The vogue for nostalgia (cynics would say money) has helped reform many a band thought long resigned to record. This with varying success — think a resurgent Blur compared to a flaccid Verve. Heroically or not, over the years Paul Weller has consistently, vehemently, rebuffed the idea of a Jam reunion, leaving chaste memories where they are.
‘Fire and Skill‘ (out on October 30th), is a six-CD chronological run through live performances, each disc neatly focusing on one particular gig for each year The Jam were together after signing to Polydor. Of the 121 remastered tracks on offer, only 11 have been previously released. It also includes a 72-page colour hardback book as well as photos, postcards and a new essay.
Serious nodding at the world and tight suits at the ready.
While their scarier contemporaries, the Sex Pistols, were piecing together what would become their sole album in September 1977, The Jam were at London’s 100 Club (CD1). Most numbers are from ‘In The City‘, having put this out as their debut album four months earlier. Covers and b-sides fill the rest of the set as the crush of being there can be felt in Weller’s avuncular advice for the audience to “move back a little”.
Still, one can imagine how hard it must have been to remain upright and orderly in a room burning off speedy renditions of ‘Art School‘ and ‘Slow Down‘. In hindsight, there is a dab of dramatic irony in this recording being used for broadcast in the USA ahead of their upcoming Stateside tour. Ironic because The Jam never had the kind of success over there, certainly when compared to that they had back home. Even more so for a Weller growing up in Woking, imbibed on America’s export of rock and roll and R&B.
This love, coupled with a dedication to bands like The Beatles and The Who, met its apogee after seeing Status Quo live in 1972, whereupon the teenager decided to start a group. Initially a four-piece with him on bass guitar, the final line-up was reduced to three, him now on guitar, Bruce Foxton on bass and Rick Buckler on drums. All under the managerial aegis of Weller’s father.
Two months after the 100 Club show their second album, ‘This Is The Modern World‘, was released. Pressure was on Weller, the primary creative force behind the trio, to produce a follow-up as well-received as its predecessor; it didn’t quite deliver amongst the critics. In an interview at the time Weller declared it an attempt at a concept album about “the forces in society today” and “that mad intellectual stuff”, but that it never fully developed due to lack of time.
The record was a personal disappointment also. He thought it would at least make the top 5 in the charts (it peaked at 22) and lamented the “bad marketing” that befell it. If Weller’s output wasn’t at its most vigorous, Foxton’s ‘London Traffic‘ and ‘Don’t Tell Them You’re Sane‘ compared poorly too. Foxton had his moment in March 1978 though, when the punchy ‘News Of The World‘ was issued as a stand-alone single, showing there was something of songsmith in him somewhere.
A week later they were back touring the USA again, supporting as incongruous an act as Kiss or Blue Oyster Cult. The album and tour not being before a show at the Music Machine (known now as KOKO) in London, where CD2 picks up and leans heavily on songs from ‘This Is the Modern World’. The crowd are still at their obstreperous best, forcing Weller at one point to remonstrate with them to stop throwing beer around lest the band get electrocuted and die (“because we don’t have insurance!”).
Big enough by now to headline festivals, they took the Friday night top spot at Reading ’78. Weller ended up smashing his guitar, not out of any ode to the incipient, punk zeitgeist about (they never fully fell into that category anyway), but due to being crippled by bad sound.
If the end of 1977 saw them creatively strolling to the finishing line then the end of 1978 had them dashing to it as fast as their skinny, tailored legs would go, ‘All Mod Cons‘ album in hand. Fatigued and jaded by then from heavy touring, Weller’s initial songs for the album were rejected. The subsequent re-writes paid off; the finished product was the sound of a group at a peak, their Kinks and Beatles influences grinning away upfront despite those breed of bands being sneered at as old hat by the current punk crop.
The Jam might well have had their necks permanently craned at a 1960s degree angle, but Weller was an intelligent enough songwriter and lyricist not to turn anything he did into an ersatz tribute. Back when universities were popular band haunts (Paul McCartney made a career out of it in the early 70s), they played at Reading Uni (CD3) as their first gig of 1979.
For the jokers out there they briefly revived the Batman Theme off their first album. More importantly, it’s here where we first hear ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight‘, a volatile number packed up in Weller’s urban poeticism. Inconceivably, it was almost discarded during recording as he felt it wasn’t going anywhere – decades’ worth of pats on the back are due to the producer who convinced him otherwise.
