Life and adventures of Jay-Jay Johanson: “I was homeless while I was preparing my second album. “He stole apples from the market.”

Jay Jay Johanson in a recent promotional photo.Manu Morales

There was a time when Jay-Jay Johanson was the epitome of

cool.

That blond, white-skinned Scandinavian, always stylishly dressed, was raffled off by advertising brands and trend trackers.

He was also heard everywhere on music channels thanks to songs that combined silky jazz and

trip hop

electronics such as

So Tell The Girls That I Am Back In Town

or

On The Radio

.

But more than twenty years have passed since that time and Jäje Folke Andreas Johansson (Trolhättan, Sweden, 1968) seems to have been forgotten by today's front line.

That does not imply that his activity relapsed.

Recently, he has collaborated with Balenciaga and already has 14 albums to his credit.

The last one,

Fetish

, dates back to 2023 and is the main attraction of his next Spanish tour, eight concerts in seven cities, with tickets sold out in several of them.

“There are many people I have to thank, because Spain was one of the first countries where I took off, along with France and Portugal,” explains the musician, always jovial and friendly, from his home in a suburb of Stockholm. .

“I have been resting here for several days between concerts, relaxing with my son and my wife,” adds an artist who has always valued his family status since he married the Belgian model Laura Delicata in 2008.

The couple has a 16-year-old son, Roman, who is studying to be a chef and has a special olfactory sensitivity that, according to his father, could also open doors for him in the perfume industry.

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But few people know that the current Jay-Jay's celebration of domestic comfort has a lot to do with having overcome a childhood and youth with almost Dickensian overtones.

“I come from a poor family, my mother had seven siblings and my grandmother was alone at home with all of them while my grandfather was always at sea with a fishing boat.

I remember my mother telling me that they only had one toothbrush for the whole family and they couldn't buy shoes for everyone.

I left home when I was 15, but until the beginning of the nineties they were times of hardship for me in terms of the economy.

Even when I put out my first album, which did very well.

I don't know if this is known, but when you sell records in a country that is not yours, the money can take a year and a half to reach you.

And, at that time, where it sold the most was in France.

I was homeless for half a year while we were preparing my second album, but luckily I had made a copy of the key to the place I had been living before, so I would sneak into the basement and sleep on the floor, although I didn't use the shower or I had sheets.

“I depended on friends, I stole apples from the market, but I hardly ate anything.”

When the second album,

Tattoo

, came out in 1998, it reached number 16 on the French charts, the biggest success he had ever had, and everything changed.

Is it true that your father ran a jazz club in Sweden?

That's how it is.

He had a printing press, but, as a hobby outside of his work, he ran a jazz club in Trolhättan.

It is a small city, with 50,000 inhabitants, but very well located, halfway between Gothenburg and Stockholm.

Many American jazz artists came to my country, back in the fifties, because they wanted to be with Swedish girls, who have that reputation, you know.

Since they had to travel by car between the two main cities, my father and his friends decided to take advantage of that situation, open a jazz club and present it to North American promoters.

That's how they got many of the jazz greats to make that stop.

I saw some concerts, not many, because I didn't really like jazz, I was too young and didn't appreciate it, I preferred hard rock and punk.

Until he saw Chet Baker and that's when his life changed, right?

Yes, in 1984. I was 15 years old and it was the right time.

Before that I believed that to be a performer you had to be outgoing, loud and proud.

That's how all the guys I saw on MTV and Top Of The Pops were.

But when I saw Chet I realized that you could be an introvert, and that gave me the courage to think that I could do it too.

I wanted to be like Chet Baker.

Actually, he was no longer in his best moment and it wasn't really a great concert, but for me it meant something very important.

Last year I met photographer Bruce Weber, who made a documentary about Baker,

Let's Get Lost

.

We talked about Chet and I thanked him for the movie reminding me of the magic he had.

The other music that built Jay-Jay Johanson was the so-called

trip hop.

How did you get to it?

In the late eighties and early nineties I spent a lot of time in London, there was a very active club scene and trends changed almost every week.

The members of Soul II Soul had a club where they played a kind of

sound system

with a DJ and different vocalists singing over what he played.

The Wild Bunch (the collective from which Massive Attack emerged) were doing the same thing in Bristol.

