Jack Jones : The John Robb interview

John Rob here interviewing Jack Jones um what what I want to know initially is are you a poet or a musician or both well I'd like to know that myself mate I think I think I started off as as a musician 100% musician and then somehow I think my actual calling may have been the Poetry I just accidentally became a musician on the way with through she determination and anger at the world I became a musician but then what I actually do naturally and find myself falling into all the time is jotting down notes and writing my life away basically did you write lyrics first I mean it's you know it's before you could play guitar or whatever was it were you always writing bits of poems at school or is it I mean no one calls and poems and lyrics really aren't they but no exactly and the word poet is funny as well I always think of it more of a Wordsmith because I'm like someone who works with words like a CO Miner or whatever you know but um yeah no when I when I was in school and I think that's why I didn't actually turn to lyrics straightway is because I would I would write and I enjoyed writing but then I I gave a story in one day I think it was called The Journey or something and it was about uh a guy trying to save his sister's life and I thought it was the best story ever written like better than Lord of the Rings and then I gave it into my teacher and uh it was like just got destroyed with all the spell mistakes and loads of red pens so like that wrecked me when I was a young kid and I didn't write again till I was like mainly in my 20 somewhere and it was that long it affected me wow that's a long Gap I mean usually it's a teenage thing you start with is it so you actually took a bit of time out so in that time you sort of kind of playing in bands I mean it's yeah I um well when I was 14 I started playing the guitar I was um expelled from school for jumping on my art teacher's car uh for a FIV screaming that I wanted to be did you get did you get the FIV yeah I got the F but then my mom gave it Church which is the um yeah something about I couldn't be asked to draw the sunflowers again Vanos I was like try make me draw those sunflowers now naked on the naked naked on the bnet but um my mom and dad weren't living together at the time and uh that next Christmas I had a present from my old man and it was under the tree and it was kind of this triangled shaped box and I thought what's that it's weird and on it it said I I heard school isn't going so well maybe time to think of an alternative career yeah I and I opened it and it was a guitar oh wow that's pretty cool yeah yeah that's that's still the guitar I've played that's the guitar I've always played I've never played another one really throughout my whole life with Peter with Liam with with whatever it's been it's always been that guitar as well my little fender Argos Fender Aros yeah where about did you grow up in Wales I grew up in a place called Mount Pleasant which is kind of near the town center of Swansea City um went to a school uh Terrace Road school um when I was about from about 6 to about 9 I had a big gap because my mom I think when my mom and dad split up my mom didn't quite know what to do and her brother lives in Australia so we spent like kind of a few years out in Australia um I was just running around looking for frogs and you know not really doing much AP from I learned how to play one of those things um a Diablo um and then we came back to Swansea I don't know why mom came back to Swansea in particular she wasn't from Swansea she's a Yorkshire lass from Sheffield but um she just felt the calling back to Wales and then I went to secondary school then in a place called Bishop Gore which is where uh I think it's where Dylan Thomas went to school so his work into my life from the very beginning yeah yeah World tradition that isn't it to be working in yeah yeah amazing I think that they didn't really make much of a deal of it I think now they do but it's um you know I I had to find my own way to Dylan Thomas me what was the music that first got you was it cuz everybody has that kind of alpha band where completely changes is it wow well the thing for me believe it or not there was like this kind of really epic Punk kind of punk rock DIY scene in Swansea and I I think the songs I was writing were a bit more kind of like British sounding if you will like jingly jangly guitar but um there were some epic bands that I loved like um Swansea bands one was called the caves I mean I'd be surprised if anyone knows these band but they were the caves were I think they even they might have got signed and they kind of started to get out of Swansea and they did some good things and there's another band called Nikolai which I completely loved and I saw these live in like I think it was something like the British Legion in mumbles Rugby Club I was like wow you know rock and roll can happen and I I was dead set on it actually and I was um I was playing football I was playing football for Swansea City like under 15s and I got let go when I just as the kind of when things start to get a bit serious into the like years 16 17 18 I got let go and then um I got picked up by a league of Wales football team called sashley town and that's where I met Wayne the bass player who ended up being like you know he ended up moving into my house he got kicked out of his house moved into my house and then we started a band which ended up being trampoline and how how does that go initially was he just playing on that kind of Swansea scene or was it you take a different route well we we played a bit on the Swansea scene but we there was another band there's bands called the arteries there uh who were like band called silicon fish there was lot really heavy like Punk hardcore punk scene in Swansea and um we loved it we loved going to the gigs but those that kind of although when I look back at some of the early songs they're much more Punk hardcore punk than I thought but um we found it hard to fit in and there was like quite a bit of like kind of and that