All Mod Icon Paul Weller Magazine

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all mod icon 7 Belleisle Court, Carrickstone Glasgow, Scotland, G68 0BZ allmodicon@hotmail.com Editor: Drew Hipson design & concept: Drew Hipson contributors: John Reed, Alan McGee Gary Crowley, Mark Baxter, David Lines, Dennis Munday, Andy Crofts Paul Du Noyer, Johnny Cooke & Martin Freeman.

Photographers: Pennie Smith, Dean Chalkley & Janette Beckman.

Disclaimer. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the publisher. the publisher assumes no responsibility to any party for the content of any advertisements in this publication, including any errors and omissions therein. By placing an advertisement, the advertiser agrees to indemnify the publisher against any claims relating to the advertisement. All Mod Icon © Drew Hipson.

All articles © Drew Hipson unless stated otherwise.

The name all mod icon © Drew Hipson a modernist Publication.

contents 04 EdiTor’s vox 06 rouTE ‘66 The Editor looks back at The Jam’s sound affects album.

24 nEu! wavE A reappraisal of sonik Kicks.

32 Gary crowlEy writes exclusively about The Jam album sound affects.

35 BooKs - A review of Thick as Thieves Jam book.

36 An interview with suburban 100 book compiler John Wilson.

39 A review of mr cool’s dream Style Council biography.

40 music - A review of The Gift super deluxe Box set.

45 A review of the Bruce Foxton album Back in The room.

46 crEdiTs.

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EDITOR’S vox

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pinion has always been divided as to what is The Jam’s best album. For most fans and critics it is invariably a close call between All Mod Cons and Sound Affects, and although both albums have what many regard as the archetypal ‘Jam sound’, stylistically they are very different. Lyrically they may share similar themes - escape from the suburbs ( In The Crowd, The Place I Love, Dream Time ), the British class system (Mr Clean, Man In The Corner Shop) and inner city decay (“A” Bomb In Wardour Street, Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, That’s Entertainment ) - but sonically they are poles apart.

All Mod Cons is a far more traditional album in terms of song structure and sound. Lyrically it is indebted to Ray Davies and musically the sound is very mid-sixties The Beatles and The Who, the best example being It’s Too Bad, which sounds like a cross between So Sad About Us and She Loves You. For the most part the sound is built around Foxton’s driving,

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melodic bass, Buckler’s military-precision snare work and intricate cymbal flourishes, and Weller’s Townshend riffing and multi-tracked, twin-guitar harmonies.

Sound Affects, on the other hand, has a diversity of styles and sounds, which combines post-punk, funk, and psychedelia (the latter of which was hinted at on the All Mod Cons album with the backward guitar at the outro to In The Crowd ). The Beatles 1966 album Revolver was of course a major influence as Paul and Bruce had been listening to the album during the American tour in Feb and March 1980.

Aside from the obvious Beatles references though, The Jam had also absorbed and reworked all sorts of contemporary influences. The bleak, discordant sounds of Joy Division for instance - which had inspired the musical backbeat to Private Hell were perfectly suited to the ‘cold hard and mechanical’ theme of Set The House Ablaze, whilst the influence of The Slits, Au Pairs and Gang Of Four

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can also be heard, most notably on Scrape Away, with Buckler’s offbeat drum pattern and muted snare sound and Weller’s psychotic, spidery guitar motif, which pays homage to Gang Of Four guitarist Andy Gill’s style of playing. (The Gang Of Four had supported The Jam in 1978 and Weller would no doubt have been taken by Gill’s punk/funk staccato chording, which sounded like a schizophrenic reworking of Wilko Johnson’s guitar style).

Weller has said that the modern funk of the Michael Jackson album Off The Wall was the inspiration for the postpunk/funk hybrid Pretty Green, though equally influential, was the nursery rhyme-like melodies and abstract lyrics of Wire, and in particular the tracks I Am The Fly and Practice Makes Perfect. The XTC album Drums & Wires - with its ambitious, experimental sounds and arrangements, was also a major influence, and there was even a nod to David Bowie on Monday and The Psychedelic Furs on Pretty Green.

Weller has often cited Sound Affects as his favourite Jam album and has said that it was used as a reference point during the recording of Wake Up The Nation. The same blueprint, it seems, has been used to even greater effect on what I regard as Weller’s best solo album since Stanley Road the dizzying aural trip that is Sonik Kicks.

The pre-release buzz that surrounded Weller’s 11th solo album reminded me of the anticipation I felt prior to the release of Sound Affects, after having

attended my first Jam concert at the Glasgow Apollo in October of that year.

I also remember - even though it was over thirty years ago - excitedly reading the Paul Du Noyer penned feature in the NME, which covered The Jam’s infamous trip to the Turku Festival in Finland in August 1980. Thirty years later I caught up with Paul Du Noyer to find out what his recollections were of meeting Paul and of hearing Sound Affects take shape three months prior to its release.

Other contributors, who have added their own unique perspective on Sound Affects exclusively for All Mod Icon, are actor Martin Freeman (best known for his part in BBC sitcom The Office ), Dennis Munday (ex Polydor A&R manager and author of Weller biography Shout To The Top) - who gives an invaluable insight into the recording process and the behind-the-scenes dramas that would unfold during the recording - Johnny Cooke (lead singer with Dogs), ex-Creation Records boss Alan McGee, The Moons front man Andy Crofts, David Lines (author of The Modfather: My Life With Paul Weller ), Mark Baxter (author of The Mumper ), Gary Crowley and Weller biographer John Reed.

There is also an interview with Suburban 100 lyric anthology compiler John Wilson and reviews of The Gift Box Set, the new Thick As Thieves Jam book, the Style Council biography Mr Cool’s Dream and Bruce Foxton’s new album Back In The Room...

Enjoy! drew Hipson • Editor

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ROUTEsixTysix Puns, Pop Art, Post-Punk & Polka Dots! Yes, it’s The Jam’s most experimental Long Player sound affects. Thirty years after its release, the Editor looks back at The Jam album which took The Beatles psychedelic masterpiece Revolver as its starting point...

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any fans and journalists regard Sound Affects as The Jam’s pièce de résistance. A mix of funk, post-punk and psychedelia, the album is certainly the group’s most immediate, yet it is also the most abstract in terms of instrumentation and lyrics. Whereas the bulk of Setting Sons was written and arranged prior to recording, many of the

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songs on Sound Affects were forged from studio jam sessions, with riffs and rhythmic ideas gradually evolving into finished tracks; a process which Weller admits frustrated the rest of the band: “The others were a bit fucked off with me about how laborious the process was. But I think it works for that album”.

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Lyrically, Weller was inspired by his favourite writers at the time - George Orwell, Spike Milligan, Geoffrey Ashe, William Blake and the Liverpool poets.

Keen to move away from the complex narratives of Setting Sons, Weller’s lyrics on Sound Affects were deliberately simplistic; even conversational in tone. The pop art titled Start! (originally called Two Minutes, which summed up the the concept of communication through a two minute pop song) was a case in point and almost reads like a letter. Inspired by passages from Homage To Catalonia (1936), in which Orwell describes how his belief in Socialism was strengthened after witnessing ‘the ordinary

Snap! Weller plays his musical ace card. Sound affects tour 1981.

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class-divisions of society’ disappear during the early part of the Spanish Civil War - the lyrics reveal Weller at his most idealistic: the message of the song being that communication via music - hence the meaning of the album title - can transcend cultural barriers and thus unify the shared common goals of ordinary people, irrespective of nationality. The ideological impact of political barriers was also the central idea of another of his favourite books at the time – Spike Milligan’s novel Puckoon. However, it was the barriers of class which concerned Weller the most. The Eton Rifles - released the previous year depicted an imaginary class war, in which the public school-bred upperclasses were the inevitable victors.

(It’s worth noting that George Orwell Weller’s favourite writer at the time was educated at Eton).

On the psychedelic masterpiece Man In The Corner Shop, Weller uses the ‘Corner Shop’ as the ‘equilibrium melting pot ’ where the three classes come into contact with each other.

The concept was similar to the famous Class Sketch, first aired on The Frost Report in 1966, which features John Cleese (upper class), Ronnie Barker (middle class), and Ronnie Corbett (working class), satirizing the British class system Discussing the song in the lyric anthology Suburban 100, Weller told John Wilson: 'I was always hung up about class, always regarded the class divisions as the real rot in our society, especially growing up in Woking, where affluence and financial struggle

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were both very apparent’.

Inspired then by Orwell’s vision of a classless society (The Lion And The Unicorn, 1941), and keen to break down cultural barriers, Weller told journalists at the time of his desire to play gigs in Russia and Red China. The following year he would also script an episode of the BBC2 community art programme Something Else, which mainly focused on class issues.

