The Jam were the Beatles of our generation, and thank heaven they aren't going to be the Rolling Stones.
- letter to the NME after the Jam's break-up was announced

Hurtling straight out of Woking on to the burgeoning London punk scene of the late 1970s, the Jam were the first to combine the visceral energy of punk with a stylish Mod sensibility. In their early days, they stood out amid the do-it-yourself style of the time, with their stage gear of matching black mohair suits and ties being a little smarter the bin-liner T-shirts or paint-splattered outfits that had been popularised by punk. Later on they would start a Mod revival, become the most popular band of their era and their singer Paul Weller would be regarded as the spokesman for their generation. But let's start at the beginning.

When You're Young

The band first began in 1972 at Sheerwater Comprehensive, a secondary school which during the 1960s had been home to Status Quo's Rick Parfitt. At first the band was only really defined by the lead singer and guitarist Paul Weller, with his various friends filling in the roles of guitarist, bassist and drummer. 'Paul Weller and The Jam' would take over a music room at the school and allow anyone to join in jamming, hence the band's name. Weller and his schoolfriend Steve Brookes started playing acoustic guitar sets around Woking, with Neil Harris joining in as drummer. It was only when Weller had booked Sheerwater Youth Club that Rick Buckler became the band's drummer, due to Harris's absence, but from that point onwards Rick was a regular in the band's line-up. Bruce Foxton joined a year later in 1975, and The Jam were finally formed.

At first, Weller was heavily influenced by The Who's Pete Townshend¹ and had formed an obsession with the Mod look of bands such as the Small Faces. This led to the band's tidy look which they adopted for all their gigs, including their regular stint at a club/gambling den/strip show venue called Michael's in Woking. As Buckler puts it, 'It was an eye-opener for us kids - we used to look forward to playing at Michael's.' The band would usually play Motown covers along with a couple of their early songs, and started going through the usual motions of sending tapes to record labels and competing rather professionally at talent contests, including one at the Kingsfield Social Club in Woking, which they won by covering Chuck Berry's 'Reeling and Rocking'.

In The City

Managed by Weller's father, John, the band began to play London, making the 25-mile journey crammed in the back of John's Austin A40 van. Weller had earlier travelled by train up to the capital with a tape recorder having said 'I want to tape London', a fascination that later begat the song 'In The City'. The band began playing at such places as the Fulham Greyhound, and Bruce Foxton soon switched from guitar to bass, though at first he was only brought on for the last few songs of each gig as he lacked confidence. Steve Brookes left the band quite soon after the band had started its forays into London, thus making The Jam a trio with Weller playing a combined lead guitar and rhythm guitar role.

Weller, Buckler and Foxton soon became more anxious to get ahead in the music scene, and so in October, 1976 they decided to play a gig in the middle of Soho Market, with the intention of being arrested for the sake of publicity. This didn't happen, as the cops simply watched as the band ran out of songs and packed up after playing through their entire repertoire twice. However, the band were signed up by record label Polydor's A&R² man Chris Parry, and by April, 1977 they had released their first single, the rather new wave 'In The City'. Originally entitled 'In The City There's A Thousand Things I Want To Say To You', the song's name was truncated for obvious reasons, and it reached number 40 in the UK charts. A month later they released their first album, also entitled In The City, which consisted of a mixture of new wave and rhythm & blues tracks, some of which showed strong punk influences, along with a few all-out Mod tracks such as 'Away From The Numbers'. The band publicised their tour by supporting The Clash's 'White Riot' tour, but fell out with the headliners after only a few shows.

However, The Jam were rejected by the punk elite, as, despite producing thrilling three-minute tunes, the band's tidy Mod image meant they were seen as suspicious by the supposedly more individualistic punk rockers. After being accused of being 'tighter than the London Symphony Orchestra' in a review, Weller decided to burn a copy of legendary punk magazine Sniffin' Glue at a gig, yelling at the predominantly punk rock crowd 'this is your f***ing bible!' In order to further agitate the punks, Weller said in an interview that he would vote for the Conservatives in an upcoming election, prompting The Clash to send an infamous telegraph to The Jam's headquarters, reading 'Maggie wants you round for target practice'.

Standards

After their next single 'All Around The World' charted at number 11, the Jam were encouraged by Polydor to get another album out there, sharpish. Proving to be the traditionally difficult second album, This Is The Modern World found the band treading water. Paul Weller explained later on that the band were caught somewhere between the punk thing and the Mod thing, somehow falling between two stools. The title track was the only single released from the album, charting at a disappointing number 36. Bruce Foxton began writing songs, but was hampered by both his lack of natural writer's intuition and the prevailing mood of the time. Although enjoyed a limited degree of success, Bruce's 'News of the World' was released in February, 1978 and gained the band an improved chart placing of 27. However, Foxton's lyrics are somewhat simplistic and it's regarded by many as the band's weakest single, although this Researcher³ does have something of a soft spot for it. The track is now used as the title music for the topical comedy TV show Mock The Week.

