Thoughts On 'The Story Of The Jam: About The Young Idea.'
Thoughts On 'The Story Of The Jam: About The Young Idea' (Sky Arts). https://youtu.be/8XZAxx5-u2k
I was never a mod. Too awkward, too uncertain, too utterly lacking in cool or style, too scared of my own shadow. But I loved The Jam. Absolutely bloody loved them. I remember thinking - and saying - and believing - that, in the late Seventies, Paul Weller was writing songs that I would write if I had... if I had... whatever it was Weller had. Their music - that first album and All Mod Cons particularly - made me feel alive, raw, real, certain, understood. And, just as it did for someone in the film, Weller sticking a Shelley quote on an album-cover helped dig poetry - and politics - deep into the soil of the rest of my life.
Of course, when I say I wasn't a mod, it wasn't through lack of trying, at least for a few months. I bought a (terrible) parka in Second Time Around. I got my hair cut like Weller (only to end up with something that made me look more like Rick Buckler). I bunked off school and went down to the Royalty to try and get a part (unsuccessfully) as an extra in Quadrophenia. I once sang 'Down In The Tube Station At Midnight' live on stage, at The Pegasus in Stoke Newington (to what was almost certainly huge acclaim from adoring fans, though I don't really know - I was too drunk on rum and blacks and fantasies of Whatsername turning up to be properly aware of my moment of glory).
There are those who would question whether Weller was a mod anyway, whether The Jam were really a mod band. I don't know the answer to that either: i suppose I'm still not sure what ‘mod’ really means. I'm not sure how subversive, how modernist, how European, how political it ever was/is. Or whether it even matters. I do know it was - as a movement, as a series of moments - proud and glittering and embracing and good-looking and precious and exclusive and - sometimes - beautiful, and that it wrapped itself around some of the greatest black-and-white music ever made. I think it was/is important, in a way. And I know that, while I wasn't ever a mod, however hard I tried, some of its pride and glitter spilt onto my ill-fitting two-tone suit and some of it has stayed stuck to my hands.
I wanted to cry, at times, watching this warped, wayward, disingenuous film, and I'm still not sure why. It reminded me of growing up, of course, of my parents, of my kids, of time passing. It reminded me of my twenty-odd years living in Woking too, of people and places lost, of dreams diluted or dumped, of hope kept alive by music and friendship and love and language and football and art and beer. It reminded me of both how like and how unlike Weller I am. And it reminded me how the people who made the film (most particularly, Weller himself) couldn't ever quite bring themselves to admit either what unites us or what divides us.
Someone said the other day that Weller was 'the man we all wanted to be', because he was 'more of a man' than us. Well maybe, yes. And, absolutely, no. I watched the old clips and I could see why he enraptured us. I could see why I've spent half my adult life talking about him. Watching them, I recognised the part of me that still wants to be him (or at least the 19-year-old him). And yet...There was no darkness in this programme: this was hagiography, a weird, cartoony panegyric. People like me, and (more importantly) people who should have been in it because they directly helped make Weller who he is, were airbrushed, in a Stalinist way, from the story.
When my youngest watched it, she said, 'I suppose I never heard them chronologically, you just showed me the individual songs you liked, not the full albums in order. I'm jealous, honestly, that I didn't grow up with it in the same way'. I felt hugely guilty for a moment. And I began to envy her her distance from it all.
I envied Weller too, of course. But he wasn't a bloody saint. He was, mostly, a projection, a screen, a mirror. He was a single-minded, selfish twat. He was full of righteous and unrighteous rage. He was a bully. He was charming and clever and an occasional genius and I once watched him be hugely, unnecessarily kind to someone at a gig. He’s still utterly unlike me (apart from the selfish twattiness. And the charm, obviously) and we’d probably hate each other if we ever met: I can only play the driven, sure-of-himself, working-class hard man convincingly for about a second. (Of course, that might be the point: I suspect without his slow-burning, finely-crafted public brand, without his songs, without his fame, Weller could only actually play the driven, working-class hard man for a few seconds…)
Another friend remarked, after watching this, that ‘he seems more comfortable these days'. True, perhaps - and her saying that emphasised to me that Paul Weller has never actually been comfortable, not ever: his drinking, his drug-taking, his entire life seems to have been one of seeking comfort and simultaneously spitting at it and running from it as soon as it appeared round the corner. He's written a handful of great songs (each one, interestingly, a straightforward love song) in our lifetimes since The Jam. But his attempts at experimentation, to distance himself from The Other Two and his essential Sixtiesness, have seemed to me (mostly) clunky and self-conscious.
Paul Weller: completely unlike me. There's a fabulous moment about 25 seconds into this post-Jam (but desperately/knowingly-nostalgic-already) Style Council video, filmed at Woking Football Club. Watch him leap off the scooter, and notice the car shake:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIZxNy2i5EQ
He's human. Aloof. Fleetingly brilliant. Uncomfortable. A bit crap. The voice of a bloody generation. It's one of my favourite Weller things, that scooter moment. Wonderful. Kevlike. And, surprise surprise, the video’s not in this film.
Which is a shame, however predictable. Because it's almost - almost - as wonderful and moving and telling as watching the power, hope, certainty and utter uncrapness of this: