Relive the excitement of Howard Jones’ first headline tour with this excellent remastered release on Cherry Red Records

Back in Your Life

Since Howard Jones stepped onto the stage at London’s Marquee Club on 20th September 1983, his live show has probably been reviewed, dissected, analysed and boot-legged a dozen times over. What more can be said about a performance that took place over 40 years ago? If you were there, you probably remember it how you want to remember it, distorted and conflated with Top Of The Pops appearances, studio recordings and the live tours that have circled the world in those four decades.

The Marquee itself is of course long gone, the building now repurposed into apartments and restaurants. Those glorious days are back, at least for the 67 minutes of pleasure offered by this newly polished recording.

Working in the Backroom

Jones does have a love for reinvention as demonstrated on his recent tour and Steinway livecast where old and new songs were tinkered with, adjusted, improvised and otherwise reimagined. He clearly loves the music that he has made, yet he seems to be on a continuous mission to tweak and improve his creations. Whilst mooching through some old master tapes for the 2018 remastered reissue of Human’s Lib in 2018, Jones came across recordings of that Marquee performance. The rest, as they say, is history. Or at least it will be on 30th January 2026 when the audio recording of the show will be released for the first time by Cherry Red.

Dream into Action

It seems rather late in the day to review the show after all this time so instead let’s take a look at what you get for your money and how Jones has gotten on with the task of remixing the live recordings without being able to fiddle with the notes, as tempting as this may have been. It’s a lovely time capsule which shows where Jones’ musicianship and stagecraft were back in those early days when New Song was in the charts at number 44 and Jones was on the cusp of the big time. Jones even references his upcoming Top Of The Pops debut appearance.

As mentioned, the audio has been remixed by Jones himself. According to Cherry Red, the CD is packaged in a digisleeve with a CD booklet which contains rare and previously unseen photos. Aside from the fun easter eggs such as the chart position and TOTP reference, you can also hear the full extended Ruth, David and Dennis storyline introduction to ‘Human’s Lib’.

Things Can Only Get Better

Jones’ penchant for tinkering is evident here; songs such as Natural, New Song and Human’s Lib deviate from the album versions in a way which showcases Jones’ flair for incorporating different musical styles.

The audio quality is great for the instrumentation and for Jones’ voice. In order to recreate the live atmosphere, some audience audio has been mixed in too and that’s a little thin to be fair, so perhaps back in those days the house microphones weren’t quite up to scratch. Having said that, the show was recorded with the intention of releasing it for sale at the time. Overall, it’s a very enjoyable listen for any fan of 80s electropop and a trip down memory lane for anyone who wants to relive those exciting early days of mainstream synth music.

Here’s Howard Jones at Live Aid, just 2 years on from the Marquee performance:

Howard Jones: Website 

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