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Its almost ten years since Paul Weller forsook the bread
- and - butter thrash of The Jam for the cappuccino soul of the Style Council,
so cue a rarity compilation. Extras, and the first chance in a decade to
reunite the band and broach some taboos-
Paul Weller shuffles in, all sheepish grin and nervous
nod, and it's like time has stood still. From the David Jones and The Lower
Third haircut, to the loafers, ankle length Levi's and the kind of casual
sweater any '60s style freak would kill for, Paul Weller is still the walking
Fashion Icon: The Boy About Town, the King of the Mods-born with dress sense
in the same way that other people are born with plastic spoons in their
mouths.
You can count a few extra lines round the corners of
his face maybe, but otherwise age has left those sharp features completely
untouched. Skinny as a rake, the odds are he could still fit into the same
suit he was wearing the night The Jam played their first real London show,
in the now-defunct Nashville Rooms, at the tail end of 1976. Paul Weller
has used up very nearly half of his allotted three score years and ten on
this planet, but my guess is that his mental self-image is a dead ringer
for the face he sees in the mirror while shaving every morning.
There are a few differences. The Paul Weller who now
sits opposite me, sipping tea and puffing his way through a pack of Bensons,
appears to have mellowed considerably with the passing years. No longer
the arrogant ball of pent-up anger and frustration, liable to spit and spark
at the slightest provocation, he seems more relaxed and at peace with himself.
Still a little terse, perhaps- but, chatting about his kids, he comes across
as a lot more human than when we last met in 1980. Nevertheless, something
tells me that the infamous Weller temper could still be lurking dangerously
close to the surface, and that it might not be advisable to start digging
around.
This is Paul Weller's first 'official' interview in
years, so let's get down to brass tacks. We're not here to talk about the
usual PR things like his forthcoming Japanese tour, the new album he's just
finished mixing and the record deal which is in the final stage of negotiation.
We're here to talk specifically about The Jam, which-to all intents and
purposes-has been something of a taboo subject in the Weller camp, during
the ten years since the band played their last gig at Wembley Arena in 1982.
The reason that Weller has broken cover after all this
time, he is determined to make clear, is not because there is the remotest
possibility of the band reforming. Rather, it's to do with Polydor, his
old record company, which has decided to brighten up its Spring 1992 release
schedule with a double album of Jam rarities. They're releasing 26 tracks,
an assortment of B-sides, previously unissued material and original demos
of songs that graced the Setting Sons and Sound Affects LPs. They've called
it Extras and, far from being upset or miffed about the thing, Paul Weller
is quietly proud of it. Even (one might venture) flattered.
Which comes as something of a surprise. Weller (who
has never exactly seen eye to eye with Polydor about anything) was distinctly
lukewarm about last year's Greatest Hits package, even though the latter
did shift 230,000 copies in the UK alone. Paul has always been slightly
reluctant to let the past get in the way of his future perfect.
"I must admit this is the sort of LP I hoped Polydor
would do one day. he says. "It's far more interesting to me than a
bunch of A-sides stuck on a record. I think you'd have to know quite a lot
about The Jam to be really interested in some of the stuff that's on it.
But I could be wrong."
It's a well-documented fact that Weller is an avid collector-and
occasional Pillager-of bootlegs and pirated cassettes of his own particular
'60s heroes. He reveals, for instance, that the whole arrangement of The
Jam's 1981 cover of The Who's 'Disguises' (which is included on Extras,
since it was the B-side ( Funeral Pyre') was built around the a peat-echo
guitar figure culled from Pete Townsend's original solo demo of the song,
unearthed in a New York specialist shop. So he feels no qualms about exposing
the bare bones of his own work to public scrutiny.
'Course not. If people are interested. it's great. I
love that sort of thing. It demystifies the whole business. I've got tapes
at home, which I picked up in the States, of Beatles demos and John Lennon
playing 'Strawberry Fields Forever' for the first time on an acoustic guitar.
You can tell he's only just written it because he keeps hesitating over
the chord changes and getting embarrassed about it. That sort of thing is
wonderful, 'cos you get so used to the excellence of the finished product
that you forget where it all came from. If somebody told me there was an
album out with some Small Faces' or Kinks' tracks on it I'd never heard,
I'd go out and get it like a shot, however dodgy it might be."
