Original subtitles

Put your hands together for the best band in the fucking world, The Jam!

When I first saw The Jam, it was almost like a hit my soul kind of thing,

almost like a spiritual thing.

If it hadn't been for The Jam, I'd have probably still been a window cleaner,

or probably serving time, a ne'er-do-gooder.

So, they kind of elevated and changed my life for the better.

I remember often playing those songs when I had to climb into a different mood.

Songs like that were a beautiful solace. Better than the meds.

The Jam definitely inspired me to look beyond the burbs.

I know every lick of those records.

I know every lyric of those records. I know every beat.

It's definitely a huge part of who I am.

Paul Weller. Born Woking, Surrey, England, 1958.

Coming from Woking, which is a little suburban town,

I think it just gave us a different perspective.

We were never sort of looked to as being sort of trendy,

and I guess we were kind of outsiders from that point of view,

because we were from this little hip town from outside London.

This is what used to be Woking Working Men's Club.

Obviously derelict now.

This is where I did my first gig when I was 14. Me and Steve Brookes, my mate.

It was me and him that started the band off.

We got a little gig on a Wednesday evening,

which my dad managed to blag off the fellow who run the club.

So, there was about maybe six people in there. Eight with us.

Steve Brookes. Born London, England, 1958.

- We were better than that, weren't we? - I don't know if we were.

Well, we first hooked up in school, at Sheerwater.

And I'd just moved into the area down from London.

He was definitely cooler than most of the other kids.

Thought you were going to say, "He was a twat."

He was a bit of a twat as well, but I found that out subsequently.

But, no, he was definitely cooler.

And I think it's that sort of, you know, when you're that age

there's a sexuality thing that's waking up in you,

and you're sort of like, you don't know,

is this the boy you wanna be or the boy you wanna have?

What is it? But it's an attraction, whatever it is. I don't know what it is.

- You didn't tell me that before. - No, I kept it to myself.

Yeah, so, we started knocking up sort of a few little, old '50s songs mostly,

wasn't it, Elvis and stuff like that?

- Yeah, rock 'n' roll tunes, R&B, weren't it? - Yeah.

- We didn't play them particularly well. - Yeah, three chords.

But there were only three chords and we felt like we were doing a reasonable job on them.

Some may differ.

We never considered being a duo. We wanted to be a band.

Yeah, so, it was really hard to find other musicians in Woking.

There was maybe two drummers in the whole of Woking that were our age group.

One of them we tried out, which didn't work, a big lad called Nell,

who was more into brass band music, really.

And then we found Rick.

Rick Buckler. Born Woking, Surrey, England, 1955.

They were looking for a drummer,

I sort of pretended to be a drummer at the time.

The first thing that I was struck by was the fact that,

"Hey, there's somebody who can actually play guitar properly."

Then you start to realise that you can form songs.

And there is the possibility, then, of playing proper gigs.

One of the first shows was at the Sheerwater Youth Club.

And Paul said to me, "Well, look. There's a stack of albums.

"Listen to all of these, learn as many as you can."

And so, we came up with a set.

Fuck, it's been a long time since I was in here last.

Must be over 40 years.

I remember there wasn't a huge crowd of people in here, really,

just the usual youth club lot,

with everybody just going bananas,

and probably too much drink for our age at that time.

But weird being back in here because I haven't been back in here since then.

Probably that was what set the seed of, "I think we wanna do more of this."

We wanted to be bigger than The Beatles, definitely.

That's true. I mean, that's what we wanted to be.

The next Beatles. That was the scheme.

And we weren't.

My dad started managing us, right. He just loved it.

No one said, "You're the manager." That just came about.

Obviously, everybody knows he's my son, Paul.

And you have to know his talent for music.

So, I said, "Well, I'll push you."

I can't give him an education. I can't give him money.

So, I give him what I can give him. Inspiration. Shall we say that?

Or a push, whatever a father can do in that cause.

He was just always encouraging, weren't he?

And he was always hustling, trying to get a gig, or get a van,

or a bit of equipment.

John was always out sort of hustling for something on our behalf.

I think he was great.

John took on the role of chatting to the right people at the Working Men's Clubs

and the CIUs, and what have you, and putting us forward to play there.

It was just three-piece for a long time, weren't it?

Yeah, two guitars and drums for quite a long time, with no bass.

The original plan was that Paul was gonna move onto bass

because Macca was his big hero.

And that was the sort of lineup we envisaged, with another guitar player.

Me on guitar, another guitar player, Paul on bass, and drums.

Bruce Foxton. Born Woking, Surrey, England, 1955.

I think I saw some sort of ad about The Jam were looking for a rhythm guitarist.

So, I went along for that, and met Paul, and Rick, and Steve Brookes.

And it just clicked, and we got on well.

And they were gigging, which was right at the top of my shopping list.

You know? I wanted to get out there and play.

Originally, I was playing bass when Bruce came around

and he was gonna play rhythm guitar.

But Bruce wasn't a powerful enough rhythm guitarist, really, for what we wanted.

Paul, I think, suggested to me, he said, "Well, look, why don't you have that,"

gave me his bass, "and I'll take over on rhythm/lead guitar?"

And it just worked. You know?

We disparaged everything that was current during that period.

'Cause we had Gary Glitter and the Bay City Rollers.

And we were really, really, totally against all that sort of stuff.

So, we didn't model ourselves at all on anything that was current.

The only band that made any sense was Dr Feelgood

because they had that kind of brash, aggressive R&B for a start as well,

but violence to it, and it was everything you want as a kid.

When we saw them we just went,

"God, this is just something totally different.”" Nothing like we'd...

And it was just hard-edged R&B. Real sort of distinctive.

Paul and Steve were very close, they were really good mates.

So, it was a bit of a blow when Steve decided that he'd had enough and he wanted to leave.

I mean, we weren't earning a great deal of money, but we were working quite hard.

So, it was sort of understandable that he had enough of that, really.

With Steve leaving, it kind of

allowed me to become the leader of the band.

- I guess is right. - Yeah.

I think that's another reason we parted,

was because we were sort of struggling for dominance.

- Yeah, I guess so, yeah. - Do we do this one, do we do...

Whereas we'd always agreed on what we were doing.

I just think it's that thing, unless you are totally united,

every band needs a leader in it or someone who can focus

and have a vision for the band.

I came late to The Who, right.