Strange Town

Like so many quintessentially British bands before and since⁴, the Jam tried to break America and nearly broke themselves in the process. It didn't help that Polydor America didn't know what they were doing and had them supporting bands like the Blue Oyster Cult in 30,000 capacity arenas and going down like a lead balloon every night. If they'd had the right kind of back-up, and started at grass-roots level playing college radio and gigs in small clubs where the raw, energetic style they had at the time would have been much more effective - well, things might have been different. Besides, there was no getting away from the fact that the quintessentially British Jam's main creative force was a 19-year-old kid from Woking who was feeling like a fish out of water in a huge and unfamiliar country and missing Gill Price, his first serious girlfriend.

As a result, the Jam returned to London with their tails between their legs, and started work on a new album. 1978 was very much a crossroads for the band. The energy of the punk scene was fizzling out, 2-Tone was yet to give popular culture the shot in the arm that it needed, and while the Jam held true to their 1960s mod image they weren't popular enough to start a Mod revival going. Yet.

All Mod Cons

Chris Parry came down to the studio and his actual words were, this is s***.
- Paul Weller

By mid-1978, The Jam were going nowhere - the material for the new album was half-baked, everyone had lost interest, and in an interview at the time Bruce Foxton was musing about opening up a small hotel after the band's presumably imminent demise - and Polydor's A&R man gave them the kick up the backside that they needed. It was the first time someone had turned round to Paul Weller and told him that he needed to do better. With his back against the wall, Weller responded with his most mature and lyrically intelligent set of songs to date⁵.

The Double A-sided single that came out in August, 1978 showed just how far the band had come. Although it only made number 25 in the charts, just two places better than 'News of the World', the Jam had put far more distance between themselves and where they'd been earlier in the year. 'David Watts' was a sparkling cover of a mid-period Kinks song, and 'A-Bomb in Wardour Street' recaptured their earlier, focused energy. Most importantly, what came to be known as the 'Jam sound' was there for the first time - clean and tight; hard and shiny like a diamond. Chris Parry had realised that while he was co-producing the band, there were too many ideas flying around pulling the band in too many directions, so he stepped down and left things in the hands of engineer Vic Smith (who later renamed himself Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, apparently inspired by his girlfriend⁶) who focused on capturing the energy that the band generated while playing live as cleanly as possible.

The single that followed two months later, 'Down In The Tube Station at Midnight', was the first time Paul Weller showed what he was really capable of. The song is like a short television play, telling the story of a man who gets mugged while taking a curry back home to his wife on the London Underground, all in the context of a three-minute pop song. It signalled the start of the Jam's renaissance, breaking into the Top Twenty for the second time, peaking at number 15 and setting the scene for the release of the album All Mod Cons a month later. It also featured a wonderful version of the Who's 'So Sad About Us' on the B-side, included as a mark of respect for legendary drummer Keith Moon who'd died a couple of months earlier.

To Be Someone

All Mod Cons was hailed as the Jam coming of age, their first 'proper' fully-formed album. The title was a more-than-subtle clue to the direction the band were going in, printed in the typeface used by Andrew Loog Oldham's Immediate Records label⁷ and the inner sleeve of the album featured a line diagram of a Vespa scooter. It was also a very English record, the Jam somehow managing to capture something of the essence of the world around them with songs like 'A-Bomb', and 'Tube Station' with Paul Weller's lyrical range extending to inventing characters in songs (as Ray Davies of the Kinks had done before him) like the stereotypical commuter 'Mr Clean', the dreamer 'Billy Hunt' who was going to get fit and grow bionic arms and make the world wish it weren't born⁸, and the failed rock star portrayed in 'To Be Someone'. The last, of course, wasn't a million miles away from the band's own experience that year. And the album also contained the Jam's softest moment so far - the acoustic number 'English Rose', wonderfully sentimental and written by Weller for and about Gill Price. Sweet.

That's Entertainment

Soon enough, all the band's hard work was starting to pay off. Before their next album, the Jam released 'Strange Town' and 'When You're Young' in March, 1979, the latter reaching number 17 in the charts. 'Strange Town', which concentrated on the alienation felt by those who were strangers to London, saw the introduction of a new style of song that told a story but then explored it before resolving it. 'When You're Young' followed this pattern, with Weller moving to a general theme, looking at all the disappointments life held once you grew up. As Weller reached 21, he started to feel all the same doubts about life as his audience, and news of a Right to Work march passing Eton College inspired him to write the rousing 'Eton Rifles'.

