"Jo the Waiter" is a song by
Gary Numan, originally released by his band
Tubeway Army
Tubeway Army were a London-based new wave band led by lead singer Gary Numan. Formed at the height of punk rock in 1977 the band gradually changed to an electronic sound. They were the first band of the electronic era to have a synthesiser ...
on its self-titled
debut album in
1978. The song is often cited by critics and fans as one of the high points of the album, and Numan has taken to performing it live in concert over the last decade or so (perhaps at the behest of his wife Gemma, who considers it her favourite song).
The subject matter concerns a lonely man who recalls an unsuccessful homosexual affair that he had with a
waiter whom he used to employ. He licks his psychological wounds from the affair's fallout while
junkies and
valium
Diazepam, first marketed as Valium, is a medicine of the benzodiazepine family that acts as an anxiolytic. It is commonly used to treat a range of conditions, including anxiety, seizures, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, muscle spasms, insomnia, a ...
addicts surround him. The phrase "Young men need love special" is a quote from Burroughs' novel ''
Naked Lunch
''Naked Lunch'' (sometimes ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the na ...
''. According to biographer Steve Malins, Numan took the real-life loss of a girlfriend, Joanna Casey, as the starting point for the song, reversed the sexuality of the affair and then embroidered the tale to arrive at the final lyric. Like many Numan songs from this period, it evokes a
Burroughsian world of addiction, homosexuality and failed relationships, predating the writer's fascination with
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
that took hold on the next and last Tubeway Army album, ''
Replicas
A 1:1 replica is an exact copy of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without claiming to be identical. Al ...
'' (
1979
Events
January
* January 1
** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the '' International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the '' Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the so ...
).
"Jo the Waiter" is one of Numan's few acoustic guitar tracks, others being "The Monday Troop" and "Crime of Passion" (also written and recorded in 1978 but unreleased until
1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...
as part of the CD release of the compilation album "
The Plan").
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jo The Waiter
1978 songs
Gary Numan songs