I have no idea why, but I don't remember them from the '60s.

And then I managed to get a copy of their first album, My Generation,

which is still my favourite Who record.

And by far, the sound was amazing.

Again, it had that kind of real edge to it and sort of violence to it,

or aggression, however you wanna look at it.

But anyway, it caught my imagination for sure,

and so much so

that I tried to rewrite the record, really, on our first album.

Sorry, Pete.

I'd had this vision from God saying, "You shall be a Mod from this day onwards."

And that was it for me, mate. I was fucking off. I was away.

So, I said to the others, "Look, this is where we're gonna go,

"this is the direction, we need to have a look. I mean, this is gonna be it."

And luckily they went along with it.

It was a good image and it felt sharp.

The look was very important. It reflected a lot about us. It worked.

During the '70s, I was kind of waiting for our time, really.

Not just me as a person, but I mean our generation.

And I found that when I saw the Sex Pistols.

And just to be in the audience, seeing those bands

and seeing all people my age, which you just didn't have that scene in Woking.

I tried so hard to be nice.

Then I saw the Pistols and Clash and all those bands.

I felt there was a connection there, really.

I thought there was a connection between what I was into and the whole Mod thing,

but it was also a contemporary connection as well.

Not that I thought we should go off and be a punk band,

but I just thought, "This is such a great scene.

"This is people our age, we can play to these people."”

Once we discovered that there was a good scene in London,

and it was only an hour drive, it was definitely the place to head for.

So, our aim was to get into London, hopefully get a bit of press,

get the name about a bit more.

Possibly get record companies down.

They weren't really that prepared to come out to what they saw as the sticks.

Adrian Thrills. Born London, England, 1958.

First time I saw the band I was 16.

It must have been around September '76. And I went along with a couple of friends.

We'd heard about them through the grapevine.

So, we went along expecting another down-the-line punk band,

so it was quite a surprise when you saw this group.

One of them had pretty long hair, which just wasn't the done thing at the time,

wearing sharp black suits and having strong '60s influences,

and being slightly more melodic,

maybe slightly more musicianly than most of the punk bands.

After the gig, my friend, Shane MacGowan, and I, we started chatting to Paul.

He just seemed very much like the kind of kid I was at school with.

We're doing this film.

And I was living in the new town of Stevenage at that time.

And Paul was from Woking, almost...

We were kind of kids from the satellite towns coming up to the Big Smoke.

And there was definitely a bond there.

We had a four-week residency at the Red Cow, right,

which was a pub in Hammersmith.

The first week there was 50 people, maybe.

And the next week there was 100 people.

And then by week three and four, there was fucking queues around the block,

and I thought that was sort of amazing.

You could just feel this thing growing, organically growing.

In 1976, The Jam wouldn't really get much of a look-in in the music press.

And so, it was left to the likes of myself and Shane MacGowan,

who were doing some of the early punk fanzines.

This one's mine, 48 Thrills,

in which you have, possibly, the first-ever Jam interview, perhaps.

It wasn't really until the publicity that the punk thing was getting

that I think the record companies,

their attention was turned to what the hell's going on here.

It almost became a bit of a fight

that the record companies had to sign somebody.

Chris Parry. Born Warrington, New Zealand, 1949.

In '76, I was an A&R man for Polydor Records.

I was on the hunt for punk bands at the time, trying to bring them into the label.

So, I was at a show, Shane MacGowan came up to me and says, "Here, Chris."

He says, "Look, there's a band playing this Saturday night.

"First on, check 'em out, they're great, they're called The Jam."

The whole approach was very, very exciting.

And I thought Paul particularly was outstanding as a frontman.

They just seemed like a group that was gonna deliver.

Paul was obviously the special one.

He was pretty determined, he was pretty sure about himself.

He said, "Chris, I'm telling you,

"I am gonna be quite something in this country.”

And I said, "Good on you.

"Well, you're 19, go for it."

Chris saw something in us.

We signed for 6 grand, which was more money in those days,

but it still weren't that much money.

We would've been signed for 600 fucking quid, to be honest with you.

Do you know what I mean? We were skint.

When they gave us the cheque, my old man was like,

"Well, we ain't got a bank account, how are we gonna fucking change it?"

Vic Coppersmith-Heaven. Born London, England, 1945.

I'd been working at Olympic Studios at that time for about five years.

I worked with the Stones,

I worked with George Harrison, who was producing Billy Preston.

And I was asked to engineer The Clash, Billy Idol with Generation X, and The Jam.

And it was almost like, "Choose one of these bands to work with, what do you think?"

And I just really wanted to see The Jam, and went to see them,

and was just completely blown away.

There was no question about who I should direct my energies towards.

They had a very interesting set. It was very vital. It was highly energetic.

It was sharp, really enthusiastic.

And it was just... I mean, it just captured every imagination you wanted to have

as a producer as well.

To want to be able to capture that sound.

And In The City did stand out as a pretty strong single at the time as well.

It was such a great song, we'd play it three times some nights.

We start with it, end with it,

and if we got an encore, we'd fucking encore it as well.

That was a great song, I loved it.

And I thought that would always be the first single.

There was never any doubt in my mind.

Making their debut on this week's Top of the Pops, here's The Jam

and an effervescent new 45 called In The City.

That was fabulous to get on Top of the Pops for the first time.

That was really one of those milestones that you tick off,

because it was the major music show in the UK.

Amazing. Because I used to just watch bands on the Pops

and think, "God, I'd like to be doing that."

And there I am doing it.

It was amazing, because I'd been watching Top of the Pops

since I was a little kid, right, religiously, every Thursday, without fail.

Once we got on there and actually done it, it was less amazing.

You know, it's like, "Really, is that all it is?"

Barry Cain. Born London, England, 1952,

That was the start of my love affair with The Jam.

I was about 22, quite old, really,

working on a local newspaper in South East London,

doing the music entertainment side.

I was a working-class kid in the council flats.

That's why it meant so much to me, this music.

It was modern music, with the emphasis on "Mod."

It was The Who kissed by Motown, with a dash of Clash.

And it really was a new kind soul, I found. It was just wonderful.

Right at the forefront of a new phenomenon known as the New Wave,

they're called The Jam and In The City.

They had that imagination to know that, if you appeared on Top of the Pops,

you got to a generation of kids that bought records.

They tapped into that and they got to those kids.

