There are not many bands that are three-piece. The classic line-up is a drummer with a frontline of vocalist, lead and bass guitarists, or sometimes, as with The Clash, three guitarists one, in their case Joe Strummer, also on lead vocals. Fancy additions might include keyboards, brass section, and backing vocals.
The Jam were different. Rick Buckler on drums, Bruce Foxton playing bass, Paul Weller on lead guitar and vocals. They lasted together a mere five years, 1977-82, but for a generation born into music-loving by the punk era Rick, Bruce and Paul have been part of our soundtrack of musical memories ever since.
With the terrible February news that Rick after a short illness has passed away, now there are two. In a wonderful tweet Guardian journalist and huge Jam fan John Harris summed up what him and his fellow fans have lost:
Rick Buckler did what the best drummers do: served the song, and put his mark on all of them. Examples abound, but here are a few: In The City, All Around The World, the peerless live version of It’s Too Bad, Thick As Thieves, Eton Rifles, Scrape Away, Beat Surrender…
Rick was no Keith Moon, Cosy Powell or Ringo Starr, he was almost as invisible off stage as he was on it, tucked behind his drum kit. But the pounding percussive rhythm to the songs John picked out, and many more, would be every part of what we hummed along to, shouted out the choruses and made our dance moves for, as Bruce’s hypnotic bass lines and Paul’s vocals painted musical and verbal pictures of our imagination.
The Jam, despite Paul Weller’s much higher profile when they were together, when he left to form The Style Council and pursued a very successful solo career ever since, were and always will be a threesome.
The split in 1982 left Bruce and Rick feeling more sad and more disappointed than bitter and twisted, yet a reunion has never been mooted. Nevertheless there was a genuine warmth from Paul on hearing the news of Rick’s sudden death, because of what his drumming had provided for The Jam:
From our rudimentary beginnings the band evolved into the powerful force that it became. Rick’s evolution as a drummer, was such a vital part of that.
Looking back almost 50 years, goodness if that doesn’t make those of us who were there at the start feel old – my first live sighting of The Jam was their Friday night headline slot at Reading Festival 1978.
That festival of my fond Jam memories is mixed with the same weekend of Sham 69, poor Jimmy Pursey forced once more to evict that section of his fanbase that were National Front or worse from the stage. Sham and Motorhead fans rained cans and bottles down on each other. Yet Sham 69 and The Jam were both labelled as ‘punk’.
Another early memory from 1976: I was transfixed by The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones and various members of ‘The Bromley Contingent’ (including Siouxsie Sioux) heaping expletives on presenter Bill Grundy, live on his early evening TV show Today. I roared them on from the family sofa. Away in the kitchen, my parents were fortunately unaware of my antics.
The anarchic Sex Pistols also flirted with Nazi chic, as did the otherwise effortlessly stylish Siouxsie Sioux. The Clash and The Tom Robinson Band wore their politics on stage and off. It is almost impossible to explain the huge statement made when Tom blasted out ‘Sing if You’re Glad to be Gay’ as a punk anthem. Sham 69 and the Angelic Upstarts were more early versions of Oi than punk but came along for the ride. The Stranglers were a supercharged but frankly conventional rock band. The Damned? A rousing mix of punk and thrash rhythm and blues. The Buzzcocks and A Certain Ratio were mainstays of the Manchester scene. Elvis Costello was linkman from punk to what became known as ‘New Wave.’
While sharing the same label, punk, there was little or nothing musically this wonderful lot had in common. Except what they pitted themselves as an alternative. My mid 1970s ‘O’ Level classroom was filled by girls teenybopping over the Bay City Rollers and boys listening to Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes. Punk in all its creative diversity stood against all this – it was DIY, independent, anti-corporate takeover, as much local as global, and eff you if you don’t like it.
The Jam fitted perfectly with all this. Schoolboys Bruce, Paul and Rick, who with various others since 1972 had shared the same dream of being in a band, rehearsing, sharing influences, writing their own songs , playing local clubs in Woking, deep in the Surrey commuter belt. And when punk burst into life to top the charts those teenage dreams came real, as a major record label signed them on the dotted line, to get a share of the commercial action.
But they weren’t an entirely natural fit. They looked, and sounded, like mods not punks, or even New Wave. However this was a reinvention of the music, fashion and culture that had inspired three Woking teenagers rather than the straight copy of Mod revivalists The Secret Affair, The Chords, Purple Hearts and others. A reinterpretation that as the albums and singles progressed increased in political messaging to dance to. Not, however good, of the anthemic kind The Clash and Tom Robinson Band produced, which was wrapped in lyrical, and musical subtlety. Down in the Tube Station at Midnight was a testament of the menacingly violent mix of masculinity, drink and far right politics. Eton Rifles was class war as music-mix, when Etonian old boy David Cameron who’d been in the cadets there described it as one of his all-time favourite songs, and Weller unforgettably responded with: “It wasn’t intended as a fucking jolly drinking song for the cadet corps.”
The Jam came to an end with their very final release Beat Surrender which both revisited the manufactured misery they had angrily depicted on their second album in The Modern World. Their retort? ‘Don’t have to explain myself to you, I don’t give two fucks about your review’ and gloriously played out with their response, the angry hope that they had made it The Jam’s mission to provide.
Come on boy, come on girl
Succumb to the beat surrender
All the things that I care about (are packed into one punch)
All the things that I’m not sure about (are sorted out at once)
It’s almost impossible to read those lines without the drumbeat growing in rhythmic intensity and irresistible volume in our heads. Rick, we will never forget.
Mark Perryman is the co-founder of Philosophy Football
The last few of the limited-edition Rick Buckler memorial T-shirt is available from Philosophy Football here
