Twenty years of Later... with Jools Holland

A few episodes into the new series of Later… with Jools Holland, which starts on BBC2 next week, the music programme will celebrate its 20th year of broadcast. A slighter anniversary will have passed unnoticed – the casual inquiry that started it all, one producer to another at Television Centre: "What's Jools up to at the minute?"

Holland was then a touring musician and band leader who'd done presenting work for Channel 4 in the 80s, and later a stint on American television. The BBC producers hoped he might front a new show they were planning. Something modest, late night, to go in among the weather bulletins and party political broadcasts on a Friday. Nothing special.

They were Michael Jackson, then in charge of The Late Show on BBC2, and Mark Cooper, who arranged the cultural programme's occasional music acts. Cooper had an eclectic booking policy – "Ice T one day, the Kronos Quartet the next" – but was keen to showcase more musicians than The Late Show had room for. Jackson, meanwhile, wanted to make use of the studio space that went to waste after they went off air. They agreed to make a weekly spin-off, called Later, with four or five bands each performing two or three songs over an hour.

Cramming musicians into their little studio, Cooper hoped, would create frisson. Because by now the idea for the show had evolved from the unromantic ("Here's an empty studio") to the practical ("How can we get the most amount of different music on?") to the deliriously ambitious ("We hoped for something like a Greek tragedy… The kind of show where you couldn't lie!").

They wanted Holland to host, linking performances with puns and chat, occasionally playing jazzy piano with his guests. He'd done something similar on Sunday Night, a show for US broadcaster NBC, and before that had worked on music programme The Tube. To him, Later sounded like "the bastard love-child of all the shows I'd done in the past". He signed up.

And so on Friday 9 October 1992, about 100,000 midnight viewers met Holland in his studio. Then in his mid 30s, skinny and hardly filling a wide-shouldered suit, the presenter was sat low on a piano stool – placed, for no obvious reason, in front of a hat stand and a fire exit sign. He sounded less than certain as introductions were made: "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first show of these shows…"

The Neville Brothers and the Christians performed; Holland got the lead singer of Nu Colour's name wrong, and asked a member of D'Influence if the growth in the popularity of British soul music was "a sort of reaction to some of the more hardcore... things?" The show featured artificial smoke, electric-blue lighting and a lot of cameras rolling just-too-late out of shot. It's unlikely any of those watching at home realised they were witnessing the start of something lasting. And "inconceivable", says Holland now, "that we'd be doing it 20 years later."

Gradually things got going. Paul Weller did a boisterous rendition of Sunflower in 1993. Blur and Oasis appeared in 1995, as well as D'Angelo, David Bowie, Pulp with a full orchestra. Elliott Smith was awkward and heartbreaking in 1999 – a year that Mel C was the first and last Spice Girl to be on. In 2000 a debuting Chris Martin muffed the introduction to Yellow because, he said, Gary Brooker was in the room and he couldn't stop thinking about this being one of the guys that wrote A Whiter Shade of Pale. In 2001 the Manics led a studio-wide rendition of an AC/DC riff and Nick Cave joined in, so too Shaggy. Mary J Blige was superb and exhausting in 2002; Devendra Banhart played cross-legged in 2004; Klaxons were out of tune in 2006. Two years ago Chicago's Mavis Staples chatted up Bengaluru's Raghu Dixit ("Boy you can really sing!"), and last spring Plan B sang lyrics he'd written minutes before, scribbling in his dressing room. Paul Weller appeared for the 11th time.

Later might once have been reduced, by Robbie Williams, to the status of "Top of the Pops with pubes", but a certain type of musician rings this booking in red, anticipating a trip to dingy studio seven in west London the way they might Shepherd's Bush Empire or the Pyramid stage. "It's the Holy Grail," says 25-year-old Ben Howard, who this year performed tracks from his debut album. "There's nothing like it," says 68-year-old Randy Newman, who last year performed tracks from album number 16.

"It reveals the nuts and bolts of bands," says Björk. "You can't help but get a little puffed up, a little competitive," says KD Lang. "I'm not sure if it comes across on television," says Tracy Chapman, "but sometimes you can reach out and touch the band standing next to you."

Heath Fogg, guitarist from Alabama Shakes, says: "It was the most nervous I've ever been for a show." Guy Garvey, Elbow frontman, says: "There's a gentlemanly feeling of, we've got to do our stuff here."

"When it's over it's over," says Jools Holland. "There are no retakes and you can go and have your tea."

Back in 1992, when Later began, Top of the Pops was in good health and confident enough of its viewership to give a guest-hosting spot to Ricky from EastEnders. The Word, a Channel 4 magazine show that hosted live bands, was thriving. Indeed there was such an appetite for music television that Pete Waterman managed four years hosting The Hit Man and Her, a dance show set in a disco. None of the above survive (and The Late Show, by the way, was binned in 1995).

