A gift for Joe Jackson fans has to cope with a catalogue that keeps changing size. The 1979 debut has four people on it. Will Power in 1987 has seventy-six. Rain in 2008 has three.
Twenty-one albums, forty years, and 189 musicians named in the research behind them. Nothing else in my range swings this hard.
The short version. My Joe Jackson map plots 21 albums across 40 years, from Look Sharp! in 1979 to Fool in 2019, with 189 musicians named in the research behind them. Joe Jackson is on all 21. Graham Maby reaches 15 and is the longest line beside him. The head count runs from four on the debut to seventy-six on Will Power and back down to three on Rain. Guests include Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega, Marianne Faithfull, Renée Fleming and Questlove. Available as a Giclée art print in A2 and A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
This Gift for Joe Jackson Fans Runs From Four Musicians to Seventy-Six
Joe Jackson is on every one of the twenty-one. That is the only unbroken line on the print, which is what you would expect from a solo catalogue, and it is not the interesting part.
The interesting part is the width of the stations underneath it. Look Sharp!, I'm the Man and Beat Crazy are four people each. Then the map fattens, thins, fattens again, and finishes on four.
For somebody who owns Night and Day and stopped there, most of this print is news.
Joe Jackson Discography Map
Twenty-one albums across 40 years, from a four-piece in 1979 to seventy-six people in 1987.
Explore This Art PrintOne Credit on Will Power Contains Twenty-One Violinists
Will Power in 1987 is the widest station on the map, and it nearly broke my research method. My sheet holds fifty-six separate credits for that one album.
One of those credits is not a person. It is a violin section: David Nadien as concertmaster, then Charles Libove, Barry Finclair, John Pintavalle, Jan Mullen, Marti Sweet and fifteen more, all sitting in a single entry because that is how the sleeve prints them.
Expand it and the real head count is seventy-six. The album released eight years earlier has four.
That ratio is the design question this map turned on. A four-piece band and a symphony orchestra cannot be drawn at the same weight without the orchestra swallowing the print, and taking with it the thing most people actually want to follow, which is Graham Maby's bass line running the length of it.
One of Those Violinists Was Marin Alsop
Reading down that section I stopped at a name. Marin Alsop is now among the best known conductors working, and was the first woman to lead a major American orchestra when she took the Baltimore Symphony in 2007.
The sleeve gives nothing but the name, so I went and checked the dates. She took a master's in violin from Juilliard in 1978, spent the best part of a decade freelancing in New York and building up recording session work, and was concertmaster on a Philip Glass session in 1983.
A New York orchestral date in 1987 sits squarely inside that window. I cannot prove it from the sleeve alone, but every detail lines up, and it is the sort of thing you only find by reading all fifty-six credits instead of the first six.
Graham Maby Misses Six Albums, and Five Are the Ones Without Songs
Graham Maby is on fifteen of the twenty-one, from 1979 straight through to 2019. Forty years of the same bass player is something almost nothing else in my range can match.
His line breaks six times, and five of the breaks land in the same place: Will Power (orchestral), Tucker (a film score), Heaven & Hell (a song cycle), Symphony No. 1, and The Duke (an album of Ellington covers).
Those are not fallings-out. They are the records where Jackson stopped writing pop songs and the bass chair went to a specialist. The sixth gap is Big World in 1986, where Rick Ford had the job.
On a map that reads instantly. Wherever Maby's line stops, Jackson has gone somewhere else.
Volume 4 Is the Fourth Album by a Band That Stopped Making Them in 1980
The first three stations are the same four men: Jackson, Gary Sanford on guitar, Graham Maby on bass, David Houghton on drums. After Beat Crazy in 1980 that band stops.
Sanford's line and Houghton's line then run dead across the middle of the print for twenty-three years, past the orchestras and the film scores and the song cycle, and start again at Volume 4 in 2003 with exactly the same four people.
The title is not a joke. It is the fourth album by that band. Five years later Rain drops Sanford and becomes the narrowest station on the whole print at three.
On Heaven and Hell the Credits Are a Cast List
Heaven & Hell in 1997 is a song cycle built on the seven deadly sins, and the sleeve does not credit singers. It credits parts.
Dawn Upshaw is the voice of Angel, and also of Forgetfulness. Suzanne Vega is the voice of Fallen Angel. Joy Askew is the voice of Conscience. Jackson himself is the voice of Soul in Torment, and also Cynicism, and also Greed.
