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Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles, a podcast for keyboard players.

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I'm your host, David Holloway, and I'm thrilled as always to be here with you.

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I'm also thrilled to be introducing this episode's guest, Mr.

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Jacob Magnuson.

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As you'll hear, I'm struggling to think, and we have lots of guests on with amazing
diverse careers, but the diversity doesn't get much more interesting than Jacob's career.

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So as you'll hear,

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He has traversed everything from Icelandic symphonies to a wonderful career in both film
and TV work and recording work and live performance in the UK and the USA.

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Jakob also, as you'll hear, happens to be a parliamentarian in the Icelandic parliament
and has made some direct impacts on the lives of musicians there and has some really

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interesting thoughts on how musicians actually make

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are living in a more substantial way than a lot of us experience.

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So yeah, I think there's a lot to really enjoying this and I'll talk to you at the end of
the show.

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Yeah, Colby, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

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I cannot thank you enough for taking the time, particularly late at night there.

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I did not ask before we started recording.

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I assume you're home in Iceland at the moment?

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I am back in Iceland now, yes.

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And it's almost mid -moment.

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Yes, yes.

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So it's amazing speaking from literally the other end of the world to you.

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I thought we would start off...

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Just talking about your year this year.

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So I do want to talk about your latest album in a second, but just more broadly, what, how
has 2024 been for you?

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Has it been a busy year?

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Absolutely.

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Fantastic.

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And I've had so much fun with, you know, completing the album and getting it out there.

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And we've had amazing reviews from all over the world.

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Best reviews ever.

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And it's

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Then I just got back from Spain a few days ago, where I was in Malaga and Marbella and had
some fantastic times there with musical activity and social activities.

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I've had an amazing time and an amazing life.

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I'm very glad to be with you.

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speaking from top of the world all the way to where you are.

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We sometimes joke when we say we do gigs here.

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

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Or if you're, or good morning if you're in Australia, because we generally do not do much
communication, but because of the different times that we are on.

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Midnight in Iceland is what time in Australia?

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Yeah, so it's just before 10 a here.

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So you're quite right.

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It is morning time.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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So let's talk about you just mentioned your amazing album Future Forecast.

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So I'm really fascinated to hear more about this because my understanding is there are I
think you improvised up to 72

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tracks of potential music.

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So it goes without saying, how did you curate or narrow that down to the final seven
tracks on the album?

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Well, first of all, let me say that this whole project was something that you could never
have planned for or organized in a conventional way.

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was suggested I, you know, come to the Floki Studios in the high north in the of Iceland.

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an amazing place and to bring my favorite musicians from Iceland along.

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Then as it happened, our drummer had a bit of an accident, so we had to find another
drummer.

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And who else?

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Pete Erskine.

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And then the bass player we were planning to have was overseas on that particular weekend
or week.

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So we got Matthew Garrison on bass.

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an old schoolmate of Schooly's, who was originally set to be with us.

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And then basically we decided we would, you know, stay away from predictabilities and
cliches, try and refrain from any sort of predictable ideas.

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I assumed that both Matthew Garrison and Pete Erskine

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were quite accustomed to just going somewhere, setting up, sound testing, and then
starting to play.

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But as it happens, nobody in that whole team had ever been involved in such an optimistic
session out in the middle of nowhere.

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All charts were banned.

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There was one chart allowed to be included.

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That was a tribute from our percussionist, Anors Giving, to his childhood and teenage and
adult idol, Pete Erskine.

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So that is called Icchiamo, that track.

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But otherwise, we just sat down and let it begin.

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And it just came to us, as opposed to us chasing it, so to speak.

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So once we started and things went so beautifully we just couldn't stop and we just kept
playing one track after another and I would just suggest maybe a C sharp minor plus five

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or something and off we'd go.

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Peter would start a groove or whatever and then after all these tracks, hours and hours of
music came the very

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the critical part of actually choosing from that raw material what seven tracks would be
worked on and then completed.

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And that took months.

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Yeah, it would have taken months.

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And is that the first time you've taken that approach?

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Really?

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Yes.

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I did an album called Two Sisters many years ago and parts of that album

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I been thought of improvised, but I've never gone into a studio with the sheer
determination to not have anything prepared, nothing to read or follow.

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And I wasn't, even though I was the one to kind of administer and pull everyone together,
I tried not to be a bossy person.

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I was allowing for everyone's creativity just to...

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you know, contribute and be part of the whole thing.

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And if you call it a future forecast from the beginning and say, how could music possibly
sound in 10, 15, 20 years?

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And how can we make it creative and different from anything else out there or anything
else we've done before?

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That's a good framework to start.

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If you have a clear framework to start,

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creative freedom seems to come to you easier.

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And that's exactly what happened.

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Great perspective.

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And look, for our listeners, I will be linking to the album in our show notes.

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is an amazing piece of work to listen to.

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mean, for the record, Jakob, mean, my favourites probably Love Space, Pasadena, Dream of
Delphi, and I know Wildcard's been a success for you as well.

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Just amazing stuff.

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So look forward to passing that on to our listeners.

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So let's jump way back in time now and our common question for guests is your musical
upbringing.

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during your childhood and teenage years, what was it that got you passionate about music?

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Well, my parents lived in New York in the 50s, in the heyday of American jazz.

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And they brought a huge collection of records with them, anything from Oscar Peterson,
Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, all that.

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and stankettes and all that stuff.

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So I had a very healthy musical diet and they were both very musical.

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My mother was a classically trained pianist, know, concert pianist status kind of thing,
although she never allowed herself to pursue a career.

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My father had a beautiful singing voice and a very keen ear for harmony and keyboard
playing.

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He was an organist.

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And basically it was no option other than me and my sister.

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one sister who we would go and study piano.

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And then when I wanted to start joining bands at the tender age of 13 or 14, they didn't
really want me to do that.

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They saw too many young, talented musicians start in the music business, stop.

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going to school and becoming hooked on alcohol and drugs.

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So they said to me, if you want to be a musician, we want you to study trumpet and become
a trumpeter for the Icelandic Symphony.

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And so I did for a couple of years.

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And I remember some of the members of that band.

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I was then put into a band at the Music Conservatory of Reykjavik.

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And they were actually members of the Icelandic Symphony.

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And I tried so hard to live up to the standards.

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and I went bleeding in the mouth.

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My lips were bleeding after the rehearsals.

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So after a couple of years of that, I said, well, shut up.

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I want to play my organ, play my piano and play my eventually other keyboards.

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So this is how it actually happened.

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But a very musical home, my parents would have, my father was a member of choir.

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After the concerts of the choirs, everyone came home to our house.

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My mother had the piano and they all sang, they sang Cole Porter and they all sang all
sorts of music.

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But then something drastic happened.

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Guess what?

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The Beatles.

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When the Beatles came, everything changed.

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And my attention, you know, went from the jazz records over to these four.

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Mop Tops from Liverpool and their two or three part harmonies and their lovely melodies
and instrumentation.

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What a fabulous outfit.

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What an incredible adventure that was.

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And then later in life, I had the privilege of bringing Ringo Sarr to play with my band
here in Iceland, which is unforgettable.

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Wow, we definitely need to come back to that.

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But this is the long or the short of it basically.

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Long answer to your short question.

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But this is basically how it happened.

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No, that's great.

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And I do want to go back to the trumpet.

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So what was it about the trumpet that wasn't able to provide you the interest or the
excitement that playing the organ or piano did?

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Basically.

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It was too much pressure on me to perform at symphony orchestra standards with symphony
orchestra players.

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It was just too painful.

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And I really, I was so smitten by jazz and pop music that I figured, well, classical
music, I'll come back to that later in life, which I certainly have.

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I love classical music as well, but I'm so happy that I didn't become a hired

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trumpeter in a stage -run symphony orchestra.

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I'm forever grateful for having been granted the freedom just to follow my heart and my
intuition.

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Yes, and as you know, there is a lot less body fluids such as saliva involved with
keyboards.

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Trumpets are very messy instruments at times.

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Well, there's been saliva, you know, in my pop career, of course.

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in a different context to what you're referring to here.

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That's right.

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No, that's great.

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Thank you, Jakob.

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so from that, I know you did go back to the US and train.

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Was there a period of time between seeing the Beatles and wanting to explore jazz and pop
and going back to the US?

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Were you playing in bands around Iceland or you?

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Yeah.

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What was the?

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Funnily enough, when I was 15, I was a year ahead of my age in the sense that I was a fast
learner.

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I was put in with 12 year olds when I was only 11 and all that stuff, or actually started
when I was eight.

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So basically, I always had that one year to kind of...

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fall back on and my parents gave me that one year to actually go and play the music that I
love to play before I would then be sent to university to study medicine.

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That was their plan.

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But then that year, that one year, basically my high school band was I founded when I was
15, became a college band, is still my band after all these years, believe it or not.