Why has Later lasted? Holland, now 54, takes an idealistic view. "It has remained a servant to the song," he says. Mark Cooper, now 59 and Later's executive producer since the start, is more pragmatic. It's important, he thinks, that the programme endeared itself to artists by being tech-minded and fastidious. "Bands are obsessed with how they sound," he says, and so on Later they get to do extensive sound-checks, with technicians sensitive to quibbles. Artists get flattered as artists – a rare thing, several tell me, in the world of TV. Usually, KD Lang says, the musician is "shoved on at the end of a show, a second-class citizen". Björk recalls being booked on other programmes between "chat, comedy, bingo… Jools is the only show I know of that lets you play totally live, lets you soundcheck and rehearse and then has a full hour just on music."

Over 20 years, Cooper says, bonds have been forged with established acts. "Foo Fighters have done Jools since [1997 single] Monkey Wrench, Coldplay since Yellow. There's a homecoming aspect for them, and we benefit."

Many younger artists have grown up watching, wanting a patch of that congested studio for themselves. "I saw KT Tunstall on Later when I was 11 or 12 – hooked ever since," says singer Lianne La Havas, who debuted last year. Ben Howard recalls watching from a sofa in Devon as Bon Iver sang Skinny Love in 2008, "one of the most amazing live acoustic performances I've ever seen". A way away, in Athens, Alabama, "I used to get in from work and watch re-runs of Jools on a US cable channel," says Alabama Shakes's Fogg. "It was part of my routine while I ate dinner."

Alabama Shakes were invited earlier  this year to appear on an episode also featuring Jack White. "Playing in front of a hero like that is one of the most nerve-wracking and rewarding things I've ever done," says Fogg. "You're in a circle. Jack White's watching. There's no other venue like it."

Cooper calls this Later's "Colosseum effect". "Artists try to trump each other," he says. "There are elements of the show that are gladiatorial."

Cooper and his Later colleague for the last 11 years, series producer Alison Howe, like to have fun with the tensions their format creates. "Poor Stornoway," says Howe. "Poor Stornoway, from Oxford, who I don't think were even signed when they came in." She refers to a show in 2009, when Jay-Z had been booked, also Norah Jones, also Dave Grohl, also Sting. Somewhere in the middle of that the unsigned four-piece Stornoway made their TV bow.

"Because we had so much wealth!" says Cooper. "You just thought somebody should benefit from it," says Howe, "even though the experience must have been terrifying." On that note, she says, she still feels bad for Fleet Foxes, made to debut after Al Green singing Let's Stay Together in 2008.

"But that's how it works, right?" says Norah Jones. "When I was first on the show [in 2002] everyone else was well known and I wasn't. I remember having tunnel vision, telling myself: 'Just look at your piano, don't look at Wilco.'" Jones, at the time, was a newcomer whom Cooper had seen perform in a Pizza Express in central London. "The idea that she'd win Grammies, sell millions of records – that was never the point for us," says Cooper. "While we love the taste-making aspect [of the job], we don't book somebody thinking they're going to become successful."

Howe points out the many times Later has missed the boat with artists, booking them when they're already well established; recently Mumford and Sons, Tinie Tempah, Two Door Cinema Club. "And of course there are quite a few emerging acts we've put on that don't go on to become successful," he says. He was big on a group called Pelvis in 1998... "It's a bit like being an A&R," says Cooper. "People remember the successes."

One was KT Tunstall, invited on in 2004 with a few hours' notice because the New York rapper Nas hadn't got on a plane; Tunstall went platinum with her debut album that year, and has credited Later ever since for the push. In 2007 Cooper and Howe found themselves with a spot to fill between two heavyweights, Björk and Paul McCartney. Björk recalls a shy girl, "performing in front of me, almost a cappella." Howe: "This 18-year-old south Londoner, terrified at the time, but you felt she wouldn't falter." Cooper: "Watch the clip. Adele is shitting herself."

Adele, then still to release an album, perched on a stool and sang Daydreamer. She told me last year: "It was my first TV appearance, and Björk did The Anchor Song just before me, my favourite song of hers. It winded me." But Adele got through it (and returned, six months later, to perform on Later's regular New Year's Eve edition, Hootenanny). She's had an all right few years since.

"People have to rise to the occasion," says Cooper. "Good musicians do, generally, and the drama of them getting through is a big appeal of the show."

But not everybody gets it. Broadcast for 20 years and you'll become shorthand for something – something, in all likelihood, unflattering. Cooper complains that newspapers – including this one – use Later as a byword for predictable, safe music. "We know the cliches," he says. "I hope we're not predictable, I hope we're challenging… But we're not a cool show. We're not selling a lifestyle, what it is to be young – how could we be? Given who we are, given how long we've been on?"

