Howard Jones

It was in 1983 that Howard Jones first burst upon the contemporary music scene and brought his very English song-writing and pioneering synthesizers to an unsuspecting world. Anyone who was around in the mid to late eighties will remember those high energy shows and his first two albums Humans Lib and Dream into Action. They lived in the higher reaches of the album charts in the UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia and many other countries in the 1984-86 period and the hits kept coming: New Song, What is Love?, Pearl in the Shell, Hide and Seek, (which he performed at Live Aid in 1985), Like to Get to Know You Well, Look Mama, Things Can only Get Better, Everlasting Love and the quintessential No One is To Blame, which reached No.1 in the US.

A classically trained pianist, Jones applied his technique to the early synths, particularly the Roland Juno 60, the Jupiter 8 and the Moog Prodigy. He also pioneered the classic Roland 808 drum machine and the Sequential Pro-One. In the early days, he was triggering sequencers live on stage whilst playing and singing, something that no one had done before. These days Howard still operates on the cutting edge of today's technology and has been one of the leading exponents of the Roland Fantom G8 and the Roland V-piano.