Twenty-nine people stand at that station, including Jared Crawford, credited with plastic buckets on Times Square.
A Song Called Right Has One Drummer in Each Speaker
On the same album there is a track called "Right" with two drummers on it. Dan Hickey is credited as drums (left). Kenny Aronoff is credited as drums (right).
Not two drummers taking a track each, which happens often enough. Two drummers playing the same track, one in each channel.
Aronoff has exactly one station on this entire map and that is it. Hickey has two.
Fast Forward Was Four Cities and Four Different Bands
Fast Forward in 2015 arrived as four EPs recorded in New York, Amsterdam, Berlin and New Orleans, with a different band in each. My sheet lists twenty-six names for it.
Four bass players: Graham Maby, Aram Kersbergen, Greg Cohen and Robert Mercurio. Four drummers: Stefan Kruger, Brian Blade, Earl Harvin and Stanton Moore. Bill Frisell plays guitar on it.
Moore, Mercurio and Jeffrey Raines are three quarters of Galactic, so the New Orleans session arrives as a unit. It is the only station on the map where four separate bands share one album.
Ten Visitors From Outside the Band
Forty years of changing direction brings in a guest list that does not sit together anywhere else in my range.
| Guest | Album | On the map for |
|---|---|---|
| Iggy Pop | The Duke (2012) | Vocals on "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" |
| Suzanne Vega | Heaven & Hell (1997) | Credited as the voice of Fallen Angel, not as a singer |
| Renée Fleming | Night Music (1994) | The opera soprano, guest vocal on "Lullaby" |
| Máire Brennan | Night Music (1994) | Clannad, on "The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy" |
| Marianne Faithfull | Night and Day II (2000) | Vocals |
| Questlove | The Duke (2012) | The Roots, drums on six of the tracks |
| Christian McBride | The Duke (2012) | Bass and acoustic bass across five tracks |
| Steve Vai | Symphony No. 1 (1999), The Duke (2012) | Two stations, thirteen years apart |
| Sharon Jones | The Duke (2012) | Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, vocals on one track |
| Ellen Foley | Body and Soul (1984) | Backing vocals, six years after the Meat Loaf duet |
Iggy Pop and Renée Fleming on the same print is the pairing I would put in front of anybody who thinks they already know this catalogue.
At A2 the Orchestra Is a Block, at A1 It Is Names
The A2 at 420 x 594mm (18 x 24 in) carries all twenty-one stations and reads the shape clearly: the tight quartet at either end, the swelling through the middle. It starts at £42.00.
The A1 at 594 x 841mm (24 x 36 in) earns its place on this map more than on most. Will Power and Heaven & Hell are the two dense points, and at the larger size the string players read as names rather than as a solid mass.
Both come unframed if they would rather choose a frame themselves, or framed and ready to hang. Every print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper, textured matte, archival and acid-free, with the full detail on the print and frame specification page.
Four Answers, Including the One About Will Power
Does it include the jazz and classical albums?
All of them. Will Power, Heaven & Hell, Symphony No. 1 and The Duke all have stations, alongside the new wave records and the film scores. Twenty-one in total, from 1979 to 2019.
Is Graham Maby on all of them?
Fifteen of the twenty-one, which is the longest line on the print after Jackson's own. His gaps fall on the orchestral and jazz records rather than anywhere you might expect.
How much of the Will Power orchestra can you actually read?
It is the densest point on the print by a distance, since the sleeve prints twenty-one violinists in a single credit and there are fifty-six credits in all. If you are buying for somebody who will want to read that section rather than just see it, go to A1.
Does it show who played what on each track?
No. Each line tells you which albums that musician appears on. Track-level roles appear only on my Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup album map.
Sue Hadjopoulos, Iggy Pop and Marianne Faithfull All Point Somewhere Else
Three names on this print turn up in my research for other maps in the range, and I found all three through the credits rather than the other way round.
Sue Hadjopoulos plays percussion on eight Joe Jackson albums between 1982 and 2012, and she appears again on the Simple Minds map. Iggy Pop sings on The Duke and has a station on the David Bowie map. Marianne Faithfull sings on Night and Day II and appears on the Rolling Stones map.
If you want the neighbours rather than the credits, the Squeeze map covers the same English songwriting shelf from the same years, and the Steely Dan map is the other print in my range where the session players are the whole story.
The full range sits in the music art print collection. If you came here for the gift rather than the research, the Joe Jackson discography map is the print itself, in A2 or A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
