Down In The
Tube Station At Midnight was almost "thrown in the bin" during the
recording of the band's All Mod Cons album.
The Jam's All
Mod Cons is one of the classic albums of the late 1970s. A defining moment in
the "Mod revival", it stands as an excellent example of post-punk and
marks the first major leap forward in Paul Weller's songwriting career.
But one of
the most innovative songs in The Jam's new set of songs almost didn't make it
onto the album: Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. In fact, as bassist Bruce
Foxton remembered it, "Paul actually discarded the song and threw it in
the bin at the studio."
All Mod Cons,
released on 3 November 1978, was the Woking band's third full-length album and
includes so many great moments: the rallying call of 'A' Bomb In Wardour
Street, the frenetic Billy Hunt and the gentle English Rose... and their lively
cover of The Kinks' David Watts.
However, the
making of the album wasn't all plain sailing for The Jam. The trio had received
poor reviews for their second album This Is The Modern World (1977) and
frontman and chief songwriter Paul Weller wasn't feeling inspired.
Having come
off the back of a disastrous US tour with heavy rock act Blue Oyster Cult,
Weller and his bandmates Bruce Foxton (bass) and Rick Buckler (drums) found
their demos for the third album being rejected by their associate producer and
A&R man Chris Parry.
"Initially
we were annoyed and hurt that our songs were panned by the label," Foxton
told Mojo magazine in 2013. "On reflection it was a healthy thing to have
an 'outside-the-bubble' objective view. It made us re-think our approach and we
raised the bar."
Heading back
to his hometown of Woking, Weller started to work on songs that reflected his
new perspective. While the main criticism of This Is The Modern World was that
it hadn't repeated the energy of the band's debut, Weller was looking beyond
the insular world of punk and started to write lyrics with a deeper meaning.
"Class
issues were very important to me at that time" Weller told The Guardian in
2009. "Woking has a bit of a stockbroker belt on its outskirts. So I had
those images – people catching the train to Waterloo to go to the city."
English Rose
was a ballad that was a far cry from the angry punk thrash that had made their
name and To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time) reflected on how precarious
success could be, musing: "The bread I spend - is like my fame - it's
quickly diminished".
However, Down
In The Tube Station At Midnight was a song that was almost rejected by Weller.
In fact, it was only through producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven's powers of
persuasion that The Jam recorded it at all.
The song is a
vivid description of a mugging at a London Underground station late one
evening. The protagonist is on his way home with a takeaway meal, when he's
accosted by a group of thugs who "smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs / And
too many right wing meetings".
A
suburbanite's worst nightmare of the big city the song is given urgency by
Weller's tense vocal, Foxton's scurrying bass and Buckler's busy drumming.
"It’s really from Paul's view of how volatile the streets of big cities
can be sometimes," said Foxton.
But Weller
wasn't convinced that the song had any potential. When he first brought the
song to Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, it was little more than a poem.
"I
brought that song in, in a very rough state," Weller recalled in the
documentary The Making Of All Mod Cons, "and I almost bottled out of doing
it."
"He
rejected it largely because the arrangement hadn't developed during the
recording session," Coppersmith-Heaven told Sound On Sound in 2007.
"I said, 'Hang on, I haven't even read the lyrics yet!"
Once the
producer had seen what Weller had been working on, he encouraged the young
songwriter - then still only 20 years old - to think again: "I was
insistent on him reviving it, and once the band got involved and we developed
the sound it turned into an absolutely brilliant track, a classic."
Together with
Foxton and Buckler, the trio knuckled down at London's RAK studios to work on
the song. "Maybe we would have come around to recording it later on in the
project," added Coppersmith-Heaven, "but he'd just reached that point
of 'Oh bollocks, this isn't working, it's a load of crap'."
Thanks to his
producer's faith, Down In The Tube Station At Midnight was released as a teaser
for the All Mod Cons album on 13 October 1978, making its way to Number 15 in
the UK charts. It was the beginning of a run of chart hits for the group, which
was to include three Number 1s - including the classic Going Underground in
1980.
Not everyone
was a fan, however, as Weller later recalled. "Tony Blackburn in his
infinite wisdom slated Tube Station on his daytime Radio 1 show.
"He said, Why can't these people write about beautiful things, like flowers and trees? Which is probably what I've started doing in recent years. I did take your advice, Tone!"
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