Extras is anything but dodgy. A perfect companion to
the Hits collection, it's an album no true Jam aficionado will want to be
without. Far from scraping the bottom of the barrel, it positively glistens
with long-forgotten gems, as well as rough-cut diamonds and lodestones which
were thrown away at the time and have never seen the light of day since.
Tracks such as The Dreams Of Children', Tales Of The Riverbank', the minimally
jazzy 'Shopping' (with Rick Buckler playing brushes, for Chrissakes!), the
delicately acoustic 'Butterfly Collector' and bass player Bruce Foxton's
'Smithers Jones'- a brilliant reassessment of Cat Stevens' 'Matthew and
Son'-will be (and already are) fondly remembered as the B-sides of 45s such
as 'Going Underground', 'Absolute Beginners', 'Beat Surrender', 'Strange
Town' and 'When You're Young'.
Considering The Jam's standard singles sales base in
the late '70s was a staggering 300,000 plus, a lot of people are going to
have these tracks at home already, but in the loft, or the garage, or somewhere
equally inaccessible. Extras is the first time they've ever been available
on album. The real appeal of Extras lies in tracks such as: the red-blooded
1982 recording of 'Solid Bond In Your Heart' (which was to be a Top 20 hit
a year later for The Style Council); superb but never-released covers of
The Small Faces' 'Get Yourself Together' and James Brown's 1 Got You (I
Feel Good)': a weird and wonderful monologue with psychedelic soundscape
called 'Pop Art Poem' (originally released as a fan club flexi-disc); plus
a clutch of Paul Weller's solo voice-and-guitar demos of impending Jam classics
such as 'Burning Sky', 'Thick As Thieves', 'Saturday's Kids' and the epic
'Eton Rifles'.
There's also an exhilarating version of The Beatles'
'And Your Bird Can Sing', which Paul recorded for fun one rainy afternoon
in 1980 with Polydor staff engineer (and soon-to-be Jam and Style Council
producer) Peter Wilson. He's particularly pleased that one has turned up
again.
"Yeah, that's good, innit? We did 'Rain', too, round about the same
time. In fact, we did loads of '60s things. We did a version of Sandie Shaw's
'Always Something There To Remind Me' and 'Stand By Me', with just me on
guitar and bass and Pete on drums and organ. Those tapes have been lost,
which might be a good thing really, 'cos I can't remember how good I they
were."
So where were former stalwarts Bruce Foxton and Rick
Buckler while all this was going on? "I dunno. Having a few days off,
probably. Whenever we weren't touring or making records I'd be demoing at
Polydor. It felt like I was there all the time. The studio was in their
old Stratford Place building, off Oxford Street. When we did those '60s
tracks I was supposed to be demoing new songs for the Sound Affects album,
but I only really had That's Entertainment' and a couple of others written.
So Pete and I spent the rest of the time fucking about.
"What really interests me, though, are the songs
that never got used, the unfinished things like 'Anyone In The World' and
'Hey, Mister'. I'd forgotten all about them. And the demos of 'Burning Sky'
and Thick As Thieves'! I can't remember where or when I done them at all."
The impetus for rarities came from former Polydor staffer
Dennis Munday, an original '60s Mod, who somewhat arbitrarily inherited
joint A&R and marketing responsibilities for The Jam when the man who
signed them, New Zealander Chris Parry, left to set up Fiction Records with
The Cure. That was in 1978, immediately prior to the release of the 'Down
In The Tube Station at Midnight' 45 and All Mod Cons LP. It was make or
break time for the young Jam, who had yet to enjoy a Top Ten single and
whose second album This Is The Modern World had been panned by critics.
Munday freely admits he saw himself in 19-year-old Paul Weller, believed
passionately in The Jam and swiftly earned both trust and respect by fighting
tooth and nail on their behalf with a record company whom, he claims, never
fully appreciated the true value of the band they had signed. And possibly
still don't.
"I reckon two or three bands come up every decade
who have an effect on pop and rock music which lasts forever-the Jam are
one of those bands," says Munday today. "And I like to think I
recognised it almost immediately-unlike a lot of people at Polydor who I'm
certain never thought the band had any longevity. I kept personal copies
of all the demo tapes and rejected mixes that passed through my office,
and at home I've got hours of stuff all carefully filed away on cassette.
I've also got live recordings from every tour they ever made of Britain.
But most of them aren't really useable.
