Howard Jones
Howard Jones is an English singer, songwriter and musician. He was extremely successful during the eighties, having 10 top 40 singles. His hits have included “What Is Love?”, “New Song”, and perhaps most famously, “Things Can Only Get Better”. He also performed at the historic Live Aid concert in 1985.
In 1985, Howard released the song “Assault and Battery”, which became a vegetarian anthem. It featured the lyrics:
For feasts at the table
A life of misery
Ending with a shock
All hands to the slaughter
Mass torture
All hands to the knife
With the knife, the jolt, the wring
They must follow in our dreams
Carrying a twisted sting
At the table in a different disguise
Or something someone else will do
We’re talking about the act
Of taking life for me and you
And I hear their screams”
“What pushed me to stop eating meat? I remember it really well actually because my brother was at Uni in Liverpool, and he had met somebody who’d worked in an abattoir, and he told him all these stories. My brother relayed that to me, and I literally gave up that night. I thought ‘I just don’t want to be part….in fact I cannot be part of this anymore’ and that was that.”1Etheridge, L. 2018. IN CONVERSATION – Howard Jones. Available: https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2018/11/08/in-conversation-howard-jones/ [Accessed 19 March 2021].