We were gigging so hard as well.

It was like five, six shows at least a week.

And travelling up and down the length and breadth of the country, really.

It was a huge swell. You'd sense that there was a big change happening.

For me, they were probably my favourite times,

because there was this sort of sense of innocence about it still,

and yet there was this excitement because we'd feel we're getting somewhere,

we're getting an audience together.

Derek D'Souza. Born Bombay, India, 1959.

I first heard The Jam in 1977.

There was a lot of new stuff around that came out at that time that I liked.

The Police, The Stranglers, Sex Pistols, The Clash.

But The Jam stood out

because they're probably younger than a lot of the bands, I think, anyway.

It felt like they're one of us.

And I liked them because, you know, much as I love the punk idea,

and I loved a lot of the bands,

I was never into ripped-up clothes and safety pins.

That was just never gonna be my thing.

A lot of the punk bands treated 1976 as a year zero.

Anything that existed before that was history.

Whereas Paul, he wasn't afraid of reaching back.

I remember going to his house in Woking after one of those early gigs,

and it was at the height of punk,

and he had a bedroom festooned with Beatles magazines, '60s memorabilia.

He had an obsession and a real love of that era.

Their early sets were, a good 30 or 40% of the songs were covers from the '60s.

We were seen as being, yeah, a bit of an anachronism, I suppose, really.

Showing all our '60s influences, and that's, you know, openly.

I remember seeing Joe Strummer come to one of our gigs,

when we played in Ronnie Scotts,

and he had a shirt on that said, "Chuck Berry is dead."

I was like, "You don't mean that, mate, do you?

"Because we fucking love Chuck Berry, you know?"

And I'm sure Joe didn't mean that either.

So, there was a lot of posturing and a lot of bullshit as well.

Even from the first album, you could tell that the skill was there

and there was the melody and the lyrics.

They weren't just like a three-chord band.

That album, the songs were pretty much our live set.

It was a big deal, of course, to make an album.

But we were kind of at the mercy of the producer, really,

because what the fuck did we know?

There wasn't very much over-dubbing

as essentially we wanted to just capture the live set

and make that as powerful as possible.

I did have some...

I think I tried to get Paul to do some double-tracking,

but I used a harmonising thing, which he didn't like very much at the time.

I remember being disappointed with it. I didn't feel it was our sound.

Because Vic would always get us to track stuff up,

which I guess in some ways did become what people think of as Jam sounds.

Keiko Egawa. Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1960.

I think it was around '77

that the New Wave started coming into Japan.

The record company arranged this so-called film concert,

to show people a promo video at the time.

And it was quite good because, obviously, we didn't have any Internet,

or they weren't showing it on television.

And that's when I saw The Jam, and it was on at school.

I still remember seeing it there.

I couldn't speak English at the time, but I did understand a little bit of words.

But it wasn't enough to be able to understand the whole lyrics.

So, basically, I didn't know what they were singing about,

but music was really, really good.

Martin Freeman. Born Aldershot, England, 1971.

I first became aware of The Jam

when my brother Tim, who's 10 years older than me,

brought home In The City, the album, 1977.

And I remember hearing swearing on it, and that was exciting.

It was scary for me, because I didn't want our dad to hear it.

It wasn't until a couple of years later,

where I thought, "Hang on, now I'm gonna discover this now for myself."

And that's when I really went to town on them.

It wasn't just about smash it up kind of punk stuff.

But they were as much as a punk band, or anything, they were a pop band.

And a really, really good one.

The Jam had quite an uneasy relationship with punk.

The punk influences were obvious.

And yet they were never quite as kind of hip with the London punk crowd

as maybe the Pistols and The Clash.

There was a bit of a kind of fashionista, art school element.

For a supposedly non-elitist scene it could be quite exclusive.

And The Jam, I think, coming from Woking, they almost seemed slightly as outsiders.

We did this interview with NME, our first cover story with NME.

And we were saying we're probably going to vote Tory

in the next election and all that, which is bollocks.

It was to be contrary

and to set us up as opposites of Pistols or The Clash.

The Pistols were kind of anarchy and The Clash were kind of left wing,

and we were like, "Yeah, we don't mind the Royal Family, really."

But it did us no favours.

Eddie Piller. Born London, England, 1963.

When I came across The Jam,

they kind of made me realise that you didn't have to be a punk rocker

to like this kind of music.

I think up to then I was thinking, "Am I a punk?

"I like that I'm wearing a mohair jumper and a school tie."

That was rubbish, I was 15 years old.

And it was only when I saw The Jam

that I thought, "You don't have to be all that crap, you could be this."

Weller made you feel that it was about you and your generation,

not some kind of poncey art school generation

that took heroin and walked down the King's Road.

It wasn't like that.

It was almost like working-class kids with something to believe in the future.

All Around The World, to me, was the first Mod record for my generation.

Not My Generation, The Who, my generation, the postpunk generation.

And I was at school when that came out, and it had a massive effect on me.

This was the first of the records that said, actually, "We're not punks, we're Mods."

And I still regret that wasn't on the album.

In 77, Polydor was still operating on a model

pretty much as it was in the '60s,

where The Beatles, and the Stones, they put out two albums a year.

And sure enough in 1977 The Jam released two albums.

Momentum was very important to me.

I thought that if we're going to have this success,

we need to really take it quickly, take it through.

We took it on board and said, "Yeah, yeah, we'll do another album,"

and just sort of leapt in quite confidently,

not really realising, maybe, what was demanded of us.

I'd had a couple of songs, which I'd been writing,

but I didn't really have too many.

There was a lot of pressure on Paul, a lot of pressure on all three of us,

with playing and then recording,

but Paul being a main songwriter...

I wouldn't say I'd help him out.

I wanted to get some songs of my own, I suppose, on the album.

I think Modern World is not a great record.

It's got a few good songs on it, but it's not a great album, I don't think.

It wasn't a disappointment to me,

because I'd gone to see them at the Royal College of Art.

I did a review of it.

And I kind of eluded to the colours of the Union Jack,

taking you through the three moods that you get at a Jam concert,

like, red hot, expanding into white heat, contracting into teenage blue.

And Paul really liked that line,

and he took "teenage blue" and used it as a lyric in Life From A Window

from This Is The Modern World.

"This is great.

"I've got a lyric that's in a Jam song of something that I came up with."

And he put my name on the back. It was like winning an Oscar.

