The Jam

Paul Weller and Rick Buckler met at school in Woking, Surrey, in 1975 and played music together during their lunch hours. The pair joined up with Bruce Foxton and Steve Brookes to play local pubs and clubs but Brookes soon quit, leaving the band as a trio. The Jam signed to Polydor in 1977 for £6,000 and their first album In The City went Top 20 in the UK. Although initially regarded as part of the punk scene, the band's mohair suits, skinny ties and neat haircuts soon sparked a Mod Revival.

Bizarrely, 1978 found The Jam supporting Blue Öyster Cult on a US tour, but it was in 1979 that the group began to make its reputation as Britain's best songsmiths. Their supremacy was revealed in the band's fourth album, Setting Sons, on which the anthemic Eton Rifles concisely articulated the class war with which Weller now seemed obsessed. The album went to Number 4 in the UK (Number 137 in the USA).

In March 1980, while touring in Texas, the band learned that their next single, Going Underground, had entered the UK chart at Number 1. Polydor jumped on the song's success and re-released six of The Jam's earlier singles, all of which charted for a second time.

The next new single, Start!, which followed Going Underground to Number 1 in September 1980, sailed pretty close to The Beatles' Taxman but, to be fair, Weller always admitted to practising the ultimate form of flattery. With yet another UK and European tour on the horizon, The Jam put out a fifth album - Sound Affects (1981). This was a funkier work than anything previously attempted and contained Weller's magnum opus That's Entertainment. 

A quieter period followed in 1981, though the singles Funeral Pyre and Absolute Beginners both reached Number 4 in the UK, and the year ended with The Jam winning just about every award in the NME poll for the second successive year.

In 1982 the band returned to Number 1 in the UK singles chart with the chunky bass-driven Town Called Malice. The track graced The Gift - an album that had a warm, 'live' rock/soul sound and sourced its rhythms from black music styles like calypso and Motown.

The Gift was promoted by a tour complete with backing singers and a brass section, but that was to be the end of the line: Foxton and Buckler were informed by Weller in June 1982 that he was leaving the group. Appropriately the next single released was the intentionally trite love song The Bitterest Pill. A lengthy farewell tour followed, and The Jam's final single, Beat Surrender, entered the UK chart at Number 1, coinciding with the band's emotional last gig at The Brighton Centre on December 12.

Obliged by Polydor for one further album, The Jam provided Dig the New Breed, a live anthology which didn't quite capture their power and intensity. Polydor also re-released all thirteen Jam singles, which in a remarkable feat reached the UK Top 100 simultaneously.

A greatest hits package, Snap, served as conclusive proof of the band's consistent quality over seven years.

Weller almost immediately formed The Style Council with ex-Merton Parkas keyboard player Mick Talbot, who had earlier joined The Jam on tour.

Bruce Foxton released a single inspired by the life of the Elephant Man, called Freak, and a solo album before ending up with fading punks Stiff Little Fingers. Rick Buckler attempted to continue a musical career with Time UK before running a studio and finally his own furniture restoration business.