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and several other members of that band are on the Future Forecast recording.

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That band is called Stummen and is one of the most successful bands of Icelandic music
history.

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And we've also made films, including the biggest film in Icelandic film history, which I
produced and we all starred in.

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It's called On Top.

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It's not a porno movie.

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It's a kind of a musical comedy, but a future forecast in itself.

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because in the film we portray what was about to happen in Icelandic society.

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It is, this was right in the early 80s when the first democratically elected president in
the world had been elected, President Rigtis, who been our French teacher at college by

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the way, and the first all -female parliamentary group had been elected to parliament.

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So we were kind of inspired by this.

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So we had this young, all female group called the Witches, Gríllur, play a backing harmony
group in a film, basically a road movie about Stúdmen playing sort of ironic comic

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versions of themselves.

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This is pre -Spinal Tap, but Spinal Tap produces actually...

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wanted to buy this film to prevent it from confusing their marketing strategy.

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The spinal tap came a year or two later.

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So anyways, what happens in the film is that the male singer and the female backing singer
are up here and the male singer chooses the keys of the songs.

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He chooses everything and he's telling her to be sexy.

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Titties forwards, belly in on all this male chauvinistic crap.

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She basically tells them shut up you chauvinistic bastard.

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This is it.

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Our relationship is over.

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And she tells the girls we're going against them.

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We're going to compete with them on the market.

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And this is what they do.

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And they beat them and make fools of them in the end of the movie.

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It's a very funny film.

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Played every national holiday, every national day in Iceland year after year.

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decade after decade because it's what actually happened in Icelandic society.

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Women demanded equality and they got it.

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So we are number one in the world in terms of gender equality.

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We're number one in the world as well when it comes to human rights and you know accepting
and respecting all you know genders and whatever you fancy and so forth.

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Our gay pride.

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Every year, beginning of August is the biggest gay pride in the world, at least per
capita, but it's bigger than our National Day parade and all that.

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So what our movie basically did was to create a future forecast of the society that
changed from a typical male chauvinistic society to an equal, you know, mutually

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respectful society, which we couldn't be more grateful for.

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This is the reason this film is basically has created an ongoing demand for Stoodman, the
group that I formed at the age of 15.

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So we're extremely grateful.

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And I was unaware, Jakob, that Stoodman started when you were that young, because I
certainly had a question here around the amazing longevity of that group.

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mean, you're 16, more than 16 albums.

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into a history.

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my question was going to be, how have you maintained that cohesive relationship over that
long?

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It sounds to me part of it is you started very young with with close friends is my guess,
but.

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You're spot on in that.

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It's that is, you know, when you meet somebody at that age and you put your hands together
and you become a success from the first gig onwards and then you start doing

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albums and they all become like the fastest album selling albums of history in Iceland and
then we make the movie and because the biggest movie it's inevitably becomes you know

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tighter and tighter and we're glued together classmates from college so and then what
actually happened that what we were a school band

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And then that one year I was allowed to start playing on the open market at the tender age
of 18.

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And then our drummer had actually temporary left for Sweden.

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His parents insisted that he go and study some stuff in Sweden.

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00:20:01,938 --> 00:20:03,958
So we had to find a drummer.

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Nobody could play those types of broken beats, seven eight and five four.

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It was kind of a prog rock type of an era leading to jazz rock, you could say.

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So we had to find a drummer from Britain called Dave Tufort who played with Mike Oldfield,
Arthur Brown or all sorts of people.

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So we spent three months rehearsing with him.

215
00:20:26,843 --> 00:20:31,814
We built our own PA system, our own lighting system, our own back projection.

216
00:20:31,814 --> 00:20:35,275
It's a very advanced Pink Floyd type of a show.

217
00:20:35,295 --> 00:20:46,698
And we took this on the road to Iceland and then the musicians union intervened and said,
there's been a, somebody's filed a complaint.

218
00:20:47,124 --> 00:20:56,411
and the Musicians Union in Iceland was founded to keep the Americans and the Brits away
from the best jobs because after the war they all got the best gigs.

219
00:20:56,411 --> 00:21:02,276
So Icelandic musicians had their union to make sure they got the gigs.

220
00:21:02,276 --> 00:21:12,844
So hence we were given a very harsh two option, either that drummer leaves within a week
or you'll be taken to court Mr.

221
00:21:12,844 --> 00:21:13,834
Magnusson.

222
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:21,476
We all had an emergency meeting and we decided that the drummer said, well, come with us
to Britain.

223
00:21:21,476 --> 00:21:24,178
There's plenty of us to do for us to do there.

224
00:21:24,178 --> 00:21:25,579
And so we did.

225
00:21:26,020 --> 00:21:28,042
All except the lead singer.

226
00:21:28,042 --> 00:21:31,965
He had failed his maths at the college graduation.

227
00:21:31,965 --> 00:21:33,266
So we were a bit stuck.

228
00:21:33,266 --> 00:21:40,822
And I got a job as a keyboard player with Long John Baldry, the first white blues singer
in Europe, he's sometimes called.

229
00:21:40,822 --> 00:21:43,114
was a legendary blues singer.

230
00:21:43,182 --> 00:21:50,782
who had backing singers called Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger, a drummer called Charlie
Watts, a pianist called Elton John.

231
00:21:50,922 --> 00:22:02,772
And to be offered a Hammond Organist role in his incredible band of the Ten Jays of 18 in
London was an opportunity too good to turn down.

232
00:22:02,772 --> 00:22:06,722
And that actually led me on a tour to America with

233
00:22:07,490 --> 00:22:14,272
gave me a very unexpected record deal once we landed in Los Angeles just a few days later.

234
00:22:14,272 --> 00:22:16,852
this is the long and the short of that.

235
00:22:16,893 --> 00:22:19,843
So you went from Iceland to the UK.

236
00:22:19,843 --> 00:22:24,205
What are your recollections, A, of that move to the UK as a young man?

237
00:22:24,205 --> 00:22:31,317
And also, do you recall what sort of instruments you were playing by that stage and how
you were discovering new keyboards?

238
00:22:31,317 --> 00:22:35,578
I know you're mostly playing organ and so on, but just, yeah, what was your approach
there?

239
00:22:36,058 --> 00:22:36,960
Well,

240
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:44,435
At that time, this is the 70s and the Hammond organ was very much my favorite instrument
besides the grand piano.

241
00:22:44,435 --> 00:22:49,048
Those two instruments I was playing mostly with Baldry at the time.

242
00:22:49,048 --> 00:23:00,276
Then I got an electric piano and an ARP synthesizer and an Elka sort of a string machine.

243
00:23:00,276 --> 00:23:06,112
Herbie Hancock and the Hatch Hunters at the time were using

244
00:23:06,112 --> 00:23:13,844
some sort of string machine so he could have sort of a sustained chords while he was
soloing and stuff like that.

245
00:23:14,304 --> 00:23:17,985
So these were type of the early instruments I got.

246
00:23:17,985 --> 00:23:21,026
Clavinet, I was also using a Clavinet.

247
00:23:21,346 --> 00:23:28,708
And then when I got in to LA, I basically got involved with all the synthesizers.

248
00:23:28,828 --> 00:23:36,210
And in fact, I came very close with Alan Howarth, who was Joe Zavens

249
00:23:36,214 --> 00:23:40,896
synthesizer programmer and keyboard technician.

250
00:23:40,896 --> 00:23:46,859
And he had a deal with Roger Lin, who created the Lin drum machine.

251
00:23:46,859 --> 00:23:51,701
And he also had a relationship with Sequential Circuits in Northern California.

252
00:23:51,701 --> 00:24:01,846
We got all that gear when we were actually, I got him to help me do a soundtrack to a
documentary I was making.

253
00:24:02,380 --> 00:24:10,134
And that was, we had samplers, emulator, fair lights and all the instruments were brand
new then.

254
00:24:10,375 --> 00:24:12,656
so extremely exciting times.

255
00:24:12,656 --> 00:24:18,519
And we formed a duet and we took on the road with big projectors and things.

256
00:24:18,539 --> 00:24:26,644
And we took that on the road in the States, took it around Iceland, took it around Europe,
something called the Magnetics.

257
00:24:26,964 --> 00:24:30,836
And it was certainly the first electronic music.

258
00:24:31,352 --> 00:24:37,936
group of Iceland, you could say, and one of the very first in Europe and the US as well.

259
00:24:37,936 --> 00:24:50,493
But that is kind of outside our scope of the jazz -oriented stuff that we're dealing with
now in the jack -and -magnet science.

260
00:24:50,493 --> 00:24:51,453
Yes, absolutely.

261
00:24:51,453 --> 00:24:52,954
I mean, that's incredibly diverse.

262
00:24:52,954 --> 00:24:58,117
And so do you recall, as you just said, being immersed in all that new technology?

