I started this interview by apologising for dialling in late, having not felt ready to try Jim Bob’s number until the outro to the title track of new LP, Thanks for Reaching Out faded out following my latest listen through. And it’s that kind of album. Best served in full.

It’s another winner, the former Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine frontman and long-since established singer-songwriter carrying on where he left off with 2020’s rightly acclaimed Pop Up Jim Bob and 2021’s Who Do We Hate Today, having crafted a quality modern-day trilogy.

James Neil Morrison has been making records under his own steam beyond his successful spell with Les ‘Fruitbat’ Carter since the turn of the century, that pair having initially joined forces after an earlier assault on indie stardom with Jamie Wednesday between 1984/87 (also featuring BOB/One Eyed Wayne drummer Dean Leggett), a dozen top-40 singles and seven top-40 LPs then scored between 1991 and 1995, including a No.1 with 1992 – The Love Album.

They toured the world and even headlined Glastonbury Festival (in 1992), breaking up five years later, returning a decade later for a series of huge, sell-out shows, then ending it again in 2014. Not as if that stops us from asking about that stage of his career of course. 

Jim’s latest press release suggests he’s ‘one oil painting exhibition short of being Britain’s greatest living renaissance man’, and away from Carter USM, he’s released 12 solo albums, written songs for Ian Dury and a Barbican production of Mark Ravenhill’s Dick Whittington & His Cat. He also made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in Gutted, A Revenger’s Musical in 2010, playing a washed-up wedding singer and the ghost of Helen George from Call the Midwife’s fictional dad. Naturally.
 
He’s an accomplished author too, with six novels published – Storage Stories, Driving Jarvis Ham, The Extra Ordinary Life of Frank Derrick, Age 81, Frank Derrick’s Holiday of a Lifetime, A Godawful Small Affair and Harvey King Unboxes His Family. As for his memoirs, Goodnight Jim Bob – On the Road With Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and sequel Jim Bob from Carter, they were both critical and commercial successes.
 
But now he’s focusing on music again, and when his manager, Marc Ollington, heard his new album, he messaged Jim, ‘I bet this is how Tony Defries felt when Bowie sent him Ziggy Stardust.’ That said, 10 minutes later he sent another message: ‘Make sure you don’t muck it up in the studio’. Or words to that effect. 
 
Thankfully Jim Bob didn’t muck it up, and Thanks for Reaching Out comprises 38 minutes of pop, punk, moving ballads, and rousing numbers, proving ‘more topical than an episode of Newsnight’, its subject matter including songs about Putin (‘The Day of Reckoning’), the Taliban (‘This is End Times’) and whoever ‘Billionaire in Space’ might be about. I wonder.

It’s certainly not all doom and gloom though, ‘Sebastian’s Gone On A Ridelaong’ a ‘hilarious psychobilly romp’ and the pre-coronation written ‘The Prince of Wales’ bringing up the rear ‘like a pub lock-in’ and ‘Bowie’s ‘Kooks’ for older people.’
 
Recorded with the same band as his previous LPs – Jim (vocals, guitars, synths) joined by Ben Murray (drums), Jen Macro (guitars), Lindsey Scott (bass), Chris Thorpe-Tracey (piano), and Jon Clayton (organ, synths, and much more); everyone bar Jon joins in with the backing vocals and handclaps, and there are also contributions from esteemed go-to session brass player and recent WriteWyattUK interviewee Terry Edwards and violinist Kate Arnold.

And as Jim himself puts it, “When I listen to this record, I get flavours of Buzzcocks and Dexys, with notes of Teardrop Explodes and Slade. It’s big and bold, bright and crispy, earthy and buttery, with a bouquet of barbed wire and an aftertaste of your life somehow never ever quite being the same again.” 

Well, what’s not to love there? And talking of influences – intentional or otherwise – the title track that opens the album reminds me – at least song structure-wise – of a certain Boomtown Rats No.1, albeit delivered in Mott the Hoople fashion, to the point that maybe he could have called it (by way of a response to Bob Geldof), ‘I Do Like Mondays’.

“I didn’t notice that when we were doing it, but we also did some cover versions for the {additional} CD, and ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ was one of those we were going to do. If we had, that would have been a giveaway, wouldn’t it! But we didn’t have enough time.”

I hadn’t got as far as seven-track bonus CD, This Is My Mixtape when we spoke (I have since, and it’s great). But I must say, ‘mixtape’ sounds very American. I always said ‘compilation’ when I was doing my own C90 cassettes back in the day. Am I being a snob?

“I don’t know. What do I say? I don’t think I ever said ‘mixtape’. I would have said compilation, I think. Yeah… and it’s definitely not a playlist!”

