Simon Jacobs very kindly took time out from his hectic promotion schedule to meet me for dinner on Tuesday. Simon’s new single, Sore, came out three days later – today at the time of writing.
You can hear the song and watch the vid on the embedded YouTube below.
Once you decide that you want to own Sore, you can buy it at all the usual places or, to save yourself a few pence, directly from Simon’s site – click here:
The first thing I feel bound to say about our evening on Tuesday is that the song Sore is most certainly not the story of Simon’s evening with me. Neither of us drank excessively, although we did share a bottle of rather jolly Alsatian Riesling, nor did we dance on any tables in a shirtless stylee.
Of course, what Simon did after we parted company on Holland Park Avenue is a matter solely for him, but I can report that the song and video were already in the can by Tuesday, so if Simon’s lyric is reportage, it is reportage of some earlier evening. Come to think of it, it could be reportage of a great many evenings at Keele “back in the day”. but that is an entirely different matter.
Anyway, we dined at the Ladbroke Arms, which had impressed me when I met Kristof there for a drink just before Christmas. I had resolved then to try the food some day soon – so when Simon suggested that I find a gastro-pub near me for our meet up this time, it seemed an ideal choice.
The staff took my request for a relatively quiet, corner table literally, so we were in the snug back area in the corner, which actually is a nice quiet spot for a chat.
Simon and I discussed all manner of things, but clearly at the forefront of Simon’s mind was his music career, past and present.
“When I was very young, I briefly joined the Jackson 5”, said Simon.
Now I have known Simon since we were both 15 or so and this was the first I had heard of this matter.
“I know it sounds strange,” said Simon, “because my name isn’t Jackson…”
“…also strange because I don’t recall one of the Jackson 5 being named Simon,” I chimed in, somewhat suspiciously.
“OK, name them all then,” said Simon, confidently.
“Michael, obviously”, I said tentatively, “Tito, Marlon…um…Jermaine…um…um…”
…”and Simon”, said Simon, who then embarked on quite a long story – 45 seconds to a minute – more than my full attention span anyhow – in which I thought he explained that, as a nipper, he imagined himself to have been asked to join his heroes in the Jackson 5 and managed to convince some naive fellow nippers in the park that Simon was now a Jackson.
“It is morally reprehensible to lie about one’s singing career”, I thought quietly to myself, “but if merely a pre-teen fantasy lived out in the park one day, I suppose it is just about forgivable after all these years”.
But when Simon sent me a kind note the following day, he included this factoid:
PS: Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, Simon, Michael… and when Jermaine stayed with Motown and the rest of us went to CBS, little brother Randy joined… it’s all on Wikipedia…
So is it true? Was Simon really a member of the Jackson 5 back then? Or was Simon guilty of generating a bit of early 1970s fake news, which for some reason (presumably to bolster his current musical career) Simon still seeks to perpetuate?
I decided that I would have to investigate this matter for myself.
My first ground for suspicion was that Simon’s surname is Jacobs, not Jackson, so how could Simon Jacobs possibly be “a Jackson”?
Well, actually, Wikipedia puts that matter into clear perspective. The original line up, known as The Jackson Brothers, included “childhood buddies Reynaud Jones and Milford Hite playing keyboards and drums, respectively”.
OK, so it was not unprecedented for a non-Jackson to join the Jacksons. But the Wikipedia entry for that group clearly mentions a brother named Jackie – the one whose name had slipped my mind (and presumably Simon’s too) – who was in the Jackson 5 throughout. So could the Jackson 5 ever have comprised six people?
That’s not quite as daft an idea as it sounds – we all know about the lesser-known fifth Beatle and the lesser-known fourth and fifth Marx Brothers. But the name “Jackson 5” does seem, at least to me, to have a cardinal-numeric requirement to it. When Jermaine left, Randy stepped in to keep the arithmetic pure to the eponymous value “5”.
Yet, even though I could find no textual evidence that the Jackson 5 sometimes exceeded five people, I did find, also through Wikipedia, the following fascinating piece of photographic evidence:
So perhaps Simon really was in the Jackson 5 at one time. I must say that, by the time I got to Wikipedia, all mentions of Simon were omitted from the Jackson 5 entry, but perhaps that is simply some sort of spoiling tactic by Simon’s competitors, who know he has a single coming out today.
So does Simon sound like a former member of the Jackson 5? Does Simon look like a former member of the Jackson 5? I am hopeless at judging these things and am open-minded, so I’m sitting well and truly on the fence for this one.
You, dear reader, should judge for yourself, by listening to Simon’s new single, watching the video and possibly then buying the single, e.g. directly from Simon’s site – click here:
Anyway, as usual, it had been a fun evening chewing the fat with Simon. Big tick in the box for the Ladbroke Arms food and service too.
And to reiterate, I was not sore the next morning…at least not until after I had played two hours of tennis from 8:00 a.m. straight through to 10:00. Then I was very sore.