Why did Jake stop recording after 1977?

[mark sturdy]

Hello everyone – new board member here, fan of Jake since seeing the BBC4 doc a few years ago. Santa finally brought Jake In a Box and the 2CD of Live Performance this year, and gleefully ploughing through them has prompted me to sign up here and probably start asking lots of geeky questions.

I’d be interested to know anyone’s thoughts on why Jake never made another album of original material after On Again, On Again in 1977. I know he eventually lost heart and gave up performing altogether, but as far as I can gather that wasn’t till the early / mid ’90s – it seems like he was still pretty active through the rest of the ’70s and most of the ’80s. The ‘new’ material on the And Songs LP certainly doesn’t sound at all like a talent that’s drying up. So why was there never another album? Was it a simple case of his EMI contract being up, and no one else signing him? Or was it his decision in some way?

On a slight tangent, I’ve tried to come up with a list of all the circulating ‘late period’ (ie post 1977) songs. Can anyone add to the below?

One of Them
The Bull
The Remembrance
Side by Side (which I’m still yet to hear)
Tortoise
Our Dog

I guess he may or may not have written some of those earlier, but I can’t find any immediate evidence of them being performed in the EMI period.

[Paul]

Hi Mark

Welcome aboard! I don’t think any of us has a definitive answer to your question. From EMI’s point of view I would imagine that record sales for an artist they could not pigeon hole would not have been strong, although in many respects the Jake Thackray and Songs TV series and album mark a certain sort of high water mark for Jake’s public profile. As far as I can tell Jake wrote very little new material in the 1980s – I saw him several times in the first half of the decade, and heard nothing more recent than The Bull, One of Them and The Remembrance. Indeed, the only frustration about seeing him live was that the set list varied very little. I did hear in the late 80s an interview (tape now lost, sadly), done by a friend of a friend, in which Jake claimed to have an album of new material recorded, and that some people would find the content offensive. However, this may well have been complete fabrication on Jake’s part – something he said he engaged in when being interviewed. Tortoise appeared on a charity album in the mid 80s, but we don’t know when it was written. Our Dog and Tortoise became additions to the setlist towards the end of the 80s. The story he tells about Side by Side suggests that it was written long before the radio show in which it appeared. One other mystery song is Lullaby My Daddio, which survives via a poor recording of a radio broadcast; sadly, the date is unknown.

I’m sorry not to be able to provide more information. If you would like more info about Lullaby My Daddio, email me (P_A_M_Thompson [at] hotmail.com).

[mark sturdy]

Hello Paul

Thanks for the reply, that was really interesting. I can certainly see that in the heyday of punk, EMI might (misguidedly) have seen songs like On Again and To Do With You as old hat. Perhaps a case of the record business losing faith in Jake, and the man himself eventually following suit.

I didn’t know about Tortoise being recorded in the mid ’80s! Have tracked down a copy of that ‘Where Would You Rather Be Tonight’ album online though – downloading it now. Thanks for that.

The thought of a great lost late ’80s album is certainly tantalising. And even taking into account the relative likelihood that he made the whole thing up, not wholly implausible. He might not have had the support of a label at that point, but of course his act wasn’t the sort of thing that would have required a big studio budget to record. And he probably knew enough people in the biz to have access to a studio if he wanted one – eg doing Tortoise at Dave Pegg’s place. Maybe he even did other tracks at the same session as Tortoise?

Incidentally, I have your email address tucked away inside my copy of Live at the Unicorn which I bought off you when you played at the Chemic in Leeds a while back. I think I said I’d send over some venue contacts, but evidently I never got round to it. Sorry! Looks like I’ve got no excuse not to do it now…

[Paul]

‘I think I said I’d send over some venue contacts, but evidently I never got round to it. Sorry! Looks like I’ve got no excuse not to do it now.’

Thanks for owning up!

Best wishes
Paul

[Ian Burdon]

I got an email once from someone who claimed Jake gave him a tape of some home recordings of “new” material but my correspondent thought he’d lost it in a house move and didn’t reply to my follow up promptings. These may just have been material we already knew about. There are some old songs which were mentioned in concert programmes but which never made tape either as far as we know. One I would have liked to hear was “The Appalling Mr Kinell” with a chorus that apparently went ‘Kinnel, ‘Kinell… The late Ian Watson claimed Jake had sung it for him once on a car journey but that it was never properly finished.

[mark sturdy]

Mouth-watering stuff. There must be copies of stuff like that in existence somewhere… but where?

[Author]

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