AN EVENING WITH CHAZ JANKEL
On 31st August 2023 we at The CAT Club were lucky to be in the company of one of the most fertile talents in British pop music, Chaz Jankel was at the epicentre of Ian Dury & The Blockheads, acting as the mercurial Londoner's sidekick, songwriting partner and musical director. If Dury brought the rock and the roll to their music, then Jankel delivered the funk into punk.
But there is another side to Chaz: that of songwriter and solo performer and thanks to cult club hits like 3,000,000 Synths and Glad To Know You, an underground dance hero. Working alongside studio wiz, Phlip Bagenal, who not only engineered many of his best works, and with whom he also founded Eastcote Studios, Jankel was responsible for some of best and most experimental dance records to come from these shores.
Jankel's first solo collaboration was with veteran songwriter Kenny Young (who co-wrote Under The Boardwalk) whose lyrics had been inspired by a recent and controversial Japanese movie called Ai No Corrida. It eventually ended up in the hands of Quincy Jones, and it was enough to win a deal with A&M, which eventually yielded five albums. Glad To Know You, co-written with Ian Dury (and later covered by Kitty Grant), was a huge club hit in the USA, spending 6 weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100.
His latest release is the acclaimed Flow album.
Chaz was with us at The CAT Club in 2020 when the featured album was Ian Dury’s New Boots and Panties! Six of the album’s ten tracks were co-written by Dury and Jankel as was the legendary Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.
We were delighted to welcome him back for what proved to be a truly wonderful evening with the great man.
CAT Club stalwart JASON BARNARD was in the interviewer's chair.
This episode has been edited for copyright reasons. Original music used in this podcast by kind permission of Chaz Jankel.
To find out more about the CAT Club please visit: www.thecatclub.co.uk
Happy Trails.