When said idealism was balked at – most notably by Pete Townshend, whom Weller met via Paolo Hewitt for a feature in Melody Maker - Weller responded with the scathing lyrical attack of Scrape Away. Of the meeting Weller told Melody Maker in January 1983: ‘The comparison between us was really broken for good as we discovered we really had nothing in common’. If Townshend’s cynicism had partly inspired the lyrics to Scrape Away, Weller wasn’t letting on, as a month prior to the release of Sound Affects he told Paolo Hewitt that the song was a reminder to himself not to become too cynical. However, in Suburban 100, he revealed that the lyrics were actually aimed at certain music journalists, who no doubt displayed an ‘open disgust for idealistic naive’. The Late Vaughn Toulouse (lead singer with Department S and journalist with music/style magazine The Face) suggested at the time that the lyrics were ‘an ode to the likes of Julie Burchill’, who was one of the ‘Hip young gunslingers’ at the NME.

Set the House Ablaze, written in a similar conversational style, is just as

intense - though Weller does offer a moment of light-relief in the Milliganesque humour of the fifth and sixth lines of the first verse. Like Funeral Pyre - released the following year the lyrical focus is on political indoctrination and the ‘build up of nationalist spirit’, as Weller put it in an essay he penned for The Face titled The Other Side Of Futurism. The article explored the messages in Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World - two books which were suggested for his CSE examination at school, of which he’d been re-reading.

In Dream Time he even paraphrases a line from 1984, in which Orwell describes Winston Smith’s fear in Room 101: ‘His bowels seemed to turn to water’. Though the style is overtly Orwellian, two other writers had stirred a vague spirituality in Weller.

The influence of Geoffrey Ashe and William Blake crop up on the middle eight and spoken word outro of the song. Both writers had explored the legend of King Arthur and the idea of England (Albion) returning to a mythical ‘Golden Age’. Weller cited two of Geoffrey Ashe’s books in particular King Arthur’s Albion:The Story of Glastonbury (1957) and Camelot And The Vision Of Albion (1971). ‘He’s into the ancient wisdom’, he told Liam Mackey of Hot Press in 1981, ‘and though I’m not into the Stonehenge side of it, I am into the spiritual side of it, which I think is missing’. Ashe’s Camelot And The Vision of Albion would have the greatest impact and includes the passage: ‘The dull mental atmosphere of the time, the cruel and deadening civilisation that went with it blinded man to the world. As Blake

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had said, vision must be restored’. Interestingly, Weller would return to the Arthurian theme over a decade later on the Stanley Road epic Wings Of Speed, with the lyrics inspired by the John William Waterhouse paintingThe Lady of Shallot. The canvas depicts the fate of a mythical young female who is isolated in a tower near King Arthur’s Camelot and perishes as a result of her unrequited love for the knight Sir Lancelot.

Weller was also inspired by the Liverpool poets of the 60s (Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten) with their pop art juxtaposition of the grandiose and the commonplace. Perhaps the title of Brian Patten’s poem - a particular favourite of Weller’s - sums up the style best: Somewhere Between Heaven And Woolworth’s. Vaughn Toulouse, who had become friends with Weller, obviously had a similar penchant for the poets, as he titled a Department S song Somewhere Between Heaven And Tesco’s. Weller had of course already used Tonight at Noon and In the Midnight Hour - two of Henri’s poems - as inspiration for The Jam track Tonight at Noon and lyrically Billy Hunt and The Place I Love are very much in the style of the poets.

The pop art concept of ‘inflating the humdrum’ crops up on Monday, with Weller juxtaposing the verses - which are full of romantic similes - with the chorus, which has the protagonist pining to meet his lover on a day generally regarded as the most mundane. Dream Time - essentially an updating of In The Crowd - also

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references pop art, though more specifically the preoccupation with consumerism: ‘My love comes in frozen packs bought in a supermarket’, and although Weller cites The Clash song Lost In The Supermarket (1979), as the source of inspiration: ‘I came in for that special offer guaranteed personality’, the idea may equally have been inspired by the Gang Of Four track Natural’s Not In It (1979), which features the line ‘Ideal love a new purchase, a market of the senses’.

Two of Weller’s favourite 60s bands had of course incorporated pop art into their work. The Who had adopted British pop art painter Peter Blake’s use of targets and military paraphernalia and also satirized consumerism on the sleeve of their The Who Sell Out album (1967). Weller’s wearing of a Heinz Tomato Soup apron for the Top Of The Pops performance of Going Underground referenced the album by wryly acknowledging the fact that The Jam had topped the charts with their most commercial sounding single. Sixties pop art experimentalists The Creation also used pop art iconography, most notably on their second single, Painter Man/Biff Bang Pow! (1966), which paid homage to the ‘cartoons and comic books’ style of the American pop art painters.

One such artist was Roy Lichtenstein, whom Weller named as one of his ‘heroes’ in a Jam Fan Club booklet.

Lichtenstein’s 1964 painting Ohhh...

Alright... had been the inspiration for the title of the Setting Sons track Girl On The Phone, and during the sessions for Sound Affects Weller penned

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the experimental Jam track Pop Art Poem (later given away free with Flexipop magazine), which features the use of the comic-book exclamations ‘Pow!’, ‘Zap!’ and ‘Wham!’- recurrent motifs in the artists’ work. Weller also had one of his Rickenbacker’s customised with the right-hand section of Lichtestein’s most famous painting ‘Whamm!’ (1963), and the following year would also assemble and design the pop art publication In the Car - the title again taken from a Lichtenstein painting. Weller’s love of pop art iconography would resurface in 1995 with British pop art painter Sir Peter Blake commissioned to design the sleeve for Stanley Road, and again in 2005 with the title of his seventh solo album As Is Now, inspired by an exhibition of pop art prints entitled As Is When.

If early Jam songs revealed a dewyeyed love of London viewed from suburbia, then Sound Affects would capture the edgy, urban, amphetamine-like rush of the capital from direct experience. In an interview published in Record Mirror (1980), Weller told journalist Mike Gardner: ‘Moving up to London has given me a different perspective. It’s so much faster, days just piss by and you don’t even notice it. I don’t think I’d have written half the stuff if I had stayed in Woking’.

The track which eulogised London most, is of course That’s Entertainment , a song universally regarded as one of The Jam’s finest moments and certainly one of Weller’s most enduring lyrical compositions. The title and concept was initially inspired by a

poem called Entertainment, which had been submitted by Jam Fan Club member Paul Drew to Weller’s publishing company Riot Stories. Weller’s ironic use of the title - taken from the Arthur Schwartz song of the same name - contrasts the showbiz exhalation of the original with the grim reality of life in Britain almost a year after Margaret Thatcher came to power.

Whereas Drew’s poem is abstract and at times surreal, Weller’s version again written in a conversational tone - is a collection of sensory snapshots of his surroundings, viewed from his flat in Pimlico. It also includes one of his most celebrated couplets: ‘Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight, Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude’.

Musically Sound Affects is the most diverse and experimental album the Jam ever recorded. Much has been made of the fact that Paul & Bruce had been listening to Revolver during the American tour in March 1980, however, The Beatles album was more of a reference point, as Weller was equally inspired by a neopsychedelic music scene which had emerged at the time, which included groups like The Psychedelic Furs and The Teardrop Explodes. (The former band would influence Weller’s vocal inflections on Pretty Green and the latter group would partly inspire the tracks Funeral Pyre & Tales From The Riverbank the following year). Weller was equally inspired by the strippedback, deconstructivist sounds of postpunk bands like Joy Division, Wire and the Gang of Four. The influence of the former band’s trebly, atonal, industrial

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rhythms created the backbone of the Setting Sons track Private Hell, which warped spectacularly the Ray Daviesstyled melody and lyric.

Weller even fused 60s psychedelia and contemporary funk with Start!, which merges the Taxman backbeat and riff with the jagged funk of Gang Of Four’s Damaged Goods (1978). In an interview with Uncut magazine in 1992 Weller told Simon Goddard: ‘You take that song away from the backbeat and the bass line and it’s a very different thing altogether. But I really like the sound on Start! We got that real minimalist, sparse sound. There was a slight Gang Of Four influence going on’. The more mainstream funk of Michael Jackson’s 1979 Off the Wall album was also a big influence with Rick Buckler using a shuffling hi-hat disco rhythm on Pretty Green (later used on Precious) and Weller adopting a sort of nursery rhyme vocal melody.

(The bass-heavy rhythms of Off The Wall would have a lasting effect, with the track Get On The Floor later inspiring The Style Council track MoneyGo-Round).

The album title, aside from its pun, refers to the offbeat instrumentation and recording studio trickery, which of course was inspired by the protopsychedelic sounds of Revolver. Pretty Green features sitar (used on Love You To), That’s Entertainment, backward guitar (used on I’m Only Sleeping), Boy About Town, trumpet (used on Got To Get You Into My Life) and But I’m Different Now, tambourine (used on Taxman and Dr Robert). If there was no evidence of a string-only track in

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the style of Eleanor Rigby, it is probably because Foxton’s Smithers-Jones had already been recorded in said style for Setting Sons, and a string only version of Liza Radley would perhaps have betrayed the source of inspiration: ‘I was down the studio during Sound Affects’, Tony Fletcher told Uncut magazine, ‘Revolver was on the turntable all the time. Paul played me Taxman and Eleanor Rigby. Then Start! came out backed with Liza Radley - it was so obvious. Everybody twigged Start! but not a lot of people picked up on Liza Radley as a homage to Eleanor Rigby. So there’s no ifs or buts about it - it’s nicked!’. One journalist even referred to the track as Eleanor Woking.

