home back to interviews	Introducing John Jowitt May 1996
	You’ve played in a lot of bands before you joined Arena. Could you name a few? Sure, how far do you want to go back? I want to go back all the way. We want to know everything about you. Oh my God. That could take a while. That’s all right, because we’ve got plenty of time. Ok, all right then. I’ve played for a lots of local bands. The first gig I played was in 1982 with a local Birmingham band. It’s was a new romantic type band at the time. Originally Duran Duran had a girl vocalist before they made it big with that other woman Simon LeBon. She was the vocalist in that band. I played for a lot of other bands, I’ll skip the details. I went to Yorkshire, to grow up. meet bands and become an adult. That all went horribly wrong and I ended up singing in a heavy metal band and playing bass in a club band. Came back to Birmingham and joined another band which was called The Cuddly Toys, which was most famous for releasing a song by David Bowie and Mark Bolan that wasn’t released by them. They had done a demo and the band had found a copy of this demo and released it as a proper song. It was a big hit in Bratislava or something.  Then I got the opportunity to play bass for David Bowie’s ex wife, who is a lovely person. Then I joined a Birmingham band called The First. The guitarist of that band is now playing for The Mission. From The First I joined Ark in 1987 who played a gig in Holland once with It Bites, and a gig in Paris. Oh, that gig in Paris [laughs]. We only played two gigs abroad. And then I left them around 1990 because they changed direction. They seemed to be doing quite well in Europe because of the type of music. They decided they wanted to go heavier. And though I have got nothing against heavy music, I thought it didn’t suit the band. Ark were great at what they did. Very English, very quirky, you know, that folky character. And when that changed I left.  Towards the end of that time Ark had three support days supporting IQ on the Are You Sitting Comfortably tour. I had kept in touch with Mike Holmes’ sister, so when Tim and Paul left, I was asked to join. When we went out to a gig once, Martin [Orford – eds.] who had been playing with Jadis said they got a problem with the bass player. And I said ‘Oh well, I’ll do it’, and we both went ‘hahahaha.’ Later he asked ‘Did you mean it, would you really do it?’ and I said ‘Of course I would.’ Eleven days later I was in doing the first Jadis album. Literally going down the motorway humming the tunes like ‘hmmmdumdedum, yes that would fit perfectly there.’ I stayed with Jadis until last year. It’s a smashing band I think, absolutely wonderful. They supported IQ at the Astoria, and it was like old times. And then of course... Arena… You can wake up now... Obviously you’ve played in a lot of bands. You mentioned you played in a heavy metal band once, but the last couple of bands you’ve played in are all prog. Is that the kind of music you enjoy making the most? I like playing with people I admire or good musicians. In between I’ve played with lots of other bands as well. For instance last year I played in a heavy metal band in Birmingham and we did a few gigs because I know the guitarist. I just love going out and play music with good musicians which really inspires you. That’s what it is all about. My first love in music was progressive rock. The first album I bought was ‘Pictures of an Exhibition’. But I love all kinds of music. IQ could have turned into a funk band quite easily. There was this toss up at the start whether they were going to be a funk band or a prog band. I think people who say ‘Oh, I don’t like that type of music’ are missing out on so much. You might say ‘I don’t like that song’ or ‘I don’t like that band’ even, but to say ‘I don’t like heavy metal’. You miss a lot of great music that way. Did you ever go to music school, or did you teach yourself how to play the bass? I taught myself. I did have some lessons when I joined IQ because they were so good. They were really good musicians, and I felt quite intimidated. But you can always learn, you always pick things up. I have a very good ear I think. I’m not classically trained in theory, although that’s something I’m getting into more now. My advantage is I think that I can come up with good bass lines fairly quickly. When someone says in the studio ‘why don’t you do something around this’ I can do it. I don’t think I’m a good musician, I just think that I’m quick. Did you ever wrote songs for bands like Jadis and IQ, or just the bass tracks? The way IQ works is that people write certain parts, certain sections. In ‘The Darkest Hour’ there is a section where Pete is singing ‘Nothing any good ever came from me’ that’s the part I wrote. Just little bits. That’s the way IQ works. Jadis is totally different. That was one of the reasons I left in the end. I wanted to get more involved in the writing, but it’s very much Gary’s band. That works well for Jadis. Gary writes the songs, and you can’t get around that. The only thing I ever wrote in Jadis was the fretless section at the end of Love Till You Need. That was in the studio, ‘We need something here, can you do that’. I wrote the fretless section and everything else grew out of that. But that was all I wrote of the twenty tracks I did with Jadis. Now you’re a member of Arena. Later today you are going to perform songs that you haven’t written [interview took place at The Tivoli, Holland, before the gig of April 5 1996 – eds.]