So, I always thought This Is The Modern World was a great album.

It wasn't great by any standards, and got bit of a pasting in the press.

Kind of got written off, really, after that.

It was kind of like there was this big sort of flash at first with In The City

and then it just sort of seemed to be fizzling out, really.

The Jam was a three-piece band.

And in terms of songwriting, my confidence was growing a bit,

and I was getting my feet under the table a bit more.

I felt a little bit more comfortable,

and wanted to contribute, try and contribute, a bit more to the songwriting.

Bruce's writing isn't like Paul's writing.

And I sensed that there was a sense of,

"Okay, well, Bruce, you can put some songs towards this."

I'm not a great believer in that.

I don't think I was that arsed about it, really,

because I fell in love with a girl around that time,

and I was kind of happy just doing that, to be honest

I was a bit like, "I don't give a fuck, really."

I wasn't right. I didn't write. I wasn't motivated.

I think also the failing of the second album was a bit like, "Well, fuck it."

I don't know why I was like that, but anyway...

But we started to make some other demos for a possible third record.

I just said, "There's nothing there.

"I don't know what you're doing, Paul." ” But, okay, that may be what it was.

I mean, I knew he had a girlfriend and they were kind of in love

and quite tight and all of that.

But I don't know, Bruce was coming forward with tunes and ideas

and even Rick had a couple of ideas.

But they weren't...

They weren't going to be... They weren't going to cut it.

I guess that's when you felt pressurised

'cause you're almost trying to write to order then,

"Well, what is going to satisfy you then, Chris, what do you want?

"And we'll try and write a song for you."

It's like, hang about,

we got this far with writing for ourselves and what we believe in.

And, yeah, that was a knock and it obviously spurred Paul on, particularly,

to have a re-think.

So, I had to get my head out of the girlfriend's blouse

and get back into working again, and start writing.

Like any record, once you have one or two songs that you're really happy with

and you feel are the real bones of the record,

it just encourages you to go further it, really.

I mean, Down In The Tube Station, I kind of had all words

and I had some chords and stuff for it, but I was a bit like,

"I don't know, I'm not sure if its right."

Vic Smith, bless him, he was the one who said to me,

"No, this could be great, you've got to work on this and we could do this."

He actually chucked the lyrics in the bin.

And I pulled them out.

I looked at them and just said, "This looks really good, can't we work on this?"

And the guys came in and bassline happened, and the drum rhythm happened,

and the track evolved out of that.

And next thing is, I was down at St John's Wood Tube Station,

with a little mobile recorder, recording the Tube trains.

And rest is history, really.

Everyone was talking about this song.

There hadn't been a song like it before.

It wasn't punk. It wasn't anything. It was The Jam.

There was obviously a big part of, well, "Fuck you. We'll show you."

But also you just knew these were good songs,

that's what we aimed to achieve,

was that they're good songs and we knew they were special.

Let's hope everybody else does.

All Mod Cons, of course is... My guess is that it is most people's archetypal Jam record.

For good reason,

'cause I guess it's where they really, really set their sound,

although the sound developed.

But no one else sounded like that.

It's got some of the best songs about youth ever written by a British songwriter,

on that record.

Somehow, they got it right.

They were conveying a different message to working-class kids,

and that is basically how Mod happened.

Mod is an aphorism for clean living under difficult circumstances.

This didn't happen around The Clash, it didn't happen around The Damned

or the Sex Pistols,

where you had an entire way of life created,

or in this particular case, re-created by one band.

Weller was either very, very lucky or very, very astute and clever

because The Jam made it happen.

Mod for me is just about being well-dressed, about having good taste and style.

So, in that sense I'm greedy,

I call anything that I like Mod, do you know what I mean?

I call everything from The Jam to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young "Mod."

'Cause I think, "No, it's good, its quality and there's detail in it."

And so, that for me is my definition of modernism in a way.

You cannot be a 50-year-old punk.

But there's plenty of 50-year-old Mods, there's plenty of 70-year-old Mods.

It's just a classic, timeless thing.

So, it's funny, really, because sort of from my daydream, fantasy things

when I was back in Woking, thinking,

"Yeah, we're gonna get this thing going again."

And it did happen.

Paul Abbott. I was born in Burnley, England, 1960.

In 1977, I became intensively aware of The Jam,

I was working in a shoe factory called Lambert Howarth in Burnley.

I was only there short term,

but I remember Paul Weller kind of screaming out at that time,

and I was just a naughty little kid who walked around frowning,

and I think when his music turned up and it sounded like I looked,

I think that's when we were onto a winner.

Punk was defined by make a loud noise and back it up.

But the melodic nature of Paul Weller's overcoat

just, I think, threw everybody off the scent of it being called punk, quite punk.

It was bigger than that, and it was better than that.

The Jam were a pop band.

In the same way that the Small Faces were a pop band,

The Who were a pop band, The Beatles were a pop band, The Jam were.

And whereas a lot of the punk bands from that era fell by the wayside,

The Jam kept their heads down

and continued to produce a whole stream of classic singles.

At that time, all of those great heroes of the punk movement,

you know, Strummer was Rocking The Casbah,

Johnny Rotten had given up, or Public Image,

but Paul Weller was writing songs that meant something

to me and my generation.

I was mindful of the audience. I wanted to get across to my generation.

But it wasn't too difficult

'cause I was just writing about how I felt as a 19- or 20-year-old,

going through the same experiences as a lot of other kids as well.

So, I didn't have to put myself into their shoes,

I was already in their fucking shoes. You know?

The clarity with which he writes about youth, it's not patronising,

it's not bubble-gum, but it's full of a real joy and angst,

and it's very present about living now.

“I'm a young... I'm a 20-, 21-year-old and I'm writing this now."

When You're Young, I used to love this song so much.

I used to put a high volume on my Walkman and listen to it.

"But you find out life isn't like that, it's so hard to comprehend."

That line, I used to love.

I thought everyone was old by the time they were 21, when I was a kid.

I can remember my 21st birthday when I thought, "It's fucking over.

"It really is all over."

And, yeah, our music was really about youth, I think.

I think The Jam music really kind of caught that time, really.

He spoke so, so specifically to a group of people,

or maybe to an age of people,

that if you missed that boat, I think it's hard to get actually.

You can appreciate writing if it's not immediately part of your world,

if it's got a universal hook to it, and The Jam were not universal, they weren't.