263
00:24:58,117 --> 00:25:00,800
How did that change your approach as a player?

264
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:12,186
So obviously you'd had education in Iceland, you'd been used to a more classical approach,
got interested in jazz and pop and now you're in LA immersed in a whole bunch of new

265
00:25:12,186 --> 00:25:13,317
technology.

266
00:25:13,317 --> 00:25:15,978
Did it impact how you played?

267
00:25:16,459 --> 00:25:17,919
Absolutely.

268
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:22,873
basically, I must admit, I wasn't really prepared.

269
00:25:22,873 --> 00:25:28,005
I was kind of thrown into this.

270
00:25:29,550 --> 00:25:40,470
I was back in Iceland for a couple of years at university, an obedient young student boy
and pleasing my parents.

271
00:25:40,610 --> 00:25:44,410
that Easter boulder recalled me for a two week tour of America.

272
00:25:44,410 --> 00:25:48,330
This is after I toured Europe with them previously.

273
00:25:48,730 --> 00:25:58,590
so a two week tour of the North America became a three week tour, four, five, six ended
after 13 weeks in Los Angeles.

274
00:25:58,590 --> 00:25:59,374
And

275
00:25:59,374 --> 00:26:13,614
A week later I have an incredible record contract with Warner Brothers and that gave me
access to all the best players in the States, all the best instruments and I could use

276
00:26:13,614 --> 00:26:16,834
whatever keyboards I fancied.

277
00:26:17,094 --> 00:26:27,234
of course, synthesizers, Prophet became one of my favorite synthesizers, Prophet 5 and the
emulators shortly afterwards.

278
00:26:27,234 --> 00:26:29,320
Then came the

279
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:37,056
Oberheim and all these sounds very much influenced my style.

280
00:26:37,196 --> 00:26:42,240
My self -taught style, remember there were no jazz schools in Iceland.

281
00:26:42,500 --> 00:26:55,680
I invented my own style, my own technique and basically played differently to most anyone
I know because it's I have never gone to.

282
00:26:56,286 --> 00:26:59,357
a discipline like a Berkeley or a school like that.

283
00:26:59,357 --> 00:27:01,528
I've taken a few private lessons though.

284
00:27:01,528 --> 00:27:02,848
Yeah, no, it's a really great point.

285
00:27:02,848 --> 00:27:04,258
I was going to ask you about that.

286
00:27:04,258 --> 00:27:14,691
So aside from the trumpet lessons and obviously your mother being a great piano player,
you've had some private lessons, but otherwise pretty much self -taught, which is amazing.

287
00:27:14,871 --> 00:27:16,492
Yeah.

288
00:27:17,152 --> 00:27:24,514
Even the teacher I had in Iceland, my piano teacher, he banned me from playing by ear.

289
00:27:24,652 --> 00:27:29,524
He banned me from tapping my foot to keep rhythm and so forth.

290
00:27:29,564 --> 00:27:36,727
It was a totally very strict kind of German Austrian approach to music.

291
00:27:36,887 --> 00:27:40,049
The great masters were the only masters.

292
00:27:40,049 --> 00:27:46,381
They kind of detested jazz and pop because they didn't understand it.

293
00:27:46,381 --> 00:27:49,572
It was a different cup of tea for them.

294
00:27:49,593 --> 00:27:52,634
So you have to find your own way and

295
00:27:54,370 --> 00:28:03,997
It was probably a good recipe for developing a style that wasn't based on anyone else.

296
00:28:04,157 --> 00:28:12,033
Although of course, listening to Herbie and listening to Zabino, listening to everyone
else would influence any young man.

297
00:28:12,033 --> 00:28:21,780
And basically the evolution of all this, using all the different sounds and all that.

298
00:28:22,144 --> 00:28:35,654
After all these years it really kind of comes down to when I'm at home and sit at the
grand piano, my mother's grand piano that I studied when I was a child.

299
00:28:35,654 --> 00:28:41,087
That is home for me.

300
00:28:41,428 --> 00:28:50,774
With all respect to all the synthesizers in the world, all the electronic keyboards and
the Hammond organs, my favorite instrument after all

301
00:28:50,958 --> 00:28:56,018
is the grand piano that I got to know as a five -year -old.

302
00:28:56,018 --> 00:28:56,778
Right, Felice.

303
00:28:56,778 --> 00:28:59,138
Yeah, could not agree more.

304
00:28:59,538 --> 00:29:11,518
And so just before we move away from that LA scene, obviously the first Jack Magnet album
in 1981, your recollections of that first, you know, really intensive period of creating

305
00:29:11,518 --> 00:29:15,918
music in the studio, what are your recollections of that?

306
00:29:16,038 --> 00:29:20,550
Well, basically, my very first solo album

307
00:29:21,238 --> 00:29:33,788
Actually, I had Phil Collins on drums and that was the album I had with me on the tour and
the album that really led to my deal with Warner Brothers.

308
00:29:33,949 --> 00:29:38,973
That album starts off, it's an album about afterlife.

309
00:29:38,973 --> 00:29:48,200
It's a story line, a concept album about somebody who goes fishing on the west coast of
Iceland.

310
00:29:48,220 --> 00:29:50,542
Weather becomes very nasty.

311
00:29:50,702 --> 00:30:07,962
He, the boat sinks, he drowns and he is reflecting on his life throughout the 12 songs and
those 12 songs it actually when I, it goes from mambo, it goes from gospel through pop,

312
00:30:07,962 --> 00:30:17,990
through rock, through jazz and windsack in a sort of a, you know, merger of prog rock and
jazz rock towards the end of it.

313
00:30:18,562 --> 00:30:24,875
When I listened back to that album after I made it, I said to myself, it was the only time
that's happened to me.

314
00:30:24,875 --> 00:30:34,408
I said, Jesus, did I write that album all by myself, both the lyrics and the music and
arrange it and everything?

315
00:30:34,728 --> 00:30:38,410
It was like somebody else had actually done it through me.

316
00:30:38,470 --> 00:30:41,891
It was almost like a medium type of experience.

317
00:30:41,992 --> 00:30:48,294
And with hindsight, when I brought this album to LA, brought it to Chrysalis,

318
00:30:48,462 --> 00:30:56,094
where I was invited to a meeting, Tom Trumbo, he instantly asked for a copy of the album.

319
00:30:56,094 --> 00:30:58,905
I said, this is the only copy I have, you can have the cover.

320
00:30:58,905 --> 00:31:05,687
And he put it up on his wall and Terry Ellis and Chris Wright, offered me a great record
deal.

321
00:31:05,767 --> 00:31:14,609
And then I got this great lawyer in LA to finalize a deal and he told Warner Brothers
about it and they offered me an even better deal.

322
00:31:14,949 --> 00:31:17,170
And basically,

323
00:31:18,922 --> 00:31:36,012
I realized only a few years ago that this album, my very first album called Horthy Rådvan
or kind of looking into the red sky, it's a bad translation, but it was a retrospective of

324
00:31:36,012 --> 00:31:45,758
popular music from the middle or beginning of the 19th, 20th century through to the kind
of latter half of it.

325
00:31:46,330 --> 00:31:53,656
with the evolution of music as it actually happened, but it was not done consciously.

326
00:31:53,837 --> 00:31:55,438
This came out like that.

327
00:31:55,438 --> 00:32:00,341
basically the next album and the first album I do for Warner Brothers is Special
Treatment.

328
00:32:00,422 --> 00:32:10,971
That's where I get like a former band with Dave Logerman on drums, with people like Sapa,
Frank Sapa, Steve Anderson on bass who became my co -writer and collaborator and Carlos

329
00:32:10,971 --> 00:32:11,921
Rias on guitar.

330
00:32:11,921 --> 00:32:15,564
was with Chico Ria and it was kind of a

331
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:19,311
special friend and student of Larry Carlton.

332
00:32:19,592 --> 00:32:24,133
So that album became the first album I did in the US.

333
00:32:24,894 --> 00:32:33,577
got a lot of airplay and it was released in Scandinavia, US and Asia.

334
00:32:34,518 --> 00:32:42,962
And then my second album in States became a concept album based on a character, an alter
ego.

335
00:32:42,962 --> 00:32:43,864
I had

336
00:32:43,864 --> 00:32:49,198
been given the nickname by my British friends in the Baldrige, Long John Baldrige group.

337
00:32:49,299 --> 00:32:58,567
They were playing with words and saying things like, see the Lobby Cubby, Yakup, that is
my nickname.

338
00:32:58,988 --> 00:33:00,027
good morning, Mr.

339
00:33:00,027 --> 00:33:01,109
Magnet.

340
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:02,651
it's Jack Magnet.

341
00:33:02,651 --> 00:33:06,714
Instead of Jacob Magnuson, they started calling me Jack Magnet.