Aside from the Taxman riff used on Start!, But I’m Different Now uses the opening riff from Dr Robert and the middle eight from And Your Bird Can Sing - not forgetting the fact that grammatically both song titles begin with a conjunction. It’s also worth noting that a cover of the latter Beatles song was recorded at Townhouse studios in March 1980 and the demo for But I’m Different Now in April 1980.

Weller also demoed versions of The Beatles Rain and The Kinks Dead End Street and Waterloo Sunset with studio engineer Peter Wilson. (These tracks are included on the Sound Affects Deluxe Edition). ‘When we did those sixties tracks I was supposed to be demoing songs for the Sound Affects album’ Weller told Vox magazine in 1992, ‘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’. By the

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World’s apart: Paul Weller & Pete Townshend outside The Marquee, London, September 1980.

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time the band played the Turku Festival in Finland, three months prior to the album’s scheduled release date, only seven tracks had been written: Pretty Green, But I’m Different Now, Monday, Start!, Dream Time, Boy About Town and That’s Entertainment, all of which Weller previewed to NME journalist Paul Du Noyer: “I’d been crazy about The Jam since before I was a music journalist – in other words, back when I could still enjoy some innocent excitement. I met them for the first time in 1980, when the NME sent me with the group to a festival in Finland. I got to like Weller very much, despite his mistrust of interviews. They had a new single, Start! and Paul played me a tape of other songs from the half-completed album, Sound Affects. This was obviously a great record in the making. A few months later I was reviewing the finished album for NME and I’ve loved that record ever since.”

Weller requested that the release of Sound Affects be put back until the spring of 1981 because the band didn’t have enough tracks written to finish the album. The MD at Polydor, however, was having none of it and the release date was set for November 28th. Subsequently, the remaining four tracks had to be, according to Weller, ’Pretty much improvised. I’d start laying a riff and we’d all jam until something happened’. (Included on the Deluxe Edition is an instrumental jam that would become Scrape Away and Set The House Ablaze with an alternate dub outro).

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Sound Affects, essentially, was the sound of Weller searching for a new direction. Unfortunately, the musical restlessness was, according to Dennis Munday, ‘the beginning of the end’ of the band. Prior to the release of the album, journalist Paul Du Noyer noticed that the rot had already set in: “With the benefit of hindsight I now see a few things more clearly. On the road, Paul was detached from the other guys, sticking close to his girlfriend and his father. The Jam were like colleagues, not a gang or a band of brothers. And the music of Sound Affects, with all its myriad influences, was a symptom of Paul’s growing restlessness within the rock format.

He needed his freedom. He was, at the time, quite a serious young man, who felt the pressures and responsibilities of leadership. The fans, the band, the record company and the media were all expecting so much of him. As virtually the sole songwriter in The Jam, as its reluctant spokesman and certainly its definitive stylist, he carried a lot on his shoulders. I think he later learned to enjoy life more. I hope so, and I wish him well, always.”

Sound Affects, although a great album, was not the masterpiece that it should have been. By his own admission Weller had exhausted himself as a writer after Setting Sons and studio time was taken up by his desire to be ‘spontaneous’. As a result, the final studio bill was an astronomical £120,000. The punk rock value-formoney principle championed by Joe Strummer and adopted with Stalinist fervour by Weller meant that Going

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Underground and the sublime The Dreams Of Children - released barely three months prior to the release of Sound Affects - would not appear on the album. Likewise, the excellent Liza Radley would remain confined to B-side status. Had these three tracks been included on the album it would undoubtedly have been a masterpiece.

Aside from its flaws though, Sound Affects, more than any other Jam album, still sounds fresh. Weller cites it as his personal favourite and in fact used the album’s short, sharp, metallic sound as the reference point for Wake Up The Nation and Sonik Kicks.

Sound Affects captured The Jam at their most musically adventurous: it was a also deliberate departure from the traditional rock sound, which by 1980 had become passé. However, the experimental post-punk, funk and psychedelia would be replaced by a more traditional and more soulful sound, which of course lay the foundations for Weller’s next musical adventure. sound affEcTs TRacK BY TRacK Pretty Green 88888 Like Going Underground, the theme is inspired by Orwell’s 1936 novel Keep The Aspidistra Flying and the futility of escaping from the ‘money-God’: ‘You can’t do nothing unless it’s in the pocket’. There is also a nod to the Strummer lyric in The Clash song White Riot: ‘All of the power‘s in the hands of the people rich enough to buy it’. Succinctly described as an ‘AntiCapitalist nursery rhyme’ by journalist Simon Goddard. Foxton & Buckler’s funk backbeat is layered with psyche-

delic phased guitar and sitar and like Going Underground, features a dramatic ascending key change. monday 88888 Compare the lines and vocal melody of ‘Oh baby, I’m dreaming of monday’ to ‘Ashes to ashes, funk to funky’ to see the similarity to Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes single (1980), which charted three months prior to the release of Sound Affects. Beautifully haunting psychedelia with a great vocal performance from Weller.

But i’m different now 888 With a Rickenbacker guitar sound that could strip paint from 100 yards, it’s the track that is most indebted to The Beatles Revolver album. Brett Ascott of Mod-revival band The Chords ‘plays’ tambourine on it. set The House ablaze 8888 The track that is closest to the old Jam sound with its hypnotic lead motif that sounds like a reworking of The Eton Rifles riff. Predating the paranoiac intensity of the similarly themed Funeral Pyre, the music matches the song’s theme brilliantly with military style whistling evoking the beat of a marching army and brilliant snare drum salvoes, which replicate the sound of machine gun - a similar idea to Topper Headon’s drumming on The Clash track Tommy Gun. start! 88888 The lower case letters a and t on the handwritten typography of the single sleeve were the giveaway - it spelled art! The single would herald the new sound, which merged pop art word-

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play, post-punk minimalism and 60s psychedelia.

That’s Entertainment88888 Brilliantly understated and deeply affecting, it is one of The Jam’s best loved tunes. Weller’s scattershot imagery - which captures the grim realities of city life in eighties Britain is in turns romantic and nightmarish.

Features great vocal harmonies and haunting backward guitar on the fifth verse. dream Time 88888 Originally titled Supermarket, the dream is of escaping from the ‘smalltown paranoia’ of suburbia - a theme that runs through Weller’s work. Features the Jam’s best middle eight, which builds to a quite spectacular crescendo. Described by John Reed as ‘Psychedelic punk’. man in The corner shop 88888 Arguably the best track on the album, Weller’s gorgeous psychedelic guitar melody apparently came about purely by chance. ‘I made this tune up on the spot’, he told Watch magazine in 1992, ‘It was in a rehearsal room. I was just showing the others some chords and singing on top of it and building it from there’. For the intro Weller envisioned the cinematic image of workers pouring out of the factory gates to the sound of a klaxon horn. Stylistically and thematically influenced by George Orwell. music for The last couple 888 Heavily influenced by the instrumental track Millions from XTC’s Drums & Wires album (1979) with its Ska-like

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rhythm and mix of unusual percussion and sound effects - which of course refers to the album’s title.

Boy about Town 8888 Totally at odds with the post-punk and psychedelia of the rest of the album, the track has a joie de vivre which, predates the sound of the Style Council by over two years. In his book My Ever Changing Moods, John Reed cites the London commuter magazine Girl About Town as the influence for the song’s title. However, closer to the mark might be the Man About Town magazine which was first published in the 50s and would later feature various 60s icons on its cover. scrape away 88888 Influenced by the stark, atonal postpunk funk of bands like Gang Of Four, Delta Five and the Au Pairs, the track features Buckler’s best drumming performance and a hypnotic off-kilter guitar riff. A similar bass line forms the backbone of the Wah! track Some Say from the album Nah = Poo – The Art Of Bluff’ released in July 1981.

8 dEnnis mundaY Sound Affects was the most difficult Jam record that I worked on and it wasn’t until I wrote Shout To The Top that I was able to comprehend what went down.

At the time, there didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get through my workload, not that I am complaining. I have always realised just how lucky I was, to not only have a job in the record business, but to

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work with such a great band. I’d always dreamed of this, but in all honesty, I never thought it would happen.

under more pressure following the success of Going Underground and Start!, I know I was. The company was looking to repeat the success with the new album and everyone assumed too

There was restlessness during this period, which permeated The Jam’s recordings and the album. I can’t recall how many times they recorded That’s Entertainment, but Paul was never happy, even with the version that finally appeared on the album.

The demo, though lacking in technical quality, had a feel that the band were never able to capture, except when they played the tune live.