There was a lot of testing of the water with lots of territories,

and America predominantly so.

Because America was beginning to sit up and take notice

of what was going on in the UK.

So, we did go out there and we did do some shows.

Right, this is our bid for US success.

This one is called Strange Zip Code.

The States, generally, I suppose, was a bit of a disaster for us.

It was a bit like The Who in their early days, deemed too British to crack the States.

They didn't work America like a lot of other bands,

so they didn't go there and stay for six months and tour all over America.

They were more of a British band, actually.

I know very few American Jam fans, not many.

A lot of people have never heard of The Jam. It's very specific, that style.

I think it explains why we in this country, if you like The Jam, you love them.

"Cause it really does feel like yours.

Maria McHugh. Born London, England, 1965.

Gosh, I would have been 14 or so, I was living at home in Wembley.

So, a real suburb.

Me and my mates were going to an Irish Catholic convent school.

And I think for us, music was a way of escaping

from the sort of constraints of that suburban life.

I remember when Setting Sons came out, one of us had a ghetto blaster,

so we'd play Setting Sons walking to school and singing to all the tracks.

We must have looked so stupid, but we were just completely obsessed.

On Setting Sons I had this idea of making a concept record,

something had a kind of thing to it.

It was going to be about three friends who were tight and close-knit.

There were quite a few songs that kind of link up.

Thick As Thieves was on that. That's a great song, I think.

But I kind of lost my way. I just thought,

"I can't be fucking doing this any more, just make a record."

That was the first record that I really tried my hardest with the lyrics on,

I really thought I could try and elevate the lyrics,

just a bit more kind of literary, I suppose, really.

I always felt that Paul Weller was wise beyond his years.

There was something about the way he wrote his lyrics

that just set him apart.

And you would pore over them and you were trying to sort of understand what they meant.

There was a Right to Work march, which started in Liverpool.

It wasn't at the height of Thatcherism, but it was the early doors.

When did she get in? '797?

And it was marching all the way down to the country to the Houses of Parliament.

And on their route, they passed by Eton College,

where some of the pupils of Eton were jeering and taking the piss.

I thought it was a great opportunity to write a song about class, really,

in a different sort of way.

And The Eton Rifles is the kind of army cadet wing,

where they go out and do war games on the fields and all that shite.

I mean, ultimately it says, the revolution won't work

because these people have got too much power behind them.

The odds are well stacked against us.

And the, "Sup up your beer and collect your fags," I suppose,

I was thinking, kind of, the English revolution was sort of,

"What time's the revolution starting?

"For God's sake, fuck it, have a quick drink first."

It's a bit like that, isn't it?

David Cameron said The Eton Rifles was one of his favourite songs

when he was at school.

So, you obviously don't... They don't...

Not everyone reads the words. Not everyone reads the lyrics.

Sometimes it's just a nice sound in the background and the catchphrase people like.

I wasn't aware of The Eton Rifles' political message, not really,

because as with a lot of Paul Weller's songs you had to go and look stuff up.

But it made you look stuff up.

If nothing else, it activated you in that sense.

Because you loved the music, it will make you want to understand it.

Den Davis. Born in Manchester, England, 1967.

The first time I saw them was at Manchester Apollo, November '79,

the Setting Sons tour. I'd be 11, 12.

I did feel really vulnerable and young,

because looking around me, there wasn't that many kids of my age

that were there at that point.

But if you think about being squashed here.

I remember my ribs just bursting,

so I've probably not even grown that much, really,

because I was quite tall for my age then,

so I've not probably grown that much because it's still on my ribs.

Yeah, it was great.

That was the first time I felt like a Jam fan, being there with all these other Jam fans,

and it was great to be part of this gang, all of a sudden, that was there.

Everyone sang every word,

and that was what was special about it.

It wasn't just that they were there to watch, they were there to take part.

And I always think the energy worked both ways.

The Jam meant everything to me at the time,

and the only way to see live was to come over to England.

So, me and my friends, we were always talking about we'd love to go to England,

to see the real thing.

And I wanted to learn English anyway.

So, I was talking to my parents,

if I could go over to England just to study English for three months.

And my parents agreed, "It's definitely only for three months, that's fine."

So, they paid for it for me.

What I was thinking was to see The Jam!

I've seen many other bands before.

But when I first saw The Jam at Rainbow,

I just thought the whole atmosphere was so different.

I just wanted to see them more and more.

But three months went really quick.

And my study wasn't completed anyway.

This is true.

So, I extended visa for six months, and then another six months.

So, I'm still in London.

After 30 years.

To live in England because of The Jam,

it sounds very crazy, but I don't regret it at all.

And I do love this country and people.

And I'm still here.

I'm always going to be here, and this is my home.

Ian Snowball. Born in Maidstone, Kent, England, 1970.

I first became aware of The Jam in 1980.

In amongst the tension, and the creativity, and the energy, sometimes the aggression.

It's almost like The Jam gave you permission to be angry about things.

I got interested in politics

taking the lead from what Paul was supporting,

or what he was campaigning for at the time.

It didn't necessarily stay like that as the years went by.

I was impressionable at that time, but I'm happy with that.

It was an education

which I probably wouldn't have got

from listening to a Duran Duran record.

We were in the States when Going Underground was released.

Because we really thought that, "It'll maybe chart somewhere

"and then we'll finish the American tour.

"We'll come home, and then maybe it'll go up the charts a bit further.

"And then maybe by the third week it'll go to number one."

We were in deepest south of the States and going down like a lead balloon still.

And John had been on the phone to the label and said, "Well, where is it?"

And they said it's gone straight in to number one,

and it was just obviously amazing.

And we thought, "Well, what are we doing here?"

So, we just got on Concorde and went home.

Cancelled the last, I don't know, two or three, four shows,

whatever it was, in the States

and literally just booked ourselves on a flight and came straight back

to do Top of the Pops.

I was in two minds when it went to number one.

Obviously, we were all pleased, but it also scared me.

Because I thought, "Fuck, where do you go after that?

"Where's beyond number one?"

And I guess it's just you've got to have another number one, and another one,

and all that stuff.

And I wasn't keen on that sort of pressure.

But of course, who would turn that down, that sort of success.

At least it was a song that was saying something.

Nine-year-olds like me were jumping around to very, very political music.

The music itself was political.