kind of spilled over a bit into like kind of screaming emo and um we kind of found it hard to fit in I think a little bit found it hard to um get any gigs or anything anything like that so that was when uh well we went to college first I went to go Sig in college and that was where I met Mr Williams absolutely poached him from another band and uh yeah he was like uh he had these amazing unbelievable like musical history like he could read music and uh I used to try and I got him to do my cours work once on uh in school on and uh I gave it in and the teacher said got there's no way you did this didn't they he T did it and they went all right okay yeah music music Still exam ever failed actually funny enough would it be fair to say the libertin with a key band for you that time yeah absolutely because we we were yeah it was more kind of it was just something that spoke to us that kind of like British Indie kind of ruggedy it still had Punk it still had Punk but it wasn't like it still had song writing as well and then armed with that we moved to London I think when we were about 18 something like that moved to a little flatten hornsey and then uh began trying to change the world but The Libertines I mean they were huge and the fact the random thing is when we first moved to London we were like I don't know we called ourselves a pack of bastards living above the hornsey railway Tavern on hor High Street oh yeah yeah and honestly they started off at the beginning there was just a three of us and then all of a sudden like more people from Swansea arrived they they everyone jokingly called it the Welsh refugee camp like my mate Moy turned up Tesco bag full of MDMA and my turned up with like six guitars it was like it just became unraveled in complete chaos by the end but the first week we were there we had our van and um we were driving up mwell hill and the and the van broke down and we were like try this we were trying to change a tire on the side of like Mozel looking like totally around then someone tapped us on the shoulders and asked if we needed a hand and it was K Barat it's like fate yeah it was like what this guy that we've seen in the enemy guys and uh and it was a really weird kind of story so I didn't we and then I think K Carl kind of kept his eye on on us and the LI teams were together um I think Kyle was doing his Jackal project kind of at the time and then uh we I was doing bits and Bobs um started releasing these poetry videos online poems about pound land about you know T in I was actually sober at the time because of my Cron's but I was kind of writing about everyone's life around me and uh and I was putting these poems on YouTube and they had about I don't know 95 views or something like that I had no views at all and uh and then I got invited to When The Libertines were kind of reforming I got invited to uh the Dublin Castle to watch them play and I was sitting on the curb outside in the van having a cigarette or something and like someone tapped me on the shoulder and it was pey and he and he and I turned around and he started narrating the the words of um health and well green at Wood Green Job Senter to me he's like fat ones thin ones clever ones thick ones black ones white ones some looking sh ones some like green ones some in between ones some looking nice ones some dead mean ones shadows in the system and among the black BS Protestants and Muslims atheists and pilgrims not a pot to pissing not about to give in and don't think of us as victims I was like it was super super super so out of the 95 views on YouTube he' win like 94 of them it's amazing that he'd even had the time to find this stuff is it with that kind of Lifestyle then yeah oh my God yeah yeah that's why it's such a like a a twist of fate I think that because um I was lucky because I think Roger Sergeant the guy who made the videos had done lots of stuff with Peter and and the libs and Oasis all the kind of like stuff back in the day and um cuz uh Peter was looking at his stuff kind of Roger's new stuff kind of slipped into his algorithm so it was like my little I think that was probably the little bit of luck I had because I met Roger when I was roding for that young Irish band called The Stripes I was fixing their guitars and driving them about and stuff like that for a while so it was a few little odd bits and pieces along the way they were B what happened to them I remember that was such a buzz on them was they yeah like humongous rord deal and I and I was you know I was probably like I don't know early 20 somewhere and they were like 16 seven whatever and I thought my career was done I was like oh my god there like past it 22 year old or something you know I mean but I found it quite out but I was you know just carrying on and yeah I don't know I don't know where what they do up to now actually I saw Josh the guitarist I think he plays for Paul wer now and then so they're all kind of doing their bits and Bobs I think obviously like entering that world of Libertines world was it as uh it as crazy as as it's portrayed or was there like quite a creative space really behind the facade of the madness um well I think at the beginning I was so um I was kind of naive not naive but very like I suppose I'd been in a in a kind of space where there' been lots of like U Lads drinking and you know taking drugs and whatever but I i' never been never been in it in a state to that level and to that like level of chaos I mean at the beginning I would um I was just doing the The Libertines tour poetry so when they went to whatever show they did did I would go out on stage and do poems about uh pound Lan and K in and then they got me to write a new poem kind of introducing the band which I wrote called to be a libertine which I got different parts of the fans to kind of um to kind of speak on the on the recording but um at that St stage I was on the bus with them and get to see that that kind of way of life a bit more cuz um it's very it is very different to what I was used to you know like kind of they're kind of scraping around get trying to get