Mendelson Joe
“The reason I played music and did it for a living was because that’s all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid,” says Mendelson Joe, who first caught the bug at the age of 10, when he heard Little Richard on the radio. “I played my sister’s guitar at eleven, and still do.” In his late teens Joe started playing with a band called Mainline and recorded his first album when he was 24, in 1968. His second album, again with Mainline, was recorded in London, UK.
In 1972, Joe left Mainline and became a solo artist, and shortly afterwards he met a budding agent called Ray Danniels. “I never felt part of a sound or scene or trend,” he says. “I made my first recording for Nobody/GRT in 1972 (I played all the instruments). The album was a collage of idioms and sillinesses titled ‘Mr. Middle of The Road’. Humour is a medium I’ve employed since song #1.” By 1974 Ray had started to book gigs for Joe, and after a year he became his manager, representing Joe for four albums. “I’m very, very fussy about my music, I don’t do what people want me to do ever,” says Joe, who nonetheless recognised the role that Ray could play. “I attribute to almost all peoples’ successes, as much as Eric Clapton has an ability to play the guitar, or Jeff Beck, or David Gilmour, these guys wouldn’t be anywhere without managers at some point.”
Characterised as a “folk satirist”, Joe’s 1979 ‘Not Homogenized’ album included a guest slot for Ben Mink on violin, and in 1988 Geddy persuaded Anthem to release the Mendelson Joe album ‘Born To Cuddle’. Geddy played on ‘Women Are The Only Hope’, “an unreleased album from 1992,” says Joe. “He adapted his style well for ‘Joe’ songs.” In April 1992, Joe started Artists Against Racism with Lisa Cherniak. Neil was the second person to join the campaign. “All art is political,” says Joe. “Honesty is about truth and as an artist, I’ve tried to write, sing, paint and guitar my truth my way. There is little or no market for truth in any form. Few people want the truth; fewer would recognise it; that is the truth!”
For the past few years, Joe has been living in Muskoka, in Northern Ontario. “I live in the woods because I embrace nature and loathe most humans,” he says. “I avoid computers/faxes but I confess I enjoy computer-mixing and appreciate the website in my name. I’m actually a contradiction because I love the technology of motorcycles (I own an R1 Yamaha).” As well as his music, he is recognised for his landscape and portrait painting. “I think he went into painting because he gave up on the music industry,” says friend and collaborator Bruce Cole. “If you don’t dot your I’s and cross your T’s, someone will come up and screw ya.” Having photographed him as an artist, Bruce also worked with Joe as a painter. “He would give me a painting and I would shoot some postcards for him, as a matter of fact he even did a portrait of me!” Joe freely admits that Rush’s music doesn’t do much for him. “I know that many people do not get my music and/or my paintings; it’s about taste and inclination,” he says. “Neil’s lyrics do not speak to me but his letters are graceful, sometimes hilarious communications. His books are almost as good as his letters.”
With a total of 24 albums under his belt (“Not all of them were released,” he says), Mendelson Joe is living proof that there’s more to life than the beaten track. “He’s very much the eccentric gentleman,” says Bruce. “Instead of going with the flow and hiding who he is, he wears who he is on his sleeve. He’s a gentleman, he’s a genuine man.”