Jason Kay
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Jason Kay, also known as Jay Kay (born Jason Cheetham on December 30, 1969 in Stretford, Manchester) is an English funk musician. He is the main composer and lead singer of Jamiroquai.
Career
Kay grew up with his Jewish mother Karen Kay, a cabaret singer and impressionist who performed around the world, and his step-father, James Royal. He did not meet his biological father, a man of Portuguese origin, until 2003. With the exception of a twin brother who died at birth, Kay had no siblings. He was educated at the independent Oakham School in Rutland. He spent six months in Thailand at the age of thirteen with his step-father.When Kay was young, he was homeless and survived by committing petty crimes. After an incident with the law, Kay decided to clean up his act and focus on music. He gathered other musicians to make the band known as Jamiroquai. The original members included Toby Smith, Stuart Zender, Nick Van Gelder and Wallis Buchanan, with Kay on vocals.
Jamiroquai has sold over twenty million albums, and spent 141 weeks on the UK singles chart in the 13 years since 1992 with Kay's personal wealth said to be around £40,000,000. He appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List 2004 at (joint) 950th.
Personal life
Ex-girlfriends of his have included Winona Ryder and Denise van Outen. Kay has also had an often fractious relationship with press photographers; he was charged in 2001 with assaulting a photographer and damaging his camera outside a nightclub (the charges were later dropped); the following year he got involved in a confrontation with another cameraman in a London street and was apparently head-butted.Cars
Aside from his music Kay is well known for many things, including his love of cars. He has a large collection of sport cars, including Ferrari, Lamborghini, Mercedes, and Aston Martin. This love of motors was expressed with the release of the album "Travelling without Moving", where the cover featured an adaptation of the "Buffalo Man" logo and the Ferrari crest. Three of his cars appeared in the video for his song “Cosmic Girl.”In May 1998, Kay was caught driving at 111 mph and his license was suspended for 42 days. He said in an interview, "I should count myself lucky. I've clocked up 175 mph on a public road. If I'd been caught doing that, it would have been a prison sentence." On September 2004 Jay was banned from the road for 6 months. He appeared at a court in Scotland to face charges for speeding after being clocked at 105 mph in a Range Rover from his holiday home in Perthshire, Scotland, on 26 February 2004. The speed limit for the road was 70 mph.
His collection includes:
- Aston Martin DB5
- Audi RS4
- Audi RS6
- Ferrari 550
- Ferrari F355
- Ferrari Mondial
- Ferrari F40
- Ferrari F50
- Ferrari Enzo
- *Kay has said that the Enzo is the best car he has ever driven and that it is much easier to drive than the F40.
- Fiat 1000 Abarth (sport version of Fiat 600)
- Lamborghini Diablo SE30
- Lamborghini Miura
- Maserati A6 GCS FRUA
- Mercedes-Benz G-Class
- Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100) a large luxury automobile of the sixties
- Range Rover
- Rolls-Royce Phantom
External links
- [Jamiroquai]
- [BBC Biography]
- [Top of the Pops]
- [Australian website]
- [Funkyjay (Jamiroquai bootlegs site)]
- [NNDB]
- [Banned from driving]
- [Speeding on the M40]
- [Pleads not guilty to assault]
- [Jay Kay injured after premiere]
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