. The same thing happened when you joined IQ. Do you listen to the albums and play what’s on there, or do you write your own new bass tracks? With IQ I stuck very much to the originals, because that’s what you would expect. When I go to see a band like Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe, if Tony Levin play would play an entirely different bass everybody would say he’s crap and yet Tony Levin has this particular bass style, and he’s so good at that style. But people would still expect to hear Chris Squire’s bass lines. I think it’s the same with IQ. You expect to hear those familiar bass lines.  With Arena there’s more room, because though the album has been released the band hasn’t really played live yet. The bass lines on the album are really good and I what I’ve tried to do is to build on those and add a bit of me to them. So they’re not exact copies. Obviously there are a lot of similarities, because my bass lines are based on what is there. The next album will have more of me on it. So you will be involved in writing the next album? Because they already have made so much progress with Pride? The next album is pretty much written. We start recording it in May. I will be involved in arrangements and bass lines and stuff. But we’ve already started talking about the album after that. I said to Mick and Clive that I wanted to be involved in writing, and they didn’t have a problem with that. And that’s another thing I find exciting about this band. It’s quality control. If I write something that isn’t very good than I expect them to say ‘No, we won’t use that’. Is Arena the one and only for you now? Do you still have time for other projects? Do you still want other projects? At this moment, Arena is a full time project. The first album has done amazingly well. Give the fact that it had little promotion. It’s probably one of the best selling albums in the genre. This will keep me busy for quite some time. Did you hear the album before they asked you to join Arena? I’d heard bits here and there. And everything I heard sounded so good. And I thought ‘Bastards, they didn’t get me involved in it’. I mean, Clive was great. He has done a very good job on the album. But I was really jealous of the fact that they’d done it without me. I did a track with Clive once on a SI compilation album, and that went pretty well I thought. We always said, we have to something together again. And when the album came out I thought ‘oh...they have done this without me’. Of course, Clive has known Cliff for years. He’s a really good bass player, and he was right for the project at that time. So I purposely didn’t hear it because I knew it was very good and I would be jealous. Do you still have time for IQ now? I think IQ are probably the most talented bunch of people I’ve ever met. But unfortunately the members in the band have got very little motivation. If you’re in a band, the band has to come first over almost anything. You can’t allow other things to get into your way. I’ve had situations with IQ where we’ve been offered a chance to play gigs in America which I had organised. We then had to change the date because one or other members of the band couldn’t do it, or didn’t want to, or was varnishing the dog, or vacuuming the cat or something. Most bands would give a limb to be able to play in America. And to be able to do something like that with IQ is so much hassle.  To me, if someone would say ‘you have to drive all the way to Moscow for your next gig, and there are going to be something like a hundred people there’, I would do it, because I love it. I will still play with them on their next album. But now with Arena, I have a chance to something I’m very proud of. Something which has a good chance of resolving my ambition, which is to make great music with wonderful musicians on a fulltime basis, and I won’t get anything in the way of that. The band members of Arena are a good package together. I haven’t been in such a positive position for ages where there are five people who are all working for the same thing, trying to push the band along. That’s why I have so much confidence that this has such a good chance for making it.  By: Michiel Koolen