When Paul Weller announced he was leaving the Jam in 1982, he shocked everyone. Well, almost everyone. When the split was announced, I was in Canada with Simple Minds on tour. We'd just got off an aeroplane, and the news was delivered at the airport by a local menial from their record company. The Glaswegian futurists loathed the Jam, and broke into spontaneous applause, whoops and catcalls.
Maybe it was a sign that the trio's bulldog-Britishness had outstayed its welcome, but for the band's supporters, all the outward evidence was that the Jam were hitting a commercial and artistic peak. Their album The Gift had recently topped the British charts, surfing in on the back of the hit single, Town Called Malice. A planned year-end tour would cover the UK from Scotland to the south coast, taking in six sold-out performances at Wembley Arena en route.
"We were initially devastated," remembers Jam bass player, Bruce Foxton. "Signs of the pressure we were all under came to light in Japan, but I thought perhaps six months off might be the answer, not a total disbanding. Once there was no turning back, it was extremely hard to do the farewell tour. We were at the top, everything we had dreamed of and worked so hard for. But we always said if one of us left, that would be it. So it was."
In hindsight, the consensus would be that Weller's songwriting had begun to outgrow the band's limited three-piece format, and that he could hardly keep writing songs about frustrated, disaffected youth forever (even if he was still only 24 when the band broke up). The group called it quits just as British pop was being overrun by the preposterous leisurewear and over-budgeted videos of Culture Club, Duran Duran and ABC, all of which were anathema to the puritanical Weller. He was off to the pseudo-soul-music and worthy Red Wedge leanings of the Style Council, which most fans regarded as a feeble substitute for the Jam in their pomp.
But it was probably this abrupt departure which has given the band's legacy its staying power. Weller's brutal decision meant that they never had the opportunity to trundle along together into a mediocre middle age. Weller had watched the Who doing exactly this, and the spectacle appalled him. Nevertheless, Weller has just given Virgin Radio's breakfast DJ Daryl Denham permission to "re-word" the Jam's 1980 chart-topper Going Underground as Go England. It will be released just before the World Cup campaign in June.
"The Jam were creatures of their time," reckons Martin Hopewell, who used to book the Jam's concert dates and continues to do so for the solo Weller. "A reunion will never, ever happen. I'm very glad that you don't have a bunch of people trying to be something that they now aren't - and looking a little bit painful in the process."
Though originally bundled together with "punk", the Jam never fitted anybody's preconceptions about bondage-trousered spleen and art-school anarchy. Their earliest publicity photos (from 1973, before Foxton joined) reveal a uniform of kipper ties, matching black shirts and hairstyles reminiscent of kids-TV popstrels Flintlock. However, it was the subsequent shift to mod suits, two-tone shoes and skinny ties that caught the attention of teens in the band's home town of Woking.
"I bought a scooter and done the whole works," Weller explained to Jamming! magazine in 1978, regarding his mod makeover. "Everybody thought I was fucking mad in Woking, but it was just something for me to do. At the time, I really wanted something like the punk movement to come along, with, like, everyone playing to kids your own age. Up until then we were just playing to 40-year-old hippies, but I needed something to relate to."
The look and the sound made a perfect fit. The trio were honing a terse, economical sound to match Weller's increasingly focused songwriting, though some on the punk scene distrusted the Jam's retro look, blatantly imitative of the early Who, and considered their technical competence a betrayal of punk's year-zero philosophy. But it would be this bedrock of old-fashioned craftsmanship that underpinned the group's development, and later Weller's resurgence as a solo artist.
"We certainly had similar ideals to those of the Pistols, Clash and so on," Foxton argues. "Musically, the early 70s had stagnated - it needed a long-awaited kick up the backside. Perhaps we were naive, but it was a way in which we could let our frustration out."
By early 1977, the Jam had tightened their stage show through regular performances at London venues including the Marquee, the 100 Club and the Red Cow in Hammersmith. EMI had taken a look, but turned them down. Polydor A&R executive Chris Parry, smarting from seeing his approaches to both the Sex Pistols and the Clash come to nothing, stepped in with a deal and a £6,000 advance. Initially this covered only the group's first single, but Polydor quickly exercised an option to extend the contract to four years and four albums.
Parry would produce their early recordings, but also brought in experienced sound engineer Vic Smith (who would later revert to his full name, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven). At first, it was by no means obvious that Weller was the dominant member, with Foxton also staking a claim as a singer and songwriter. "The band was always an equal partnership but Paul was the obvious spokesman," says drummer Rick Buckler.
"It was very much a three-piece, with a real fiery energy coming from all of them," Coppersmith-Heaven recalls. "They had unique arrangements and a unique sound, and it was an engineer's dream, trying to capture their raw excitement on vinyl. Vinyl was lovely stuff because you could make it bleed, you could force it to its limits and make the sound really leap out."