The recordings seem to go on forever and it was becoming my worst nightmare. The budget for the recordings spiralled out of control and came in at around £120,000 when in reality Sound Affects should have only cost about £30,000. The Jam’s recording costs were recuperable, so Polydor didn’t care, as it would be their loss and not the company’s. Whether John or the band thought about this at the time, I have my doubts.

Looking back, there was plenty of time to record the album, enough demos were recorded prior to going into the Townhouse, and it shouldn’t have been a problem. Paul admitted that he ‘fucked around’ during the demo sessions he did with Peter Wilson.

Though he did record the two Beatles songs, Rain and And Your Bird Can Sing, which came in mightily handy when I compiled Extras and the fifth CD for the box set.

There was no doubt that Paul was

readily that a number one record for The Jam would be a shoe-in and anything less, would be seen as a failure.

I vividly recall the day Paul came into my office to tell me he didn’t have enough songs written and wanted to put the album back. John should have been the one to tell Polydor’s management, but he went AWOL and it was left to me to break the news to out of The sinking: Weller sups up his beer on the ferry to sweden on the European leg of the sound affects tour.

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The biggest problem for John was that he’d booked a large tour of the UK and Europe at the end of year to promote the album, which couldn’t be cancelled. If the album came out in the first quarter of 1981, they would have had to repeat the tour playing the same set list. Also, the company by this time were in the mire financially and it was put to me that if Sound Affects didn’t come out in time for Christmas, some of my mates could lose their jobs. This was unnecessary pressure as the outcome was out of my hands, and eventually the album was completed and delivered at the very last moment.

the MD. I knew he wouldn’t be happy, as the company were having a bad year and if we slipped into the red, he could well be looking for a new gig in the New Year.

I donned my flak jacket and with great trepidation went to see the MD to explain. It turned out to be nowhere near as bad as I expected and he took the news on the chin. Although he did mention he would ask Godley & Creme to contribute to the album, if Paul was having problems writing songs. Naturally, I turned his offer down. I mentioned this to Kevin Godley quite recently and he was as bemused as I was at the MD’s offer.

smoke on The Water: Rick Buckler on the ferry to sweden on the European leg of the sound affects tour.

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When it came to cutting the album the shortcomings of the recordings came to light. Poor old Arun Chakraverty must have cut more than a dozen different masters for the record. For all you train spotters, if you check the run out of the album you will find the catalogue number and it should have the cut number etched into the vinyl.

Anything over five and you have a reasonable sounding album, anything under will sound on the dull side. Arun did his best, but he couldn’t solve the problems, as several of the tunes needed to be remixed. However, this wasn’t an option as the company wanted to release it at the end of November, come hell or high water.

Because there was no capacity in the UK, I had to get the album manufactured in France and spent the next couple of weeks flying back and forth.

It was a trip I didn’t enjoy as I had the flu and unfortunately for me, the printing company was north of Paris,

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whilst the factory was south and I had to drive 120 kilometres every day. I love Paris, but this trip was one that I want to forget!

The album came out in time to hit the Christmas market, sold a shed load of albums and went to number 2 in the charts and everybody was happy. My bosses called me up to pat me on the back and I was given an envelope containing a bonus, which I threw in the bin on the way out. A mate who worked on the double LP of Saturday Night Fever was given the princely sum of £50, which was an insult, so I knew my bonus wouldn’t have been bigger. Recently an old colleague asked about this and did I ever wonder how much money was in the envelope.

I answered no and I didn’t give a monkey’s, as I knew it wasn’t more than £50 and Polydor could shove their measly bonus where the sun doesn’t shine.

The New Year arrived and when John worked out how much the album would personally cost him and The Jam, the shit hit the fan. Egged on by the execs at Polydor, Vic Smith was given the heave-ho. By the time I arrived at the meeting, it was a done deal and although I stoutly defended Vic, there was no turning back. When the execs wanted to sack Vic around the time of All Mod Cons, he was saved by the fact he had the backing of Paul, Bruce, and Rick, but now, everyone had deserted him and Peter Wilson took over the mantle of the Jam’s producer.

My views about Sound Affects have

always been jaundiced, mainly because of the problems, and every time I played tracks from the album, they would return to haunt me like a spectral ghost. If I am going to be honest, the album should have been put back, as it was never the finished article.

Had this happened, tracks like, Scrape Away and Music For The Last Couple, which were fillers, would never have appeared had the recordings carried over and into the New Year. I am certain Paul would have come up with new material to replace them.

Sound Affects contains some of The Jam’s finest moments, but I can’t help wondering how the album would have turned out had it been put back to 1981 and what difference it would have made to what followed.

In 1980, I watched my all time favourite Jam gig in the capital city of Geordie Land. It was on October 28th at Newcastle City Hall, and even though I was recording the gig, I got to see it and it was a white-knuckle ride from start to finish. Whenever any of my bands played Newcastle, I made sure I was at the gig. It was a city that I always enjoyed and I loved the people, who were down to earth and friendly.

While I am on the subject of The Jam live, a few years ago, I put the idea of a 4CD Live Box Set (four complete gigs) to Universal. However, I am still waiting to hear from them, so don’t hold your breath.

Was Sound Affects worth all the hassle? Of course it was, even though

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I didn’t think so at the time. Now I can put my nightmares aside and enjoy listening to the CD without having to take a Valium. I loved the album version of Start! and That’s Entertainment is one of Paul’s (many) finest moments as a songwriter, no matter how quickly he knocked the tune out.

Pretty Green was a humdinger, but would never have bettered Start! as a single. Boy About Town effervescently harkens back to The Kinks and Dream Time was a cracker. What can be said of Sound Affects, (and all the other Jam albums) that 30 years on, it still stands the test of time.

Paul was moving away from Bruce and Rick and although the changes were minute, the cracks were starting to show. During one of the demo sessions for Sound Affects, Paul and I were discussing the future and he was adamant in his views and stated; “Whatever our achievements, I don’t want The Jam to end up as a geriatric rock band living off their early years. I want the band to mean something, and to stand for something. I’d rather finish at the top than end up touring, playing a set of our greatest hits.”

For me, Sound Affects was the last real Jam album and their next 45rpm Funeral Pyre, the last ‘typical’ Jam single and it signalled the beginning of the end. Paul was going through personal and musical changes that would ultimately see The Jam’s career come to a shuddering, and unexpected halt. david linEs If you ventured into the BBC's Sound

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Effect archives and searched through their recordings under the heading of Band Stretching Their Wings, then this, my friends, is what you would find. There would be but one entry.

And Sound Affects is it.

It really is an extraordinary record. It's my favourite by a country mile. So much stuff going on. So many textures, so many tastes. The clue's on the cover. It's all in there.

As a record it swirls and drifts and carries the listener along a road far less travelled by other bands at the time, or even now. It took Jam fans to another time and another place and it was, I think, a coming of age record for both Weller, The Jam and us, the fans. As the band grew up, so did we.

As Paul passed on his new musical experiences to the fans, we took up the mantle and matured alongside our band.

The Jam were the people's band. They showed that sound does indeed affect.

It affects and moves you on an emotional level like nothing else in the universe. It disturbs and upsets you, it uplifts and inspires you. You can hear Sound Affects in Wake Up The Nation.

It's the sound of an artist stretching his wings yet again. mark BaxTEr By 1980, I was a fully-fledged, paid up Jam fanatic. In all honesty, they could have put out an album of Hungarian nose flute, folk music being played by Paul, Bruce and Rick and I would have spent my hard earned on it. So when Sound Affects landed at my local

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drums and Wires: The Jam recording Sound Affects at Townhouse Studios.

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record shop I had to buy it on the first day of release.

needle and played that song over and over, blown away by it. I found I HAD to hear it again and again, the word’s conjuring up all sort of images in my brain: ‘Sticky black tarmac’ and the ‘tranquility of solitude’ indeed!

I was 18 that year and had begun to question what was happening around me: poxy job, lack of money and wanting to spread my wings. I was already struggling to articulate my dreams and plans, and desperate not to get trapped in the world of the nine-to-five drudgery that lay in front of me especially as I had left school with no qualifications.

I loved Sound Affects then and I love it now. And do you know what? Thinking back, I seem to recall Hungarian nose flutes being used later on a Style Council album…but that, my children, is another story...

As I looked at the front cover of the album, with it’s pop art style sleeve, the series of small photos and images on it seemed to say ‘this is what is front of you mate: life, death and the struggle to get between one and the other’.

andy crofTs Whilst growing up there were a few albums on heavy rotation in my bedroom. I was too young to have been there the first time round but I was re-living a punk/new wave scene of my own.

I turned the album over, desperate to find out what songs I was about to hear, but my eye first caught the poem

by Shelley that was printed on there. I had no idea who Shelley was at the time, but the line ‘Rise like lions after slumber’ already had me curious to read more and a week later I had bought a book of Shelley’s work. As the song said ‘They didn’t teach me that in school…’

The Buzzcocks, The Specials, Dexys and The Clash were faves of mine from that era but the masterpiece that is Sound Affects by The Jam ticked all the boxes. I loved everything about the album including the cover, which gave me the same kinda feeling that The Beatles Revolver did and totally fitted the sound. I think it was the Rickenbacker driven But I'm Different Now and Dream Time that we're the ones for me, although I change my mind every 10 seconds. Sound Affects, and The Jam in general, are a massive influence on me and I often get the album out when DJing. Pow!