"When we got the go-ahead from Polydor at the end
of 1990 to start researching this album fully, I discovered that, in many
cases, what I'd got was all that was left. The original multi-tracks have
simply gone missing. Nobody knows where they are. That's criminal, if you
ask me. Master tapes must surely be one of a record company's greatest assets.
To admit they've lost them is like the Bank of England saying they've lost
some gold!"
Munday sought to put together an album from whatever
could be salvaged, which would preserve The Jam's much-prized credibility.
That same credibility which, years ago, he had recognised as one of the
key elements to the band's continued success.
"We were able to remix a few of the Extras tracks
with Peter Wilson, but basically I wasn't worried if the recordings were
a little iffy, as long as the songs and the performances were up to scratch,"
admits Munday. "They had to retain the qualities that people remember,
which made The Jam such an important band, and the reason why they will
continue to sell records ad infinitum, if their memory is treated with proper
respect.
"It's easy to forget just what a successful band
the Jam were. In five years they not only had four Number One singles-which
is more than Elton John has managed in his entire career-but those records
consistently sold in the sort of numbers that would keep them on the top
of the charts for months and months by today's standards.
"And Paul was such a prolific song-writer, too.
He never stopped delivering great material. As soon as we'd got an album
finished he'd be writing new songs for the next single. You forget that
things like 'Funeral Pyre', 'Absolute Beginners', 'Beat Surrender', 'When
You're Young' and 'Strange Town' were never put on any albums. I think we
released 16 singles in five years: they weren't all great, but there certainly
wasn't a duff one, which is a pretty major achievement in my book."
The release of Extras has prompted Paul Weller to reassess
his own role in The Jam. There's good reason to believe that, towards the
end, he considered the band as little more than a one-man show, and Extras
might reinforce such a theory, given the overall strength of the writing,
and the power and passion exhibited in the solo demos of 'Eton Rifles',
'Burning Sky' and Thick As Thieves'. The truth of the matter, as Paul now
admits, is that such demos really were few and far between.
"I believed then, as I believe now, that if a song
still sounds good when you sit down and play it with just a voice and a
guitar then you know you've got a good song. With 'Eton Rifles' I certainly
did sit down and figure it all out before I played it to anyone. And I can
understand how it might have been tough on Rick and Bruce when I presented
them with a song like that and virtually told them what to play. It must
have been especially frustrating for Bruce because he had such a distinctive
style. But 'Eton Rifles' was an exception. Most of the time all I had were
rough ideas and fragments, and we'd hammer them out together, with everybody
contributing ideas."
That is certainly how drummer Rick Buckler remembers
it.
"In The City, the first album, was essentially
a studio recording of our live set. After that, though, most of the arrangements
which made it onto record were worked out between the three of us. Things
like 'Pretty Green' grew out of Paul picking up on a rhythmic idea that
Bruce and I were messing about with one day. Or else we'd experiment with
some of Bruce's bass lines, to link sections for two different songs which
weren't quite working and turn them into one that did. That sort of thing.
You may think this is sour grapes, but my feeling is that Paul needed Bruce
and I to be there to bounce ideas off. He fed off the tension. Once he took
sole control of things, I think a lot of the fire went out."
Weller himself can hardly be expected to concede this
last point. Not with Style Council masterpieces like 'Long Hot Summer' and
'Speak Like A Child' to his credit. Nevertheless, Extras has prompted h
admit further fallibility and, somewhat belatedly, to acknowledge the role
played in The Jam's success by the producers-in particular, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven,
who guided the band from their very first recordings to 1980's Sound Affects
LP.
"I think bands have a tendency to give themselves
all the credit for what goes onto a successful record," says Weller.
"I know we did. It's only now that I realise we'd have been thrashing
about in the wilderness if Vic hadn't been there".
Today, Coppersmith-Heaven lives in the wilds of Gloucestershire,
working as a trustee for the Earth Love Fund, which seeks to mobilise the
support of musicians and artists for a variety of different ecological campaigns.
When we spoke he was putting the finishing touches to the soundtrack of
a forthcoming Central TV programme about endangered species. Back in 1977,
as plain old Vic Smith he already had major engineering credits on Cat Stevens,
Rolling Stones and Joe Cocker sessions, when Polydor A&R man Chris Parry
invited him to co-produce The Jam. The brief for both of the first two albums
was simple: make them loud, fast and cheap. Preferably in reverse order.
