Review: 'The Jam 1982'

Just five years after releasing their decidedly punk debut, The Jam did what all the best punk survivors did: they experimented, diversified, and found a sound of their own. For the restless Paul Weller, this meant his band had reached a plateau he didn't want to rest on. Shortly after completing what would be The Jam's sixth and final album, The Gift, Weller told bandmates Bruce Foxton and Rick Butler that he was breaking up the act at the height of their popularity. There would be one more tour, and that would be that. Weller would emotionally detach throughout the last of The Jam's obligations, Foxton would quietly seethe, and Rick Buckler would accept his fate gracefully despite its uncertainty.

This is the period Buckler and writer Zoë Howe cover in their new book The Jam 1982. It's an oral history of the last days of The Jam, though it's one with precious little bitterness since the honest but easygoing Buckler is the book's main voice, and Foxton is so rarely quoted. Although Weller is not among Howe's interviewees, he is regularly quoted via previously published interviews. Aside from Buckler, the most quoted contributors are mod chronicler Paolo Hewitt, Acid Jazz Records founder and band-friend Eddie Piller, A&R man Dennis Munday, presenter Gary Crowley (who also contributes a foreword), and writer Simon Wells, who wrote some truly excellent rock books and was a gracious guy (he once sent me a lovely thank-you note for a deservedly positive review I wrote of his book on Mick and Keith's 1967 drug arrest) and who passed a year ago--by far the saddest thing I learned from The Jam 1982.

The presentation is equally light and very fitting for a group as style-conscious as The Jam. There are loads of color pictures of the guys playing and hanging around in their mod finery. I often want to do a but of record shopping after reading a book about a band I love. After reading The Jam 1982, I'm spoiling to hunt down some sharp clobber.