Start! was very different, with a great bass-line that I didn’t recognise back then, only discovering the nod to the Fab Four when I started going through my serious Beatles phase a couple of years later. Thanks Mr Harrison!

That’s Entertainment was a serious piece of music. A “fuck me, that’s unbelievable” moment. I picked up the

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alan mcGEE Sound Affects is maybe the Jam’s best album, it’s a very pop album and Boy About Town is just classic Weller. The Jam were a huge thing to me musi-

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cally. I first met Weller through Oasis in ’95, he's a gent. I think everyone who has loved music, at some point, clothes-wise, has nicked bits off Weller. marTin frEEman To this day, if I walk around with Boy About Town on my headphones, I feel like a king. Wide, tall, cocky, and capable of literally anything. In other words, transformed. And that, surely, is the point of music, of art. What's the pun of the album title, after all?

From the opening bass riff of Pretty Green to the nervy French fadeout of Scrape Away, Sound Affects is full of humour, vulnerability, anger and irony. For me, it's a record that makes a nonsense of the moniker 'Modfather'. Partly, because the term is so lazy and emasculating, but also because the album panders to noone's idea of what 'Mod' is all about.

It's dark, introspective, detached. In some ways, the most 'Indie' sounding record Paul has made.

Bruce and Rick play a blinder too, as usual. Because Paul is...well. Paul, it's easy to forget that The Jam had a bad rhythm section...Oh, and it's an album that contains Start! and That's Entertainment.

P.S. I'm guessing I wasn't the only one who was turned on to Shelley, right? johnny cookE This is a massive album for me, dripping with nostalgia, it would seep under my brothers' bedroom door into the hallway. I'd sit on the top of the

stairs soaking it up. I never knew what it all meant then, but I know how it made me feel, excited, dangerous. It's full of vocal echo and dark key changes. Eventually one of my brothers took me into town to Andy's Records on the market and I bought Start! - my first record. I held it like a dinosaur egg.. john rEEd Sound Affects was an album of peaks and troughs rather than one of consistency...its stark atmosphere was influenced by the atonal style of postpunk acts like Wire, Gang Of Four and Joy Division - excepting the odd funk bassline and acoustic track. This strange mixture was constructed from what Paul described as “scraps of images”.

Sound Affects may be Weller’s favourite Jam album today, but he wasn’t happy with Vic CoppersmithHeaven’s flat production. The album had to be recut on numerous occasions in an attempt to compensate for the disappointment of the final masters and it was the last time Coppersmith-Heaven worked with The Jam. Despite the band’s reservations, Sound Affects sold over 100,000 copies and would have topped the charts had it not been for Abba’s Super Trouper.

8 sound affects Deluxe Edition Released Nov 8th 2010

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NEU!wavE sonik kicks Released march 19th 2012 Weller reconnects with the post-punk and psychedelia of Sound Affects via Krautrock and Electronica in the final part of the Black Barn Trilogy...

I

n 2007 Paul Weller was fast approaching fifty. Up until then he had only released one album of original songs in the space of five years. As Is Now (2005) boldly stated that it was of the moment, yet it harked back to The Jam and the Style Council, especially when attempting to break free from the mid-tempo modrock of previous solo albums. From The Floorboards Up, with its choppy Dr Feelgood chording, sounded like The Strokes playing Art School, whilst Come on/Let’s Go - which took its title from the similarly named Broadcast song - sounded like an amphetamined That’s Entertainment, with its twochord acoustic strum. Both songs were urgent and raw and hinted at a

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new Mod energy. There were also several nods to the cosmopolitan soul and ornate classicism of The Style Council, most notably on the spritely Roll Along Summer, which recalled the Parisian waltz of Down In The Seine from the Our Favourite Shop album, and the sombre, piano and vocal grandeur of The Pebble And The Boy, which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on side one of the Confessions Of A Pop Group. album. However, it was the experimental Fly Little Bird a wonderfully odd piece of musical invention - that would hint at a new method of working and a new sound.

Keen to mark his fiftieth year with something that would be musically

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groundbreaking, a year-long recording project at Black Barn Studios would result in the sprawling magnificence of 22 Dreams - an eclectic collection of songs pulled together by the conceptual theme of the changing seasons. Although the album would occasionally hark back to the pastoral moods of Wild Wood and even further back to the blue-eyed soul of early Style Council, there were several moments of musical audaciousness, which would result in the oddest, most abstract tracks Weller had ever recorded. The lynchpin was undoubtedly Simon Dine, whose cut and paste technique of creating modern/retro soundscapes from samples and loops lent his Noonday Underground project such contemporary Modernist cool.

Weller of course had collaborated with Dine as far back as 2003 on the single I’ll Walk Right On and also It’s Written In The Stars, after Dine had remixed the track There’s No Drinking After You’re Dead from the Heliocentric album.

This new willingness to collaborate was perhaps partly borne from a weariness with the traditional songwriting approach, which invariably took the form of late night bouts of acoustic creativity on the Ovation guitar.

The process would begin with Dine introducing a drum loop, drone or sample as a backing track, which Weller would then create a vocal melody for. Both musicians would then hone and sculpt the idea into a finished track. The best examples of the collaboration are the funky, chug-

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ging Push It Along - the cut and paste technique would perhaps explain why the chorus veers off at an unexpected tangent - and the eerie Arabic waltz One Bright Star.

The press were unanimous in their praise of what one journalist called ‘Weller’s White Album’ and were encouraging of his willingness to incorporate new influences into his work.

Intrigued by some of the more obscure artists that journalists had compared the more unconventional tracks on 22 Dreams to, and buoyed by the positive critical reaction to these more avantgarde moments, Weller began to explore artists as obscure as freeform experimentalists AMM and psychedelic prog-rockers Neu!

Wake Up The Nation, released two years later, was a logical progression of the new song-writing approach of building on snippets of sound samples. The album’s Modernist montage of musical instrumentation, discordant interludes and abstract ideas was exactly the sort of vibe that Dine had been looking for, having cited The Jam album Sound Affects as an example.

If 22 Dreams was the sound of the changing seasons and of nature, then Wake Up The Nation would attempt to capture the sound of the city: abrasive, urgent and edgy. The songs were short, sharp, shocks of brittle vitriol: a clarion call for the nation to revolt against celebrity culture, media mediocrity, and technological distractions:

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‘Get your face out of Facebook’ Weller barked.

Although predominantly urban sounding, several tracks feature the earthy accompaniment of flutes, harps and harmonium, offering brief reminders of the ephemeral qualities, which permeate much of 22 Dreams.

Though the overall sound strayed from the Mod-rock roots, the influence of The Beatles was never far away. Find The Torch, Burn The Plans - with its relentless incantation of rippling guitars and vibraphone - echoes Tomorrow Never Knows, whilst Grasp & Still Connect captures the bluesy freight-train vibe of One After 909.

Critics likened the new sounds on Wake Up The Nation to side one of Bowie’s Low album (1976) from the Berlin Trilogy - especially the tracks Fast Car/Slow Traffic and Up The Dosage. Though the influence was no doubt a result of Weller’s wife Hannah being a huge fan, Weller had admittedly bought all of Bowie’s albums up until Scary Monsters (1980). On the cinematic Mod/Sci-fi track Andromeda, Weller even uses the central theme of Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 movie The Man Who Fell To Earth - which starred Bowie in the lead role - as a metaphor for the passing of his father.

Critics were now comparing Weller to Bowie and Dine to his Berlin Trilogy collaborator - musical conceptualist Brian Eno. Having won the Uncut Music Award for Wake Up The Nation Weller was

keen to acknowledge the input of his co-writer. He told Uncut in 2011. ‘A lot of credit has to go to Dine. The album came from him, really, He had these very rough backing track ideas, which he sent me...once I heard them, I could see a whole new sound emerging.’

The new sound - fractured, neurotic ephemeral - seemed to be an apt soundtrack to Weller’s state of mind.

He had lost his father, separated from his wife and had reconnected with former Jam band mate Bruce Foxton - who supplied bass on the tracks Fast Car/Slow Traffic - an affectionate nod perhaps to the Foxton penned track London Traffic from the This Is The Modern World album - and She Speaks.

If Wake Up The Nation sounded like a man in shock and grappling to find his bearings, then Sonik Kicks - the follow up album - sounded more like a man finally at peace with himself, or as Weller himself stated - paraphrasing a line from Set The House Ablaze, - ‘Vision has been restored’. The quote wasn’t a coincidence, the spirit of The Jam album Sound Affects - which had served as the touchstone for much of Wake Up The Nation - still resonated - even more so perhaps. Not surprisingly, Scrape Away was included in the live set.

