Gary Jules’ career path has always been that of a songwriter, and his songwriting is quite good (a long-time favorite of KCRW’s Nic Harcourt). He thought of “Mad World” as basically just a hired job, and favor to friend, Michael Andrews.
He was quite surprised when it became a big hit (in the U.K.), years after he had recorded and nearly forgotten about it.
He ended up making quite a lot of money off that song- directly from the song itsself, and indirectly from a heavy tour schedule through the U.K., Europe, and Australia and thus added album sales of his own albums.
He has made enough money to acheive the victory of no longer needing to live in Los Angeles in order to advance his career, so he and his wife have moved to a small North Carolina town where they just had their first baby.
One of Gary Jules’ great acheivements was establishing the music scene at The Hotel Cafe. The owners wisely discovered soon after opening the place that they had absolutely no idea how to book a music venue, so they got Gary Jules to be completely in charge of booking for the first few months.
Gary created an environment that was very artist friendly, but at the same time he was a harsh arbiter of taste. The result was that all of the best songwriters in Los Angeles were drawn into the Hotel Cafe scene. In the begining, a music fan could head out to the Hotel Cafe having no idea what songwriters would be performing but still be 100% sure that there would be an amazing line-up for the night.
Among this first wave of songwriters (AM, Quincy Coleman, Jim Bianco, Tracy Spuehler, Shane Alexander, among many others) there developed a strong sense of artistic community. Songwriters went out to each others shows to show support and collaborated with each other on stage. Before Gary Jules got things going at the Hotel songwriters often viewed themselves in competition with each other rather than in community with each other.
The Hotel Cafe soon became “cool”, and as with most truly cool places that suddenly become “cool” it became a bit less cool. There was a small dip in quality control after Jules stepped out, there was another dip in quality control when they broke through a wall to expand the place last year. These dips in quality control, however, were small dips starting from extremely high standards. It’s been five years since Gary Jules founded the music scene there and the Hotel Cafe is still one of the best music venues in Los Angeles.
If you’d care to discuss the intricacies of everything TFF – or Radiohead, for that matter – ever did, by all means drop me an email (it’s in my profile). It’s always nice to meet a fellow, er, enthusiast.