James Attlee caught up with singer/guitarist JONATHAN BUTLER who is risen from shanty town obscurity to pop stardom.

Butler, who'd been playing guitar since he was six, took to practising eight to ten hours a day and saturating himself in the music of guitar heroes George Benson, Joe Pass, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. He ended up joining a bunch of Cape Town jazz-fusion veterans called Pacific Express, playing Herbie Hancock and Crusaders covers. They made some albums, but Butler's eagerness to write original material eventually led to conflict and earned him the sack for "being too smart." There followed a period in a band with his brothers called the Butlers, increasing problems with drugs and a radical conversion experience in 1981.

"When I got saved I found a new love for music in a way, because when I was in the pop world I was doing serious drugs, like I was stoned every day. I'd wake up at six and start crushing tablets, throwing in the ganja and blowing the pipe, throwing up and falling off my bed and sweating, getting crazy, drinking.

"Those were the weirdest times, because I almost died - if I had done that one more year I would have been a dead kid. When you're drugged you play drugged music - when I got saved and got clean I discovered a new love for just playing and the music began to sound really fresh to my ears."

We unearthed a real rarity - The Jonathan Butler Band playing on a South African Youth For Christ live album...

"Wow! The Youth For Christ record - that was another trip, man you're taking me back, that was like my gospel group. When you stop drugs you have to get right out of that circle which is what I did. I met these guys who became the Butler Band, who were Christian guys and these guys were so different. They were just out there loving me and taking me in - it was unusual. They were not professional players; they were guys from the church who I really thought had potential. I wrote a couple of gospel albums with them."

The heads of the Bullett label, Clive Calder and Ralph Simon joined the swelling ranks of emigres from the apartheid state in 1976, settling in London. Butler at that time wasn't ready to leave his family and join them, but when they founded Jive Records in 1984 he got on a plane to New York to cut a jazz album "Introducing Jonathan Butler" with Barry Eastmond and a selection of world-class session musos.

"It was a painful experience, but also a good one. It was such a culture shock to be thrown in a pool of great musicians like that when you're just a kid from South Africa...You've got to know your chops, you've got to know what you're doing around those guys...I felt really inferior, like I couldn't even play my guitar. They'd all played with Herbie Hancock or Charlie Parker, Jimmie Smith - they'd played with everyone. Eventually I realised this is your album, these people are playing on your record so don't be afraid, you know what I mean?"

Butler moved to London and Jive put him to work with London-based songwriter Simon (Eastenders theme) May. He also did guitar and backing vocal sessions and wrote songs for Al Jarreau, Ruby Turner and Millie Jackson. His next album, simply called Jonathan Butler, was a radical departure, establishing him as an international soul artist.

The Jonathan Butler album probably sold two million worldwide - it went gold here, in the States and in South Africa. It was another direction when I started singing, which people here didn't know me for. But I'm a singer first, guitar player second."

With his third album "More Than Friends", Butler aimed squarely at the American dance-floor scene, and scored four top five US hits, although sales in Britain were disappointing.

"The 'More Than Friends' album was a venture to try and bridge the sound of today with my sound - that's why I worked with Teddy Riley and a few other producers. It didn't really work as the previous two albums did but Clive felt, being young, I could afford to still take chances - you can't make a dance album when you're 40 - it seems it's almost going gold now as well."

Trying to make a monster dance album evidently required Butler to descend lyrically to the level of his cheapest American counterparts - with Theophilus P. Wildebeeste sexist-rubbish songs like "She's A Teaser", "More Than Friends" and "She's Hot" demonstrating that he was transforming himself into a major soul-artist, blind-spots and all. But that album also included the soaring gospel-soaked strains of "True Love Never Fails" with label-mate Vanessa Bell Armstrong adding her inimitable black-church holler, and a brace of instrumental to remind us that Jonathan was, after all, a serious jazz musician.

Were you aware that you picked up some criticism from the Christian press for the lyrical content of 'More Than Friends?'

"I can't really help those things, they are things that I've lived, things I've gone through, things that some Christians even fantasise about and are afraid to admit...I think some of those songs were just a way of getting rid of those things that hindered me before. Right now I'm on a different phase, I'm talking about social and political issues now so I'm at a different level. I will still write love songs but it won't be "She's Hot" because I'm not really out to offend people. I'm still in a ministry; I meet more people unsaved than the vicar and the pastor in the church. I'm out there for people to throw stones at and to bless - I have to take what I get.

"Believe me, I will not throw myself at the mercy of people, I will throw myself at the mercy of God, He knows what I'm doing. My wife and I know that in the end I will minister again, I'll write gospel albums - I don't see me doing this kind of thing forever. I see myself a couple of years down the line doing gospel music, working with artists like BeBe and CeCe Winans or The Winans, because I desire those things, I believe in them strongly...of course I will offend some, but I think the ones that knock the music should just learn to love me as I love them!"

Again, Butler might be excused a little bitterness towards the church in South Africa, which was quick to use him to draw crowds and fill their churches, but never supported financially the man who forsook fame and fortune to dedicate his talent solely to gospel soon after his conversion.