Smith was nobody's idea of Mr Punk, having worked on everything from Beatles demos and the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed to Verdi's La Traviata with Joan Sutherland, but the Jam responded to his attention to detail and work ethic. At first the band didn't have their own guitar roadie, so Coppersmith-Heaven would take Weller's guitar into the workshop to tune and adjust it. The debut single, In the City, was released in April 1977, and its taut melodic construction, harnessed to explosive chords and high-revving drums, served as a spectacular introduction. In the City, the album, followed in May, and climbed briskly to number 20. Apart from a wobble with their hastily recorded and disappointing second album, This is the Modern World, the group's trajectory would soar steadily upwards.
There is a theory that it's Weller's ongoing success as a solo artist that has helped to sustain interest in the the Jam's catalogue, but that does scant justice to what the band achieved in their five-and-a-half year recording career. If they started off by merely transferring their stage set to vinyl, they quickly learned to exploit the full range of possibilities available in a recording studio. After ousting Parry from the producer's chair when he criticised the material they were recording for All Mod Cons, they forged an increasingly close working relationship with Coppersmith-Heaven.
"For the third album, All Mod Cons, it was a very experimental time in the studio," says the producer. "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight was arranged and conceived in the studio, and it got to a point where Paul just chucked the lyric down and said: 'It's a load of shit, I'll do it some other time.' I read the lyrics and I thought it was such a great song that I persuaded him to push ahead with it, and it turned into an absolutely sensational track."
For the Going Underground single in 1980, the producer made Weller jump through hoops to deliver a convincing vocal performance. "He'd done a good vocal, but every time I tried to mix it I'd think: 'The vocal's not with the track.' He was reluctant, but once he got into it he performed until he got a vocal that really held the track together. I think it's why we're still talking about the Jam now, because a lot of moments were captured in their music that will last another 20 years."
If the Jam can't lay claim to the aura of insurrection that surrounded the Pistols or the Clash, they did put together one of the most coherent bodies of work of any British band since the 1960s. The durability of their catalogue in Britain is partly due to the fact that that they never became tax exiles or put all their energy into trying to seduce the American market, and never tried to pretend that they were anything but British and working-class.
A shadow passed across the Jam's memory when Buckler and Foxton launched a lawsuit in 1993, claiming they were owed up to £200,000 in royalties and earnings from merchandising accumulated since the group split up. Weller hasn't kept in touch with the other two for 20 years. "I guess it's a bit sad and a bit silly, but then we didn't speak an awful lot when we were all together," he says. "I never felt we were best of friends, and best friends don't take each other to court."
Bruce Foxton strikes a more resigned note. "I admit, I have not enjoyed reading some quotes that Paul allegedly has said. Also the court case didn't help matters. A lot of time has passed and I feel we have all moved on. Who knows what may lie ahead? Once the band was successful we all kind of changed. It became too much like a business, the fun slowly disappeared. Paul was and is an extremely gifted songwriter. I do not wish to discuss his personality, I think those that have seen him interviewed can judge for themselves. I'm still very fond of Paul and Rick."
The moral is, if you want to know about the Jam, play their records.
Yesterday's heroes: The Jam on record
In the City (May 1977)
In impeccable punk-era style, Weller's first words on the Jam's debut album were a barked "one-two- three-four" over the knee-trembler rush of Art School. A brilliant start, able to find room for the Small Faces-esque Away from the Numbers as well as the speed-freakery of the title tune.
This Is the Modern World (November 1977)
Hastily recorded under pressure, this follow-up was sometimes only a pale imitation of its predecessor. But there was evolution too, like Weller's harmony-pop Tonight at Noon and Bruce Foxton's bold Don't Tell Them You're Sane. Worth another look.
All Mod Cons (November 1978)
A newly focused Weller proving himself the class act of the New Wave. It's the Jam's most consistent album, with landmarks like To Be Someone, In the Crowd and English Rose, plus a storming cover of the Kinks' David Watts. The finale, Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, was a tour de force.
Setting Sons (November 1979)
Weller later confessed he thought this was "a bit too slick", perhaps because it was intended to be a concept album. Only parts of the overall theme of three characters survived, but there was plenty of musical muscle, especially the class-warfare hit single Eton Rifles.
Sound Affects (November 1980)
Preceded by the crunchy chart-topper Start! (reworking the Beatles' Taxman), this presented a mixture of musical approaches. Music for the Last Couple was especially wacky, but Pretty Green, That's Entertainment and Man in the Corner Shop are genuine Jam classics.
The Gift (March 1982)
Elements of funk and northern soul permeated the Jam's last studio album, notably on the double-A chart-topper Precious and Town Called Malice. Uneven overall - The Planner's Dream Goes Wrong floundered clumsily, but Ghosts was superb. Followed in the same year by the live album Dig the New Breed.
Polydor re-releases In the City as a 7-inch single on vinyl on Monday. The compilation album, The Sound of the Jam, follows on May 6. The live album, Live Jam, is out now. A Radio 2 documentary, The Jam - Made in Britain, is broadcast tomorrow at 8pm. A 3-CD set, The Jam at the BBC, is scheduled for June 3.