Part memoir, part discourse on the art of music. . . . This is an intelligent, thoughtful look into the mind of an artist. --New York Times Book Review
Since the release of his first best-selling albumLook Sharpin 1979, Joe Jackson has forged a singular career in music through his originality as a composer and his notoriously independent stance toward music-business fashion. He has also been a famously private person, whose lack of interest in his own celebrity has been interpreted by some as aloofness. That reputation is shattered byA Cure for Gravity, Jackson's enormously funny and revealing memoir of growing up musical, from a culturally impoverished childhood in a rough English port town to the Royal Academy of Music, through London's Punk and New Wave scenes, up to the brink of pop stardom. Jackson describes his life as a teenage Beethoven fanatic; his early piano gigs for audiences of glass-throwing skinheads; and his days on the road with long-forgotten club bands. Far from a standard-issue celebrity autobiography,A Cure for Gravityis a smart, passionate book about music, the creative process, and coming of age as an artist.
Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award Finalist
Joe Jackson's internationally best-selling albums include
Look Sharp, Night and Day, and
Body and Soul. He has also composed music for film, video, and television. A graduate and now a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, he divides his time between New York City and Portsmouth, England.