Six months after opening for Curved Air, Eddie Jobson was drafted into the band. In an article from Prog 13, we chart a career that’s seen him ricochet through Roxy Music, Jethro Tull and cut a path uniquely his own.

Words: Sid Smith

By his own admission, Eddie Jobson is a detail-oriented kind of bloke and always has been. As a 16-year-old, with a picture of Curved Air on his bedroom wall, he’d dissect Daryl Way’s violin parts, listening to the albums time and again in order to get every note exactly right. Exactly right.

“Frank Zappa just grabbed me by the arm and said, ‘I want you onstage tonight.’ And that was it.”

Eddie Jobson

Like every kid that’s ever played along to the albums of their favourite band, he harboured thoughts of what it’d be like to actually be on a stage with his heroes. But unlike nearly every other kid, Jobson did just that. He’d perfected Daryl’s signature solo piece, Vivaldi, and not just the brief version that appears on their 1971 debut Airconditioning, but the live version that often extended into a rigorous 10-minute virtuoso performance. Jobson had it all under his fingers and would pull off the solo note for note as a member of Fat Grapple, the Newcastle-based band that acted as support whenever Curved Air came north.

Jobson, onstage in Japan with UK, 1979.

PRESS/EDDIE JOBSON

“We were opening for them at Redcar Jazz Club,” Jobson recalls, “and the band were still driving up to the gig from London and so I asked their roadies if I could play Daryl’s violin in the soundcheck. So, I got up onstage and played Vivaldi.”

Ten minutes later, a slightly gobsmacked Curved Air crew had the levels they needed and Eddie was as pleased as punch to have gotten that close to his idols. Yet he was about to get much closer than he’d bargained for. “When the band arrived from London they caught wind about me playing in the soundcheck and wanted to meet me in their dressing room. I walked in and the whole group were standing there in stage clothes ready to go on.” Eddie still gasps in awe as he recounts the tale. “These were my heroes remember, and everybody was right there in this little room in front of me, and there I was, 16 years old with Daryl Way handing me his violin and saying, ‘I hear you play Vivaldi.’ So with the band standing two or three feet in front of me I played it. They started to laugh, though, because I was also playing the echo parts - I’d not realised that these were a special effect and so I’d learnt to play all the repeated notes myself, which made it even harder, I suppose.”