The post-punk, psychedelia and pop art of The Jam’s fifth album are all thrown into the mix on Sonik Kicks even the album title alludes to the effect of sound. >

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Green, for example, takes its title from the Sound Affects album opener Pretty Green and shares an equally bruised, backbeat, though this time inspired by the motorik rhythms of Neu! - the German 70s prog - rock outfit formed by two members of Kraftwerk. The 4/4 beat with minimal fills and occasional crash cymbal is allied to a thumping bass line, which

assaults.

There is also a lineage which can be traced back to the post-punk sounds of Wire - a major influence on Sound Affects - especially on the one-chord drone of Paperchase, which seems to bridge the gap between Wire and Blur.

Blur had of course been heavily influenced by Wire as far back as their

The spectral electronica of Around The Lake feels like the joining up of the dots, sounding like a cross between Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control and Bowie’s Speed Of Light.

is peppered with sound effects, including electronic blips, drop echo and heavy reverb.

On top of this wonderful cacophony of psychedelia, Weller recites arbitrary lines taken from advertising hoardings that he a Dine had seen on the train journey to the studio - again a pop art reference to consumerism.

The album also momentarily returns to the ska dub of Sound Affects. Study In Blue features an insistent melodica riff like Music For The Last Couple, though whilst The Jam track was inspired by Gang Of Four’s use of the instrument, the Sonik Kicks song is more Augustus Pablo. Serving as the apex of the album, the song segues into an LKJ-style dub instrumental with a Dennis Bovell bass line and shuddering, intermittent, percussive

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Parklife album (1994), though it is their 1997 single Beetlebum which Paperchase most resembles. The fact that Blur guitarist Graham Coxon guests on the album is further proof of the connection.

Likewise, the influence of Neu! can be traced back through Joy Division another band whose influence can be heard on Sound Affects - via front man Ian Curtis, who was a huge fan of Kraftwerk. Prior to the name Joy Division his band had been called Warsaw - after the track Warszawa from Bowie’s Low album - which itself was influenced by Neu! The spectral electronica of Around The Lake then feels like the joining up of the dots, sounding like a cross between Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control and Bowie’s Speed Of Light. >

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The trippy Drifters sounds like Olé by John Coltrane and Sixteen by The Buzzcocks played at the same time.

Certainly the most literal reference to Krautrock though, is Kling I Klang, which takes its title from Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang recording studio - which in turn was named after the first song on the Kraftwerk 2 album (1972). The manic, motorik beat summons up the spirit of The Clash’s Know Your Rights (1982) and welds it to a music hall melody inspired by The Trolley Song from Meet Me In St Louis, which begins ‘Clang, clang, clang went the trolley…’.

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N.B. The Clash Song Jail Guitar Doors (1978) also features the line ‘Clang, clang, go the jail guitar doors’.

It wasn’t the first time that Weller had merged an agitprop lyric with a kitsch soundtrack; The Style Council‘s Come To Milton Keynes, uses a similar idea, though in the case of Kling I Klang unlike the Style Council track - the delivery of the song matches its ire.

The synthesis may sound odd, but like

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everything else on Sonik Kicks, it works brilliantly and is just one example on an album that simply bristles with invention.

The neon crackle of That Dangerous Age with its tongue-in-cheek pop confection of electronica, Kinks riffing, Bowie vocal modulations and kitsch ‘Shoo-oop’ backing is another illustration, whilst the wonderful pizzicato rush of The Attic sounds like Oasis doing a rendition of Helen Shapiro’s You Don’t Know. Even more ambitious is the trippy Drifters, which sounds like Olé by John Coltrane and Sixteen

by The Buzzcocks played at the same time, the modal jazz of the tablas and bouncing bass, jousting with a twochord Telecaster flamenco/punk riff. It is the albums’ oddest moment as Weller wails in an odd time-signature vocal about sleeping in ‘bus shelters’ In the brief moments when the mania subsides Weller dips into psychedelic folk, as on the beautiful When Your Garden’s Overgrown - a fictional tale based on the life of the late Syd Barratt, guitarist with Pink Floyd, whose debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn was on heavy rotation on Weller’s turntable in 1980. The Floyd album title was taken from one of the chapters in the Kenneth Grahame book The Wind In The Willows, which would inspire the lyrics to The Jam song Tales From The Riverbank and the solo tracks Wild Wood and Pan.

The Nation and Sonik Kicks. Not only did both albums push the boat out in terms of sonic experimentation - via Brendan Lynch and Simon Dine respectively - they also marked junctures in Weller’s personal life: both were recorded after a marital breakup and both would see Weller sign off with an epic song about mortality and fate. In the case of Stanley Road the album ends with the semi-spiritual Wings Of Speed: ‘In dreams she floats on a stream, with Jesus at the helm’, whilst Sonik Kicks parts with the most startling, and certainly the most affecting moment on the album, the soulful Be Happy Children, in which Weller sends a mesage to his children from both himself and his late father: ‘In the darkness of God’s great sky, know my heart is always with you’.

Sonik Kicks, is undoubtedly the apogee of the Black Barn trilogy. With a nod back to the psychedelia and pop art angles of Sound Affects and an absorption of the experimental electronic pop of Berlin period Bowie, and Neu! it is the most creatively focused and best produced record Weller has released in a long, long time.

Weller is now without Dine - after an apparent disagreement over royalties - so it will be interesting to see where the Magical Mod Mystery Tour of musical invention, integrity and beauty stops off next.

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If Stanley Road was the pinnacle of the solo album triumvirate of Paul Weller, Wild Wood & Stanley Road, the same can be said of 22 Dreams, Wake Up

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icOn ExcluSivE gAry crOwlEy

gary crowley On Sound Affects

‘‘

Listening to it today there's a freshness, a directness that hasn't diminished with the passing of time. It has to be one of the band’s most complete and cohesive sounding album's.

L

istening to Sound Affects takes me back to a time and a place that looms large in my memory. I was working for the promotions company Modern Media at the time and working with the two best pluggers in the music business - Clive Banks and Nigel “Spanner” Sweeney. I was a music mad 18 year old and our client roster included the creme de la creme of who was who and firing in the late 70s, early 80s. How's this for a roll call? Elvis Costello, The Who, The Pretenders, The Boomtown Rats and

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Bananarama, amongst many others, and the reason why I joined the company in the first place...The Jam. I literally thought that I'd died and gone to heaven at that time. Yes, life was pretty sweet for this spotty little punky, moddy oik.

We'd recently plugged the band's Setting Sons album, and to say they were at the top of their game would be an understatement. I can remember a tremendous sense of anticipation with the new album and have a vivid >

icOn ExcluSivE gAry crOwlEy

memory of myself and Clive going down to the Town House Recording Studios in Shepherds Bush and hearing for the first time what was going to be the first single from it -Start! There was no denying the Fabs Taxman was its blueprint (which sparked a lot of debate at the time), but they gave it an extra added funky twist and energy, and as always made it all their very own. I can see myself and Clive now, smiling knowingly at each other as it was played out loud over the studios massive speakers. Both realising the band had pulled it off yet again and their next number one was a mere drumbeat away.

Over the summer of 1980, myself, Nigel and Clive would occasionally pop down to the studio and hear Sound Affects in progress. Hearing snippets and hanging out with Paul, Bruce and Rick and John and Vic and Dennis too. Chatting about music, what we loved and what we hated and shooting the occasional game of pool.

To say my friends were a little jealous would be putting it mildly.

The band at the that time were the biggest and the most vital in the country. And this album was really testimony to their talent. Awash with the well documented various 60s influences that had always been there since day one, it also boasted tinges of what the likes of Joy Division, Gang Of Four and other post-punk greats were bringing to the party at the time. And you can't forget the Lord of the Dance Michael Jackson's pop/funk masterpiece Off The Wall. A massive fave and an undoubted influence on this album.

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Highlights? How about all 11 songs! At a push though, I'd have to namecheck the funky immediacy of the great lost Jam single Pretty Green, the psyche-

delic rush of Dream Time, the classic snapshot of suburban everyday life that is That's Entertainment, whilst the album's closer - the scathing, dark sounding Scrape Away - showed that Paul's pen was never sharper. But tomorrow I'd probably give you a different answer...

Listening to it today there's a freshness, a directness that hasn't diminished with the passing of time. It has to be one of the band’s most complete and cohesive sounding album's and captures Paul, Bruce and Rick once again moving forward and looking ahead. And to think they were still only in their early 20s!

8

ICon booKS THICK AS THIEVES

THICK AS THIEVES Stuart Deabill & Ian Snowball Marshall Cavendish

This 240 page book is a poignant reminder of just how important The Jam were to thousands of Saturday's Kids the length and breadth of the country. The timing of its release couldn’t be better. Thirty years ago the biggest band in the UK split, ending an incredible musical journey that began in the working mens clubs in Woking and ended at Wembley Stadium.

