An Evening with Joan Armatrading, Cadogan Hall review - thoughtful and engaging conversation

I can’t hear Joan Armatrading without being instantly transported back to Liverpool, and my student digs just around the corner from Penny Lane. I was a first-year music student, writing essays in the late-night glow of an Anglepoise, my radio-cassette player (boomboxes hadn’t yet been invented) tuned to Radio City. “Love and Affection” and “Down to Zero”, from her magnificent self-titled 1976 LP (no CDs either, and certainly no streaming!) were on the playlist of just about every DJ.

I saw her live only once, from quite near the front of the 250,000-strong audience assembled at Blackbushe for Bob Dylan’s famous Picnic in July 1978. She was pretty damned good, even if I only had ears for Dylan. Ah, the good old days.

Almost a score of albums later (How Did This Happen and What Does It Now Mean? dropped last November), Armatrading maintains a low profile: her last tour was in 2018, and media appearances are few and far between. So her one-off appearance at Cadogan Hall, hosted by How To Academy, drew an enthusiastic audience, many from outside London. They weren’t hip and groovy – most didn’t look like regular concert-goers, certainly not these days – but they sure were devoted. And many of them hadn’t travelled on a Freedom Pass. Clearly, the music of Armatrading, an ageless 74, has transcended the generations.

Like the rest of us, she still has no answer to the question posed by the title of that last album which was indeed, she explained, a response to the dismal state of a world where civil disagreement is now all but impossible. What we got instead was an evening of thoughtful and engaging conversation with ITN newsreader Julia Etchingham, clearly a fan, who probed thoughtfully and didn’t feel the need to interrupt. Armatrading, in her trademark casual sweats and sneakers, was self-deprecating in manner but utterly confident in her talents.

She had, she said, “a God-given talent” and her job was “to look after it. Don’t mess it up”. She didn’t need to be told that her work was good – she knew it was. That’s her job – to exercise critical judgment. Which means also recognising when something isn’t so good.

Armatrading arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied minor from St Kitts, her parents and two brothers having gone ahead, leaving her with her grandparents. She recalled the experience vividly, and the onward journey from the airport to Birmingham to be reunited with her family. While she’s long lived in Surrey, where she has her own Bumpkin recording studios, she remains both proud and fond of her home city and its people. The audience cheered.

Her father played guitar but kept it in “the safe”, out of little Joan’s reach. Her first instrument was acquired in exchange for two old prams: she still has it, but the action is so high she’s not sure how she ever played it. Indeed, it was at the piano – which her mother had bought to enhance the living room – that she wrote her first songs. The urge to create was always strong, and when her brother got her a gig at Birmingham University he told her to learn a couple of songs with which the audience would be familiar. “I played ‘The Sound of Silence’ before I could get to the good stuff!” A successful chance audition for the touring version of Hair (not for anything would she have removed her clothes) led to her meeting lyricist Pam Nestor. Armatrading would arrive at the theatre early each day to write, and the result was Whatever’s for Us, a one-off for the partnership. It was producer Glyn Johns who launched her career and produced those memorable early singles.

But Armatrading has never been content with the record-release-tour lifestyle, preferring instead to range across musical genres. She “always knew” she would compose a classical piece, and one day she just started writing. It premiered in 2023 to luke-warm reviews which have left Armatrading’s enthusiasm undimmed. A choral work is currently in its final stages.

The evening’s conversation ranged over the writing process, AI, her support of young musicians, her meetings with Nelson Mandela, and her preference, even in childhood, to observe rather than engage. On the road, she preferred the comfort of her hotel room to a post-concert night on the town with the band and crew. “I’d watch television or write an OU essay, which in those days you had to submit by mail, not email.” Armatrading wrote and studied wherever she was, and she went straight from the airport to sit her final exam.

Not very rock ‘n’ roll – but very refreshing.

• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk

Liz Thomson's website