Howard Jones said this past weekend he is looking forward for to an "exciting" year that will include a tour that will bring him back to Canada.
The English singer, who turns 68 in February, is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his debut single, “New Song," In addition to a tour, Jones said he is working on a fan-based book (“More details to follow as 2023 unfolds,” he wrote in a Facebook message.)
“It gives me great encouragement to know you have stuck with me for 4 decades!” Jones wrote.
In Canada, Jones found success not only with “New Song” but the follow-ups “Things Can Only Get Better” and “No One Is to Blame” (which featured Phil Collins on drums).
There is another reason Canada holds a special place in his heart: Jones was nine years old when his father John brought the family to Canada and settled in Ottawa's western suburb of Nepean.
“Dad was capable of making big life changing decisions and carrying them through,” Jones said at his father’s funeral in 2013. “He lead us to emigrate to Canada and return... not once but twice.”
In interviews, Jones has credited Canadian radio for sparking his passion for music. “I got this fantastic mix of hearing all the American music and then also all the English music, because Canada was sat right in the middle culturally,” he told Music Life in 2018. “For me I was getting this amazing blend of music and I was obsessed with listening to the radio, and that’s where I have always got my music from.”
Howard Jones in his Grade 9 yearbook at Confederation High School (left) and a flyer for the first concert he attended.
Jones was a student at now-defunct Confederation High School when his parents decided to return to the UK.
“I was so sad to leave. I can’t tell you how upset I was,” Jones remembered. “I was heartbroken to leave. My parents wanted to move back so I had to go. But I have always retained that connection and affection for Canada.”
Jones has repeatedly mentioned that he attended his first concert in Ottawa “at an ice hockey place” in 1968. “It was the Troggs, the 1910 Fruitgum Company and The Who,” he told the Peterborough Examiner in 2018. He told The Music Express that the line-up was “The Who with The Troggs, 1910 Fruitgum Company and Five Man Electrical Band – all on the same bill – it was just mind blowing.”
In fact, neither the Five Man Electrical Band (who were known as The Staccatos until 1969) nor the 1910 Fruitgum Company were part of the show at the Ottawa Civic Centre on July 16, 1968 – the support acts were the Ohio Express and local band 5D.
“I was 14 and it was the attraction of The Who that got me there,” Jones said in a 1984 fan newsletter, Risk. (In fact, he was 13.)
Jones has also said that he joined his first band while in Ottawa – which has been widely misidentified as Warrior, a band Jones actually founded when he was back in England.