what you can rather than like th this time is yours and you do what you want you know it was like um very odd but then um I suppose things became it became a bit more normal to me even though it is completely an normal situation I mean I think that time it was trying to think I mean I was um doing The Libertine tour poetry and then I was like playing guitar on the sly like in the because Pete didn't know I I don't think he knew I played guitar at that point I was hoping he would hoping I'd catch his eye and then um must have been after the Libertines have kind of done their thing their reunion I got a call from the manager J Stanley and he said uh and I just done a sold out gig with trampoline in the water rats and I thought that was as good as my life was ever going to get like I was ready to retire know he called me and said oh um what are you up to and I just woke up it was like 2:00 in the afternoon and uh I was like oh nothing you know fine Dandy nothing happening and um and he said good well Peter wants you to be his new guitarist and I was like oh T said pack put some socks and pants in a bag and uh I booked you on a flight to bonies at 7 o'clock this evening that's bit of a swerve is it yeah did you find your passport exactly I didn't have a clue where it was I think I'd used it for like you know since a school trip to Amsterdam 16 so how how did you even rehearse I mean is that like a one one rehearsal on the stage yeah mate this is this is like I was given a set list to loar all right on the plane so I was learning a bit of a set list I was like oh this this they know I got to the gig like showed Pete the songs and Pete was like we're not playing any of them and I was like um all right what do we do then if he said if you don't know that don't know how to play a song Just dive into the crowd I was like all right fair enough like literally just got there there's like 3,000 people this like giging bonies everyone's going Pete Pete Pete Pete going mental and he starts playing a song I have no idea what it is it's a no one in the band actually knows what it is it's a song he wrote two minutes ago in the bathroom before we're about to go on stage and then I looked around and put the guitar down and just dived into the crowd and thought right you know [ __ ] it this is what's happening now and everyone was going mad they were like scream screaming I was like oh my god I've made it I'm a rock star and I like looked behind me and thought Oh actually everyone's going in a different direction everyone Peter jumped in after me and everyone just crawling after him like literally was like I don't know some sort of like mon Doom hands from the lava just like it couldn't get him out the crowd for like 45 minutes yeah luckily we only ended up playing like you know half an hours worth of music and then that was it that was my introduction after that imagine it became slightly more organized you had to learn a few of the songs or was it always very ad hoc well I did learn all the tracks and I had to learn the way that I had to kind of like adapt the way Peter is a little bit I started to learn like um like reading his mood or although those things were at that time were like so extreme they were like you know he wasn't in probably the best of ways like he is now so in a different in a different way and um so it was it was everything was completely unpredictable like not even from one song to the next like that was unpredictable we had a rough idea of what a set list and what the songs he might play was but then um just day-to-day life was also like that as well because we were living together in South America uh for quite a while at the beginning of the put them our D and it was like it's almost like you know impossible like normal people's lives where they like plan something to do something at I don't know 4:00 or 3:00 or I'll do that tomorrow was everything was just completely out the window you couldn't plan anything that wasn't two minutes ahead of where you were and like any friendships or any anything like any kind of relationships I was um kind of in it were hard as well it was like oh I might be there at this time and then I ended up being you know totally different place it was a different different moment it was I think like it was it was chaos and then um and then I slipped into the chaos myself I think I don't know whether I became more of a problem than Pete to be honest as much the attendant lifestyle should we say yeah yeah yeah you could I just I thought oh [ __ ] it I'm on I'm on this journey I'm going to I'm going to go full full whack and just see what happens you know and all and the fair thing to PE like no matter like what I no matter what state he's in or no matter how he's been in the past his memory is like Second To None even now he's like super Sharp up and also [Music] um you wouldn't ever believe it but sometimes when someone's like in the center of the chaos they can kind of I don't know control it or feel or seem like but if everyone else in that kind of circle I think everyone else gets kind of like swirled around so I think he he he could deal with it quite well some sort of genetic disposition I mean the guy's like got the constitution of an elephant you know I mean like everyone else is dropping like flies around them so but you see that in those kind of situations the people can't keep up with that main person like the stones or all those situations and it the people in the middle always get out the other side don't they yeah yeah it's so true it's so true how how how did you get out the other side I don't know I tried a few times I mean and then uh I was I think by the end of it I'd you know I I kind of ruined all my personal relationships I'd completely bankrupted myself um and then I think I had some sort of when my girlfriend kind of left me I think that was when I kind of Switched on a little bit kind of like decided that I uh wanted to try and make a change but at that stage I think thought that kind of I don't know the Rock and Roll Lifestyle you could say was so part of my life I