342
00:33:06,714 --> 00:33:11,168
And then I built on that for my second Warner Brothers album.

343
00:33:11,168 --> 00:33:23,656
a character who had the abilities to use his magnetic powers, and there are people in the
world who can actually do that, to attract metal objects to his body with his magnetic

344
00:33:23,656 --> 00:33:25,007
powers only.

345
00:33:25,328 --> 00:33:30,591
And I built the whole album and the lyrics on that stuff.

346
00:33:31,552 --> 00:33:33,973
then that name lingered.

347
00:33:33,973 --> 00:33:38,176
I didn't use it as an artist name until many, many years later.

348
00:33:38,296 --> 00:33:40,888
Did an album for Woodward Avenue with

349
00:33:40,888 --> 00:33:50,055
Paul Brown, my first close friend in the USA and my best US friend.

350
00:33:50,055 --> 00:33:57,109
He's a producer of many very successful albums and a solo artist in his own right, a
guitarist.

351
00:33:57,390 --> 00:34:08,938
So basically Jack Magnet became my alter ego, slowly but surely, and then we decided to
create Jack Magnet Science with these...

352
00:34:09,312 --> 00:34:12,465
the group of players who appear in future forecasts.

353
00:34:12,465 --> 00:34:13,095
Exactly.

354
00:34:13,095 --> 00:34:23,083
And it's really hard, Jakob, to nail down some specific times and albums here because your
career has been so prolific.

355
00:34:23,083 --> 00:34:33,622
So I thought I would ask you, there three artists you've collaborated with over that time
that have made the biggest impression on you, that you continue to inspire you or you

356
00:34:33,622 --> 00:34:35,353
continue to work with them today?

357
00:34:35,353 --> 00:34:39,246
What are the three other musicians that you've really

358
00:34:39,246 --> 00:34:40,846
stood out for you?

359
00:34:41,527 --> 00:34:50,269
Well, funnily enough, it's a very close family.

360
00:34:50,269 --> 00:35:05,903
could say that if there was a jazz prophet in Iceland or a preacher of American culture,
American jazz, that was a man named John Bully Arneson.

361
00:35:05,903 --> 00:35:06,933
He was

362
00:35:08,598 --> 00:35:12,579
the voice of Icelandic radio for years and years.

363
00:35:12,700 --> 00:35:14,340
He was a trumpeter himself.

364
00:35:14,340 --> 00:35:16,741
He was a great songwriter.

365
00:35:16,741 --> 00:35:20,173
Some of the most famous and beloved songs were by him.

366
00:35:20,173 --> 00:35:28,366
He, after my parents' divorce, became my mother's boyfriend for about five years.

367
00:35:28,866 --> 00:35:29,817
Then they split.

368
00:35:29,817 --> 00:35:32,007
He moved to the north of Iceland.

369
00:35:32,308 --> 00:35:36,649
Shortly afterwards, he found another lady and

370
00:35:39,230 --> 00:35:45,410
He happened to be the mother of Aetor Gunnarsson, who is one of my closest friends.

371
00:35:45,410 --> 00:35:53,390
He's been with Stubman for 27 years and he's also the founder of Mezzo Forte.

372
00:35:53,390 --> 00:35:58,930
And he is probably my favorite keyboard player in the world.

373
00:35:59,530 --> 00:36:07,566
So it's great to have him with you as a collaborator and he's an incredible

374
00:36:07,566 --> 00:36:11,366
an tasteful musician with an incredible ear.

375
00:36:11,366 --> 00:36:18,926
And he wrote Iceland's first global hit called Garden Party by Metzl Forti back in 83.

376
00:36:19,206 --> 00:36:24,946
So here we have a kind of a sort of a like a family relationship between us.

377
00:36:24,946 --> 00:36:28,426
I asked him to join Stutman back in 1998.

378
00:36:28,426 --> 00:36:31,006
He's been with us ever since.

379
00:36:31,006 --> 00:36:35,026
Now for 17 years I was with the Wraga.

380
00:36:35,138 --> 00:36:39,780
who is the vocalist of Studman and still is.

381
00:36:40,180 --> 00:36:41,741
We had a fantastic time.

382
00:36:41,741 --> 00:36:43,802
We made some great projects together.

383
00:36:43,802 --> 00:36:47,773
Besides Studman, we did the human body percussion ensemble.

384
00:36:47,773 --> 00:36:53,205
did a rock and the Jack Magic Orchestra, fantastic album.

385
00:36:53,366 --> 00:36:55,326
Came out in the UK.

386
00:36:56,847 --> 00:37:01,969
she is on Future Forecast as well as our daughter, Disa.

387
00:37:03,682 --> 00:37:18,674
Just these three people, my former wife, continuing friend and collaborator in music,
Raga, our daughter, Disa, who is a lead singer with Trent DeMuller, the famous Danish act,

388
00:37:19,535 --> 00:37:28,321
traveling the world, doing concerts and festivals with massive attack and all sorts of big
acts.

389
00:37:30,464 --> 00:37:33,550
Disa, if I had to name one album.

390
00:37:33,550 --> 00:37:36,750
that I can listen to forever.

391
00:37:36,950 --> 00:37:41,910
That's her debut album from the tender age of 19.

392
00:37:41,910 --> 00:37:43,790
album that played out.

393
00:37:44,130 --> 00:37:49,930
that would be my first album on a remote island I wanted to have with me.

394
00:37:50,650 --> 00:37:57,210
And Raga has been with me in so many musical adventures, still is.

395
00:37:57,790 --> 00:38:03,224
We have a new student track in the charts at the moment that we wrote together.

396
00:38:03,304 --> 00:38:06,146
and we also have many other projects.

397
00:38:06,146 --> 00:38:07,657
Aether of course.

398
00:38:07,657 --> 00:38:11,059
So these three people are probably the most influential.

399
00:38:11,059 --> 00:38:28,421
Besides them, I have to say the most inventive jazz composer and player, what two of the
most favorite I could mention right here.

400
00:38:28,421 --> 00:38:32,554
I have both Matt and

401
00:38:32,654 --> 00:38:35,034
listened to for forever.

402
00:38:35,034 --> 00:38:42,294
That's Wayne Shorter who passed away last year and that is Joe Zanull who passed away in
2007.

403
00:38:43,654 --> 00:38:55,994
We shared Alan Howarth, he was our keyboard technician and synthesizer programmer and I
did an album with Alan called The Magnetics and toured the world with him.

404
00:38:55,994 --> 00:39:01,974
So now I mentioned a few names that you will give you and besides all this

405
00:39:01,974 --> 00:39:05,096
I have to mention Joni Mitchell.

406
00:39:05,727 --> 00:39:06,597
wow.

407
00:39:06,597 --> 00:39:17,144
I was so privileged to kind of wander accidentally into the studio where she was doing the
hissing of Summer Lodge with Henry Louis.

408
00:39:17,805 --> 00:39:21,027
And I just stumbled in there.

409
00:39:21,207 --> 00:39:26,410
She was in the middle of doing background vocals for her own song, Shadows and Light.

410
00:39:26,471 --> 00:39:28,142
They invited me into the studio.

411
00:39:28,142 --> 00:39:30,013
They were ever so nice to me.

412
00:39:30,013 --> 00:39:31,672
And I was involved.

413
00:39:31,672 --> 00:39:42,867
They asked me to help with writing faders in a cross mix and getting involved with mixing
that album.

414
00:39:42,867 --> 00:39:46,148
It's amazing.

415
00:39:46,669 --> 00:39:53,072
This was shortly after I moved to LA, before I moved to LA.

416
00:39:53,072 --> 00:39:58,794
So when I moved to LA and got the record deal, I decided Henry Lewis should be the
producer.

417
00:39:59,082 --> 00:40:03,004
I felt so grateful, I felt I should get him involved.

418
00:40:03,565 --> 00:40:09,149
But Joni Mitchell is probably my all -time favorite artist.

419
00:40:09,149 --> 00:40:12,431
She is the most remarkable songwriter ever.

420
00:40:12,892 --> 00:40:28,732
And her amazing song, Both Sides Now, as arranged and conducted by Vince Mendoza in Los
Angeles, is my all -time favorite track.

421
00:40:29,678 --> 00:40:30,398
There we go.

422
00:40:30,398 --> 00:40:33,960
No, that's, yeah, that's an amazing stumbling into Joni Mitchell.

423
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:36,132
It doesn't get much better than that.

424
00:40:36,132 --> 00:40:41,455
I do want to go back, Jakob, to you mentioned Stoodman and the fact that you're like a
family.

425
00:40:41,455 --> 00:40:45,607
And as you've just mentioned, your former wife is part of the band or whatever.

426
00:40:45,607 --> 00:40:51,470
What are the opportunities and the challenges of having such a close knit?

