Jamiroquai's Jay Kay talks ahead of Birmingham show
Space cowboy Jay Kay will return to Birmingham to headline the city’s Arena tomorrow after making a triumphant return with his band, Jamiroquai.
The renaissance-man has enjoyed a remarkable return and sold out his first live dates in over seven years within thirty seconds. They put arena shows on sale – and tickets also raced out quickly.
Fans can look forward to seeing the global electronic soul funk superstars – who have just toured South America and the Far East – play a series of hits.
Recent shows have featured Shake It On, Little L, Automaton, The Kids, Space Cowboy, Superfresh, White Knuckle Ride, Cosmic Girl, Corner of the Earth, Cloud 9, Emergency on Planet Earth, Runaway, Canned Heat, Love Foolosophy, Virtual Insanity and Supersonic.
Jamiroquai is one of the most influential British bands of the past 25 years. They have seen each one of their seven album catalogue reach the UK top 10 (three reaching number one) for a combined total of more than 30 million sales worldwide. They currently hold the Guinness Book of World Record for best-selling funk album of all time.
The band formed in 1992 and lead the acid jazz movement, along with contemporaries Brand New Heavies, James Taylor Quartet and Incognito. They feature frontman Jay Kay, Derrick McKenzie, Sola Akingbola, Rob Harris, Matt Johnson, Paul Turner and Nate Williams.
The band’s international breakthrough came during the mid-1990s with the release of their album Travelling Without Moving, which yielded the hits Virtual Insanity and Cosmic Girl.
Frontman Jay led a storied life, spinning around in fast cars, dating IT girls and partying on huge yachts. He had a well-publicised cocaine habit and also developed a taste for vodka after amassing a fortune running into the tens of millions.
Jay was delighted to return with the band’s new album, Automaton, which was a hit across Europe. He told an interviewer: “The most challenging part was actually starting up again. I didn’t know whether I particularly wanted to carry on in the business because it can be overwhelming. It’s a little bit different when you’re younger, but the whole industry has changed so dramatically now. Although you see artists who were from an era before me carrying on, they tended to have all their major stuff release long before the whole internet and social media thing ever came along. I still started at a time when you put out one single, an A- and a B-side, and then you had an album and that was really it.
“There might have been a 12-inch remix as well, but now things have changed so dramatically that you almost have four times the workload and there was no “least challenging” part to that. So it was definitely deciding to start up and debating whether it was worth it, but then again you continue to do it because you love doing it and you love creating music. I love the buzz of starting with a blank sheet of paper then seeing songs come together, especially when you see and know when they’re finished, and when you are overdoing or overcooking them, and when you feel you’ve got it right.
“The buzz of creating something from scratch and seeing that lyric you came up with in your head go onto a record, and then off to the radio and eventually you end up with 30,000-40,000 people singing that line that you thought of when you were wandering around your garden thinking, “What can I do for a chorus?” — that’s the buzz and that’s why most musicians do what they do.” Jay says the biggest change during his career has been the advent of social media, including YouTube and Spotify. The landscape has changed from what it once was, when vinyl and CD ruled the roost, rather than downloads. He’s found it bewildering to see so much change. It’s not just the change in formats, however, that has surprised him. His workload outside of just creating music has gone up drastically and that’s been by far the biggest change in the music industry. The record companies haven’t been able to keep pace with it, he reckons, and so artists have more control. The band’s audience has also changed over time. Initially, Jamiroquai fans were cool and young. The band played to student crowds across Europe, filling clubs of 150-200 people, particularly in France, the UK and Japan.
Jay is a cultural icon with Katy Perry and Pharrell fans.