Three singles during 1979 culminated in November with ‘The Eton Rifles‘, a political diatribe of an effort against the privileged elite (ironically loved by the current UK prime minister). The song was part of ‘Setting Sons‘, the band’s fourth LP and another failed attempt at creating a concept. Whatever they lacked in the ability to lace through a common theme in a record however, they made up for in numbers like ‘Private Hell‘, ‘Thick As Thieves‘ and, Foxton the songster rearing up again, ‘Smithers-Jones‘.
Political bashings were kept up for the Conservatives in ‘Going Underground‘, a double A-side single alongside ‘Dreams Of Children‘ in March 1980. The public must have agreed because it went straight in at number one. If their first number one wasn’t success enough, next single ‘Start!‘ – another Beatles homage – rollicked its way to the same position.
CD4 is from Newcastle City Hall in October 1980, layered in tracks from the upcoming album ‘Sound Affects‘. This was a period of commercial high, letting go of the heaviness of their last album and producing a poppier soundtrack through tracks like the folk-punk ‘That’s Entertainment‘ and the bouncing ‘Boy About Town‘ (“one for the Oxford Street John Waynes”, Weller quips at the later Hammersmith Palais show in this collection).
Slowly, the covers they relied on in their sets a few years earlier are being ousted; only The Kinks’ ‘David Watts‘ played here in Newcastle. On the recording front, 1981 was a relatively quiet one. It was the first since 1977 that they didn’t release an album, though ‘That’s Entertainment’ – despite never having been released as a single in the UK – still charted as an import-only single, while ‘Funeral Pyre‘ and ‘Absolute Beginners‘ both made the top five.
The Jam stated the lack of album was an attempt to get out of the annual rut of releasing and touring – this “rut” would eventually break the band up, Weller and his creative urges not wanting to be stuck inside the same circle doing the same thing year after year. Indeed, one of their last shows of 1981 was at the Hammersmith Palais (CD5), as part of a pro-CND event that had other acts including Bananarama, an antithesis of a group, on the bill.
The gig is a development in their sound, the brass instruments of their final album ‘The Gift‘, released a few months later, appearing on stage on tracks like ‘Ghosts‘ and ‘Circus‘. (Even ‘Boy About Town’ and ‘Going Underground’ are brassed up.) It’s also the one chance to hear ‘That’s Entertainment’, though its tameness feels underwhelming, whereas another one-hit wonder on the collection, ‘A Town Called Malice‘, is much more satisfying.
The decision to pick one full concert per CD, whilst creating coherence, can work against the grain at times like this, suffering from an imbalance of available songs; the overall sound quality dips on CD6 compared to the others, and a noticeable out of tune guitar on ‘Down In the Tube Station At Midnight’ is symbolic of things to come. By the time the Wembley Stadium gig in December 1982 arrives, when the band is secure in its public prime, Weller had fallen out of tune with the whole idea of playing together. They were on the verge of breaking up.
The other two had been told what was happening in the summer just gone. There was little they could do about it. If anything, the Wembley show is noteworthy for being one of their last ever. The inclusion of brass and a more soulful direction in sound had been signalling Weller’s future intentions all along, if anyone looked hard enough.
Weller formed the more jazzed up Style Council in 1983, aged 24. Foxton and Buckler faded into relative obscurity. But all carrying the reputation of having played in one of Britain’s most influential bands (think Britpop, The Enemy, The Rifles) for an anodyne.
‘Fire and Skill’ is not for the uninitiated, and is likely to only really pique the ears of inveterate Jam fans. At nearly six and half hours long across six discrete concerts there are inevitably numerous versions of the same song, without varying in the unpredictable way they would if it were, say, a live Led Zeppelin collection.
It requires commitment to get through it all, yet the rewards if you do are plentiful. Hearing Weller graft a passion beyond studio recording on to each of the three ‘Going Underground’ performances is just one of them; listening to the underrated b-side ‘The Great Depression‘ on the final CD another.
We live in an age when Johnny Rotten has pushed butter to help pay the bills – we don’t need The Jam to reform when we can listen to a compilation as complete as this to know how valuable to music they were.
Let’s be happy with that.