In this case, the source is the third verse of that title track, Jim Bob singing,

‘This is my mixtape, my romantic gesture,

A dozen red roses left on your doorstep

This is my balcony scene, my drunken tattoo

My heart-shaped balloon, my graffiti on a factory wall’

Is that Jim Bob style irony in the same way that the LP title uses the dreaded term that lazy PR-type people use in addressing me in unsolicited emails? Well, we’ll get on to that.

But first, I see the bonus CD – alongside further inspired takes on tracks by Tubeway Army, The Damned, Elton John, The Psychedelic Furs, Squeeze, and Dexys Midnight Runners – includes a cover of Steve Harley’s ‘Sebastian’. And that’s rather timely, Steve already on my mind following our most recent interview, which gave me the excuse to revisit his latest LP, Uncovered, where he does his own interpretations of various songs. In fact, perhaps there could be an Uncovered Volume II, including a Carter USM or Jim Bob cover.

As it was, before I saw the track listing for Jim’s latest ‘mixtape’, I was thinking how song three of the main album, ‘Bernadette (Hasn’t Found Anyone Yet)’ reminded me of Cockney Rebel’s ’Judy Teen’. It carries a similar vibe, I suggested.

“Wow, yeah, and ‘Bernadette’ was the one that, when we were mixing it, it started to sound like Slade… so we tried to make it sound more like Slade rather than think, ‘How can we disguise this?’ The thing is, when I do things like that, what you end up with doesn’t sound like the thing you think it sounded like!”

He’d previously revealed how his band added a military type snare drum and a violin to that track when they realised it sounded a bit like ‘Coz I Luv U’, adding, ‘We even talked about putting a microphone in the dance studio upstairs to record the kids’ dance class stamping along with the bass drum.’ But he still takes on board my suggestion regarding that Harley feel.

“I loved Cockney Rebel, and the {1977} live album, Face to Face, is one of my most played albums of all time, often to the detriment of a lot of the original recordings, because he sings them so differently.”

Funny you should say that. I said to Steve how his version on his latest LP of Hot Chocolate’s ‘Emma’ could almost be an early ‘70s David Essex song. So maybe with that interpretation and your ‘Bernadette’, you’ve both subconsciously re-entered an early ‘70s mind frame.

“Possibly, yes. I’ve always been almost subconsciously striving to be more like David Essex – that’s not left me since I was 13. I wanted to be Jim MacLaine in Stardust. I was obsessed with that film when it came out.”

I should add that I’d previously corresponded with Jim ahead of this interview regarding his wonderful contribution to Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, where we got on to his appreciation from an early age of Slade and David Essex, more of which you’ll find in print when the book’s out this autumn, Jim telling me he always felt back then that fellow Jims, Lea (Slade) and the fictional MacLaine (first portrayed in 1973’s That’ll be the Day) encouraged him to think ‘bass players seemed like the coolest band members’.

As for Slade in Flame, released barely three months after Stardust (released in late ’74), did he get that {now considered cult) film straight away, or was it a slow burner for him?

“Maybe I was so young that I didn’t think that deeply about it.”

It gets better every time I see it.

“I haven’t seen it for a long time. I obviously need to! Sometimes those old films can’t survive the modern world almost. Like comedies of the time.”

The odd thing is that it’s supposed to be set in the late ‘60s, around the time Slade were finding their own feet on the live circuit. And yet it looks a very 1970s film for my eyes.

“It’s weird to think, looking back, that the glam rock period was so obsessed with the ‘50s, all rock ‘n’ roll based, like Alvin Stardust and Mud – they all wanted to be Elvis.”

Getting back to the new record, last time we talked about Who Do We Hate Today, and with regard to the songs ‘#PrayForTony’ and ‘Where’s the Back Door, Steve’, I suggested your ‘inner Mick Jones’ came through. As for this album, ‘The Day of Reckoning’ also carries a Clash/Jonesy vibe.

“I was definitely aware of that, even just the sound of that song. I wasn’t just copying everyone for all the songs, but early on, I remember saying to Ben {Murray}, who plays drums, ‘Play it like ‘My Perfect Cousin’.’ Those chord progressions are very kind of basic punk. I find that I rewrite not only other people’s song but rewrite my own songs. So they sound completely different, but then maybe when I do them live with the band, one of them will point out, ‘We’re already doing this song. It’s got a different melody and lyrics, but it’s exactly the same!’”

I would venture that the inspirational title track is this LP’s equivalent of the last one’s ‘You’re So Vain’ antithesis ‘Song for the Unsung {You’re So Modest You’ll Never Think This Song Is About You)’. But I’m guessing you don’t think, ‘Right, we need something chirpier now.’

