Let's take a detour today. Having sorted through almost a thousand Stranglers related recordings over the past few days I am a little Strangled out. Normal business will be resumed shortly, but I want to take a day to focus on another band who really mean a lot to me and I know that there is considerable cross over interest here and I want to look into why that is the case.
I'm talking about Paul Weller & Co., The Jam. "The best band in the fucking world!" were the words often barked out by Jam manager and progentitor, John Weller, by way of introduction at the start of a gig... and he may have had a point.
Looking back upon the carrer of the Jam some 42 years after Paul Weller split the band I see pretty much a text book example of just how a band should come together and (with more than a little luck of course) find success. Perhaps I should say how a band came together once upon a time in a pre-digital era.
The Jam were music fans, Paul 'You can bury me a mod!' Weller especially so. They scrimped money for instruments with dreams of being rock stars in the tried and tested way, the Working Men's Club Apprentiship, one of the hardest youth employment schemes there is! Imagine playing effectively background music to disinterested drinkers for whom a band on a Saturday night was just a part of their membership subscription and nothing more. Imagine the hours spent churning out the popular standards of the day against the hubub of bar room chatter and the heavy chink of pint glasses for little more than beer money. It's a grim start (and so often as far as many bands ever got) but it was such a valuable path to tread. If nothing else it gave aspiring musicians fire in their bellies to learn their craft sufficiently to break away from that circuit and find an audience of their own.
And here's where fate played into young Weller's hands. He chanced upon a gig at, if memory serves, Notre Dam Hall in Soho in late 1976. It was an early Pistols show and it had a dramatic impact upon the young musician. It was apparent that the Sex Pistols and Weller's own band were drawing inspiration from the bad boy bands of the mid-60's, The Small Faces, The Who and The Kinks. Soon enough Weller dropped the 'Boy Meets Girl' fayre that they had served up to date to entertain punters at the Working Darby and Joan in favour of choice cuts from his record collection, albeit with that all important 'punk' attitude overlaid.
With John Weller behind then, better gigs became available through the London Pub Rock network that set The Jam on a tradjectory that was to see them become one of Britain's most popular bands within 18 months or so.
One of several bands that came to the nation's notice as a result of punk but one with more than three chords in their musical arsenal, The Jam, primarily through Paul Weller's immense talent as a songwriter, made the UK charts of the late '70's and early '80's their own. Weller became a spokesman for his generation and on record he was favourably compared to Ray Davis of The Kinks by virtue of his ability to encapsulate the day to day trials and tribulations of his audience. And let's not forget a quintessential Englishness in his songs... not to be confused with stupid jingoism!
Aside from a similar pathway to chart prominence it is in The Jam's relationship with the fan base that I see the greatest parallel's with The Stranglers. A fan taking the time to write to the band could expect detailed and expansive responses from Paul Weller discussing the band's motivations and future plans. Fans gathering at venues early knew that there was a good chance that they would be invited in to view the sound check and spend a little time in the company of the band. This is how The Stranglers operated, with a 'fan club' that was intentionally significantly more, hence an 'information service'. Like The Jam, band members would take the time, to respond to fans individually despite their heavy schedules.
Such attention to your fanbase pays dividends and has resulted in an unduring, undiminished love of both The Jam and The Stranglers that is enjoyed by few bands. Unfortunately, that devotion sometimes goes too far... I am thinking 'Weller wings' here! The copycat coiffure thing has even passed over into The Stranglers fanbase with an increasing number of fans appearing to abopt the 'Baz Warne look'!.
So, what of the music? Like The Stranglers, The Jam released two albums in 1977. The first, 'In The City' was a reflection of their pre-contract live set. Unlike The Stranglers, who had most of the material for their second album in their live set at the time of the recording of the first, it was The Jam's second album, 'This is the Modern World' (rather than the third) that was tho be the so-called 'difficult album' with Weller suffering from a degree of writers block. To some critics it appeared as though The Jam's career was stalling before it got properly started.
The negativity towards the band fell away with the release in late 1978 of 'All Mod Cons'. Any doubts about Paul Weller's writing abilities were blown out of the water by this amazing piece of work. From this time until the point in late '82 when, to the amazement of all and sundry, Weller pulled the plug on Britain's best loved band, they never put a Jam-shoed foot wrong.
Next came 'Setting Sons' just twelve months later in November 1979. Another brilliant collection of songs (I see-saw (no Jam related pun intended there!) between 'Setting Sons' and 'All Mod Cons' as The Jam's best). 'Setting Sons' is a darker album, I guess a reflection of the dark times that existed in the UK in 1979. As for its predecessor, 'Setting Sons' has a 'class' theme running through it, an issue close to Weller's heart and something that he attributed in part to growing up in Surrey on the edge of the Stockbroker belt where the City bankers returned to after a day playing in the finacial markets.
The realease of 'Sound Affects' again in November (1980) was another powerhouse album, one that completed a near perfect trilogy of albums that shouted out the fact that Paul Weller was a songwriter without compare! Such was the influencial clout enjoyed by The Jam at this time that an entire mod revival grew up around them, a clutch of bands fronted by Weller wannabees ensured that parkas and targets were de rigueur on every High Street in every town in the UK!
With the sixth and last studio album, 'The Gift' (March 1982), Paul Weller markedly changed direction. The theme was consistent, the material placing a spotlight again on the gritty lot of the British Working Class ('Just Who Is The 5'O Clock Hero?', 'A Town Called Malice' and 'The Planner's Dream Goes Wrong' etc.), but the delivery was very different. In homage to Paul Weller's love of soul and Northern Soul, the album is awash with brass and funk-influenced bass lines giving the album an overall American feel that is wholly absent in the ealier albums.
And then the shock news came through in October 1982 that it was all over and Paul Weller was disbanding The Jam declaring that he felt that he had 'taken the band as far as it will go'.
In the following posts I will include a gig lifted from each year of the bands recording career (i.e. 1977 to 1982). There are a couple of crackers in there!
