A Whiter Shade of Pale

“White Guy at the Apollo” jokes were rampant Tuesday night with Joe Jackson headlining the famed Harlem venue, but it was Jackson himself who took the cake, covering a song by 1970s spandex-flashing, Eurovision Song Contest sovereigns ABBA.

“I guarantee you this is the whitest thing ever played at the Apollo,” Jackson declared triumphantly, before launching into “Knowing Me, Knowing You,” a hit single in 1977 when he was still in the band Edwards Bear and was yet to establish his eclectic New Wave/jazz blend that over the years has incorporated rock, pop, and R&B (and on this surprising cover, even calypso). With a high-energy performance, Jackson spanned thirty years of fame and loneliness, from New York to New Orleans, in a set marked simply by extraordinary musicianship.

It only took seven songs to bring the fervent audience to its feet, which the band did during “On Your Radio,” a song Jackson called Jurassic-era, either due to its approaching 30th anniversary, or possibly as a swipe at the state of radio today. “At least he didn’t sing ‘Sunday Papers,’” I thought, “that would be positively Triassic.” But when you’ve been around and prolific for as long as Jackson has, the different phases of your career must begin to seem like eons. And with the showmanship on display that night, you’d think the last three decades had been one long wait to make his Apollo debut.

Things kicked off with “Steppin’ Out,” setting the New York theme with a song released as he was making the city his new home in 1982. In the years that followed that top ten hit, Jackson’s success has often been contrasted by a desire for personal anonymity, and the next two songs confronted this longing pointedly. After “Invisible Man,” the lead single from the new album Rain in which he yearns for an invincibility to the pressures of fame, Jackson segued into “Too Tough,” a more personal proclamation of solitude:

“I know you think that I protest too much / I’m like a Diva with the tragic touch / But if I wanna hide from the pouring sun / It has to be alright”

At the end of the song, Jackson melodramatically shielded his eyes as he looked out at the crowd, before having the house turn the glaring spotlight away from the stage and onto his audience. Now at ease, he confided, “I never thought I could play here.”

Jackson’s delight at finally playing the venue is understandable given that he lived here for 20 years, mostly during the theater’s 1980s renaissance. He departed in a huff in 2003, not for the usual (and forgivable) 9/11 reasons, but in protest of the city’s smoking ban, a movement that Jackson has actively campaigned in essay and song. He now lives in Berlin, where there is no smoking ban. Appropriately, after the doomsday satire “Cancer” from Night and Day, he provided the antidote by detailing the exploits of a hedonistic immortal in “King Pleasure Time.”

Suffice to say, the songs on Rain do not elude Jackson’s trademark sharp wit, but there is plenty of romance and loneliness to go round; he closed the set with “A Place in the Rain,” which he called “angry, sad, funny, romantic,” and is startlingly akin structurally to the W.H. Auden poem “Funeral Blues.” During “Solo (So Low),” a song about being alone, he fittingly ordered his band mates off stage to perform unaccompanied.

His band on the road and on Rain consists of bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, original members of the Joe Jackson Band with whom Jackson reunited in 2004 for Volume 4. Paying tribute to cocktails and New Orleans on “Dirty Martini,” the trio appeared to have the most fun, with Maby dancing round to press his cheek against Houghton’s as they shared a mic for the echo refrain, while the drummer awkwardly tried to keep rhythm.

At the end of the day though, the city that got the most love was the one we were in, with “The Uptown Train” and “Chinatown” played back to back. Even sans ashtrays and nicotine-stained ceilings, Joe Jackson still hearts New York.

–Julia Clarke

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment





Leave a comment

Name (required)

E-mail (required)

URI

Your Comment