“But you’re right. With that song It started out a lot darker than it ended up. It’s almost a straightforward love song in a time of adversity. That kind of thing that in hard times, appreciate your loved ones.”

Absolutely. And it’s only recently that I interviewed Terry Edwards, so it was nice to hear his wonderful contributions on that and the brooding but heartfelt masterpiece that is ‘goesaroundcomesaround’.

“He was amazing when he came down to record. Half the band knew him, and he’d worked with Jon Clayton, who co-produces everything with me. In fact, he’d been recording in the same studio as Terry’s Near Jazz Experience, with Mark Bedford from Madness.

“I was aware of Terry from all the other people he’s played with, like PJ Harvey and Tom Waits… and I always wanted to play with somebody who played with Tom Waits! And his Wikipedia page is just insane. When he came to the studio, I said, ‘I don’t think we’ve met before,’ and he said, ‘We have – when Carter supported Madness.’ So we looked at each other with a sort of understanding nod, because those weren’t the happiest gigs for us.”

Out of interest, when I was listening to ‘Bernadette (Hasn’t Found Anyone Yet)’, I scribbled down an extra line that isn’t there – expecting you to deliver, in a salute to The Four Tops regarding that song’s title, ‘Levi stubs out his cigarette.’ Perhaps I was just channeling my inner Jim Bob.

“Ah yes… that is something I would do. Ha! I like something that has a layered meaning… it sort of goes back. Billy Bragg as well, isn’t it.”

Yes, and I was probably in that mindset because of the LP’s Thanks for Reaching Out title. I’m one of these who turns up his nose in disgust, regularly railing against received press releases where PR types say they’re ‘reaching out’. There are at least two LinkedIn requests waiting in my in-box because senders chose to use that tired phrase. Unless it’s a personal message from the wonderful Duke Fakir, sole survivor of The Four Tops, asking me to ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’, I’m not interested.

“When we announced the album, we did a search for it on Twitter to see how few people were talking about it. And it was just tons and tons of tweets from companies using it to react to complaints! ‘Thanks for reaching out, sorry your gas is not working…’ That sort of thing.

Well, you’ve clearly captured the pervading zeitgeist there. As for ‘Toxic Man’, I would venture that there are elements of the art (or maybe art nouveau) punk of Blur’s Graham Coxon, someone else we mentioned last time I called.

“Yeah, I loved Blur, but now I’m just kind of jealous – they get too much publicity! But Jen Macro, who plays guitar on everything I do, used to be in Graham’s band, so there are times when she’ll play something and I’ll say, ‘That’s almost too much like Graham Coxon’, and she’ll change it. So that’s probably rubbed off on her. She’s a bit like me, she’ll play things then say, ‘That sounds very familiar,’ and we’ll work out why. We did a song on the first album that sounded so much like INXS, because of her guitar. So we changed it… and then it sounded like Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’!”

I suppose there are only so many chord progressions to go around.

“Yeah, it’s that trick of doing things that sound familiar in a good way, not just copying stuff. “

Talking of Jen, is that her gorgeous vocal alongside yours on ‘We Need to Try Harder (We Need To Do Better)’?

“It is, yeah. Isn’t that amazing. She did a similar thing on Pop Up Jim Bob on ‘Truce’. She doesn’t think she’s as good as she clearly is, so you have to sort of say, ‘Will you do this?’ and she’ll reluctantly do it. The same with that song as ‘Truce’, she just did it once, and it was perfect. She said, ‘Can I do it properly?’ and we said, ‘No, you’re never going to get it as good.’ There’s a sort of fragile thing about it. She also sings a verse on one of the covers we did, Squeeze’s ‘Labelled with Love’. I want to do a whole album with her… but I haven’t broken that to her!”

You use the word fragile, and ‘We Need to Try Harder’ is another highlight here, perhaps the song with the most direct link to Jim’s Carter USM past, carrying the air of something post-apocalyptic or at least post-pandemic. Think of it as a new take on ‘The Impossible Dream’ for the 2020s.

“Yeah… that’s good. Use that quote!”

You know, ‘No matter how hopeless, no matter how far.’ That kind of feeling.

“Yeah.”

‘Billionaire in Space’ speaks for itself, I’m thinking, but how about ‘This is End Times’, one of my highlights on this record – what prompted that? Is that what we’re living through right now?

