with the regional designs. They’re really cool,” Jones explained.

There’s currently no chance that any of the young Jones’ designs will be for sale at the merchandise tables, but Howard wants his fans to be creative and make their own versions of what he and his band will be sporting.

This weekend, Jones will lean on his old and new, electric, spacey hits, and as per usual, be in charge of synths and keytars. Oh, and despite what you may hear, he doesn’t actually hate the word “keytar” (“Maybe I just had a bad day,” he recalled). Still, he’s not convinced for a second that Edgar Winter—who currently tours with Ringo Starr, as HoJo once did—invented the idea, per his recent claims.

But nonetheless, in true Howard Jones form, he still spoke highly of the Woodstock legend’s recent performances. “He was fantastic with Ringo. I really enjoyed it,” he admitted.

In short, he sees nothing but the best in his peers, and that’s just about as high of a note you can live on.

This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2023.