Love Jones

For those unaware, ‘Swingers’ are those who play swing music and drink cocktails performatively. 

When Jon Favreau set out to make a film that would indulge this trend sweeping Los Angeles, lead Love Jones vocalist Ben was apprehensive: “They sent us the script. I didn’t like it. I was also very punk rock at the time and I didn’t want to sell out. The irony wasn’t coming across in the script. So, I threw it out the door of our tour bus.

“But little did I know (bassist) Barry was music supervisor, and his notes were in the script, so we had to stop the bus, retrieve the script, go all the way back to L.A, to Doug Weston’s Troubadour. Vince Vaughn and Favreau come up to me like ‘you’re gonna be in our movie’ and I’m like, ‘fuck no, I’m not gonna be in your movie’. And we all laughed.”

As part of their involvement in the film, the guys got the opportunity to hang out with lead stars Favreau and Vaughn. Playing video games. 

“Vince is like, I’m gonna get out the new Madden,” says Jonathan, who is also on vocals. “We’re gonna play some SEGA. He’s showing me some tricks about how to play more effective defence and set your defence while he’s kicking my ass on this video game.

“Month later, we’re invited to a screening of the film, and he’s doing the exact same thing on the screen. I’m thinking, it’s like a documentary, almost. Jon wrote characters as larger than life versions of who he and Vince were.

“I watched it with my son when he was nineteen, and it’s kind of not aged at all. It’s got this sweetness and earnestness at its core. It’s a slice of a moment in time, in L.A, and it’s about young guys trying to find connections, friendship-wise or romantically, and that’s every young man in every point in time in every country. There’s a universality to it.”

A few years later, Jonathan and Ben went to an ACDC concert, in a secret underground area for V.I.Ps: “There comes Favreau,” Ben adds. “And he says, ‘how you doing’, and I’m like, ‘Apparently not as well as you, Iron Man!” This was shortly before Favreau directed the second film for Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, where he also played Happy Hogan. 

The Love Jones guys are also enjoying a rejuvenated level of success, having appeared on The Tonight Show. Host Jimmy Fallon is a massive fan of the band’s. 

“Jimmy gave us this really enthusiastic intro,” says Jonathan. “He comes up to me, backstage, and goes ‘you don’t understand, man, I’m a superfan. Name any record and I can sing it back right now’, and I’d name the most obscure album tracks and he’d just sing it back to me. It was surreal.”

Love Jones’ first LP in 15 years is out now, wherever you get your music.