The results were good. Both In The City and This Is
The Modern World were almost as exciting as the band's live shows. But they
weren't awesome. Vie remembers the turning point came with 'Down in the
Tube Station at Midnight', the track which was to close All Mod Cons and
take The Jam up to Number 13 in the singles chart of October 1978.
"I had to stop Paul from throwing the song away
on a number of occasions. He was very frustrated with it because, although
he had it fully written, we had difficulty in discovering an effective arrangement
for it. After I'd seen the completed lyrics I knew instinctively that this
could be both a classic Jam track and an important crossover song for the
band. The Mod Cons sessions were something of a turning point, when we started
experimenting with things like over dubbed guitars, percussion and sound
effects, without sacrificing the basic integrity of the three piece sound.
Once The Jam were confident with the idea of overdubbing there was no stopping
them"
Although Copper-Smith Heaven had no hand in any of the
demos featured on Extras, he does remember the final mix of "Eton Rifles"
as being something of a nightmare. "On the very last night of recording
in the Townhouse, after all their mates had been in to sing along on the
choruses, I threw up a very quick monitor mix, just so that we'd all have
something to take home to listen to. It took ten minutes and it was exciting,
capturing all the excitement and all the feeling that had gone into the
sessions. But there were a few cues missed here and there; backing vocals
and organ overdubs weren't quite loud enough-the sort of thing you expect
to be wrong with a monitor mix. We moved to RAK studios to complete the
album, and even though I went back to the Townhouse and tried everything
I knew, I just couldn't recapture the atmosphere and excitement of that
original rough tape.
"I tried the near impossible and ran it against
the multi-track, and wherever there was a short section which needed repairing,
where a keyboard could have come in or a voice should have been a little
louder, I'd make a new mix, dubbing two-track to two-track to add the missing
elements, and then cut it back into the old one. This was before there were
such things as synch codes to lock two tape machines together. So it all
had to be done by ear and eye, with scissors and splicing tape. The finished
master was made up of so many tiny edit sections it looked like a patchwork
quilt. Suddenly and somewhat acrimoniously, at the end of 1982 Weller sacked
his ex-school chums Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler. "I'd just had enough,"
is all he'll say today.
But talk to Dennis Munday or Peter Wilson, two of Weller's
closest associates at the time, and the impression you'll get is that Paul
wanted to progress musically, but didn't feel his long-term Jam cohorts
would be up to the task. This, of course, is old news to Bruce Foxton and
Rick Buckler. Even after ten years, in which they have both forgiven if
not forgotten, it's a bitter pill which Foxton, in particular, still finds
a little hard to swallow.
"It was a real shock when it happened," recalls
Bruce. "We knew Paul wasn't happy, and I was expecting him to suggest
taking a break for six months or a year so he could concentrate on getting
his studio and record label together. Then he'd come back refreshed, and
we'd pick it all up again. After all, right from the start, when I first
joined the band from school in 1973 the idea was always to be big. And despite
the at that we were massive in Britain, the US was only just beginning to
open up for us, and we still had a lot of work to do.
"The trouble was that Paul never discussed what
he was feeling with us", explains Foxton. "And he hasn't done
since. I've only met him once since we split up, although I've tried to
contact him several times, which makes me sad. Maybe he was right: maybe
we couldn't have persevered with the new direction he was moving in. But
I always thought Rick and myself were amiable enough chaps to give it a
go if he'd asked us. But he never did."
Extras offers no answers, only more twists to the tale. Some of the last
recordings The Jam ever made are on this album, including 'Beat Surrender'
B-side 'Shopping', and the putative master of 'Solid Bond In Your Heart',
produced by Peter Wilson but subsequently rejected after extensive editing.
Could The Jam have made the transition? Well, 'Solid
Bond' may not be perfect, and is undoubtedly harsher than the Style Council's
hit version, but the rhythm playing of Foxton and Buckler doesn't sell it
appreciably shorter than Paul Weller's guitar work. 'Stoned Out Of My Mind',
on the other hand, is a superb example of updated dewy-eyed '70s soul. 'Shopping',
complete with 'Frisco flute solo, is a clear supper-club jazz pastiche,
and even if his tongue is slightly in his cheek, Rick Buckler's brushwork,
in particular, is very nicely stylised. Less said about the cover of Curtis
Mayfield's 'Move On Up' the better, though.
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