MAD ABOUT THE BOY - INTERVIEW: JAMIE CULLUM

At the age of 24, jamie cullum has become the biggest-selling british jazz artist ever, with his new album twenty something set to chalk up one million sales and his shows selling out on both sides of the pond. here, he talks about fame, the glories of analog and of course korg?

Jamie Cullum is standing on a garish pink stage, hammering out a fearsome drum
'n' bass beat on a piano lid and grinning like a man possessed. It's late Saturday morning at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith and the 24-year-old is whooping it up for the television audience on ITV1's teen pop format, CD:UK. Standing to his immediate right is the show's presenter Cat Deeley, smiling intently and clearly impressed by the antics of the man she has just described as 'the heart-throb of British jazz'.
Twenty minutes later, Jamie is milling around in the teeming backstage hospitality area, pondering the contradictions of sharing the bill with the likes of Atomic Kitten, Peter Andre and Usher.
'Yeah, it is weird isn't it?' he grins. 'It's not something I ever thought I'd be a part of. Obviously, it's great and it's a dream come true in a way but I still can't get used to it. It's like someone is going to come along at any minute, spot you and say 'Oi, what the hell's he doing up there'.'

EARLY YEARS
Given his musical background it's not such an unreasonable question. After all, jazz singer-songwriters are not exactly prevalent on primetime youth television shows. But it's a reminder of his broad appeal which spans genres and generations, and which has seen the Wiltshire-bred pianist catapulted to stratospheric heights.
Dubbed the 'jazz Beckham', Jamie Cullum has become the biggest-selling British jazz artist ever, signing to jazz giant Verve/Universal for a reported £1 million. The album has already sold 650,000 copies in the UK and is expected to top the million mark by the end of the year.
His rise has been meteoric. Two years ago, he was a student at Reading University studying English literature and film, playing around the local jazz circuits while financing and recording his first album Jamie Cullum Trio - Heard It All Before. Then he received an email that transformed his fortunes. Bath-based jazz singer-songwriter Clare Teal had heard his album and was making it her personal mission to bring him to the attention of legendary producer Alan Bates.
Bates snapped him up within weeks. Appearances at prestigious venues such as Ronnie Scott's followed and when Michael Parkinson began championing Jamie after hearing his second album Pointless Nostalgic, the big labels started to move in. Since then, he's never looked back - sold-out shows, astral record sales, an acclaimed duet with Katie Melua at the BRITs and even a performance at the Queen's birthday party at St James's Palace. Not bad for a bloke who used to play weddings.

HOME RECORDING
His third and latest album Twenty Something has been hurtling up the charts on both sides of the Atlantic with Cullum selling out shows from Shepherd's Bush to San Francisco. He has written much of the material himself, along with older brother Ben, so he's well on the way to becoming a very wealthy man indeed.
Despite all the trappings, his passion is still music and like many successful touring artists, he has concerns about the lack of time available to write and record new material. Which is one reason why he's currently in the process of putting together a home studio.
'Well, it's primarily for songwriting purposes,' he says. 'Obviously, it's a great way to see if a new song is working by putting a few bars down and then going back to try it with other instruments. I'll also be using it to demo tracks at home and to practice because I'm trying to play bass and drums too. But it's a problem finding the time and the gear that will work best for me. I've had an eight-track digital recorder for ages so I'll stick to that for now, pack it up with synths and get some good microphones in.'
One piece of gear Jamie has already decided on is a Korg Triton, which he will use in his studio and take on tour to help him write.
'Part of my thing is you have to be able to write anywhere at anytime and I love the idea of having everything you need in one unit without having to load up and configure loads of things. I know the Triton is a great workstation and I love the Korg sounds. I've always loved the Korg sounds. So it will be the perfect marriage between those great sounds and a nice working environment.'

MUSICAL MENTOR
Central to Jamie's success is his brother Ben, a songwriter, programmer and producer who has just released a dance-based album entitled Sunhatch (www.sunhatch.com). Ben wrote the tracks These Are The Days and It's About Time on Twenty Something. Much of the writing and demoing is done in his west London studio and he has been a major influence on Jamie's career. It was Ben who first got an electric guitar at the age of 13, and whose love of bands such as Nirvana proved such an influence on Jamie.
By their mid-teens, both brothers had become accomplished rock guitarists, mastering power riffs and screeching lead breaks, and playing with a number of rock bands around their Wiltshire home.
Strangely, Cullum junior showed little aptitude for the piano, which he started playing at the age of eight. For starters, he hated practising, never knew what key he was in, didn't understand theory, failed Grade Four and by the age of 11 he'd given up.

But the electric guitar had a major impact. 'All I wanted to do was play Eddie Van Halen's solo in Thriller,' he recalls. Not the kind of musical tastes you might expect from the brave new hope of British jazz. However, as he points out, his musical tastes have always been eclectic, with rock, drum 'n' bass and hip-hop all exerting a strong influence.

