Tim Hughes looks forward to a show by a hugely talented musician who says he feels like he is starting over

FROM an early age Jack Savoretti loved film. Then when, as a precocious 16 year-old, he saw The Graduate, and fell under the spell of its Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack, he knew there was only one thing to do. Head to Hollywood.

Biding his time, the budding movie-maker waited for the right moment to make his move before flying to Los Angeles. Unfortunately his timing couldn’t have been worse.

“I woke up on a plane halfway across the Atlantic with military jets outside the window,” he said. “The captain told us the Pentagon had been hit, and the Twin Towers were no longer standing.”

The date was September 11, 2001.

Fourteen terrifying hours after taking off from Switzerland, he was landing in Zurich.

“My California dream came to a pretty abrupt end,” said Jack, the son of an Italian actor, who grew up in London, Italy and Switzerland.

When he finally made it to Los Angeles, he found a damaged nation still in shock. But he instantly fell for the thrilling charms of the sprawling city and its music scene. And, encouraged by his mother, a Polish-German model, who had hung out with Hendrix and the Stones, he picked up a guitar and began to write tunes for the poetry he had written “while looking out of the window” at school.

His debut, Between The Minds, proved an instant hit, Jack’s husky voice going down well with live audiences and even Radio 2. He found himself on the road supporting Corinne Bailey Rae, at one point playing to 9,000 fans at the Hammersmith Apollo.

He headlined his own tour of UK coffee shops and seemed to have found his stride. But when his second album failed to take off, he decided to knock it all on the head. He split from his label and management and went about looking for a proper job. He had just got married, had a child on the way, and his writing had dried up. “It was just the wrong time for me to try to break through,” he says. “I was seriously thinking about giving it all up.” He was 27.

While wondering what to do next, a song came into his head. And stayed there. “I was thinking my career was over before it had really begun,” he said. “Then this song came along and made me realise I wanted to make another album.”

The song, Knock Knock, is the standout track on Before the Storm. “If I have a breakthrough song I think this is it,” he says.

“I used to write from my imagination but when I listened back I realised how much my songs were influenced by my own experiences.”

Another gem is Take me Home, which has also been play-listed by Radio 2. He describes it: “It’s about a night out and doing things you shouldn’t do, being with who you shouldn’t be with, and wanting to be back where you belong... home.”

Even though it’s Jack’s third album, he regards it as his first; it signifies, he confesses, a new start.

“For me this is like starting all over again,” he says. “The first two albums came from my imagination, but for this one I have drawn on my personal experience.”

The record, which charts the course of a rocky relationship, is a perfect mix of fast, slow, happy, sad, uplifting and thoughtful. And, in closer For the Last Time, it also takes a swipe at the music industry. “It started out as a personal song but finished with me expressing my anger at the industry at taking me for a ride,” he says.

On Saturday he arrives in Oxford with his band The Dirty Romantics, for a show at the Jericho Tavern, ahead of support slots for Jools Holland and Jake Bugg.

“Oxford is one of my favourite cities,” he says. “I have a lot of friends in your part of the world and any opportunity I get to come to Oxford, I’m there.

“After eight years I have finally found my sound,” he goes on. “I feel like this is my first album. The first two felt like my education and my college years, and this feels like my first real job. I sat down and decided I wanted to make a great album, where every song could stand alone and yet be part of a great album. I think we’ve achieved it. I am very proud of it.”

Jack Savoretti plays the Jericho Tavern, Oxford, on Saturday. Tickets from wegottickets.com Before The Storm is out this month.