Who was making it, by its nature, was political.

And the lyrics were overtly political.

The greatest lines in it,

"You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns."

And it's just, it's the same thing going on now, really.

I've read that every time they fire a missile in the Middle East it costs us £850,000.

There was a lot of concern over a lot of these issues.

It was always that dark mood of nuclear war,

and the Cold War, and all that sort of thing going on.

And Paul picked up on that fact.

CND for me, at the beginning, was just a cool badge.

You'd sort of seen it on these Volkswagens and things like that.

And you weren't necessarily interested in the news about it.

But the fact that he was talking about it and going on rallies and things like that.

The Cold War was just as neurotic as it could get.

It put more people in institutions just for that threat.

And I think everybody was fighting their way through,

and Paul Weller just had a governance of the way.

It was like, he always reminded me of a Resistance worker,

and it gave you the sense that you weren't on your own.

Paul Weller was labelled, and was, a spokesman for a generation.

He never really liked that title, but he was.

We'd rather listen to him than Maggie Thatcher or something, simple as that.

It was like, if he said something, you'd take it on board.

Yeah, I wasn't really comfortable with any of that.

I mean, I was a bit probably flattered, ego-wise. Probably flattered at first,

but I didn't really like it.

I don't think I was the right person cut out for that sort of thing.

I wasn't intelligent enough or articulate enough

to be any spokesman for anyone, I don't think, really.

I was just writing these songs,

which said more really, anyway, I think.

When you saw The Jam or you listened to The Jam,

you were aware that they were a three-piece.

I mean, you couldn't divorce Bruce Foxton's bass playing from their songs.

It was brilliant.

And Rick's drumming.

But I think it's fair to say that the focus, certainly for me, for my friends, was on Paul.

In terms of the band, The Jam being a three-piece,

and how important each of those members were,

I don't know anybody that's ever thought it was Paul Weller's band.

Bruce and Rick were just as important to us.

Each of them played such an important part in making it.

Yeah, Paul was the brains behind that, if you like.

But I think, in all of our hearts, we always felt equally about all of them.

Sound Affects, I love. It sounds to me like their most indie record.

It sounds like their most student record, for a band who weren't very student-y at all.

But the sounds that were coming in on that

didn't seem to be dictated by, "Does this sound '60s enough?"

Sounds Affects was very close to how we saw ourselves.

We'd stripped everything back to a fairly minimum sort of sound.

I preferred the sound on it because it wasn't multi-tracked guitars

and basses and stuff.

It was a bit more sparse sounding.

I think if they'd just carried on playing In The City,

and another version of In The City, and so on, and so on,

it wouldn't have been the same.

I liked the new stuff

and I didn't want them just to play the same thing over and over again,

which so many bands do.

Mark Baxter. Born London, England, 1962.

We were a footballer community, really.

So, music was around, but you didn't really actually follow it religiously.

I think The Jam were basically the first band to really do that for me.

Hearing Paul, the way he sounded, the influence he had was massive on me.

He almost gave me an education I didn't get at school.

I sort of thought, "Maybe there's other things you can be doing because he's done it."

He's obviously a working... Or he sounded like, a working class guy.

And he looked a bit chippy, and a bit edgy.

And I thought how I'm like that, we're all like that where I'm from.

So, if he can do it, why can't we do,

not necessarily music, but something else you'd be doing?

But I honestly didn't have a clue where to start.

When you look deeper, the lyrics that Paul would come out with

were definitely an influence on what I'm doing,

the writing I'm doing now, and the book, The Mumper,

which did really well.

Without Paul's influence as a young man, I wouldn't have done that book.

There's no way I would have even attempted it.

Because just the work they put out, and the songs they wrote about,

and the situations they were describing in those songs,

I identify very strongly with that.

And when the opportunity come along to do writing, to be a writer, I took it.

And without a doubt, without that band, without Paul's influences,

I wouldn't have been doing what I'm doing now.

Paul Weller electrified people's vocations.

And I think there are people who are generous with intelligence,

and people who use it as a weapon, and he just seemed to share it.

And that made me trust him as a role model.

What Paul was singing about was, really,

"You don't have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

"You can have big ideas."

So, for a humble girl from Wembley

to end up in New York for 12 years, working in advertising,

I guess, yeah. I mean, I guess I had some kind of belief in myself from a young age.

And maybe I got some of that from them.

I'd always been interested in photography.

My father bought my first camera when I was 18,

and then my love of music, it seemed natural to combine the two.

At the time, music videos were just sort of starting out,

so I wanted to try taking a picture from the TV, just to see if it worked.

And this was during the Start! video, during Paul's solo.

I think this is before we had a video even,

so you'd have to just take the shots while it was live on TV,

so it wasn't a case of playing it back and trying again.

It was just you'd set up to watch the TV and have your camera on the tripod as well

at the same time, which is crazy.

And so, I actually wrote in to Paul to the fan club,

just for them to see what I'd taken, really.

And I couldn't believe it.

And Paul wrote back and said he really liked the pictures,

and he especially liked the ones taken off the TV.

"Dear Derek, hopefully you will have received your photos back signed.

"Sorry about the delay.

"Anyway, I just wanted to add that I thought they were great,

"I especially like the ones taken off the TV.

"Fantastic colour. All the best, Paul Weller."

The band, at the time, were recording the next single,

which was going to be Absolute Beginners,

and the B side, Tales From The Riverbank, so I was invited to go along to meet them.

And we were talking about what Paul wanted to do for shots for the new single,

and he had the idea of shooting in Chiswick House.

And what I didn't know at the time was that The Beatles had shot,

I think it was Paperback Writer and Rain,

they'd shot two of their videos in Chiswick Park.

And knowing that Paul, being a massive Beatles fan,

it was always one of my questions to ask Paul,

did he know at the time that The Beatles had shot there.

Any opportunity or excuse to go anywhere they've been, I would do so.

So, The Fabs done their promo films down there.

So, yeah, I just wanted to... Yeah, why not?

This was taken right at the end of the day of the session.

We put the camera on a tripod, and put it on self-timer.

And that was a lovely, lovely memento at the end of the day for me,

from my first-ever professional photo session.

I can't imagine another band doing what they did,

to pick some guy out of the fan club, a novice in every way,

and it did change my life.

One, two.

The Jam was like a family. I saw The Jam well over 50 times.

