The crown Jools
Before he was the face of televised pop Jools Holland played empty pubs alongside U2, mentored a skinny kid called Mark Knopfler and rode to school in Daniel Day-Lewis's dad's Mercedes.
Stuart Clark, 12 Aug 2008
If U2 notice a sales spike in Greenwich, South London, that’s because Jools Holland has just been down to his local HMV and bought their Boy, October and War reissues.
“I like to support young talent,” Jools says benevolently. It’s not the first time Bono & Co. have benefited from his patronage.
“Yeah, U2 supported us – as in Squeeze – when we played this tiny cellar bar in Islington called the Hope & Anchor,” he reminisces. “It would’ve been early 1979 and the crowd consisted of the proverbial three men and a dog – the dog leaving half-way through ‘cause he wasn’t into it. So the only audience for U2 was Squeeze and vice versa!”
Was it obvious that the Hope & Anchor was merely a stepping-stone for the chaps on their way to multiple nights in Croke Park?
“Did I know that 31 years later they’d be the biggest band in the world?” he ponders. “No, but you could tell they were ambitious young men who wanted to be more than the new Sham 69.
“They were great back then, and crucially they’re even better now. Some bands reach a certain point and then start atrophying whereas U2 have kept progressing. They never go out on ‘Greatest Hits’ tours – there’s always a new album which is invariably more successful than the last one.”
Another band that supported Squeeze – at the Albany Empire in Deptford to be precise – were Dire Straits.
“Yes, whatever did happen to little Markey Knopfler?” the 50-year-old deadpans. “That was at the time when pub rock was bleeding into punk. We’d have been quite pally with Dr. Feelgood whose singer Lee Brilleaux was the funniest person I’ve ever met, and aware of The Boomtown Rats who were one of the R ‘n’ B bands who decided to cut their hair and narrow their trouser width. Rather successfully as it turned out!”
Jools was even more aware of Bob Geldof a few years later when he married his Tube co-presenter Paula Yates.
“My abiding memory of Paula is her wonderful sense of humour – she always made me laugh,” he smiles ruefully. “People say, ‘There must have been signs’, but never for one second did I think her life was going to end the way it did. It’s incredibly sad.”
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