The band found time to record their next album in Shepherd's Bush, London, with their next batch of music being inspired by the post-punk era as well as The Beatles' Revolver. They finished the job with a day to spare, and spent much of that time recording the sound of a fly, which they then added to 'Music for the Last Couple'⁹. Setting Sons clearly followed the lives of a handful of characters, with one of the highlights of the album being their return to the place where they grew up in the poetic 'Wasteland'. Meanwhile, Weller let on to his unhappiness with fame with lines like 'she says she knows everything about me' in 'Girl On The Phone'. While the album as a whole was nothing ground-breaking, Weller's songwriting helped it into the Top Five when it was released in November, 1979, proving how successful the band were and guaranteeing the band a fully sold-out tour.

During their tour of the USA in February, 1980, the band played in front of full houses all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast, including a performance in front of 3,000 at the New York Palladium. They were never going to crack America, but they were doing well enough anyway. Meanwhile, 'Going Underground' was to be released as a double-A-side along with 'The Dreams of Children', but was instead released with the latter as a B-side. 'Going Underground' aggressively rejected society as being too full of hate, referring quite simply and effectively to the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, a move which could so easily have led to nuclear war. The single received 200,000 orders before release in March, 1980, and hit number one in the UK charts, fulfilling an ambition the band had had ever since their days playing at pubs and clubs in Woking. It was in fact only the third single ever to go straight to number one, partially thanks to the fact that Polydor marketed it well and allowed for a full week's sale¹⁰. Polydor cashed in by re-releasing the band's previous singles, with six re-entering the singles charts.

Sound Affects

After their success, the band returned to the recording studio to produce their next album, making the occasional appearance elsewhere including a rather depressing gig at Loch Lomond marred by both the weather and the violence that occurred. Their next single, 'Start!', reached number one despite the efforts of Polydor, who would have preferred the safer bet that was 'Pretty Green'. Presented in the same stripped-down manner as The Beatles' 'Taxman' had been 14 years earlier, 'Start!' dealt with the importance of social communication and asked if music was a way forward. The other side of the single held 'Liza Radley', a slightly haunting tune that told the story of Weller's very own Eleanor Rigby.

Meanwhile, the album was completed early due to time pressures and consisted of a rollercoaster of strong and weak points despite being consistently and deliberately bleak throughout. Sound Affects was released in November, 1980 and revealed that Weller was busy expanding the band's resume by changing direction again, though critics quite understandably put it down to mimicry of Revolver. Meanwhile, 'Pretty Green' stayed with the old style of the band, beginning with a single bass note before growing into Weller's assault on a land obsessed with money and violence. Others were less mainstream and showed signs of much experimentation, ranging from quiet soundtracks to almost psychedelic punk rock. Altogether, the album lacked the previous short stories and showed many signs of Weller's sadness at his inability to change society for the better, as reflected by the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley printed on the back of the album cover. Originally released as a single only in Germany, the lamentations of 'That's Entertainment' made it one of the best-selling import singles of all time back in the UK. His exploration of life through music had strongly affected Weller, and it wasn't to be long before he decided he had gone far enough.

Beat Surrender

By the start of 1981, Britain's music was moving on and The Jam were being left behind. Meanwhile, a meeting between Weller and Pete Townshend had revealed that each disliked the other's current work, which just made it worse that Weller no longer wanted to be spokesman for the mess that he had discovered the modern world to be. The Jam's next single, 'Funeral Pyre', was almost but not entirely unlike Sound Affects and featured a thick blaze of guitar and a constant beat behind the anti-Thatcherist lyrics. The single was the first to be produced by Polydor's Pete Wilson instead of Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, and was unique in giving the writing credits to the band¹¹. The band then toured the UK and went on holiday, leaving 1981 without an album, and Weller began to change his taste in music a little through visits to Motown and soul clubs in Soho. The product of this time off was 'Absolute Beginners', which featured horns in place of guitars and seemed to be Weller's idea of a contribution to new pop. On the B-side 'Tales of the Riverbank', Weller reminisced about his home town, with the poetic notions of 'pastel fields' and the like making the track good enough to give the A-side a run for its money. As it was, the single hit fourth place in the UK charts, and The Jam slipped back into a near coma again.

