Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson Steps Out

posted in: Features • Pop • Rock

Scottish indie-pop icons Belle and Sebastian have never exactly been publicity hounds. They’ve continually avoided putting their photos on their album covers and even routinely leave their names out of their album credits. But their anonymity doesn’t originate from a desire to generate mystery, it has more to do with a dedication to collectivism and seemingly, a genuine humility. Between the band’s anti-star aesthetic and frontman Stuart Murdoch‘s dominance of the lead vocal and songwriting duties, it’s frequently assumed that Murdoch is the brains behind Belle and Sebastian, but that’s an untruth. In fact, other members of the band have long been contributing on both of those fronts, and none more so than guitarist Stevie Jackson, who has penned and sung such B&S staples as “Seymour Stein” and “The Wrong Girl” among many others, and seems to be something of a right-hand man to Murdoch. So it was probably inevitable that Jackson would eventually step out on his own, which he’s now done with his first solo album, the cleverly titled (I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson.

“I’m not sure even now I consider myself to be a songwriter,” says the unassuming Jackson, who somewhat unsurprisingly turns out to be just as modest as his band’s image, even when publicizing his solo project. “I’ve never been very prolific at it. Being in a band with Stuart, I never felt that comfortable on my own, I was always more of a collaborator, I was good at coming up with melodies and giving them to Stuart and those becoming songs. Even though I’ve come to it quite late I’m still feeling my way, so I don’t know if I’d actually call myself a songwriter”more like a musician who’s written a few songs.”

Asked to analyze the difference between his and Murdoch’s writing styles, Jackson is similarly self-effacing. “They’re different because they’re not as good [as Murdoch’s], to be totally honest,” says the guitarist. “I’m not capable of writing songs like he is…I think he’s one of the great songwriters. There’s certain songs that he’s written that I think stand with anybody. Stuart’s way with words is very poetic. I read through the lyrics and they’re incredible on their own. With the songs on my record, I don’t know if they can stand up in that way, but I think they’re kind of interesting. I suppose Stuart’s songs, and my songs on this record, are kind of similar because, even in a subtle way, they tell stories, they are sort of story songs.”

Considering Jackson’s degree of egolessness, one can’t help wondering how he came to make a solo record to begin with, especially after a decade-and-a-half of being in Belle and Sebastian. “I think why it happened so late is I just had time,” he explains. “There was like ten years of this group being fairly full-on”album, tour, album, tour…and around 2007 I just had this free time, and I got involved in art projects, and I got involved in working with other people, and it was just a period of growth, I guess. Maybe I got a bit confident. I had this batch of songs, I figured I’d just record them and see how it goes.”
And while the bulk of the songs on his new album wouldn’t sound terribly out of place on a Belle and Sebastian record, Jackson does seem to take some of his sonic cues from a slightly different playbook. “The songs I have written over the years, there’s usually a Stones reference,” he reveals, “like a chord change or some little lyrical thing. I think I’m always trying to write something off of [1966 Rolling Stones album] Aftermath or something.” Jackson also claims David Bowie as an inspiration. “Not so much in the actual songs he’s written,” he clarifies, “but just his method. The thing I like about Bowie is he just makes stuff up, it’s not necessarily like, ‘This is how my relationship’s going,’ that kind of confessional school of songwriting. To give you an example, there’s a couple of songs [on I Can’t Get No] about movie directors; the idea of that was, ‘I’ll just make something up about movie directors.’ There’s one about Kurosawa, and there’s one about John Huston. Even if you do make stuff like that in a more abstract way, whatever you do always becomes personal anyway. It’s unavoidable.”

“Try Me” is a raw garage-rocker that feels far more fervid than what one would expect from an artist of Jackson’s provenance. “I just kind of wrote it in five minutes,” he admits. ” It almost had a dumb kind of bubblegum quality to it, [sings] ‘Try me, try me,’ I thought, ‘That’s kind of direct,’ [laughs] that’s a song that says something.’ Maybe the Velvet Underground [were an influence] as well, that kind of rhythm. That kind of music never leaves you, it will always come out to a certain degree. It’s just kind of fun to go da-da da-da-da on the guitar. They’re kind of fundamental organic pleasures to the human psyche, for me anyway.”

Quizzed about the lyrical connection between the aforementioned “Kurosawa” and its cinematic namesake, Jackson confesses, “Bizarrely, it actually ended up more about [Yasujiro] Ozu, another Japanese director, I nearly called the song ‘Kurosawa Ozu,’ but ‘Kurosawa’ just seemed like a more elegant title. It’s actually about the two of them, but maybe a bit more about Ozu. I just heard them singing that song. It just had that kind of feeling, and it’s also about a dream I had: I was trying to make friends with a pigeon, even that seemed like a Japanese parable, something they teach in school. And I suppose that, mixed with the kind of Japanese cinema thing that started it off, it just seemed to go together.”

Jackson also does his part to advance the role of technology in modern romantic songwriting with “Press Send,” a tune about the perils of spontaneously sending one’s objet du desir an emotionally-charged email. “In a sense, that was the kind of conceit of it,” he says, “so that was easy. I suppose in the past it was ‘I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,’ or ‘Please Mr. Postman,’ there’s all these songs about sending letters. No one really sends letters anymore. I think in the future there’ll be a lot more songs about email interaction.”

Of course, this outburst of solo activity doesn’t mean Jackson has become any less dedicated to Belle and Sebastian. He remains a stalwart of the band, and he’s not even of the opinion that the songs on I Can’t Get No wouldn’t have worked in the context of a B&S album. “I guess if the group had been writing at that time,” he reckons, “and I had any of those ideas, they would have been fair game. It probably would have come out differently. I don’t really write songs for the group because I think they’re Belle and Sebastian songs”it’s just whatever I’ve got at the time. I think any of them could have been Belle and Sebastian songs, really.” Despite his (and his bandmates’) modesty, that’s high praise for anyone’s material.