Music has always been a tribal thing, and the music press – Classic Pop excepted, of course – has always derived a certain sadistic pleasure from stoking animus among the tribes, arbitrarily selecting a whipping boy to be pilloried. In the 80s, at the peak of his success, Howard Jones was that whipping boy. Whether it was the feathered blond hairstyle, the synth variation on the one-man-band theme, the cheery persona or the relentless optimism of his self-help songs, he certainly seemed to get under the skin of the journalistic fraternity.
All very perplexing, really, as Jones seemed to be an inoffensive young man back then, just as he seems to be an inoffensive older man now, aged 65. The perfectly agreeable embodiment, in fact, of a practising Buddhist. “I was a vegetarian. I wasn’t a band, I was one person. I was singing songs about challenging preconceived ideas. I wasn’t into drugs. I wasn’t wearing black!” is how Jones attempts to rationalise the hostility directed at him.