It was in 1983 that Howard Jones released his first single ‘New Song’ in the UK. The expectation was that it might sell a few thousand copies and introduce his fresh new music to an unsuspecting world. The reality was quite different. The single steadily climbed the UK chart to peak at No. 3.
Then came the second single ‘What Is Love?’ which reached No. 2 in the UK and the third single, the enigmatic ‘Hide and Seek’ which showed the spiritual side of Howard Jones’ writing. This was followed by the first album ‘Human’s Lib’ which came straight in at No. 1 in the UK in April 1984, eventually going platinum and which took the synthesiser and Howard to a new plateau. This success spread across the globe with ‘Human’s Lib’ going gold in USA, Japan, Germany, Italy and Australia.
The second album ‘Dream Into Action’ was even more successful spawning a series of hits including ‘Like To Get To Know You Well’, ‘Look Mama’, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and the classic ‘No One Is To Blame’ which reached No.1 in the U.S. singles chart and has since had over 3 million radio plays in USA. Dream Into Action went platinum in USA and lived in the US top 20 album chart for the best part of a year making Howard Jones one of the very few British artists to have comprehensively ‘broken’ America in the past 25 years. In 1986 Howard was voted Keyboard Player of the Year in Rolling Stone magazine, and in 1987 and 1989 he toured the world extensively headlining Madison Square Garden in New York , the Forum in LA and The Budokan in Tokyo. He performed 'Hide and Seek' at Live Aid in 1985 which has since been featured on the Live Aid DVD released in 2006.
There were three more albums on Warner/Elektra ‘One To One’ (1987), ‘Cross That Line’ (1988) and ‘In The Running’ (1992) all three of which were accompanied by successful world tours. The 1992 single ‘Lift Me Up’, taken from ‘In The Running’ album went top ten in USA. In 1993 the ‘Best Of Howard Jones’ was released which, together with the Howard’s other albums have seen his worldwide album sales to date exceed eight million.
He also released an album ‘Working In The Backroom’ on his own dTox label with the idea that the album would only be available at live concerts and on the Howard Jones website www.howardjones.com. This continues to be the case. In the true Howard Jones pioneering tradition, this album has never been sold in shops and never will be.
Being a classically trained piano player, Howard now decided to take a completely unexpected path and in 1996 without a synth in sight he embarked on ‘The Acoustic Tour’ which featured Howard on grand piano accompanied only by Carol Steele on percussion. This proved to be a huge success and was recorded live at the Variety Arts Theatre in Los Angeles and was later released as ‘Live Acoustic America’. This album has to rate as one of the best live albums ever recorded.
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