But what really impressed me was discovering Portishead.

To earn some money, on the weekends I worked at a Swedish music magazine called

Pop Magazine

.

Their album,

Dummy

, wasn't going to be released until the end of August, but we already had the promotional tape in May.

I listened to it every day in the summer of '94. Until then, I had arranged my songs with a jazz quartet in Stockholm.

It didn't convince me at all, because it sounded very old-fashioned and a bit boring to me.

I wanted to be more modern, and it was after listening to Portishead that I realized that jazz could be arranged in a different way, so I got rid of my jazz quartet, brought some turntables to the studio and started slowing down. my hip

hop

singles

,

add

samples

of jazz music and many soundtracks, James Bond themes with hip

hop

beats

.

Portishead had that fundamental influence on my first album,

Whiskey

(1996).

The Swedish musician begins a Spanish tour in February. Manu Morales

You studied at art school in Stockholm, has that influenced you to have a more multidisciplinary vision of your work?

Yes. I didn't know what form of art I wanted to work with, but I did know that I was going to dedicate myself to some type of artistic expression, whether it was film, painting, architecture, magazines, photography or music.

I wanted to learn as much as possible from all the disciplines and then let luck decide.

I was at ID

magazine for a while

, working with photographers and fashion people, but then music came along and my career headed that way.

I never returned to the publishing world, although I am still in charge of the covers of my albums, the interior booklets...

His songs have also been featured frequently in advertising.

Do you notice that his music is good for selling things?

I don't think it was used that much, I thought they were going to use it more.

People often say that my music is very cinematic.

It goes in spurts and, well, it's a good way to get people to discover it.

For example, I have never had much success in North America, but the times that there has been a bit of a stir has been with the songs that appeared in advertisements or in television series, even in fashion shows.

For example, Ralph Lauren used several of my songs at New York Fashion Week.

Yes, I think they work in different formats.

I was surprised, for example, to see how Apple used my theme Heard Somebody Whistle

last week

.

Do you consider advertising an art form?

Of course it is.

It is a collaboration between creative people from different disciplines: filmmakers, set designers, architects, photographers... It will never be considered a true art form because they don't display it on gallery walls, but there is a lot of creativity in it.

The same thing happens with fashion.

Lately he is collaborating with Balenciaga.

What is your relationship with the fashion industry like?

When I was a child I really liked punk, I watched the Sex Pistols and I realized that it was as important to look at the photos as it was to listen to their music.

Then in the eighties, with the

new romantics:

Visage, Culture Club... a lot of importance was given to what people wore.

Living in that era meant becoming curious about clothes, style, fashion.

But I never felt too interested in entering there, it has always been the world of fashion that has invited me to be part of its creativity.

It's funny, because I've been working a lot with Balenciaga in the last two, three years, and also twenty years ago, when I collaborated with their designer Nicolas Ghesquière.

My Spanish tour just starts in San Sebastián, there is a Balenciaga museum nearby, so I'm going to visit it the day before.

Have you also been on the catwalk?

Yes. They invited me last year to walk in a campaign.

I had never imagined myself as a model, but, in reality, I have been on stage for half my life, so it didn't make that much difference.

It was fun.

He has many followers in both Russia and Ukraine.

How has the war affected you?

We played in Russia practically every year, and they paid us very well there for concerts compared to Western Europe.

At the same time I have to say that many of the young and creative people in Russia had to escape as soon as the war started because they were forced to fight.

Homosexuals have also always been attacked and harassed, and have been fleeing the country for a long time.

So, in the last two years I have met at concerts many Russian fans who had gone into exile in other countries.

They told me horrible stories, about how they will never be able to return to their country and may never see their families again and have lost many of their belongings.

Of course, the situation for Ukrainians is even worse, I have also heard sad stories from them.

They had to flee to survive, many have lost their parents, or their homes.

I have had to cancel many concerts, but that is nothing compared to their suffering.

Jay-Jay Johanson

performs on February 15 in San Sebastián (Dabadaba), on the 16th in Barcelona (La Nau), on the 17th in Madrid (Conde Duque), on the 18th in Valencia (Loco Club), on the 19th in Seville (Sala X ), on the 20th in Malaga (Echegaray Theater) and on the 22nd in Murcia (Víctor Villegas Auditorium)

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