‘What can anyone say about something they did so long ago?! I’m not embarrassed by it, or not by most of it, anyway. It positively reeks of London 1978-79 and, well, it is what it is. I’m glad people liked it, and still like it, though I think some of that is nostalgia and a tendency to romanticise peoples’ first albums, as though later ones must somehow be less ‘authentic’. For a first album, this one’s not bad, but I was only 23 when I made it and it would be pretty weird if I didn’t think I’d done better things since.’

‘This is really Part Two of ‘Look Sharp’ – it was released less than a year later. I don’t know how I even had the time to write and record a slightly more mature record, but I think it is, and the best of the first three.’

‘The stereotypical Difficult Third Album, in which we tried to change the formula a bit without quite knowing how. It’s darker than the first two, and the reggae influence is more pronounced. There’s some good stuff on it (I especially like the title track and ‘Biology’) but it’s not quite the triumphant swan song of this band. For that, see ‘Volume Four’.’

‘No guitar, latin rhythms, and a more sophisticated and jazz-influenced approach to songwriting . . . my first three albums are London albums, but this is a New York album. It was also the first time I did exactly what I wanted and to hell with the consequences . . . I was really nervous when it was released, I thought it would be hated or ignored, but it was my most successful album. In many ways it feels like my first.’

‘I want to clear up two myths about this record which still crop up all the time. Myth 1: During the live recording of the album, the audience was forbidden to applaud. Fact: There was plenty of applause. We were just playing a lot of unfamiliar material, and recording it for an album, so the audience were asked to hold it until they were sure a song was finished. They understood this and there was no problem. Myth 2: It’s a double album with a side missing. Fact: This was my first album to be released on CD, where the running time was not an issue. I was having a hard time deciding what to leave out for the LP, though, and I suggested making a 3-sided one, and selling it for the price of a regular album. Much to my surprise, the record company said yes. So rather than a side missing, you got an extra side. Critics, of course, hadn’t had to pay for it.’

‘Like ‘Big World’ this is a diverse record which I tried to tie together with an overall theme. In ‘Big World’ it was Travel, and this time it was a journey through life, from childhood to some sort of vaguely-defined maturity. I think it’s a stronger album than the previous two. It has a kind of epic quality, with a 16-piece band. For the tour I cut it down to a mere eleven. I still lost money.’

‘This one is simpler and more conventional than the previous couple of albums – I’ve even seen it referred to as a ‘mainstream rock record’. As usual I don’t know what it is, but over time the songs have held up surprisingly well and I now think it’s one of my better albums.’

‘I still don’t know if the title was the right thing to do. The consensus seems to be, in retrospect, that it hurt rather than helped. But I went with it because there were so many connections to the earlier album. It’s supposed to be something like a day in the life of New York, seen through the eyes of several different characters. The tracks are continuous and all in the same tempo, though the actual grooves change around it. That was a technical trick which I felt worked very well, it seemed to give the whole thing a kind of relentless drive like the energy of a big city. And I loved working with Marianne Faithfull (on ‘Love Got Lost’). Anyway, I reckon this is one of my best albums and certainly my most underrated.’

‘I think I was a bit burned-out on big, complex projects at this point, and ready to strip things down. I wanted this to be the great fourth album my original band would have made if we’d stayed together a couple more years. I think it turned out to be even better than that, because of all the experience I’d gained as a writer and we’d all gained as players. For me this is far and away the best Joe Jackson Band album . . . though of course, you can’t compete with nostalgia, no matter what you do.’

‘Like ‘Volume Four’ I think this was partly a reaction against the very ambitious projects I’d done a few years before, but even more stripped-down. I wanted to create something powerful with what I thought would be the absolute bare minimum of forces that I could do it with: just piano, bass, drums and voices. It’s interesting what happens when you take out the guitar, it seems to get bigger rather than smaller, there’s a lot more space and the piano sounds huge. I think the album has a kind of timeless quality which I’m very pleased with.’