Howard Jones: Breaking Down Barriers

MUSIC HAS always been a tribal thing, and the music press – Classic Pop excepted, of course – has always derived a certain sadistic pleasure from stoking animus among the tribes, arbitrarily selecting a whipping boy (it's seldom a girl) to be pilloried. In the '80s, at the peak of his success, Howard Jones was that whipping boy. Whether it was the feathered blond hairstyle, the synth variation on the one-man band theme, the cheery persona or the relentless optimism of his self-help songs, he certainly seemed to get under the skin of the journalistic fraternity.