thought I'd have to not be a musician anymore I actually got in the way the creativity as well yeah yeah because there's no other way I know to function that was a human you know the when you were in the band The creativity did you sit there and J jam with him much or was it just like doing the gigs or was it off for moments when you would be creative in the same space we were we were ex I mean we were extraordinarily like in the same space creative quite a lot I mean the best I mean I don't even know I'm going to say it anyway but I remember uh J trying to describe the putamadre to to to someone and he and he said God it's the sound of five what did he say actually let me get this right he said it's the sound of five extremely damaged individuals taking a shitload of drugs [Laughter] together they didn't Men music in there but every time we were together we were kind of playing music we would like sit in the like in whatever whatever when Pete eventually arrived or we um uh got to um like a sound check we'd be like sound checking from for from like 2: in the afternoon there were people coming into the gig they' arrived to the gig and we were still practicing still playing our music kind of like sound check and every like oh my God the gig s like we so that I mean and I listened to um that album with Peter recently and I and there's some like like decisions that I remember Pete making I thought that's mad you know mad to make that decision like he want he didn't want um anyone to mix the record and stuff like that I was like okay that's a new one on me but um those little decisions now when I listen back to it like that kind of record is so brittle that uh Pete record is so um it's so fragile I think beautiful in so many ways cuz the all of us in the band I think by the time it was recorded was uh we're on the edge of like our our abilities musically and in our lifestyle and every in every way so there's something about it I don't know what I mean was it was it almost like a deliberate thing to get so [ __ ] up you find some kind of musical Purity on the other side or was it just just too attractive to get [ __ ] up so that's that's what you do anyway I think it I think for me it was the originally the idea of finding something some sort of musical like you said Purity because I've always been driven by the art or by the you know by that that's that is what I live for that is my dream and that is like my constant Drive really to find that song to find that defines me or defines uh my life or whatever it is that helps someone I create something that helps someone through their life that's kind of what I live for so I think it was done from a from that side of it all of us have that in common I think too it was like this is this is real for us how did you get out the other side of this was he just deciding that I've got to get me own life together yeah Bas basically yeah basically it just yeah I think when I kind of like lost kind of uh I think it was me I think I had some sort of switch to be honest when my girlfriend like finish with me because I realized [ __ ] I am although I'd thrown away everything in my life and I thought I could throw that away as well um I realized that I didn't want to and um and uh and that was when I started to make started to believe I could make little changes to my to my life and I moved back to Swansea away from London and um just started to rebuild just started to do thing I mean I think I just sat on a couch to be honest for like six months staring into that the wall just uh my brain was kind of trying to re uh program itself and um then I started to write music again and write well I suppose write my own music again and write uh started to write poetry again and things like that little the little juice the little moment started to return to me yeah so then you go back out the road with the band you get again you play another icon of that period with Liam Gallagher don't you yeah I mean the Liam thing is quite fun because I think I mean he he's there's a pub in like North London where where he he loves going and um randomly enough Wayne from trampoline is like was like man is manager of the pub Okay and like I think before Liam's big comeback they were mates so they had like this camaraderie and I think um when um P yeah when Liam did his big old comeback he was speaking to Wayne he was like oh fancy you know coming on the road and then Wayne was like all right why not and and uh and his and Liam's partner um deby and and Katie they're kind of like they they were kind of looking out for us as well because we were like I don't know a young band who just arrived in North London and didn't really have a clue what we were doing and they were like yeah we we sense they sense the spirit in us they sense the spirit and then Liam ad was on to and then the first gig I we we did I ran on I like went to the front of the stage and stood on this speaker didn't it wasn't even that big it was like I don't know this big or something I stood on it and it just went flying from underneath my feet like flying off the stage smacked in to pieces at the bottom of the stage and then we had like an invoice from the tall man it's from Liam's tour manager so all our pay from the next like gigs we had had to go towards this amp that I broke on the food but Liam was great and I had some good nights with Liam as well and uh I mean that's one regret I I have actually that I wasn't like Compass mous enough to uh actually play Liam a proper song you know every time I would get to like that moment in the night was like right I'm gonna play him a song and then hopefully Liam's gonna want to sing one of my songs I never I never quite that was always the idea but I was never kind of on the focused enough be able to do it so every time I tried to play him a song instead of go and feed his cats and like Goose Breeze or something from the garden or I don't know what lot just end up like saying I could walk on my hands although there's no chance I could but what's interesting the last few years is that you're this is about you