427
00:40:51,768 --> 00:40:54,200
group as far as creating new work.

428
00:40:54,200 --> 00:41:02,006
Does it allow you to be brave in creating new work because you know everyone so well or
does it actually make it harder?

429
00:41:02,607 --> 00:41:15,477
Well, thing is that Stillman is a very different project to Jack Magnet Science and a very
different project to like Ragga and the Jack Magic Orchestra or the Body Percussion

430
00:41:15,477 --> 00:41:16,518
Ensemble.

431
00:41:17,159 --> 00:41:20,361
Stillman is very much a

432
00:41:21,324 --> 00:41:37,939
popular songwriter kind of based group and our songs are designed for people to learn and
sing and be played on the radio and so forth.

433
00:41:38,319 --> 00:41:48,052
So, I mean, we know exactly what we're doing in that regard and very much inspired by the
way the Beatles work.

434
00:41:48,704 --> 00:41:55,557
writing songs and getting great lyrics and getting great arrangements, great production in
the studio.

435
00:41:55,817 --> 00:42:06,341
That is basically what students do and that's the secret formula behind their lasting
success through the decades.

436
00:42:06,962 --> 00:42:17,292
knowing people so well, knowing that everyone can improvise and just make things up on the
spot is

437
00:42:17,292 --> 00:42:19,322
the other side of this thing.

438
00:42:19,523 --> 00:42:25,344
You have these close friends and associates from your teenage years.

439
00:42:25,344 --> 00:42:29,325
You can take them anywhere and just say, let's start playing something.

440
00:42:29,325 --> 00:42:30,466
Let's make something up.

441
00:42:30,466 --> 00:42:32,016
Let's just improvise.

442
00:42:32,016 --> 00:42:33,726
Let's flow.

443
00:42:34,107 --> 00:42:35,907
And then that happens.

444
00:42:36,027 --> 00:42:42,769
So you could say the five of the Jack Magnet science group are students.

445
00:42:43,289 --> 00:42:46,410
And that is

446
00:42:46,482 --> 00:42:57,189
It's a wonderful thing that you can put them in different situations and put them in, you
know, say that now we're not going to create a pop song for radio, we're going to do

447
00:42:57,189 --> 00:42:58,950
something entirely different.

448
00:42:58,950 --> 00:43:12,398
We're going to just make things up on the spot and then we'll work on it and we'll create
structures and we'll create melodies and we'll do the soloing and we'll let it flow.

449
00:43:12,992 --> 00:43:26,513
like you mentioned Space Pasadena is very much like designed like a journey through
landscape where you're not really kind of there's no chorus there's no head there really

450
00:43:26,513 --> 00:43:40,044
well there's a head but you only hear it once and then you go through different you know
over hills and into forests and things like that and cross rivers so that was very much

451
00:43:40,044 --> 00:43:42,722
the concept of the future forecast

452
00:43:42,722 --> 00:43:53,387
was to move away from your conventional structures and ideas of us, how things should
sound or be written.

453
00:43:53,387 --> 00:43:54,807
That's brilliant.

454
00:43:54,947 --> 00:43:58,129
And I do want to take a bit of a sidestep if you don't mind.

455
00:43:58,129 --> 00:44:10,382
Your ability to envisage large landscapes in music, your knowledge of society, your well
-traveled times in both the UK and US, is that what led to you

456
00:44:10,382 --> 00:44:16,406
during the, I believe it was in the 90s, you becoming a cultural attache in London for the
Icelandic embassy.

457
00:44:16,406 --> 00:44:25,493
I'm just fascinated by that because that's, although you may not have been directly
involved in politics as such, it's still an amazing honor to be doing something like that.

458
00:44:25,493 --> 00:44:29,295
And what was your experience of doing that?

459
00:44:30,196 --> 00:44:39,074
Well, it was actually going with the flow has been very much the recipe for me and
trusting that.

460
00:44:39,074 --> 00:44:43,276
things will work out and that we'll manage.

461
00:44:43,456 --> 00:44:59,173
There was a plan in the, well, let's begin with Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime
Minister who took over in British politics when Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy

462
00:44:59,173 --> 00:45:00,103
really.

463
00:45:00,864 --> 00:45:06,506
They gathered a lot of wealth from other colonies and then they lost.

464
00:45:07,148 --> 00:45:21,931
a lot of their wealth in the two world wars, the 20th century, and then Harold Wilson, the
politics went out of hand, and the economy went to the ground, so it dropped the ball, and

465
00:45:21,931 --> 00:45:33,081
Margaret came in and she slashed all budgets, and everything was down to nitty gritty, and
there were strikes, and there were frustrations, and there was punk and all that.

466
00:45:35,084 --> 00:45:44,877
respected cultural institutions like the Barbican Centre in London, they had to find a way
of surviving, pay their salaries and so forth.

467
00:45:44,877 --> 00:45:47,578
There was no more grants as they've been used to.

468
00:45:47,578 --> 00:45:54,370
So they're thinking, who can we go to, to, you know, find some money and some monetary
stability?

469
00:45:54,370 --> 00:45:56,200
Let's go to Scandinavia.

470
00:45:56,200 --> 00:46:02,682
Let's offer them the biggest cultural festival of Scandinavian arts and culture ever held.

471
00:46:02,798 --> 00:46:14,858
and let's get all the ambassadors involved, make them patrons and let them guarantee that
their heads of state will all join us for the opening of this in 1993, the first time

472
00:46:14,858 --> 00:46:23,978
since 1337 that all the heads of state of Scandinavia, the Nordic countries team up with
the British royal family.

473
00:46:24,098 --> 00:46:30,212
So this all sounded great and all the cultural attachés of the Nordic countries were
really impressed.

474
00:46:30,398 --> 00:46:47,434
their ambassadors were very keen and all the heads of state committed except the cultural
attaché of the Icelandic embassy had fallen ill so he had gotten Alzheimer's and Iceland

475
00:46:47,434 --> 00:46:52,258
was very behind in organizing its contribution.

476
00:46:52,258 --> 00:46:57,102
So at the last minute I was called in as a creative

477
00:46:57,262 --> 00:47:08,565
person with the experience of doing concerts and films and this and that festivals and I
had very little time and no money.

478
00:47:08,565 --> 00:47:25,260
So I was summoned to actually become the cultural attache of the embassy and I managed to
turn things around very swiftly and it became an incredibly colorful sort of run and

479
00:47:25,260 --> 00:47:26,190
promotion of

480
00:47:26,190 --> 00:47:31,070
over 1000 artists over the next four five years.

481
00:47:31,630 --> 00:47:38,790
And a very inspiring type of a task but demanding at the same time.

482
00:47:39,050 --> 00:47:41,450
So it was difficult.

483
00:47:41,450 --> 00:47:47,790
Then I became the the charge of affairs of the embassy, the head of the embassy basically.

484
00:47:47,790 --> 00:47:53,310
So there was less time available for for music, but we still did.

485
00:47:53,310 --> 00:47:54,910
Me and Raga did.

486
00:47:55,050 --> 00:48:09,004
Regular gigs at the Jazz Cafe and in Camden Town we did kind of jazz stuff with members of
the you know some you know like some great British musicians and We managed to do the

487
00:48:09,004 --> 00:48:11,404
Ragtime Jack Magic project.

488
00:48:11,404 --> 00:48:24,098
We managed to do the body a human body percussion ensemble and some other stuff as well
made in Reykjavik my solo album the piano album I did with only the grand pianos

489
00:48:24,536 --> 00:48:31,530
So if there's enough hours in the day as well as the night, you can get things done.

490
00:48:31,530 --> 00:48:37,193
You can do your day job and then get on to the evening and the weekend and get things done
that way.

491
00:48:37,593 --> 00:48:47,178
So as the charge defers at the embassy, did you ever have any temptation to progress a
career in diplomacy or politics?

492
00:48:48,159 --> 00:48:53,942
I was actually supposed to do this only for a year.

493
00:48:54,606 --> 00:49:01,429
to save our presence at the Barbican Centre, the biggest Nordic cultural festival ever
held.

494
00:49:01,450 --> 00:49:04,991
As it happened, we got the biggest exposure.

495
00:49:05,232 --> 00:49:15,697
We were last minute in with the least budget, but with creative ideas and publicity and so
forth, we managed to turn things around.

496
00:49:15,878 --> 00:49:21,741
And I was hired for a lifetime as a diplomat in the Foreign Office of Iceland.

497
00:49:21,961 --> 00:49:23,762
I still am in fact.

498
00:49:24,767 --> 00:49:30,851
a cultural counselor of the Foreign Ministry of Iceland for life.

499
00:49:30,851 --> 00:49:40,497
But the moment I found myself hired for life, I got paralyzed.

500
00:49:40,497 --> 00:49:50,804
I saw myself sitting in a gray suit in a gray office and just kind of slowly dying from
boredom.

