I d Rather Jack

All doors are open wide/They poke around inside/My desk, my drawers my trunk/There s nothing left to hide/Some love letters are there/And an old photograph/They ve laid my poor soul bare/And all they do is laugh. Ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Funeral Tango by Jacques Brel)

And ha ha! again! Jacques Brel, that great blackhearted burlesque singer-songwriter, obviously got it wrong. Because nearly twenty years after his death, it has become increasingly apparent that the deeper that countless contemporary song-poets peer into the jagged musical outpourings of his soul, the clearer they see endless riches in relation to lyrical, structural, ideological and conceptual inspiration for their own work. And if they laugh, it is only in response to his black humour.
Even funnier is the fact that British and Irish pop at the moment could be neatly divided right down the centre with the more commercial bands like Oasis, Blur and Ash soaking up influences from 1960s icons such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach, while borderline cases like Pulp, Jack and The Divine Comedy kneel instead before the altar of Brel and his most fervent spokesperson from that era, Scott Walker. Indeed, The Dibine Comedy s latest album, Casanova is, at points, almost a pastiche of Brel, a gloriously idiosyncratic tribute to the man s lingering influence.
Likewise, Jack Lukeman & The Black Romantics Wax album is a tribute of a more obvious kind, featuring no less than nine Jacque Brel compositions, more than half of which were recorded live during the band s Brel show at Dublin s DA Club. Neil Hannon, mainman of The Divine Comedy, describes himself as Anglo-Irish, claiming this double edge gives him a natural affinity with Brel s black romanticism. Jack Lukeman, on the other hand, is Athy-born Irish, so how, and why did he hook into Brel?
Through Scott Walker, basically, he replies. I knew the Walker Brothers stuff as a kid, because my dad loved them. He also loved all the great singers like Sinatra and Como and that gave me my interest in singing. But in terms of the Walkers, I also came to them through No Regrets because Ultravox did it in the early 80s and I m very much a kid of that era, though everyone seems to slag it off now. I actually think it was a good time for songs, before rap, dance and all that took over. So I hooked into the music at that level.
Madness, drug addiction, alcoholism and guilt-ridden homo-bisexuality have been given as alleged reasons for the sense of alienation at the soul of the work of Scott Walker. Last year, during a Hot Press interview, Scott himself also suggested that for some reasons, people have a scar and other don t. And that comes through in their work.
So what of Jack Lukeman s psychological roots?
That is a question I ve asked myself, he says. And I must be honest and say I m not really aware where that darkness in my voice comes from, though people have compared the sound of my voice to the sound of Scott s voice. Sure, I ve had me heart broken several times, really kicked into the gutter. Especially back in my adolescence, when things are more intense. That s when I really discovered what music can do, how it could express that tangle of emotions.
More than anything else I really do tend to think that a musician is a magician, who can put people into whatever state of virtual reality is dictated by a song. I try to do that move people in the same way I m moved by a song. And doing something like Sons Of , I have seen people cry in the audience. Lots of times, I ve often cried too, or at least been so lost in emotion after I finish a song that it s hard to get a handle on things straight away.
I see singing as very spiritual, though religion means nothing to me, particularly coming from the 80s. The greatest pleasure in the world is the actual singing itself, which is the perfect outlet, for me, for this force inside me that I can t name, whatever it is, it really is therapeutic.
Likewise the act, or art of listening to music, which is probably the greatest blessing many of us have been given in life, Jack agrees, particularly when one s seemingly natural state is being alone.
Definitely, he says. I certainly know that when I was living alone in a bedsit in Dublin, before getting involved in this Brel thing, I d be there playing my Scott Walker records and I really would regard him as my friend , even though I ve never met the man. Scott was perfect for that time of introspection in my life, for reflection. That s when I really got into that stuff. Because even Walker Brothers songs like In My Room and Archangel are neurotic, all about some poor fucker in a small room, waiting for his girlfriend to call and save him, or whatever.
Similarly, in the case of Walker s The Plague or the much later Sleepwalker Woman , from Climate Of Hunter, the narrator could also be said to be desperately waiting for his next fix. Was this ever part of the landscape for Jack Lukeman?
All I want to say on this is that what I d like to head for, eventually, is a drug-less state of mind, he responds, balancing every syllable as though his future depended on answering this question correctly. My prime dictate, in my own life, really is that I reach a point where I can know what sustained happiness is, without drugs, without alcohol, to a great degree. And in terms of the music I would have to say that neither ever enlightened my performance. They just dull the senses.

Not so neatly shifting the focus back to the music, Jack claims that his life really turned around when he hooked up with the positively perfect band of bohemian reprobates, Serious Women, with whom he was both performing and had recorded backing vocals, on the highly recommended 1994 album, 38 SCR.
While touring with the band in Germany he met confirmed Jacques Brel devotee Ginger O Keefe, who later would become bandleader with The Black Romantics and would soon make Jack aware that Brel had recorded the original versions of songs he clearly knew better through versions by Scott Walker, such as Jackie , Port Of Amsterdam , My Death and If You Go Away all of which turn up on Jack s debut album. Lukeman also suggests that in their stage show they pulled together what is best about both Walker and Brel.
The whole idea was to bridge the gap between Walker and Brel, which is why we often end the show with Scott s Twentieth Century Man , basically because it s one of his few rock songs from those early years. Brel could be considered the Rage Against The Machine of the 60s, with all that spit and venom; whereas the stuff Scott did was more often very beautiful, mostly because of his voice. It was smooth, relatively tame, vocally, until Tilt. So our idea was to bring both together, in one show. Even within single songs.
Now that he has set on record his tribute to Brel and, maybe to a lesser extent, Scott Walker, Jack says that the next set of songs he records will probably be nearer Radiohead . His own composition on the Wax album, Fear Is The Key , is a tantalising teaser in that direction. And beyond all that, yes, he does dream of one day producing an album as startling and groundbreaking as Tilt.
Something like Tilt really is the ultimate in terms of a pop record, as far as I m concerned. It s dark, challenging, cold, metallic, but maybe that kind of stuff really can be appreciated by people like myself who grew up on The Sisters Of Mercy, Floodland, with gothic choirs, surreal lyrics. And the negativity, which, as I said, was so much a part of growing up in the eighties. But Scott takes things ten steps further into Tilland whatever the fuck that is! Yet something like Farmer In The City is so mysterious you can t help but go back to it. And I love lines like Take me with you/It s the journey of a life which means different things to me every time I listen to it, which has to be what music and art really should be all about. And The Cockfighter frightens the fuck out of me! That s why I say Tilt is an album you shouldn t listen to on your own. It s great that music can get into your soul like that, unnerve you so much.
With sell-out gigs adding to his reputation and Wax in the record stores, Jack L has much to keep him satiated between dreams of fashioning a Tilt-like masterpiece.
The best thing about all the songs on the album is that they keep changing, he says. And now that I ve got a new band not The Black Romantics we do many of these songs much differently already. But that s another thing about Brel, you can take a song he wrote thirty years ago, set it in a nineties musical background and you don t betray anything at all. Like the song My Death which could be seen as an AIDS song, and even has that line of hope in the chorus where he says Whatever is behind the door/There s nothing much to do/Angel or devil, I don t care/For in front of that door is you. That s fucking great stuff, isn t it? Even after all these years? And we ve done swing, rockabilly, heavy rock versions of his songs and they always stand up to that kind of re-interpretation. Surely that shows the vitality, and timelessness of songs created by Jacques Brel? He obviously is one of the greats. As is Scott Walker.
But I really do sometimes wonder is Brel up there, looking down at me while I m doing the act, singing his songs. Maybe even laughing at all of this!