It can be hard sometimes to convey just what sort of impact The Jam had on their audience - thankfully, Deabill and Snowball’s book goes some way to doing just that. A collection of interviews, anecdotes and memorabilia, from not only Jam fans, but from those who worked with the group including producers Chris Parry and Pete Wilson, Polydor A&R manager Dennis Munday, and sleeve designer Bill Smith - the book captures the spirit of the band through the eyes and ears of the fans and reveals the effect that the music and the lyrics had on their lives.

Thick As Thieves will remind you of

what it was like to be a Jam fan: the anticipation felt the day before a single or album release, the euphoria of a Jam gig, of meeting the band, the posters, the badges, the scrapbooks full of clippings from the music press - we’ve all been there.

The Jam became a soundtrack to our lives. Weller could articulate - sometimes even in one couplet - what it was like to be young, to fall in love for the first time, to drift from childhood friendships and to pine escape from the suburbs. His voice became the sound of the underclass: it expressed the frustrations, hopes and despair of thousands of teenagers who had left school to face a future in a humdrum nine-to-five or the dole queue. Weller’s lyrics allowed us to dream; they educated us and inspired us to read, to write, and to become politically aware.

Above all though, The Jam had integrity, they were a people’s band: fans were allowed in to soundchecks and the recording studio. Weller also took the DIY manifesto of punk seriously.

He encouraged young bands, set up his own record label, started a fanzine - in fact it could be said that he single-handedly inspired a generation of journalists, authors, musicians, poets and fanzine writers. He is still relevant because he didn’t ‘ shit out ’, didn’t make butter commercials or do the greatest hits circuit. Weller and The Jam changed all our lives forever. This book is testimony to that: it is the true voice of a generation who became inspired, politicised and sartorially stimulated by one of this country’s greatest ever bands.

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notes from

underground An interview with suburban 100 book compiler John Wilson

How did the book collaboration with Paul Weller come about?

I am one of the presenters of Front Row, the daily arts show on BBC Radio 4. Paul approached me in 2006 after he was asked to do a book by Random House. His idea was for a lyric anthology, to collect the hundred best in one volume. He approached me as I'd just made an edition of Front Row dedicated to English songwriters, in which I spoke to Ray Davies, Damon Albarn

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and Paul, along with a few others including poet Simon Armitage. He needed someone to sift through his massive output and to advise him objectively which ones were the best, and then to edit.

You mentioned that your fondest cultural memory is of seeing The Jam at the rainbow Theatre in 1980. What was special about that gig?

To be honest, it could have been any

iCon bookS Suburban 100

one of many Jam gigs. I saw them a couple of times the previous year, and they blew my 14-year-old head off. The sound from the stage was like nothing I'd ever heard before, and shockingly unlike the records - they seemed to be playing at twice the speed and twice as loud. Fire and skill, indeed. I saw them at the Palais, the Sobell, Ally Pally and three nights running at Wembley, but the Rainbow gigs were always special.

Council and did you follow Paul's career through his solo work?

I was at a few of the early Council gigs - in fact the first time I met Paul was backstage at the Paris Theatre after

1980? It's a toss-up between the one in April, the week they went in at number one with Going Underground and opened the set with In The City, and the one in October on the Sound Affects tour (first song - Dream Time!).

Both joyous, sweat-soaked nights.

How much of an inuence did The Jam have on you culturally and career wise?

The Jam changed everything for me. A C-90 cassette, with This Is The Modern World on one side and All Mod Cons on the other, was given to me as a present by my aunt Liz in 1978. In the years since, The Jam remain my musical touchstone, the band by which I judge any new act. Of course, all fail the test. But more importantly, Paul Weller's lyrics spoke to me in a way that was both familiar and challenging. He told stories in song, created characters and directed mini-dramas to be played out over the most thrilling musical backdrop. Career wise? Would I have read Orwell, Blake and Shelley at such a young age if they hadn't been on Mr Weller's prescribed reading list?

Probably not.

Were you as much a fan of the Style

TSC had recorded a Radio 1 session there. We'd blagged in. It was Paul's 25th birthday if I remember rightly. I loved the CafĂŠ Bleu album and that run of singles in the first couple of years, and saw a couple of good gigs at the Dominion. But, no, it was never the same for me. Everything made sense again when I heard Into Tomorrow in '91, I knew he was back. did compiling the book give you a fresh perspective on Paul's lyrics?

Yes, it made me realise that he was even better than I'd thought. I honestly don't think there's another British songwriter who has maintained the The Collector: Suburban 100 Paul Weller lyric anthology book compiler John Wilson.

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leaving only the bare essentials on the page.

Which lyrics would you rate as Paul's best and why?

Tough one, as he's far more versatile than he's given credit for. Angry songs, love songs,,story songs, existential-crisis songs, he does the lot.

But I think Thick As Thieves will stand the test of time alongside any piece of pop poetry: ‘the burning sun in the open sky, the twinkling stars in the black night...we seemed to grow up in a flash of time, as we watched our ideals helplessly unwind’. I don't have

‘‘

The Jam remain my musical touchstone, the band by which I judge any new act. Of course, all fail the test.

standard that Paul has managed for so long. Davies and Townshend delivered, but in short bursts. Costello had it, but where is he now? At school, in English, we were asked to write about a poem of our own choosing. I chose Wasteland, and was marked down for picking a pop song. If nothing else, editing Suburban 100 reminded me that I had been right all along. These lyrics are not just pop songs. And he's still got it. Read Trees, Andromeda or Invisible, all great lyrics. Like the best poets and painters, he's paring back with age,

in rainbows: Paul Weller in action at the rainbow Theatre, london, 1980.

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to check the book for these, they're hot-wired. It's our story isn't it? I like to claim credit for this reappearing in the set a few years back, by the way, after reeling those words off to Paul one day. I'm planning to have a quiet word about Private Hell...

What was it like meeting and working with Paul?

The man is a gent. He's a fierce selfcritic and demands the best from those who work with him. We spent a few mornings and evenings around his kitchen table sorting through a huge pile of lyrics. For me it was a labour of love. And he makes a very nice cup of tea.

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ICOn bOOkS MR COOL’S DREAM

MR COOL’S DREAM Ian Munn Wholepoint Publications From as far back as the early Style Council releases Weller has always had a preoccupation with the changing seasons (2009’s 22 Dreams was actually built around the whole concept!). If The Jam conveyed autumnal and winter hues with Weller’s grim social reportage and icy cynicism, then The Style Council would come to represent a musical rebirth of sorts which Weller himself would describe as ‘The sound of spring’. If the new project was like ‘starting with a fresh canvas’, then the musical pallette would change from the bold primary colours of The Jam to the subtle pastel shades of The Style Council.

Munn’s Complete History leads the reader through this transitional period of Paul’s career, from the 50s French chic & self-parody of the early years, to the Bermuda shorts and House Music of The Style Council’s infamous final concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

As a reference the book is faultless, yet it does not follow the standard biography format; instead it reads like a sort of diary-of-unfolding-events which offers a much more fascinating insight into The Style Council’s everevolving ‘musical adventure’. Munn’s attention to detail should be resoundingly applauded as no stone is left unturned, with press releases, TV and radio appearances, concerts and interviews all documented in fine

detail.

There is also a comprehensive and exhaustive discography, a foreword by Weller, some fascinating quotes from fans and an update on the current activities of the seventy-eight musicians (Honorary Councillors) who played within the nucleus of Paul & Mick.

Painstakingly detailed and obsessively researched, Mr Cool’s Dream remains the definitive Style Council biography.

The book is now sold out in printed format, but is currently available as an E-book on Kindle, iTunes, Google and Kobo stores priced £3.00.

8 In-flight reading: Paul Weller at Dublin Airport with his copy of Mr Cool’s Dream .

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8 The gift super deluxe box set 4 Disc Box Set including 72-page, full-colour book, a set of postcard prints and a replica 1982 tour programme. Released 11/11/2012. Universal Records.

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ME journalist Graham Lock called The Gift ‘Weller’s ball of confusion’. He was alluding to the Jam’s new musical direction by using the title of the 1970 Temptations song to make his point. His main gripe was that the album, he felt, failed to ‘balance questions of style’. The styles in question were soul, funk and R&B.

The Gift may not be as cohesive an album as Sound Affects as a result of Weller’s attempt to broaden the band’s musical palette, but it is certainly just

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as eclectic. Though the new Jam sound was in tune with a burgeoning music scene at the time - which favoured soul, funk and jazz over traditional rock - two songs sounded like updates of former Sound Affects tracks. Carnation for instance used a cyclical Byrdsian chord sequence and lots of ‘La’s’ in the vocal similar to Man In The Corner Shop, whilst Precious revived the funk of Pretty Green, but ditched the ‘Jam sound’ in favour of a straightforward funk workout. Weller, obviously digging the James Brown

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connection, had appropriated the bass line from the Pigbag song Papa’s Got A Brand New Pig Bag (1982), deployed the shuffling hi-hat/snare rhythm from Pretty Green and added layered wah-wah guitar and horns.

The result was one of the most musically brave songs that The Jam ever recorded - it certainly baffled some Jam fans at the time who denounced it as ‘Disco’.

