Joe Jackson laments “no fun era”
Joe Jackson has a new album out tomorrow and earlier this week The Times published an interview with the New York and Portsmouth-based musician.
The headline, ‘We’re in the no fun era’ — Joe Jackson on smoking bans and abstinence, is a little misleading because it represents only a single paragraph in the entire article, but it’s a reminder that, two decades ago, Joe was an outspoken critic of public smoking bans.
As well as op eds for the New York Times and Daily Telegraph, he wrote an essay, The Smoking Issue (later updated as Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State), and alongside David Hockney he was one of five speakers at a fringe event organised by Forest at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.
He also wrote a letter to The Times (co-signed by the likes of Hockney, Bob Geldof and Simon Cowell), and prior to the smoking ban he gave several interviews on the subject, including two appearances on the Today programme and another on Five Live.
Understandably, Joe tired of such interviews which he found extremely frustrating owing to their abbreviated nature and frequent interruptions, but the main reason I believe he stepped back from the public debate was because he didn’t want his long career in music to be overshadowed by a reputation for political activism, à la Billy Bragg. (That, at least, is my interpretation.)
Joe Jackson at Forest’s 35th anniversary party at Boisdale of Belgravia in 2014
You can see the problem because even though there is only a fleeting reference in The Times to his well publicised opposition to smoking bans, the following represent most of the comments that were posted in response on The Times’ website:
'Smoking ban is no fun' - neither is a smoke infested room or a cancerous disease in later life brought on by smoking.
Smoking can cause a living death of vascular dementia. And there is no requirement for cancer.
Never heard of this guy but I've lost family to diseases caused by smoking and they didnt even smoke but had to work in smoke-filled rooms. They weren't having "fun" when breathless on their deathbed, decades earlier than they should've. Wanna smoke? Go outside you selfish melon.
And still, 20 years later, you'll still hear the same nonsense that the smoking ban was the death of pubs - despite the fact non-smokers like me hadn't been to a pub for years because of the tobacco fog in every bar.
There is no smoking ban. You can smoke all you want, just not in front of other people who dont want to inhale it.
The smoking ban was 20 years ago. Get a life. From being in pubs to standing at a station, I am grateful I am not breathing in cigarete smoke even after someone's lungs has filtered it.
As an ex-smoker I can assure him that smoking has absolutely nothing to do with 'fun' and everything to do with addiction, wasting serious amounts of money and potentially dying of horrible diseases.
I suspect most of those commenters are responding to the headline and haven’t read the interview. Nevertheless, given such a hostile reaction it’s hardly surprising that so few public figures want to engage in the smoking debate, and I can’t say I blame them. But equally depressing is the comment that inspired those responses - Joe’s belief that “We’re in the no fun era. Smoking bans are part of that. That’s a battle that was lost a long time ago”.
To be clear, I don’t disagree with him at all. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons why Forest no longer actively campaigns to amend the existing workplace smoking ban. As Joe says, that battle “was lost a long time ago” and there is no realistic scenario in which it will ever be reversed. Nevertheless there are still battles to be fought, and won. The generational ban is one of them (Nigel Farage, for example, has pledged to repeal it), and so too are threats to extend the smoking ban to beer gardens and other outdoor areas.
Unfortunately few if any public figures are prepared to get involved in the smoking debate today (even Hockney had been noticeably quiet of late) which is one of the reasons why the generational ban has enjoyed such a relatively easy passage.
Anyway, the new album Hope and Fury is out on April 10 and Joe will be touring the UK later in the year. There’s a further interview, in Flood magazine, here.
See also: Happy 70th birthday, Joe Jackson! (August 2024)
Making plans for Joe (July 2022)
Wednesday night at the London Palladium (April 2019)
Joe Jackson on A Billion Lives (November 2016)
Joe Jackson and the common enemy (February 2014)
Why Joe Jackson's CAMRA resignation is still relevant (August 2014)