“It’s probably less obvious than it seems. Once you know what it’s about … the time when we kind of abandoned everybody in Afghanistan, left them to the Taliban. I wrote it quite quickly, almost like a kneejerk reaction. I’ve done this before with songs – almost anti-men songs. And with this, it’s the way they’re so terrified of women that they’re covered up, hidden away, and they don’t go to school or have jobs.

“Why? What’s the big fear? I don’t think it’s religious. It might be an excuse for it, but they need the power. I wrote it about that but at the same time stuff started to happen in Iran, and it’s a similar story – these places are potentially beautiful but destroyed by awful people.”

Back to Terry Edwards and ‘goesaroundcomesaround’, and I get the feeling he’s Davey Payne to your Ian Dury. And I know you’ve got past links, but you’ve becoming something of a modern-day Dury.

“Yeah, although I’m less… err… there are things I haven’t got in common with him! I think when I’m gone, less people are going to say I was… what’s the phrase, when people are kind of both lovely and awful?”

He did seem to be that guy. After reading so much about him, I’m left with the impression, ‘What an amazing fella… but I wouldn’t have wanted to live with him.’

“Yeah, we spent a few days with him in different countries, and he was all extremes – hilarious, entertaining, but also incredibly angry, and that’s quite a destructive thing. But he’s always been one of my lyrical heroes.”

I’d say you have that ability with the way you write songs and how you turn a phrase and paint a picture with words. In the same way I’d cite someone like Ray Davies, for example.

“With Ian Dury… and Ray Davies as well, it’s using not necessarily obvious words. A lot of it is rhyming, isn’t it? Some people write songs that don’t rhyme, and that’s fine. If you’re going to use rhyme in songs, there are so many options available, but people invariably go for the simplest. I watched a documentary about Ian Dury showing his process of writing songs. He was just finding great rhymes, then working out what the songs are about later. And if you listen to something by Ray Davies, like ‘Village Green Preservation Society’, those lyrics are amazing for a pop song. It’s way too clever.”

Getting back to Mick Jones, and ‘The Day of Reckoning’, if he brought that out as a single tomorrow, I reckon it would be a nailed-on hit, festooned with lavish praise, the music press suggesting he’s back and at his best. I’m not suggesting that won’t happen with you, but…

“Well, maybe it will happen with me and Mick Jones! I don’t know him, but…”

There’s an idea, like his duet with Roddy Frame on ‘Good Morning Britain’ maybe.

“He went to school with Fruitbat. I think they were in the same class.”

That’s surprising – that’s two generations to me.

“Yeah, I mean, they don’t know each other. But they did know each other. And Tim Roth was at the same school.”

Every day’s a learning day. And how is Les?

“He’s fine, yeah. I heard from him earlier. He’s doing gigs with his band.”

Of course, you do realise I’m contractually obliged to ask if you have anything in the diary together?

“No… nothing like that anyway. We might go to the pub.”

Fair enough. That’s a good idea.

“That’s less stressful!”

As we were talking about Ian Dury, and you mentioned less obvious rhymes, he came to mind when I read the words to ‘We Need To Try Harder (We Need To Do Better), where you give us, ‘In the deserts of Sudan, and the gardens of Japan…’ I was waiting for Yucatan to come in there. But it didn’t quite happen.

“I know! That’s outrageous, isn’t it! But it’s that kind of thing that people don’t notice. Obviously, I thought of that when I was doing it and I was just kind of naming different parts of the world. Then I thought, this would work well. Then it goes in and luckily, because it’s not some massive band, we don’t get sued.”

The stand-out tracks continue, and not long before I called, on the inspirational ‘Befriend the Police’ the line, ‘If you’re Malcolm, then I’m Martin’ jumped out at me for some reason. I’m guessing it’s X and Luther King we’re talking about.

“It is. When I was writing that, I physically remember being in a pub. I went to see some friends, and Chris T-T {Thorpe-Tracey, bandmate} was there. I remember asking, ‘Can I get away with this line?’ Because there’s the mere suggestion that I am Martin Luther King, somehow. And in the same song there’s, ‘I saw it on a wall, you’re John, I’m Paul.”

Surely no one in their right mind would infer from that, ‘He thinks he’s Martin Luther King now!’

“It feels like the riskiest song I’ve ever written. If anybody wanted to misunderstand what I’m trying to say…”

You’ve had that in the past. You should be thick-skinned about it by now.

“That’s true. I just don’t know whether you can… If I was Taylor Swift and I released a song called ‘Befriend the Police’, I imagine there’d be an uproar. And I’d have to try and explain it.”

