I don’t think my mother knew that I could sing...
Barbra Streisand’s son Jason Gould tells NAOMI CLARKE, about his musical upbringing and finding his own voice
MANY have been blessed with musical DNA, but to have been on the West End stage before you were born surely guarantees you’re going to have rhythm running through your veins.
Shortly after the hit musical Funny Girl opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1966, the show’s lead star, Barbra Streisand, announced she was pregnant with her first child – Jason Gould.
After her acclaimed run, Barbra gave birth that year in New York.
Jason grew up immersed in the arts, as his mother continued to record dozens of albums and star in a plethora of film and TV projects, while his father, actor Elliott Gould, appeared in everything from 1970s dark comedy M*A*S*H to classic US sitcom Friends.
Jason followed in their footsteps, with his first role alongside his mother in the 1972 film Up The Sandbox, before attending acting school.
After years on the silver screen, in films including Say Anything, Listen To Me and The Prince of Tides, he only began branching out into music later in life.
“I never thought I would sing in front of anybody up until I was probably in my early 40s,” Jason, 57, tells me over a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “I always felt this impulse to make music, but I didn’t really know how to do it.
“So I started to study songwriting. I wanted to also try singing songs I hadn’t written, and I came across How Deep Is The Ocean. It was the first song I ever recorded that I didn’t write.
“And so I shared it with my mother – it was scary. I don’t think she knew that I could sing.”
After hearing Jason, Barbra wanted to collaborate with him on the cover, and when her next tour rolled around in 2012, she asked him to join her. “I had never sung in front of anybody so it was an incredibly daunting task to go from nothing to a stadium of 18,000 people,” he admits.
While combating nerves and navigating the whirlwind of touring North America and Europe with his mother, Jason notes that singing with her was a “very personal and beautiful moment for us. Because when I was singing with her, it was just about me and her, the audience happened to witness it, but it was just about me and her”.
The song helped amplify Jason’s name within the music world, as it was released on Barbra’s 34th studio album Partners, in 2014, which also featured duets from music titans including Billy Joel, John Legend and Stevie Wonder.
The record later went to number one in the US and was nominated for a Grammy.
While he feels his love of music and creative expression is embedded “in my DNA”, Jason admits he was afraid to sing for many years because of his mother’s legacy.
“I was so intimidated by it, I think,” he reflects. “She’s such a great singer and I was thinking I don’t want to be judged or compared to that.”
After taking a leap of faith in himself, he released his first selftitled EP in 2012, and followed it up in 2017 with his debut album, Dangerous Man.
The 12-track record, which features a range of his original songs and jazz standards, highlighted his sweeping vocals and ability to pack a punch with the big notes.
Now, with a few more years under his belt in the industry, Jason is moving his sound to places he has not explored before for his new EP.
It opens with his latest single Laws Of Desire, which pairs his emotionally-charged lyrics with a propulsive dancefloor beat, while nimble guitar-plunking is overlaid on synth sounds on tracks Run and Scared Days.
The change in direction came after Jason’s producer Stephan Oberhoff moved away, and he sought a new team. “I was interested in exploring dance music, more rhythmic music, [a] more contemporary vibe,” he says. “But I wouldn’t discount anything I made with Stephan earlier, it was all a part of my growth.”
Among his new tracks is World Gone Crazy, which he wrote while trying to process what he was witnessing in the world.
“The world we live in now, there’s so much pain and suffering and I’m so disturbed by it. What human beings do to each other has been going on for millennia, and I see so much injustice in the world.”
Jason has also merged his two worlds by getting involved in the direction of his own music videos.
His video for World Gone Crazy features images of decimated buildings, victims of conflicts and world leaders spliced with clips of his singing. He says he has enjoyed the process of creating these short films.
“It’s about being vulnerable, being human,” he says of his creative process. “I’m not afraid to expose my humanity because I know all these feelings, we all have them.
“I guess that’s an artist’s job, right? Is to feel, to experience the world and then offer it out again for the masses.”
Jason Gould’s new EP Sacred Days is out now