501
00:49:51,084 --> 00:49:53,906
So I decided to...

502
00:49:53,942 --> 00:50:08,006
say things but know things but it was I spent a number of years in the 90s in the UK I
actually got offered a great job after five years in the embassy and so that was in the IT

503
00:50:08,006 --> 00:50:21,270
business where I had a studio there as well so I did actually I've always been interested
in social matters in putting in my you know

504
00:50:23,256 --> 00:50:36,132
five P of knowledge and ideas to help make society better, fairer and more colourful.

505
00:50:36,333 --> 00:50:46,934
And that has actually led to the fact that I'm still the councilor for the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.

506
00:50:46,934 --> 00:50:50,257
And I actually have a seat in the parliament of Iceland.

507
00:50:50,257 --> 00:50:54,900
So you may is in your planning on running for office or?

508
00:50:54,900 --> 00:50:55,681
I am.

509
00:50:55,681 --> 00:50:56,432
I did run.

510
00:50:56,432 --> 00:50:58,924
I've been there three years.

511
00:50:58,924 --> 00:51:01,145
I am an MP as well.

512
00:51:01,306 --> 00:51:02,527
I did not realise that.

513
00:51:02,527 --> 00:51:03,228
So there you go.

514
00:51:03,228 --> 00:51:04,409
You've answered my question.

515
00:51:04,409 --> 00:51:04,889
Right.

516
00:51:04,889 --> 00:51:05,520
Yeah.

517
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:11,614
But I mean, that is, I do that because I have a way of getting things.

518
00:51:11,675 --> 00:51:15,918
I managed to get a lot of bills through parliament as the head of the

519
00:51:16,174 --> 00:51:19,534
the Composers Guild of Iceland.

520
00:51:19,614 --> 00:51:27,714
So we have a great, I've gotten about 12 bills through parliament with just explaining
things metaphorically.

521
00:51:28,534 --> 00:51:44,924
For instance, I think we are the first country in the world to have, say, music royalties
diagnosed and accepted as bearing not income tax, but

522
00:51:45,006 --> 00:51:49,786
capital gains tax, which is only a fraction of what income tax is.

523
00:51:49,786 --> 00:51:53,526
And I use the following metaphor for the ministers.

524
00:51:53,846 --> 00:51:58,446
This is in the year 2019, before I took a seat in parliament.

525
00:51:58,446 --> 00:52:00,776
said, there's two brothers at work.

526
00:52:00,776 --> 00:52:06,306
One of them is building apartments and houses from wood and glass and concrete.

527
00:52:06,306 --> 00:52:11,506
And he rents out these apartments and he pays capital gains off the rent.

528
00:52:11,506 --> 00:52:14,476
The other brother is building from

529
00:52:14,476 --> 00:52:20,269
different materials, is frequencies of music, lyrics and visuals and so forth.

530
00:52:20,269 --> 00:52:29,575
He builds up blocks of songs and catalog of music, which he owns the author's rights for.

531
00:52:29,575 --> 00:52:31,056
He is the owner.

532
00:52:31,056 --> 00:52:40,411
He will rent out a song for a play here, for a commercial there, or a movie or whatever,
but he always owns the property.

533
00:52:40,411 --> 00:52:42,322
So basically,

534
00:52:42,690 --> 00:52:46,101
The Minister of Finance suddenly realized what I was talking about.

535
00:52:46,101 --> 00:52:51,034
had taken many years before me to try and get this through.

536
00:52:51,034 --> 00:52:57,697
He said, he met me at the gas station and said, Jacob, I've realized what you've been
talking about now.

537
00:52:57,697 --> 00:52:59,597
This is a great concept.

538
00:52:59,597 --> 00:53:04,750
Intellectual property and real property should be taxed the same way.

539
00:53:04,750 --> 00:53:10,162
Which means that we are the best tax haven for music royalties in the world.

540
00:53:10,254 --> 00:53:14,934
writer's royalties, performance royalties, and publishers' royalties.

541
00:53:15,274 --> 00:53:28,014
And then I also introduced another bill which is actually, most countries have these
rebates on film making to attract big film projects to their countries.

542
00:53:28,014 --> 00:53:32,034
You know, have it in Australia, you have it New Zealand, all over the world.

543
00:53:32,174 --> 00:53:39,466
I said to a minister back in 2018, well, if you do it for the films,

544
00:53:39,502 --> 00:53:41,962
you know, we should do it for the music as well.

545
00:53:41,962 --> 00:53:46,302
This was end of term and that minister became very excited.

546
00:53:46,362 --> 00:53:49,342
name is, she said, let's do it, let's do it.

547
00:53:49,342 --> 00:53:51,522
And we ran as fast as we could.

548
00:53:51,522 --> 00:54:01,702
And we had this amazing 25 % rebate on all recording costs in Iceland, including travel
and hotels and everything.

549
00:54:01,702 --> 00:54:04,842
And this has revolutionized the industry here.

550
00:54:04,842 --> 00:54:08,070
We do a lot of Hollywood scores, a lot of...

551
00:54:08,142 --> 00:54:14,282
Big projects here in Iceland because first of all, the studios are relatively inexpensive.

552
00:54:14,282 --> 00:54:28,782
And when you get 25 % rebate, which is gonna rise to 30 and 35 eventually, know, becomes a
fantastic ideal spot to come to record and create.

553
00:54:29,642 --> 00:54:29,912
Absolutely.

554
00:54:29,912 --> 00:54:33,984
And I'm assuming that's a source of huge pride for you.

555
00:54:33,984 --> 00:54:45,364
as a parliamentarian actually making direct impacts on the lives of musicians, not just in
Iceland, but hopefully setting example for other countries and jurisdictions to pick up.

556
00:54:46,125 --> 00:55:01,038
I just think it's my duty as a well -known citizen here for a long time to assert my
influence and use my know -how, abilities and network to make things better.

557
00:55:01,038 --> 00:55:06,718
not only for my peers and colleagues, but also for those from the humbler walks of life.

558
00:55:06,718 --> 00:55:16,018
So I'm a member of the People's Party and we focus on those from the humbler walks of life
to make their lives better and safer, more optimistic.

559
00:55:16,018 --> 00:55:16,798
That's superb.

560
00:55:16,798 --> 00:55:17,058
Yeah.

561
00:55:17,058 --> 00:55:20,748
And so there's around 63 members of parliament.

562
00:55:20,748 --> 00:55:21,598
So that's amazing.

563
00:55:21,598 --> 00:55:28,818
And I believe, so you're up for election if I'm, by Googling is correct, in September next
year is the next election?

564
00:55:30,126 --> 00:55:32,566
And are you planning on standing again?

565
00:55:33,266 --> 00:55:35,606
I haven't really decided.

566
00:55:35,606 --> 00:55:38,466
I I like this very, very much.

567
00:55:38,466 --> 00:55:42,506
It's a great place to work.

568
00:55:42,506 --> 00:55:51,626
I love all the 63 people in the parliament and all the 160 -something that work there.

569
00:55:51,626 --> 00:55:54,646
And it's a very demanding job.

570
00:55:54,646 --> 00:55:56,866
You have to read a lot of bills.

571
00:55:57,090 --> 00:56:04,394
take a lot of meetings with people who have to give their opinion on whether this field
should be passed or not.

572
00:56:04,394 --> 00:56:11,518
So there's pros and cons, but it's the most educational job I've ever done.

573
00:56:11,558 --> 00:56:23,565
But as long as I can keep doing my music and keep creating new works and so forth, you
know, as I've been doing now, yeah, why not?

574
00:56:23,565 --> 00:56:25,106
Let's see what happens.

575
00:56:25,602 --> 00:56:28,975
Look, I would love and I apologize, we're getting close to time.

576
00:56:28,975 --> 00:56:38,914
I would love to spend three hours talking about the politics because that's an area of
interest of mine, but we'll move back reluctantly to the music.

577
00:56:38,914 --> 00:56:46,371
so you mentioned even when you were the cultural attache in London and the previous person
had developed Alzheimer's.

578
00:56:46,371 --> 00:56:51,255
So there was a potential train wreck of a situation there for you that you resolved.

579
00:56:51,255 --> 00:56:52,384
Have you had

580
00:56:52,384 --> 00:56:59,796
and on stage or behind the scenes train wreck where something's spectacularly wrong that
you can laugh about now.

581
00:57:00,336 --> 00:57:07,648
Yeah, well, there is one particular moment which I have to share with you.

582
00:57:07,648 --> 00:57:14,040
This is back in the 80s when we, mean, me and Alan Howarth have been so inspired.

583
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:21,646
I had gone to Brazil and made a documentary about the first immigrants of Iceland, the
first people who fled Iceland.