Speaking of which, another line I love from that song is the rather inspired, ‘Bring on the dancing nurses’…

“Yeah, I’m quite pleased with that. I think that might be another one that passes people by. It’s not like the original line was obscure – it was an Echo & the Bunnymen hit – but…”

And back to Mick Jones, I feel there’s a ‘Stay Free’ vibe to the glorious ‘The Prince of Wales’, as if that’s the next pub up the road from The Crown. And there’s a line on your press release which I thought was just perfect, suggesting that song’s like a pub lock-in.

“Yeah, and ‘Stay Free’ is another good example of that kind of song. But I was thinking of ‘Kooks’ and that idea that, ‘It doesn’t matter what happens, we’ve got each other.’ I always liked that, Bowie telling his kid, ‘If it comes to, we’ll just leave, we’ll walk. If you don’t like school, you can just leave. We’ll just set fire to the books,’ that sort of thing. In an adult way, if you’re having a bad day, it’s, ‘Let’s just go for a drink, forget about it for a bit.”

It’s a wonderful way to end the album… and your live sets too, I imagine. And do you see this as part three of an album trilogy opening with Pop Up Jim Bob?

“I think so. Because I’ve said that a few times, I’ve started to believe that’s the case. I don’t know how I’ll follow it. I can’t just do another exactly the same. I said this to someone the other day and said it more as a tongue-in-cheek thing, but it sounds sort of arrogant – if Pop Up Jim Bob was Ziggy Stardust and the second one was Aladdin Sane, this one’s Diamond Dogs… and then it’s Young Americans.”

You best tell your better half you’ll both be moving to Berlin in a few years.

“Well, we’ll be off to New York for Young Americans first. Berlin’s later! First, I’m off to search for my own Luther Vandross.”

Wonderful, and to go full circle from our last chat in August 2021, quoting 2019’s Jim Bob from Carter – In the Shadow of my Former Self, ‘I still haven’t written a new song since 2013. But now that I’ve nearly finished writing this, perhaps the songs will come flooding out of me’. That certainly proved to be the case. Is the inspiration tap still fully on?

“I did think after this one, ‘That’s gonna be it for a while,’ but since then I’ve thought of three potential titles, and those sort of suggest the songs they’d be. The worst thing about all this is the costs of things. Sales are obviously not what they used to be, so to do things the way you want them to sound, whatever it is, obviously costs more money and takes longer, and you end up having to decide how much of a vanity project you want your work to be.”

Talking of your rather inspired song titles, many moons ago I’d enjoy going through record shop racks, looking at vinyl, and among the LPs I loved the titles of the songs on were those by Half Man Half Biscuit. Even before I heard them, I’d have a smile on my face. And you’ve got that quality too.

“I thought that when we first put the album together and started trying to do press releases. I remember when The Jam would release an album or Morrissey, where you’d get the album title and be quite excited about it, thinking, ‘Oh, what’s this about?’… even if it turned out with Morrissey they were all about something awful! For instance, ‘National Front Disco’. Whatever it turned out to be about, it was quite exciting to see that as a title rather than a lot of bands where songs might be called ‘Tomorrow’ or ‘Another Time’.

“And I’d want to know what ‘Sebastian’s Gone on a Ridealong’ is about. Or ‘Befriend the Police’ – what could that possibly be about?”

As you’ve also covered Steve Harley’s ‘Sebastian’, I should ask if there’s a correlation there. Because I’ve never tried to think about what that song might be about.

“I’ve got no idea!”

So you’ve covered it and still don’t know?

“I’ve no idea what any of his songs are about! He’s somebody that I think wrote great lyrics, but it’s very unclear what they’re about. Which is okay. Like Shaun Ryder wrote great lyrics for Happy Mondays. They sound like gibberish, but they’re just good lyrics. And Ian Dury… just hearing those unusual words.”

Well, you’ve nailed it again, and despite it just saying ‘Jim Bob’ on the sleeve, yours is a proper band too.

“You’ve got to keep some sort of order, haven’t you!”

For this website’s last feature/interview with Jim Bob, published in August 2021, head here. And for a link to Jim Bob’s May 2019 WriteWyattUK feature/interview, head here.

Jim Bob’s Thanks for Reaching Out is out this weekend via Cherry Red Records on purple vinyl (in a gatefold sleeve with a 2024 calendar), CD (including a second disc, This is My Mixtape, comprising cover versions recorded especially), cassette, and on digital platforms. The cover illustration is by Mark Reynolds, with design by Keith Davey, the songs recorded and mixed by Jon Clayton at One Cat Studios, Crystal Palace, the audio mastered by Nick Watson at Fluid.

There are also a series of in-store and live dates to celebrate the release, with venues, dates and ticket details via www.seetickets.com and https://www.cherryred.co.uk/artist/jim-bob/.