ECLECTIC TASTES
'A lot of people are genuinely surprised when they find out I grew up playing in rock bands,' he says, 'but I'd worn out my Nirvana Nevermind album way before I'd even heard of Cole Porter. I mean, I was in Bristol later when the whole Roni Size thing was getting big. I was involved in hip-hop and drum 'n' bass kind of bands, and my music collection is extremely varied. Only about a third of it is jazz. The rest is dance, rock and classical.'
It was while Jamie was listening to Roni Size and Portishead that he started moving towards jazz, after unearthing Oscar Peterson and Miles Davis albums in his parents? record collection. This rekindled his interest in the piano and while playing around the Wiltshire jazz circuit, he was soaking up a range of musical influences. His eclectic tastes are in evidence on Twenty Something. As well as including classics such as I Get A Kick Out Of You and tracks by Jamie and Ben, it features covers of You Should Have Come Over by Jeff Buckley and The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix.

ANALOG RECORDING
The album was recorded entirely on analog, a natural decision given the choice of instruments reckons Jamie. 'I'm not a technophobe. I love working with all kinds of software synths, but it was all acoustic instruments on this album and they sound great on analog equipment. We also wanted a live feel so doing it on analog gives you a different kind of philosophy,' he says.
As a result, all the tracks were laid down in two or three takes with minimal overdubs. Technology may have resulted in boundless sonic opportunities says Jamie, but purity of performance is still the key.
'The real clever people are stripping it right back down, even if that's just on a workstation or a little home studio setup. And they're making it about the songs and about simplicity again,' he says.
Since signing to Verve/Universal, Jamie's schedule has been a whirl of touring, and he has little time available to write at the piano. As a result, he's tended to turn to other instruments.

NEW SOUNDS
'I've been getting into some old synths of late and I bought myself a microKORG recently. I've been playing with that at home and just enjoying it and using it for inspiration purposes really. I bought it for two reasons - because it was fun and cool and secondly to take on tour because it takes batteries. So I play it on tour and just muck about with it. It's really helped me out with a few ideas recently as well. It's great little machine.'
Jamie has no doubt which sounds inspire him on the microKORG.
'The industrial squelchy ones,' he says. 'Also, there was one night on the tour bus when I plugged it into the stereo. There's a great function where you just hold down one key and get these great percussive sounds. You can play about with all the resonators and filters and get some amazing effects. Yeah, we were having our own little house moment on the bus that night,' he laughs.

CROSSOVER MARKET
In an era where jazz, opera and classical artists are plucked from obscurity and thrust out into the burgeoning pop crossover market, it's tempting to assume that Jamie Cullum's success owes as much to industry savvy as it does to his talent. But cynics are missing a vital point. Way before marketing bods got their paws on him, Jamie was creating quite a stir in jazz circles. His self-financed first album was selling like hotcakes for a tenner a time at his gigs and he'd paid his dues playing over a thousand dates, earning the respect of seasoned jazz players along the way. That said, you can't help wondering what jazz purists make of his crossover into the pop market.
'Well, to be honest, that side of it doesn't concern me because anyone can see it's a good thing to do - to get the music out a bit more into the mainstream. The only thing I think the jazz community might be wary of is the fact that I'm being championed as hardcore jazz, as are Norah Jones and Katie Melua. And of course, we're not really. We are all from a jazz place but what I'm playing on television is not going to be hardcore bebop.?

U.S. BOUND
In the backstage area of the CD:UK set, as the hordes of pop stars, PRs, managers and general hangers-on slowly begin to disperse, Jamie and his band - bass player Geoff Gascoyne and drummer Sebastiaan de Krom - prepare to record some tracks for a segment on next week's show. Occasions such as these are one of the most rewarding aspects of his success says Jamie.
'Just getting the chance to play a lot is great,' he says enthusiastically, 'and feeling as though you're changing things. I mean, we're about to do this thing on CD:UK and we're playing live - piano, bass and drums. The reason we couldn't just do this before is because they're not used to coping with live instruments. So it's really nice to feel that you're doing something a little different.'
After that, it's a welter of press interviews, then UK and European dates before heading off to the US where venues from Austin to Hollywood are already sold out. When asked how it feels to be Britain's biggest ever jazz artist taking the music back to its roots, he laughs.
'Well, I mean hopefully we're taking it back with a kind of major twist. I always point out that in no way does our music sound harmonically, melodically or rhythmically like the great jazz masters. But what I'm doing is using my Nirvana and guitar music and dance music stuff and just
trying to sound like a 24-year-old playing jazz in the 21st century. As opposed to being a 24-year-old trying to sound like a 50-year-old who really wishes he'd been born in the Fifties. And for me, this is new music that I'm still just discovering.'
And as for the direction of his own music in the future? 'Oh, that's easy,' he grins, 'the only way it's going to go is better.'