The band had come down and signed things. They recognised faces and they went,

"Yeah, I haven't seen you since Utrecht." Or something like that.

You don't know what that means to a 16-year-old kid who's looking for an identity.

It was great, because they looked after you. That was the difference.

They weren't standoffish.

They'd let the kids in, they'd sign the autographs, they'd talk to them.

They just treated them like they wanted to be treated.

It worked really well. It was always a two-way thing.

Letting us in to sound checks, I mean, their Jam sound checks were legendary.

Sometimes there'd be more people at Jam sound checks

than there would be other bands' gigs.

Stuff like sound checks, we didn't want to have that barrier there,

because a lot of those were unable to get a ticket,

and/or were too young to actually come and see the show,

but they've hung around outside.

And you just think, "Well, why not come in? Come in out of the cold," for a start.

And also, "We appreciate your support."

Was that enough?

It was just great to sort of get to know people.

And we didn't really see that there was any real barrier

between us and our fans, really.

Well, I don't think we really liked that "us and them" mentality,

where rock gods are up here, and the audience are down there,

and they never meet. And it's just...

That didn't really fit in with us at all.

I always thought, "I wonder if that ever made any difference at all, doing all that stuff."

But it did, I think, because I meet people, and I've met people over the years,

and still meet people who said, "Yeah, we spoke to you guys,

"you let us back in the dressing room and we spoke to you."

Or, "We went to the sound check, your old man let us in."

So, I think it did make a difference in a small way.

I think people liked it and appreciated it as well.

David Pottinger. Born Middlesborough, England, 1994.

I first became aware of The Jam when I was around 11.

I was bought an iPod for Christmas

and my dad had pre-loaded Absolute Beginners onto it.

That track, that Christmas Day, 2006, I mean, it sort of changed everything, really.

I went and bought all the studio albums.

I mean, my dad had them, but they were all on vinyl.

I needed access to them quickly,

and that iPod, for about the first four months of its life,

there was nothing but The Jam on it.

It was just like a Jam Pod or whatever you want to call it.

I decided to start a blog around September 2013.

It was sort of just done on a whim to see what happened.

And I put my love of writing and modernism together.

Graham, who's like 50% of the blog, he put his love of sort of photography

and web design together, and we just wanted to see where it would go,

who we could meet, what we could do.

We spread our own sort of modernist gospel

and just see what happens with it, really.

Number One Mod at the moment, it's got to be Weller, hasn't it?

To speak to someone like Weller would be huge.

I mean, it'd give you that sense of achievement,

I suppose, that you've reached the top with your blog.

- Yeah. Not too formal. - Yeah, just whatever you wanna do.

All right, well, yeah.

- How are you doing, Paul? I'm Dave. - Yes, mate, all right.

- Good to see you, man. - It's proper.

Yeah, I run Move On Up blog, it's an online modernist-inspired blog,

- so, yeah. - I know.

It's a pleasure to be doing this interview, looking forward to it.

- Nice one, mate. - Sweet.

Start off, obviously, The Jam had massive influence

to myself, my favourite band of all time.

So, obviously, The Jam, how did the name come about?

It was something about you always jamming, weren't you,

you and the lads, and that,

- and it was sort of... - Yeah, I don't know

if it came from that or not. I mean,

it was there right from early days anyway,

- like from '72, '73 or something like that. - Yeah.

So, it was kind of, we always had that name. But I don't know.

I think my sister, I think.

It's sort of well documented, isn't it, that you're quite into poetry and stuff?

You used a Shelley poem, didn't you, on Sound Affects?

- Yeah. - So, why that one then?

It's called the Mask of Anarchy, right?

And we just sort of used, like, two or three verses from it, anyway.

But basically, the poem is a revolutionary poem and it's saying,

"We are many, they are few."

And basically, we're sort of trying to get people to rise up

against the ruling classes, really.

But I thought it was, yeah, definitely relevant for the time.

This was kind of early days of Thatcherism,

and an austerity for the working classes anyway in England, I think.

I went and bought a book on poetry that Shelley...

Because of that quote on the back of the album cover.

And that is crazy when you think now.

I didn't know who he was or what he was even... I didn't understand it.

But I still went and bought the book,

because I thought I've got to find out what it is about.

Why is he using that on an album? Why?

Because I think, in a way, he was just tipping everybody off.

I mean, I went to an all-boys comprehensive in the early to mid '80s.

Boys didn't go around reading poetry.

And they certainly didn't go around writing poetry.

But then you had someone like Paul Weller, who was saying,

"I do. And I read this, and I write that."

And I like that.

Steve Cradock. Born Solihull, England, 1969.

I remember seeing them on Top of the Pops doing Town Called Malice.

I'd have been 11 years old, and then hooked from then on, really.

That was the first sort of serious single I bought.

I think it was that tune that really got me into it.

Just the power of the sound of it was just a really fast, exciting tune.

Dancing to it at the youth club. You know?

It was kind of the best song of that year, I think.

It was just of that time, really.

You could see the economic effects of Thatcherism.

We'd go up north and it was worse up there,

you'd see all these fucking places that had shut down.

And you talked to kids and there were just no prospects.

It was a very desolate time, I thought, really.

But I suppose I tried to turn it 'round to be positive.

Everybody was stuck.

But everybody needed a key or a kick to get out,

and stop dreaming of a quiet life.

I think it was just a clarion call for everybody, just it was carpe diem.

Yeah, and I love that song

because it threw me into a massive fit of really good writing.

And actually, that period shaped my career.

That's not a lyric that you find very often in number one records.

Just the way it scans, and just the way a lot of it

unapologetically doesn't scan or rhyme particularly, like an easy pop song.

And yet it's set to the most commercial beat of the 20th century.

Like, like if you're talking about Motown, there's nothing poppier than that.

It was also probably our most commercial song.

We sort of stepped outside of just Jam fans at that point.

I think that song transcended all of that,

and I think it got through to a lot more people.

By the time The Gift came out,

every song was going to number one or top three or whatever.

It was almost like everyone had discovered The Jam,

and they were part of mainstream, versus earlier,

when I felt that they were still...

A small group of people had discovered them, they were still our secret.

So, I have bittersweet memories of The Gift,

and that time around '82.

I went for another big, heavy rebirth around that time, really,

of listening to soul music.

I suppose that influence is in a lot of the songs on The Gift.