584
00:57:21,646 --> 00:57:25,605
after very harsh winters in the 1800s.

585
00:57:25,605 --> 00:57:28,106
And there were a few opportunities.

586
00:57:28,106 --> 00:57:34,946
One was to go to Australia, one was to go to Canada, one was to go to Brazil.

587
00:57:34,946 --> 00:57:38,346
And the deal from Brazil seemed like the best one.

588
00:57:38,346 --> 00:57:41,786
So several of them went there and I went to trace them.

589
00:57:41,786 --> 00:57:44,246
They been lost and forgotten.

590
00:57:44,326 --> 00:57:50,446
And this is, of course, 1863, whatever is way before Bossa Nova.

591
00:57:50,446 --> 00:57:51,860
It's way before

592
00:57:51,860 --> 00:57:53,201
Icelandic folk music.

593
00:57:53,201 --> 00:57:55,511
So what kind of music do you put to that?

594
00:57:55,612 --> 00:58:04,215
You just get the latest samplers and synths and things and create something that has no
time limits or no...

595
00:58:05,716 --> 00:58:11,629
So this is how actually that project, we called it the historical glimpse of the future.

596
00:58:11,629 --> 00:58:15,601
Me and Alan Howard, the group was called the Magnetics.

597
00:58:15,601 --> 00:58:19,142
So after we put the music track to the film,

598
00:58:19,214 --> 00:58:22,894
The came out, it's been on television many, many times.

599
00:58:23,274 --> 00:58:33,354
We go on tour in the States and it's all, is it 50 hertz in the US that you use, but 60
hertz in Europe.

600
00:58:33,354 --> 00:58:35,034
Am I right?

601
00:58:35,034 --> 00:58:37,094
vice that's right, Yeah.

602
00:58:37,094 --> 00:58:41,924
Anyways, we have this, this is how we set it up.

603
00:58:41,924 --> 00:58:44,974
We create the music.

604
00:58:45,034 --> 00:58:47,032
We have a full set of music.

605
00:58:47,032 --> 00:58:53,286
But we also decorated the music with visuals, which we have on a UMATIC tape.

606
00:58:53,727 --> 00:59:03,753
And the UMATIC tape, you know, this is, nobody has UMATIC tape machines anymore, but back
in those days, in the 80s, they were standard.

607
00:59:03,774 --> 00:59:08,998
And we had a SIMTY code on the UMATIC tape with the visuals on it.

608
00:59:08,998 --> 00:59:15,298
The SIMTY code was driving the LIMD drum machine, and the LIMD drum machine was driving
the sequences.

609
00:59:15,298 --> 00:59:18,640
which founded the basic tracks of the whole set.

610
00:59:18,901 --> 00:59:29,049
Now we're in a huge hall in Reykjavik with the debut of this amazing new electronic duo.

611
00:59:29,630 --> 00:59:34,194
And all my fans, they fill the halls, they're very excited to...

612
00:59:34,194 --> 00:59:44,882
They think that I'm gonna do stuff from the Jack Magnet album that had come out
previously, but they hear, they just see two guys on stage.

613
00:59:45,138 --> 00:59:54,922
And we start the UMATIC device and the visual start, the music starts, and we start
playing to it.

614
00:59:54,922 --> 00:59:56,713
Alan played a little bit of saxophone.

615
00:59:56,713 --> 00:59:58,744
I was doing most of the keyboard work.

616
00:59:59,624 --> 01:00:08,408
But then it all stops because the hertz in Iceland are totally different to the hertz that
the UMATIC device is made from.

617
01:00:08,408 --> 01:00:10,329
And we had no transformer.

618
01:00:10,409 --> 01:00:12,790
It all went terribly wrong.

619
01:00:13,070 --> 01:00:26,290
And I had one, basically one Prophet 5 synthesizer to save my face and save my reputation
for the rest of the evening for a good two hours.

620
01:00:26,710 --> 01:00:36,910
And this is probably the most embarrassing and the most nerve wracking and the most trying
experience of my whole musical career.

621
01:00:36,910 --> 01:00:41,030
I get chills when I recall it and remember it.

622
01:00:42,060 --> 01:00:56,442
Somehow the following concept, we managed to get some electronic expert to help us set it
up so we could actually continue the tour around Iceland and around Europe with this Hertz

623
01:00:56,442 --> 01:00:57,623
business.

624
01:00:57,823 --> 01:00:59,465
That's amazing.

625
01:00:59,465 --> 01:01:01,366
That's absolutely amazing.

626
01:01:01,366 --> 01:01:04,589
Yeah, I would still be getting the chills as well.

627
01:01:04,589 --> 01:01:06,126
I can understand that.

628
01:01:06,126 --> 01:01:13,586
I have to add a little anecdote to this because it's all about hertz frequencies.

629
01:01:14,286 --> 01:01:18,246
bought a 24 truck device for this.

630
01:01:18,246 --> 01:01:30,426
Actually, we hired a 24 truck device, a Stevens recorder for this recording of the
Magnetic's historical glimpse of the future as we call the album.

631
01:01:30,426 --> 01:01:34,326
The album was just released by a New York label a couple of years ago.

632
01:01:34,326 --> 01:01:35,810
Now that...

633
01:01:35,810 --> 01:01:43,014
Basically, machine was the best machine before digital machines.

634
01:01:43,014 --> 01:01:45,896
This is what Pink Floyd used, Dealer Dan used.

635
01:01:45,896 --> 01:01:48,547
There was a guy called John Stevens who had built these.

636
01:01:48,547 --> 01:01:53,940
These were all handmade and only a limited number of them in the world.

637
01:01:53,940 --> 01:01:58,843
So after using it for the record, I buy it and I bring it back to Iceland.

638
01:02:01,765 --> 01:02:04,366
a year later, John Stevens himself

639
01:02:04,366 --> 01:02:14,770
comes to Iceland, he's on his way to Salzburg and actually he's gone to Salzburg for the
first time in his life, he's gone to Europe.

640
01:02:14,770 --> 01:02:27,185
He goes back to Iceland to look at his machine on the way back and he said to us, you have
to be very kind to this machine, never talk about it negatively or send bad vibes to it,

641
01:02:27,185 --> 01:02:29,156
then it'll run forever.

642
01:02:29,236 --> 01:02:33,718
All the majors, the MCIs and Sonys have all tried to figure out

643
01:02:33,718 --> 01:02:37,010
What was the secret behind this little machine?

644
01:02:37,010 --> 01:02:38,311
It was like a black box.

645
01:02:38,311 --> 01:02:40,883
If you opened it, it will all go wrong.

646
01:02:40,883 --> 01:02:43,485
So they couldn't figure it out.

647
01:02:43,485 --> 01:02:46,206
But John was a brilliant electrician.

648
01:02:46,206 --> 01:02:54,592
When he comes to us and looks at the machine, which is fine, he tells us that he had just
come from Salzburg.

649
01:02:54,592 --> 01:02:58,004
He had gone to the airport, taken a cab.

650
01:02:58,264 --> 01:03:10,154
said, drive me into town here, drive me up the hill there, to the right you see the
churros there, you turn right again there, and that is the house I lived in in my previous

651
01:03:10,154 --> 01:03:12,146
life as Mr.

652
01:03:12,146 --> 01:03:15,289
Hertz, the guy who invented the Hertz.

653
01:03:15,289 --> 01:03:21,964
I'm not joking, this is what he said, and that house was marked with the name, with the
shield of Mr.

654
01:03:21,964 --> 01:03:22,655
Hertz.

655
01:03:22,655 --> 01:03:26,818
He remembered his previous life, and he had actually

656
01:03:26,818 --> 01:03:34,863
He was self -educated, had brought from a previous life his entire understanding and
knowledge of electronics.

657
01:03:34,863 --> 01:03:36,195
That's an amazing story.

658
01:03:36,195 --> 01:03:41,349
I had to add this to the story about my hurts, the levers.

659
01:03:41,509 --> 01:03:43,401
I'm absolutely glad you did.

660
01:03:43,401 --> 01:03:52,896
Now, my apologies, Jakob, we're running out of time, so I'm going to hit you up with the
dreaded question you've already alluded to, which is the five albums.

661
01:03:52,896 --> 01:04:00,330
So you've already mentioned one, but please feel free to mention that again and the other
four albums that would be your Desert Island discs.

662
01:04:00,330 --> 01:04:17,799
Well, the album that I listen to most often is not because it's written and sung by my
darling daughter, my first child that I can call my own.

663
01:04:19,501 --> 01:04:22,442
It's a self -titled album called DISA.

664
01:04:22,782 --> 01:04:29,765
And she is named after my mother, my deceased mother, Brindis Jakovtotir, who called
herself Disa.

665
01:04:29,765 --> 01:04:33,807
And my mother was a visual artist as well as a pianist.