now and it's not about you playing these other people not by not being the side man or a part of somebody else's Madness this is you creating your own space now when it with the band and also with your solo stuff like the gig the other night when you playing with Pete in the in the working men's club in what it kringlewood and it's a great really great really great set actually I like both things obviously trampoline Great Garage rock and roll but the solo thing is really interesting because just you and a laptop doing your poems over these electronic backings that's really interesting it's quite original it's it's your own space there is it yeah I feel like I've I found a real because it's quite hard to kind of always put the Poetry into kind of a rock and roll band you know and and the things that I've I mean I stopped drinking just before Co I think it was like six months before Co and um and then the covid thing happened and I after my m is a doctor so we were like we ended up getting covid quite early on like way before the vaccine and um I was like so seriously sick I was um like and then after i' kind of recovered I started having like such I don't know if they were like Suicidal Thoughts but I was just on a such a a sad kind of um I suppose anxious moment nothing I'd ever experienced before in my life and um I started keeping this journal this someone some doctor had said that you know just keep a keep a journal of your like thoughts and your moods and all this and it it was so surreal for me because like even anything to do with that mental health thing I think you know I'd always kind of thought that I was too tough or anything like that and uh anyway so I started keeping these journals and um I found it it was I didn't know what they were for it was hard to find a kind of space for for such kind of long kind of word and also to fit these kind of into into kind of like traditional songw writing I was not finding it that easy and then um I met this uh producer a guy called Adam French who I was int introduced from by a friend and I kind of got there and he was kind of had these this a different way of writing music I never even had a laptop I've always kind of written with a guitar or just written the poems and said no there's no music on that sorry mate that's it you're you're out like that and then when I was in this space and kind of challenged to write stuff um I had all all these things that I've been writing over the kind of past years in my life just kind of spilling out of me and it felt like there was just endless things that I needed to say and wanted to say and um it felt like the medium itself like taking it um away from the kind of like traditional songwriting aspect just really suited me really felt like I could say all the things I wanted to say that I could like be as helpful by saying these things I'm hoping I can be as helpful as I can to anyone else so it's um so yeah it's been quite I suppose it was revealing and like uh difficult but um I just trying was just trying to be honest like I always am really is the idea to do both projects in parallel because each one is a different way of creativity in it the both sue you so the band on the solo thing yeah I think I think so I mean I don't know I mean me and the me and the vi with trampoline we're kind of we've been gigging you know since we were 14 so we like we've been went to school together we've been in the trenches for like I don't know over 15 years so it's and when when I look at the band you know we've done like four albums or whatever we've we when I think about that I'm just think the it's a miracle that we're still friends let alone that we're in a band together so it's there is a way balancing both one one is one is like a the band's all like your live story is it and the yeah and they're very different aren't they but they're both different they're both different facets of the same thing there's no reason why you can't e both is I mean it's yeah I mean that's what I'm trying to figure out I think at the because I don't quite how it's gonna how I'm going to how I mean I got this Tour on the rest of the year kind of was all about figuring out this live set that I'm going to do with me in the Beats or or whatever and um it work very well at the gig I I thought yeah know that was my I think that was that was only my third gig like that so it's like it's it's still getting used to it it's quite open because it's quite different because if I'm doing a poem like in I'm in trampoline like I look to the side and usually Wayne's like [ __ ] sake AR up son you know what I mean yeah I saw that in the gig yeah's like when's he gonna finish his [ __ ] po but like uh with with my own stuff I'm just suppose um I can I can be a bit more Freer to talk about what things mean or what this kind of Journey of each song without worrying about a and also I suppose when people the audience come and see a trampoline show they're all expecting a bit more kind of like four to the floor kind of rock and roll kind of thing so there is less kind of sensitive moments I suppose so is is the poof going to be is going to be an album I guess soon yeah I think so I mean did you say the trampoline stuff or the Jack stuff sorry this Jack the Jack stuff yeah yeah yeah so the album so that stuff yeah there's an album very soon it's coming out I think when is it the 20th of September 20th September what's what's it to me there's a really obvious title for this album and it's going to be on his Jack Jones in it that's what I want to call it it's just perfect is it they just called it Jack Jones in the end though so I don't oh no you you missed a really good line there well what I'm gonna whenever I do the installs I'm GNA write in Brackets just before my name on his on your own they all got the title I think there's some other random titles I wanted to call it like oh there's some belters oh yeah forever in the dog house that's what I wanted to call call the album but that that' just be a poem to so um actually I'm in the last minute now she's going to cut off any second