Blogs on influential music site the Quietus have decried Later's "Sunday-supplement pop", and likened band-approval on the show to acceptance by the Masons. "The format is so well-worn it's self-parodic," complained NME this year. And a few outspoken musicians have taken against Later. Folk singer Robb Johnson called it "a cosy televised version of Mojo magazine". Mark E Smith of the Fall once said he only agreed to appear if he didn't have to duet with Jools Holland. He claimed to have demanded: "No boogie-woogie piano, Mister Holland."

Smith was being mean (and a lot of musicians told me they agreed to their repeat visits to the show, in part, because of personal affection for Holland). Yet the host's jazzy piano work is one of a few longstanding, distinctly un-rocky features of Later. Over its 20-year run a smooth and very grown-up production routine has been established by core staff who've been running things from the beginning. (Current director Janet Fraser-Cook and sound supervisor Mike Felton were in their jobs at launch; Michael Jackson went on to become a BBC controller.) Recordings are relaxed and efficient – Ben Howard says: "I thought TV was your classic load of nutters running around and shouting but Jools was the most chilled-out place" – which doesn't leave much room for the chaos that can make telly memorable.

"There's a strain of thinking that music on TV is only really good when it fucks up," says Cooper. "L7 throwing tampons on The Word. The Stone Roses [shouting "Amateurs!" after a studio power-cut] on The Late Show. We don't deliver that."

The timetable for visiting bands is rigid. Artists commit for two days – individual sound checks on a Monday, rehearsals with all bands present on a Tuesday. Backstage there are paltry BBC treats: Fogg recalls being given a Lynyrd Skynyrd DVD to watch; Lianne La Havas got cheese, ham, and the sound of Holland's piano playing coming through the vents from his dressing room. In the studio an audience is brought in, followed by the bands, who record an hour-long show to be broadcast on a Friday. After that (since the addition in 2008 of a live show to the weekly Later package) there's an extra 30-minute broadcast that goes out live on a Tuesday.

Later asks a lot of its guests' time, and it makes the famous sit still and be patient while others are spotlit. "A real ego-leveller," says Randy Newman, and something that doesn't always make sense to debutants. "Jay-Z was really bewildered," says Cooper. "He wanted to know: 'Why can't I do my songs in a row?' But he's a music lover, and [the format] was so obvious to him when he stepped on to the studio floor."

There were difficulties in 2009 with Smokey Robinson. "For some reason – I don't think he was feeling well – Smokey didn't turn up," says Holland. "Smokey's probably been bored stupid in TV studios since the 1960s," says Cooper. Anyway, the R&B legend was late – and rehearsals had to start without him, even though a special guest had been booked for a duet. "Eric Clapton was getting pissed off," remembers Cooper. "He'd eaten the cheese sandwich he'd brought with him. He was saying, 'Jools, I'm going to get my coat.'" After a queasy wait, Robinson arrived in a cab and Cooper "pushed him through the curtain, literally as Jools walked across the floor to introduce him". Unruffled, Robinson sang a track made famous by Norah Jones. Its chorus line: "Don't know why/I didn't come".

"That's our version of chaos," says Cooper. Janelle Monáe once lost her voice mid-show; At The Drive-In pinched stage furniture from Robbie Williams; the Libertines smoked an on-set cigarette. It's not quite tampon-throwing, not quite Ian Brown having a hissy fit... Later has never been much good at forever-in-legend extravagance. Instead: "We once had McCoy Tyner getting so into his jazz tune that he decided to do an 18-minute version," says Cooper. Holland tried to halt the music after five. The audience intervened with applause after six. Elbow were due next to perform, "and Guy Garvey kept looking at his watch," something that in the genteel world of Later must rank equivalent to dashing a beer bottle on the nearest hard surface. "But it's our version of conflict," says Cooper, and he's comfortable with that. So too, I think, are most of Later's audience.

This is not a show about things going wrong, it's about things going very, very right. It's about artists – spurred on by weirdly intimate peer scrutiny, by close production and painstaking sound-management – putting on a four-minute rendition of a song that's as close to perfect as possible. Later isn't always dynamic; it has its cosy moments. But there's something properly commendable about the quality level it forces, the number of cut-out-and-keep moments created as a result. YouTube videos of Bon Iver doing Skinny Love have garnered more than 2m clicks. John Cale sang Hallelujah in front of 100,000 viewers in series one, a single clip that's been watched 4.4m times since.

Artists like Ben Howard have come to see an appearance on Later as a deposit in the cultural time-capsule. "Most artists are terrified of what they'll be remembered for," he says. "Later is not necessarily a pivotal performance in your career but it's a defining performance. You're conscious it's something permanent, something that people will look back to."

"It's an opportunity for artists to leave a record," agrees Cooper.

"Our time on Jools is something I'd be proud to show my grandkids," says Fogg.

"Long," says Garvey, "may Later reign."