Published in The Hamilton Spectator May 23, 1996
BABYLON ON THE BEATLES
BY NICK KREWEN
There aren't many people who can be mentioned in the same breath as THE BEATLES about their accomplishments.
JAS MANN is one of them.
Under the pseudonym of BABYLON ZOO, the 24-year-old former microbiology student is the proud creator of "Spaceman," the fast-selling single in the U.K. since The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" over 30 years ago. The smash hit -- which entered the British charts at #1 and has since sold over a million copies -- repeated the feat in 20 more countries, prompting a global-orbiting promotional tour that saw him touch down in Toronto last Friday.
"It's sort of like somebody hitting you over the head with a brick," says Mann, dressed head to toe in black with space age leather trimmings. "Obviously it doesn't happen to everyone."
Mann says he wasn't surprised by the song's appeal, just at its impact.
"It's like you're training for the 100-metre dash, and you're timing yourself. You know you can win it, but you end up breaking the world record. That's how it felt."
Some of the credit for the song's launch to the top of the charts might be headed to Levi-Strauss, which filmed a jeans commercial featuring the song that was shown in Britain, Benelux and Norway late last Fall.
"They stopped showing the commercial in November, and the single didn't come out until January," says Mann, born in Britain but raised in India and the U.S. as well as his native Wolverhampton. "But the track had been doing really well in the clubs and on the radio before the commercial. The commercial made it even more phenomenal."
As for The Beatles, that's the one group Mann didn't listen to when he was growing up.
"I grew up listening to RAVI SHANKAR and Indian records, FRANK SINATRA, ELVIS, JOHN BARRY -- people like that ," says Mann, whose parents are of Sikh descent. "I love soundtracks -- Midnight Express, GIORGIO MORODER, or War Of The Worlds."
Spaceman's origins date back almost three years, when Mann and some close friends made an independent short B-movie called Spaceman's Sub-Organic Mutation.
"It was sort of like a ROGER CORMAN meets FRITZ LANG, Invaders From Mars meets Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman," Mann explains. "It was a 15-minute film, and the music I did to it was `Spaceman.' It was all quick edits -- slowed down, sped up, and I thought the tempo changes were quite interesting. I told my record company that's how I wanted to release it. It was a bit of a fight, but they eventually complied."
With DAVID BOWIE's "Space Oddity" and PETER SCHILLING's "Major Tom" in mind, it seems a coincidence that once a decade an astronaut-inspired hit seems to top the charts.
Mann thinks it's just the perfect sci-fi escape from a humdrum existence.
"I think people have grown up in a prototype society: man's prototype," he explains. "It is an artificial environment. So you dream. You fantasize about traveling somewhere else. You read Marvel Comics, the SILVER SURFER, watch Dr. Who and Star Trek, and it becomes a release -- a throwback against the normalcy of every day, mundane life. It's something exciting and different."
Describing himself as "an obsessive character who works 25 hours a day," Mann says success that his single and current album The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes hasn't changed him.
In fact, he's been rather amused by it all.
"You do find that the size of the car that picks you up from the airport is relative to the success you've had in the country," he says. "We got picked up in a taxi here, and it's a limousine everywhere else.
"But I don't mind. I see the humor in this business. I see the bull in this business. I love the music, so all the airy fairy stuff of champagne and fancy parties doesn't really interest me. I'd rather be sitting in my studio writing songs."
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THANKS: Marianne Girard, Doug Foley
©1996, 1999 Nick Krewen, Octopus Media Ink.