And Precious, yeah, kind of came out of that, really,

and just getting immersed again into black music, really.

Some fans liked it,

but at the time there was a bit of a division. There was a bit of like...

Because I remember us meeting some fans in the street

who were saying they thought it sounded a bit jazz funk.

Paul Weller was always trying to move them forward creatively,

which is a very Mod thing to do.

I think 13-, 14-year-old kids wearing parkas,

walking down the street in 1982,

didn't want The Gift probably, because it's a little bit difficult, didn't want the soul.

They wanted In The City and When You're Young.

And the fact that he'd moved on, you know,

I think his original fans kind of moved on with him.

The Gift is their sort of last gasp.

I love it,

because sound-wise, you get a clue as to where he is going next,

with the more sort of overt soul thing.

This one is called Ghosts.

By that time, right, by '82, I'd been in the band for 10 years,

from the time me and Brookesy first started, right, in '72.

And as great as it was,

it was full on, it was just tour, record tour.

It was very much like that.

I just sensed, I suppose, that Paul wanted a break,

or maybe we should all take a break.

But I didn't see that the end of the band is nigh.

No, I don't think there was ever any feeling

that we were reaching the end of the line at all,

not by any stretch of the imagination.

I was only 24.

I wanted to see what other kind of music I could make.

I wanted to see who I was, who I could be.

Paul sat us all around the studio table,

and John said to us, "Paul's got something to say."

"What's this?" And it was...

So, it was a bit of a shock when he said that he wanted to leave the band.

It was a bit like jaw dropping down to the ground.

You could have heard a pin drop.

It was like, "Okay."

So, almost immediately go into sort of shock mode, really.

There was no talking Paul 'round.

It was a big decision for him to make, obviously.

When you got The Gift and Malice, and they are riding high in the charts,

and it's all gone so swimmingly well,

and it is everything you've aimed for, and you're there,

you're at the pinnacle. You know?

It was hard, it was hard.

Like anything, like if you leave your missus.

Like, "This ain't working any more, I've gotta fuck off, babe."

And it's tough, isn't it?

We tried very much to keep it a secret, until the last tour.

But it became a secret that was impossible to keep.

The news had gone out already.

And there were some very tearful eyes during those last shows.

I was crying and crying for three days, I still remember.

It was almost like you'd lost a member of your family.

It was, like, just disbelief.

We were destroyed. I mean,

it's like such a big part of your life is coming to an end.

You don't believe it at first. The same as anything, isn't it?

You don't think that way.

Just simply the bitterest pill I ever had to swallow.

It was devastating.

We'd come out after the show and anybody wanted anything signed

or photo or whatever.

And of course, you've got the whole of the audience,

saying, "Why are you splitting up? What a show tonight,"” et cetera.

And I just kind of said, "Well, I don't know, really,

"I don't know why we are, but we are, and that's it."

I think we've done all we can do as the three of us.

And I think it's a good time to finish it.

I don't want to drag it on and go on for, like, the next 20 years doing it.

Become nothing, mean nothing.

End up like all the rest of the groups.

I want this to count for something.

I want everything I've done over the last five or six years to count for something.

As far as I was concerned, I had thrown my all into this.

Do you know what I mean? I didn't have a backup career.

I couldn't go back to being a brain surgeon or anything like that.

And, you know...

I don't know what to say, really, about it.

I mean, you just have to accept it

because that's the way that he wanted to do it.

After the last show, I think we probably just got splendidly drunk,

and even worse then because you wake up in the morning after

with a cracking hangover, and no band.

It was just, yeah, it was horrible.

Horrible.

I don't know, maybe Paul had The Style Council in mind at that stage,

I am honestly not sure.

I wanted to play with other musicians, and to see what I was capable of,

and learn other things, and it wouldn't have happened if we'd stayed together anyway.

I am very happy with what I am doing. You know?

From The Jam, it's got bigger and bigger over the last few years.

It's a testament to those great songs.

There's just no getting away from it. They're great.

They are memorable, people still want to hear them.

My brother took me to my first Jam gig in 1977,

Portsmouth, Locarno,

and I was blown away from the word "go."

And it's ironic, but he was also our last gig as well, in '82.

- In Brighton. - Yeah, I was.

And from there, he's now headlining, front-lining the band.

You know, I think we're all kind of pretty happy with our lives now.

Rick's doing his thing, he's got a book coming out.

The book came about, really, I started writing odd things down.

Little stories, anecdotal things.

And when I bumped into Snowy, he helped me really pull it together, properly.

I've not done ghostwriting before.

That is so The Jam.

You know, it's almost like letting the people into sound checks,

that kind of, know them and ask SO you can be part of this.

Loads of fans of The Jam ended up playing in bands, didn't they?

Because you could learn how to play the songs,

I've just played on Paul's, I think it's his 12th solo album,

which I think I have played on 11 of them 12,

And still in his band after 21 years.

And I think, more than ever, the older I get,

the more I just want to see where else I can go with it all, really,

try and push it as far as I possibly can.

And I don't know where it will end up or what will happen with it.

But I think it's my job to do that.

I came up with the idea of a proper exhibition about 2010.

So, it's taken five years to get to the stage of doing that exhibition.

Thirty-three years on, the legacy still means so much to people.

And everything they ever said, every word they spoke, sang,

just made sense to all of us, it clicked.

So, that's why it stayed with us because it's a lifelong thing.

It wasn't just a "wham, bang, thank you, ma'am" and gone.

It's something that I would never have ever thought of doing

if Den hadn't come up with that idea.

We would never have got our archive out, ever.

The Jam did speak for a generation, and I think that it does live on.

They have assumed a legendary position in British culture,

because they split at their peak.

The band I'm most likely to see in the world now, tomorrow,

is The Jam, still, you know, and I am 51 years old now.

Absolutely, categorically, fucking no.

I don't know whether it would be the wisest thing to do, in actual fact.

To me, it would be against everything we ever stood for.

There's too much time,

and too much water, you know, under the bridge,

and it's best probably left there.

We stopped at the right time.

The music's gone on. The music has legs and it's got longevity

and the young kids get into it.

And hopefully, in years to come, after we're all fucking brown bread, mate,

people will still be discovering it.

And good enough. That's a good place to leave it, isn't it?

Who was your favourite in the band? Come on, be honest.

- John. - Right. There you go.

That's just fucking awesome, mate.