By this time, Weller was busy helping fledgling bands through supporting the indie label 'Jamming!' and signing The Questions on the Polydor brand Respond. Meanwhile, the state of the nation led Weller not towards Labour but against Thatcherism, leading him to support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, with the band playing several benefit gigs for the CND. Next came gigs at the Michael Sobell Centre and the Hammersmith Palais, during which the band gained a horn section, followed by the need for a sixth and final album to see the band off properly. Weller ended up working too hard to find the rock/soul mixture he was after, leading to arguments over whether his demos outclassed the band's recordings and, ultimately, Weller's collapse while playing pool. However, 'A Town Called Malice' arrived with its lively beat to look at the life of the working-class, hitting number one in the UK charts as a reward for strong, heartfelt lyrics.

The Gift was released in March, 1982 and consisted of a mixture of Northern Soul, rock and a few other things, including a steel band to back 'The Planner's Dreams Go Wrong'. Weller wanted The Jam to be a politically-driven mixture of soul, rock and funk and Beatles-style pop, but came only as close as reality would allow with the closing track 'The Gift'. Among, others things, the final song contained a fight between enraged guitars and a Hammond organ along with a need to 'keep on moving' and use 'the gift of life', thus ending the album on a positive note. However, after the album tour Weller announced that he wanted to split up the band. After releasing their last two singles, which included the number one hit 'Beat Surrender', and a live album entitled Dig The New Breed, The Jam played their last ever gig at the Brighton Centre in December, 1982. Weller went off to form The Style Council, while Buckler and Foxton continued their respective careers with The 100 Men and Time UK. Buckler has since formed The Gift, a sort of tribute band whose gigs mostly cover Jam songs, with Foxton making guest appearances for the group. Weller has not spoken to the other two since 1983, such was the bitterness caused by the split: but it was probably for the best that the band did not damage their youthful notions by letting The Jam grow old. The Jam inspired a generation and gave them ideals which they could believe in - not many bands have achieved that, let alone in such a short timespan.

Discography

Singles

• 'In The City' / 'Takin' My Love' (7", 1977)
• 'All Around The World / Carnaby Street (7", 1977)
• 'The Modern World' / 'Sweet Soul Music' / 'Back In My Arms Again' / 'Bricks And Mortar' (7" Maxi Single, 1977)
• 'News Of The World' / 'Aunties And Uncles' / 'Innocent Man' (7" Maxi Single, 1978)
• 'David Watts' / ''A' Bomb in Wardour Street' (7", 1978)
• 'Down In The Tube-Station At Midnight' / 'So Bad About Us' / 'The Night' (7", 1978)
• 'Strange Town' / 'The Butterfly Collector' (7", 1979)
• 'When You're Young' / 'Smithers-Jones' (7", 1979)
• 'The Eton Rifles' / 'See-Saw' (7", 1979)
• 'Going Underground' / 'Dreams of Children' (7", 1980)
• 'Start!' / 'Liza Radley' (7", 1980)
• 'That's Entertainment' / 'Down In The Tube-Station At Midnight' (7", 1981)
• 'Funeral Pyre' / 'Disguises' (7", 1981)
• 'Absolute Beginners' / 'Tales From The Riverbank' (7", 1981)
• 'Town Called Malice' / 'Precious' (7"/12", 1982)
• 'Just Who Is The Five O'Clock Hero' / 'The Great Depression' (7"/12", 1982)
• 'The Bitterest Pill' / 'Pity Poor Alfie' / 'Fever' (7", 1982)
• 'Beat Surrender' / 'Shopping' (7"/12", 1982)

Albums

• In The City (LP/Cassette, 1977)
• This Is The Modern World (LP/Cassette, 1977)
• All Mod Cons (LP/Cassette, 1978)
• Setting Sons (LP/Cassette, 1979)
• In The City / This Is The Modern World (re-release on double LP/Cassette, 1980)
• Sound Affects (LP/Cassette, 1980)
• The Gift (LP/Cassette, 1982)
• Dig The New Breed (Live album, LP/Cassette, 1982)

Compilations

• Compact Snap! (CD, 1983)
• Snap! (Double LP/Cassette, 1983)
• Greatest Hits (CD/Cassette/LP, 1991)
• Extras (CD/Cassette/LP, 1992)
• Wasteland (CD/Cassette, 1992)
• Beat Surrender (CD/Cassette, 1993)
• Live Jam (Double LP/CD/Cassette, 1993)
• The Jam Collection (CD, 1996)
• Direction Creation Reaction (CD Boxset, 1997)
• The Very Best Of The Jam (CD, 1997)
• Fire and Skill - Songs Of The Jam (CD, 1999)
• The Sound Of The Jam (CD, 2002)
• The Jam At The BBC (CD, 2002)
• Snap! (Double CD, 2002)