These were the only links though albeit slight - to the previous Jam sound. For the most part the psychedelia and post-punk was replaced by soul, funk, R&B and even an attempt at calypso.

One of the main differences was Weller’s voice. The deadpan, conversational delivery on Sound Affects was replaced by singing that was deliberately more soulful, the best examples being Weller’s impressive vocal range on the spine-tingling Ghosts and his breathtaking falsettos on Precious.

Both songs were also perfect examples of the band’s assimilation of new styles.

Two bands whom Weller admired inspired the most adventurous moments on The Gift. The Madness single Embarrassment (1980) had prompted an attempt at a similar modern Motown sound. The result was the brilliantly realised Town Called Malice, which married a Small Faces-like melody to a Motown backbeat similar to You Can’t Hurry Love

by The Supremes. It was a magnificent howl of outrage in the face of Thatcherism with unforgettable sub-

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urban imagery.

The attempt at calypso though, on The Planner’s Dream Goes Wrong - which was possibly inspired by The Specials Stereotype (1980) - sounded awkward and stilted. And therein lay the problem for Weller: he was attempting to create soul and jazz (Shopping) within the constraints of a rock band. Buckler sounds uncomfortable with the rhythm, switching clumsily between cod-calypso and rock. It was a pity, as the song contained one of Weller’s best melodies. Bizarrely, journalist Graham Lock, in his review for the NME, criticised Weller for writing about tower blocks, ‘years after they had gone out of flavour’. What he failed to grasp though, was the fact that people were still living in the ‘nightmare throng’ of ‘piss stench hallways and broken down lifts’.

Again the class issue arose with Weller berating the ‘public school boy’ planners who ‘keep spewing out our future’. His ire can be traced back to the similarly themed Bricks And Mortar from the In The City album, in which he condemns the decisions made by town planners, who knock down houses to build car parks: ‘Who has the right to make that choice? A man whose house has cost forty grand’.

The most exciting fusion of rock and soul is on Trans Global Express,which took the beat, chant and horn refrain from the Northern Soul anthem So Is The Sun by World Column and welded it to an incendiary polemic about the power of industrial action and work-

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Shadows & Reflections: Weller, Buckler and Foxton, 1982 - the writing was on the wall.

ing-class unity. Strangely though considering the importance of the lyrics (which were printed separately on the inner sleeve) - the vocal is buried too deep in the mix. Nevertheless, it is a stirring piece of agitprop with dub effects influenced by Clint Eastwood and General Saint and a spoken word rant at the end in which Weller castigates Sting for his defeatist attitude in the lyrics to The Police song Spirits In The Material

World (1981), which opens with the line ‘There is no political solution, to our troubled evolution.’

N.B. The title Trans Global Express was adapted from the name of an LP released in 1977 by a pioneering Krautrock outfit who would later inspire the sounds on Sonik Kicks.

The band were Kraftwerk and the album, Trans-Europe Express, was released on the Kling Klang label.

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Equally effective was Running On The Spot, which merged a Northern Soul backbeat to a guitar figure, which predated the descending chord sequence of Uh Huh Oh Yeh by a decade. The lyrics would articulate Weller’s frustration towards both himself and his generation: ‘You can’t see further than the bottom of your glass’.

The Gift was recorded during a time of intense political turmoil in Britain.

Thatcher had become gripped in an ongoing struggle with the Trade Unions, which would climax in the 1984 Miner’s strike. Lest anyone was unclear whose side Weller was on, Just Who Is The Five O’Clock Hero outlined who, in his opinion, were the country’s real heroes - the workers on the production lines of the factories and the coalface. The lyric also offered an explanation as to why ‘ordinary people don’t get time to think’.

The weary worker ‘covered in shit and aches and pains’ is simply ‘too knackered to think’. The imagery was possibly drawn from memories of Weller’s father John returning from the building sites: it also acknowledged the line from the Ronnie Lane penned Faces track Debris - a song based on memories of Lane’s father: ‘There’s more trouble at the depot, with the general worker’s union’.

The spirit of Lane can also be heard on the title track - The Gift, with its R&B groove inspired by The Small Faces track Don’t Burst My Bubble.

The central concept of the lyrics to ‘Keep on moving’ was essentially Weller’s Modernist dictum - and still is for that matter. Unfortunately for

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Foxton and Buckler, they would not be part of Weller’s ever-evolving musical journey. If the title of the track Running On The Spot wasn’t a big enough clue, then the sleeve artwork would firmly cement the notion of the split.

In pop art-styled images, the band members are separated and tinted by the colours of traffic lights: Weller’s is the only one that is green.

The Gift would turn out to be The Jam’s swansong. It not only gave a clear indication of Weller’s musical frustrations, but it also hinted at where he was going next. Apparently, a gripe of Buckler’s, was that the songs on The Gift weren’t ‘drummer’s songs’. As a result he was prone to over-elaborate, as on Just Who Is The Five O’Clock Hero. It may be a bravura display of drumming and performance-wise is one of Buckler’s personal favourites, however, one would guess that Weller was after something more akin to the simple rhythm of Chain Gang by Sam Cooke.

Aside from its shortcomings The Gift contains some of The Jam’s best songs. Lyrically, Weller’s anger was directed at capitalist greed (Carnation, Trans Global Express), vacuous rock rebel posturing (Ghosts, Running On The Spot) and the inequalities of the British class system (Just Who Is The Five O’Clock Hero, The Planner’s Dream Goes Wrong). The message - to embrace the gift of life and love in the face of adversity - was wrapped up in a stirring blend of soul, funk & R&B. 8

ICON MusIC BACK IN THE ROOM

BACK IN THE ROOM Bruce Foxton Basstone

Regardless of which side of the fence you are on as regards to bands playing their back catalogue - and opinion is fiercely divided - there is no doubting the fact that Bruce Foxton is one of this country’s finest bass players.

After a short lived solo career following the Jam split, and several hit-andmiss musical projects, he joined Stiff Little Fingers for a stint that would last 15 years until the formation of From The Jam in 2007.

A reconciliation with Weller last year would result in Foxton playing on Weller’s Wake Up The Nation album, which in turn led to the bass player being invited to record his solo album at Weller’s Black Barn Studios.

Back In The Room is a surprisingly diverse affair. Several tracks do hark back to Foxton’s Jam days, which is only natural, considering that his band have been performing Jam songs for the past five years. Number Six, for example, rekindles the sparkle of The Jam’s Beat Surrender, with its call and response vocal and effervescent melody. It’s a wonderful slice of mod-

ern soul with an infectious refrain, great singing from front man Russell Hastings, and Weller himself contributing piano and glockenspiel. The Gaffa and Glad I Found My Tears delve even further back: the angular R&B of the former song wouldn’t seem out of place on the In the The City album, whilst the Beatles chord progressions and vocal harmonies of the latter recall I Need You (For Someone) from the This Is The Modern World album.

The most surprising moments though, are when the band venture into more experimental musical territory, like on the stunning album opener Ride.

Driven by the sound of Foxton’s funky bass figure, the largely instrumental track features a dreamy vocal refrain, shimmers of Hammond and some sonic sound effects - suggesting that the spirit of Simon Dine was still around at Black Barn.

The rustic setting also seems to have had an influence on the proceedings, resulting in the creation of two folk ballads. The tender, acoustic lilt of Drifting Dreams is a gorgeous lament to lost love, with its soaring chorus and heartfelt lyrics, whilst the psychedelic folk of Senses of Summer features Weller playing a flute refrain which traces the melody of The Beatles Norwegian Wood .

Back In The Room is a finely crafted album of soul, R&B, and psychedelia, and even features Stax legend Steve Cropper supplying his trademark Telecaster licks on the sublime Don’t Waste My Time.

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8 Thank you to the following people for their help, support, inspiration and good taste: Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton, Rick Buckler, Russell Hastings, John Reed, Mark Baxter, Johnny Cooke, Alan McGee, Ian Munn, Gary Crowley, Janette Beckman, Polly Birkbeck, John Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Claire Moon, Mark Carr, David Lines, Andy Crofts, Steve & Sally Cradock, Dennis Munday, Martin Freeman, Jon Abnett, Stuart Deabill, Ian Snowball, Lou, Jo & Wilko @ Pretty Green, Monty & the boys at the Pretty Green Store, Glasgow, Alex Banks, Peter Challis, Craig, Colin, John and the team at Cowan Print, my family, Tricia & my two beautiful daughters Aimée & Mia x Photo credits: Pages 06/07 © Pennie Smith /// 08 Dennis Munday /// 13 Janette Beckman 17 Dennis Munday /// 18 Dennis Munday /// 21© Pennie Smith /// 30 Dean Chalkley /// 34 Courtesy of Gary Crowley /// 36 Dean Chalkley /// 37 Courtesy of John Wilson /// 38 Gavin Frankland /// 39 Andy Davis.

John Reed sound affects excerpt © Omnibus Press

Janette Beckman’s punk prints are available to purchase: www.janettebeckman.com/jb.rocks

Dedicated to the memory of my friend Brian Robertson.

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