666
01:04:33,807 --> 01:04:41,551
And even her signature on her paintings and her things that she made is the signature of
the album.

667
01:04:41,551 --> 01:04:43,031
that's number one.

668
01:04:43,471 --> 01:04:48,593
Number two is an album that I absolutely fell for.

669
01:04:51,138 --> 01:04:56,079
When it came out, I had really fallen for Asia by Steely Dan.

670
01:04:57,460 --> 01:05:00,100
And I still love that very, very much.

671
01:05:00,281 --> 01:05:02,791
Some friends of mine played on that album.

672
01:05:02,791 --> 01:05:04,292
played on my albums as well.

673
01:05:04,292 --> 01:05:06,622
Victor Feldman is one of them.

674
01:05:06,622 --> 01:05:09,903
Jeff Ducaro and people like that.

675
01:05:09,903 --> 01:05:18,985
But more so, Gaucho, Babylon Sisters is the song I can listen to forever.

676
01:05:19,166 --> 01:05:20,886
Absolutely forever.

677
01:05:21,056 --> 01:05:25,069
I'll come back to the one quickly after I finish the other three.

678
01:05:25,270 --> 01:05:33,156
So then I have to really share my love of...

679
01:05:34,718 --> 01:05:48,769
Well, the first Weather Report album I heard was Black Market and I absolutely love the
title track which Joe Savile wrote by turning his keyboard upside down so when he plays on

680
01:05:48,769 --> 01:05:50,006
upward scale

681
01:05:50,006 --> 01:05:56,368
it sounds like he's playing a download scale and that's how that melody becomes so unusual
and creative.

682
01:05:56,368 --> 01:06:03,870
And then you have the song by Wayne Shorter, Elegant People, on that song which is on an
all -time favorite as well.

683
01:06:03,870 --> 01:06:07,981
This is the album that they introduced Jaco Pastorius on.

684
01:06:07,981 --> 01:06:11,052
Alfonso Jones was playing days previously.

685
01:06:11,052 --> 01:06:14,993
And Alex Acuño who played with me as well, he's on that album.

686
01:06:14,993 --> 01:06:18,094
Manolo Badrina who played on my albums as well.

687
01:06:19,894 --> 01:06:37,967
Of course the most famous album by Weller Report was Heavy Weather with Love as well but I
want to use my five discs bearing me so these are number one Gaucho number two Black

688
01:06:37,967 --> 01:06:48,364
Market number three number four I have to say Joni Mitchell Once Her Voice Had Gone Down

689
01:06:48,558 --> 01:07:05,258
from the high soprano down to the more husky sounding bass alto voice with Vince Vidoza
conducting the orchestra and that song, Both Sides Now, gracing that album.

690
01:07:05,318 --> 01:07:09,618
That is the song I can listen to forever and ever and ever.

691
01:07:09,958 --> 01:07:17,678
So, Both Sides Now, Johnny Mitchell, think Sinatra and about 35 other people have covered
that song.

692
01:07:18,390 --> 01:07:37,863
And then last but not least, David, very self -gratifying and selfish, but it's the
collaboration of Peter Erskine, Matthew Garrison, Aethur Gunnarsson, Disa Raka, Guðmundur

693
01:07:37,863 --> 01:07:47,129
Pjellason, Phil Doyle, Sintragu Baldursson, Einar Skeving, Ari Braje Kaurason and
Thorleivur Góðgull.

694
01:07:49,858 --> 01:07:52,900
an album called Future Forecast.

695
01:07:54,221 --> 01:08:00,986
I can listen to that Jack Magnet Science album over and over again in the car day after
day after day.

696
01:08:00,986 --> 01:08:02,727
I never get bored of it.

697
01:08:03,127 --> 01:08:10,923
So I've been listening to it for a year now because it was ready a year ago, although it
only came out this year.

698
01:08:10,923 --> 01:08:18,998
And the reviews we've been getting on that album and the feedback from everyone, it's been
amazing.

699
01:08:19,229 --> 01:08:30,684
And I'm so grateful for the opportunity given by Wade Coleman and Chris Funk and Chad, who
offered me to go to the North of Iceland and just make something up.

700
01:08:30,684 --> 01:08:33,015
They had listened to my entire catalogue.

701
01:08:33,015 --> 01:08:37,857
They figured, why don't we offer him to go and do something?

702
01:08:38,197 --> 01:08:43,549
And I think I used that opportunity, harnessed it in the best way possible.

703
01:08:43,549 --> 01:08:48,161
And I'm extremely proud of it and grateful for having done it.

704
01:08:48,386 --> 01:08:50,687
grateful for everyone who was involved.

705
01:08:50,687 --> 01:09:02,734
Grateful to you, David, for talking about it and letting me rant on about this most
amazing adventure of my life in music.

706
01:09:02,814 --> 01:09:09,118
Look, the pleasure is all mine and I cannot thank you enough for spending the time and I
would happily talk for another hour, Jakob.

707
01:09:09,118 --> 01:09:12,950
It's actually my deadline that I need to wrap this up, unfortunately.

708
01:09:12,950 --> 01:09:17,602
I would love to reconvene at some stage in the future because you have

709
01:09:17,794 --> 01:09:28,989
mentioned some corridors that we didn't even explore and so your career is and has been
amazing and will continue to be amazing and so I'd love to talk in the future but for now

710
01:09:28,989 --> 01:09:30,839
I cannot thank you enough.

711
01:09:31,080 --> 01:09:43,415
Well I'm very grateful I enjoyed speaking with you very much David thanks for initiating
this offering me on your show and be happy to speak with you again we can cover a lot of

712
01:09:43,415 --> 01:09:46,366
ground there's a lot of stories a lot of

713
01:09:47,154 --> 01:09:49,416
unbelievable happenings.

714
01:09:49,416 --> 01:09:51,678
I've had so many lives.

715
01:09:53,019 --> 01:09:56,532
I've had so much fun and I'm forever grateful.

716
01:10:03,552 --> 01:10:05,023
And there we have it.

717
01:10:05,043 --> 01:10:08,105
I did say it at the start, but what a career.

718
01:10:08,185 --> 01:10:14,519
I would happily talk for another four hours with Jacob and I'm hoping to catch up with him
again at some stage in the future.

719
01:10:14,519 --> 01:10:28,537
I have huge respect for anyone that takes their career in music, diversifies it, and then
even gives back to society more broadly through, in his case, his work in parliament.

720
01:10:29,068 --> 01:10:33,220
But yeah, I do highly recommend you listen to the Future Forecast album.

721
01:10:33,220 --> 01:10:34,781
The link is in our show notes.

722
01:10:34,781 --> 01:10:38,003
You can find it on all the streaming platforms and on YouTube.

723
01:10:38,003 --> 01:10:39,564
So do take the time.

724
01:10:39,564 --> 01:10:41,755
It's some amazing timeless music.

725
01:10:41,755 --> 01:10:47,659
So a huge thanks to Jacob for his time and a huge thanks to you for your time.

726
01:10:47,659 --> 01:10:53,862
We always appreciate you listening and we're always thrilled to see our subscriber numbers
and our listeners grow.

727
01:10:53,862 --> 01:10:57,358
And they do tend to grow after each episode, which is wonderful.

728
01:10:57,358 --> 01:11:00,138
for those of you that are new to the show, welcome.

729
01:11:00,138 --> 01:11:03,758
A quick shout out to our gold and silver supporters.

730
01:11:03,798 --> 01:11:06,338
Dewey Evans, thank you sir for your support.

731
01:11:06,338 --> 01:11:08,878
We hugely appreciate it.

732
01:11:08,878 --> 01:11:10,938
Tammy from Tammy's Musical Stew.

733
01:11:10,938 --> 01:11:11,708
Thank you Tammy.

734
01:11:11,708 --> 01:11:15,258
You've been a long -term supporter and we hugely value it.

735
01:11:15,258 --> 01:11:23,828
Dave and the team from the musicplayer .com forums, 100 % community funded forum,
particularly the keyboard corner, because I'm biased.

736
01:11:23,828 --> 01:11:27,662
I love that forum in particular and it has been there for over 20 years.

737
01:11:28,002 --> 01:11:36,571
And then we have Mike from Midnight Mastering who provides amazing mixing and mastering
services, can be contracted with online and does an amazing job.

738
01:11:36,571 --> 01:11:39,814
I personally recommend and love his work.

739
01:11:39,814 --> 01:11:41,325
Again, thank you to listening.

740
01:11:41,325 --> 01:11:42,236
We'll be back.

741
01:11:42,236 --> 01:11:43,347
Thank you to listening.

742
01:11:43,347 --> 01:11:44,879
Thank you for listening even.

743
01:11:44,879 --> 01:11:46,481
And we'll be back in a fortnight.

744
01:11:46,481 --> 01:11:48,382
See you then, keep on playing.