Jo Harman - The Five Years

Artiest/Band: Jo Harman Single: The Five Years  Release Date: 2024 The 'Five Years/Life On Mars' pairing  will be released shortly as a vinyl 'picture disc' (remember them?). The picture disc idea arose from a casual conversation with our friend Mark Wilkinson, a noted music, film and TV illustrator and graphic designer, whose work has adorned album covers by the likes of the current Iron Maiden and Judas Priest releases, to name but two.

  Mark, a Bowie fan himself, suggested a picture disc for the Jo release, fancying the idea of putting Jo against a dystopian sci-fi background and offered his not inconsiderable skills to make that happen. Hence these beautiful artwork images on the picture disc itself; based partly on an original photo of Jo taken by another talented friend and musician, Shaun Hill. We feel so honoured and fortunate to have such talents involved. Footnote: I casually mentioned to Mark over coffee recently 'Have you ever been involved in any other Bowie related projects?'. Mark, one of the humblest guys you could ever meet, gently replied 'well,.. ...yes I was involved in all the official Bowie album re-releases'. Nice work if you can get it!  Jo Harman's latest single (and brand new never before released music from Jo, a rarity in itself!), being her take on David Bowie's 'Five Years'. 

Why David Bowie?  Well, one obvious answer is 'why not?' but there's actually a little more to the story and not just because her Father (RIP) was a big Bowie fan, and the fact his eclectic record collection from the 'golden age of music' has perhaps most influenced Jo's musical tastes. 

 No, it was more that Jo, fresh out of college, and taking her first steps toward her aim to be a professional singer, was invited to perform at a 'Bowie Night' in Brighton. This was about the time she was separately invited to perform 'Whole Lotta Love' in front of Jimmy Page, but that's another story!  Back to the 'Bowie' event, included in the band that night was Herbie Flowers who played the distinctive bass line on 'Space Oddity', as well as featuring heavily on Bowie's Diamond Dogs album, plus that oh so famous bass line ('doubled' on both upright and electric bass, in order 'to claim two lots of royalties', according to Flowers!) on the Bowie-produced 'Walk To The Wild Side', a huge hit for Lou Reed. 

 

The song Jo was asked to sing that night was 'Five Years' and now a good decade or so later she has recorded a version with her good friends Stefan Redtenbacher (bandleader/bass), Ross Stanley (piano and Hammond organ) and Mike Sturgis (drums). Pretty much as a nostalgic nod to that early event in her career (maybe 'Whole Lotta Love' will be next?, who knows). Some of you may know that Jo has recently become the proud Mother of twin boys, one of which is called 'Herbie'. Whether this is a coincidence or not, Jo's not saying! 

 

Over and above all of this, Jo confesses that the lyrics of this song (written well over 50 years ago) take on new meaning to her as a recent Mother of three, with climate crisis, AI, war, conflict and much else threatening our world existence in no small way. Some of that has definitely infused into her reading of the song on this recording.