The Jam: "Absolute Beginners"

15 October 1981

"And if Paul Weller's lyrics won't see him installed as poet laureate during the next fortnight, they should at least help him grace the charts till his current supply of pocket money runs out."

— Fred Dellar

From one imperial phase to another: last week it was The Police and now we have The Jam. They have a few similarities on the surface — both trios with charismatic frontmen and both groups rose in popularity at about the same time. (For Sting and his crew this meant damn-near world domination whereas Paul Weller and co. had to be content with a much more parochial following, albeit one that was so fanatical that they managed the unprecedented feat of getting import-only Jam singles from Europe on to the UK Top 40) In terms of presentation and style, however, the two acts couldn't have been more different. Where The Police were older — considerably so in the case of guitarist Andy Summers — The Jam were younger, with a following that was equally wet behind the ears. Where Sting's songwriting seemed locked in a world of minute human obsessions, Weller's tunes spoke of people slipping through the cracks of Thatcherism. Where The Police borrowed from pub rock and reggae, The Jam nicked from mod, sixties pop and, now, soul.

"Absolute Beginners" is the beginning of The Jam's final period in which they began to fully embrace black music. And this was no mere blip: soul, Motown, jazz and house music would all end up defining the next ten years of Weller's career. Of course no one was to know this at the time. What's fascinating is that there may not have been much of a sense that they were heading in a different direction. Fred Dellar's review in the October 15th issue of the Hits mentions Weller's lyrical fortitude — as quoted above — as well as being impressed that they'd be literate enough to borrow the title of a Colin McInnes novel for the name of their new single. As for their new sound, there's a "punchy brass line to help things stay alive" but not much an indication that they might be heading in a new direction. Going all R & B seemed to go over His Nibs' head.

The Jam's previous single was "Funeral Pyre", which ramps up the psychedelic/post-punk fusion of their Sound Affects album to an extreme. Where were they to go after such an abrasive, jarring record? Add a horn section apparently. There's a little more to it though. Weller's guitar playing does a deft balancing act between a jangly-Motown style and some clipped new wave. If The Jam's run of sublime singles — beginning with "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" back in '78 all the way through to the end of '82 — can take us on a narrative continuum, as I would like to think they can, then here we have Weller taking a blowtorch to his cynicism of old in the appropriately named "Funeral Pyre" only to start all over again with the unusually idealistic "Absolute Beginners". Or did Weller simply get up on the right side of the bed for a change?

We're not to know but that's beside the point. Just to have this capsule of what The Jam were up to in the autumn of '81 makes the stand-alone single worthwhile. Years later, with his empire beginning to crumble all around him, Noel Gallagher began lamenting about how singles had to take a back seat to albums and that he didn't have the freedom to release a new forty-five without an L.P. following hot on its heels. Attempting to take stock of the hubris-fuelled disaster that was Be Here Now, Gallagher expressed feeling let down at how the "D'You Know What I Mean?" single came out in advance, then the album itself was released and that it was "over almost before it had begun". He looked back in envy at his musical heroes of the eighties, The Jam and The Smiths, as acts who could churn out singles seemingly whenever they felt like it, regardless of whether they had an album to promote. The dynamic of "D'You Know..." — and, to be sure, far better singles — is that it is supposed to represent the album as a whole; stand-alone's are to be judged on their own terms, not necessarily as a signpost of what's to come but as a postcard of what's up. 

That's not to say, however, that a single is little more than a trifle to bestow upon the populace. I like to think there was a time when the single could be as much of an creative statement as an entire album. Plus, an ace three-minute pop song could only whet one's appetite for more to come. Just what could The Jam have in store next?

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Haircut One Hundred: "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)"

Horns. Loads and loads of horns. Well, three really. This isn't the fairlight synthesizer nor a Bob Clearmountain-esque big drum sound but there's something intrinsically eighties to pop songs with a horn section. Well, not really but they do crop up on the SOTF as well as on Orange Juice's "L.O.V.E...Love" and on this little firecracker. Dellar admits throughout various selections of this fortnight's singles review page that he wants to turn that mother out and this is the best one to get down to. A very youthful-looking Nick Heyward leads his Haircut chums through something that Talking Heads could very easily have recorded with a bit more edginess but without nearly this much passion.