"They gave me two rand to take home and pay my rent and feed my kid and clothe myself, and yet the Bible says 'a workman is worthy of his earnings...' Here I was offering music to exalt and encourage and what the body of Christ did was to accept me and really use me to get their churches full. Sometimes my wife and I really had to laugh, you know, - I'd come home and she'd say 'so - did they bless you today?' and I'd say 'no'...We used to sell Coke bottles in our house and take the bottles to a stall to change to get money for food. Some of the toughest moments in my life were after I got saved and worked in the body of Christ! But I love the brothers and sisters it's....different here, I play in my church here in London."

'Heal Our Land' is the first album on which you've directly addressed the South African situation, isn't it?

"Yeah. I was in church when I got (the song) 'Heal Our Land'...it was guys from South Africa preaching and I got this unction, this inspiration. They were talking about how much work God is doing with the Christians in South Africa, which people in the UK and the US probably don't realise. There's a lot of changes going on, the social structure is changing spiritually...it's multi-racial, it's people loving each other, black and white - and that began to touch me, and I began to feel the Amen. My wife and I talked about it and I went home and wrote it in about 25 minutes, I just had it. I called Labi Siffre in Wales and we talked at length about my upbringing in South Africa, and what it's like to be called a 'coloured' - to be classified as such and to live in a society where you don't even know who you are - you know you're a black South African, but there's this classification, divide and conquer trip that's so weird. Everything we discussed became part of the lyrics, the personal and honest truth. The song was like a plea - Lord, heal our land. Then when we spoke again Labi said 'God works through people - so we must heal our land.' So it's directly addressed to the black people - we've got to take charge and heal this situation. It's amazing right now the blood, violence and the killing between the Inkatha movement and the ANC That's all I ever want to say - it's apartheid that's caused it, how could it blind us so much that we fight one another.

'I'm concerned that Buthelezi doesn't throw more paper on the fire - we have to draw the Zulus into the political process more, we are all black people from South Africa. The right wing are probably sitting in their lounges eating biltong and drinking lots of beer and saying 'you see, these kaffirs are no good' but they created the problems in the first place."

Will your record be released there?

"I believe it will...but I'm sure they won't play the video! I feel very good about it because I'm letting people know how I feel - 'Heal Our Land' is for home in a way, it's for South Africa - they're going to be listening to me and saying 'this little boy from Athlone, is he really saying those things?' This album was lying dormant inside for about a year before it came into being and I'm very proud of it, because I feel I've got to another level and I want to continue to grow in this area."

Before 'Heal Our Land' you recorded another Jazz album, didn't you?

"I did a Jazz EP called 'Deliverance' which was the number one Jazz album in America. It's connected to 'Heal Our Land.' I ran into a lady who writes African poetry, she's been in exile for 20 years, and I used her poem 'Deliverance' on the album. I worked with Michael Brecker, Don Alias, Omar Hakim, Bobby Lyle who's an incredible Jazz player, Hugh Masakela - it was a milestone, like a real dream come true to work with these incredible musicians. For a minute I felt like I'd arrived! It's all coming back to real music, real musicians instead of computers, because at the end of the day you can rehearse with a band and take it on stage live - that's what I love to do."

Muso that he is, Butler's still high on the excitement of having worked with childhood heroes among the cast of his last two albums - bass player Marcus Miller for example (perhaps best known these days for his work on the last few Miles Davis albums.)
"One time Marcus had just packed up his bass to go home and he was walking out and he said 'I think my bass is out of tune, let me do it again just before I leave'. So like a real pro he pulled out his bass, performed the whole song again just like the first time only with different beautiful licks on it - all these things I'll take back to South Africa with me because the musicians I know there will love that. I'm bringing these great musicians home with me for them - it's exciting. I listen to Don Alias playing, to Michael Brecker playing and think 'they're playing on my album!'"

For my money 'Deliverance' and 'Heal Our Land' are the best things Butler has done. Sometimes it has seemed that the identity crisis inflicted on Butler by the system he grew up under has extended to his soul artistry. Blessed with a voice that can at will evoke Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson or Billy Ocean, Butler has come across at times as a rather faceless, soul-star-by-numbers type of artist. His instrumental work too has been almost too bland for these ears - his African colourings quelled of all fire by American studio wizardry. On these two albums Butler seems to be coming to terms in public with his roots, and beginning to focus on his genuine strengths, the talents and experiences that set him apart from the international plethora of soul artists. It would be tragic if those years on 7th Avenue, the childhood soaked in township Jazz and the music of two continents, spent on the road and in the shanty towns should remain submerged in American soul and fusion formulas. Butler, the man who's sung and played on a thousand sessions, has finally found a voice - and his guitar's sparking township-style too.

"I have to think about young guys who get signed to record labels - 501 Jeans, a white shirt, a black leather jacket and lots of gel in their hair, there's nothing to it. Some of these experiences are so incredible I wouldn't give them away," he says, shaking his head with wry amusement.

Jonathan Butler's on a roll. Enthusiastic, with a vision for the future, and as he says, "a lot to be excited about." The little boy from Athlone's come a long way from 7th Avenue.