Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

I found The Jam around the time I found Big Star. An older brother of a friend of mine played some albums by them in the early 80s. Another band that could not make the jump to America. Sometimes people say…oh this or that band was just too British. I never found a fault in that and wanted more British bands.  But…if ever a band could be considered “too British” this may very well be the band.

This song about a brutal mugging in London became a classic. The song is on the album All Mod Cons which was released in 1978. It was their third album since May of 1977 when their debut was released. They would release six studio albums in the five years they were around making records.

The song gave them their second top-20 hit. It peaked at #15 in the UK in 1978. Paul Weller, who wrote most of the Jam’s songs, wasn’t going to include it on the album. He didn’t think the song was developed enough but producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven finally convinced him to work on it and include it.

Jam - Down in the Tube Station At Night back cover

The single cover showed the band and the back cover had a picture of Keith Moon who had just died. The B side to the song was The Who’s So Sad About Us. The Jam was in the middle of the 1970s Mod Revival going on. You can see and hear The Who and other sixties bands’ influences in their music and videos.

They formed in 1973 and released their first album in 1977. Their members included guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Rick Butler. Paul Weller is the best known out of the band but they were all great musicians. Being a bass player…I’ve noticed a lot of Foxton’s bass playing is terrific.

Although The Jam was at the height of its popularity, Weller was becoming frustrated with the trio’s sound and made the decision to disband the group in 1982.

Producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven – “I remember Paul throwing certain songs out of the All Mod Cons album, like ‘Down in the Tube Station’, which he rejected largely because the arrangement hadn’t developed during the recording session. I said, ‘Hang on, I haven’t even read the lyrics yet, Paul… You should really work on this song, it’s great.  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. Maybe we would have come around to recording it later on in the project, but he’d just reached that point of ‘Oh bollocks, this isn’t working, it’s a load of crap.'”

The B side…So Sad About Us     (I like it just as well as the A side)

Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

The distant echo
Of faraway voices boarding faraway trains
To take them home to
The ones that they love and who love them forever
The glazed, dirty steps
Repeat my own and reflect my thoughts
Cold and uninviting, partially naked
Except for toffee wrappers and this morning’s papers
Mr. Jones got run down
Headlines of death and sorrow, they tell of tomorrow
Madmen on the rampage
And I’m down in the tube station at midnight, oh

I fumble for change, and pull out the Queen
Smiling, beguiling
I put in the money and pull out a plum
Behind me
Whispers in the shadows, gruff blazing voices
Hating, waiting
“Hey boy” they shout, “Have you got any money?”
And I say, “I’ve a little money and a takeaway curry
I’m on my way home to my wife
She’ll be lining up the cutlery, you know she’s expecting me
Polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork”
I’m down in the tube station at midnight, oh

I first felt a fist, and then a kick
I could now smell their breath
They smelt of pubs, and wormwood scrubs
And too many right wing meetings
My life swam around me
It took a look and drowned me in its own existence
The smell of brown leather
It blended in with the weather
Filled my eyes, ears, nose and mouth, it blocked all my senses
Couldn’t see, hear, speak any longer
I’m down in the tube station at midnight, oh
I said I was down in the tube station at midnight, oh

The last thing that I saw as I lay there on the floor
Was “Jesus saves” painted by an atheist nutter
And a British rail poster read
“Have an away day, a cheap holiday, do it today”
I glanced back on my life, and thought about my wife
‘Cause they took the keys, and she’ll think it’s me
I’m down in the tube station at midnight
The wine will be flat and the curry’s gone cold
I’m down in the tube station at midnight, oh
Don’t want to go down in a tube station at midnight, oh
Don’t want to go down in a tube station at midnight, oh
Don’t want to go down in a tube station at midnight, oh
Don’t want to go down in a tube station at midnight, oh

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

35 thoughts on “Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight”

    1. A nice night out! A cheery mugging! There are some great lines in there. What really caught my ear by them is the bass…and that got me in the door…

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      1. The intro to ‘Pretty Green’ is an instant ear grabber too. I’d somehow sort of forgotten they did a cover of ‘David Watts’ too. An English sounding song if I ever heard one.

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      2. I was going to feature David Watts or So Sad About You.
        That is a cool bass sound on Pretty Green…listening to it now.

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    1. Being too British is a badge of honor to me…but they are very British so I do see if someone said that…what they mean with The Jam.

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      3. Good point. I think the reason Elvis Costello for example got away with a lot of very British centric songs was that he had Alison and Watching the Detectives if he had led with I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea or Olivers Army it might have been different.

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      4. Yes I see that. It took a while for the Kinks really to sink in over here and that started with their seventies rock.

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  5. gritty song but it’s catchy, and more punk than most of the offerings of their spiky haired contemporaries. They really offered up pictures of the Britain Her Royal Highness didn’t want seen. They should have done better in North America, but it may be hard to really look back and envision how it and their other late-’70s hits would have fit in with American radio and artists like the Bee Gees, Andy Gibb, Eagles, rupert holmes etc; even the big rock acts like Foreigner and Journey then didn’t have edge to them like The Jam.
    Foxton is great – he, JJ Burnel and Peter Hook, to me the three great post-punk or new wave bassists.

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    1. I hate that term “too British for America” but this band lol might have been just that.
      No they would not have fit on mainstream radio at the time which is a sad thing.

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  7. I was late to the party with these guys, never heard of them until late ’81/early ’82, but I became an instant fan!

    This wasn’t my favorite from them, but it is a great tune and still stands up, all these years later!

    And yes, Foxton is truly underrated! Any bassist in a trio has to really put themselves out there and he never disappointed!

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    1. That is around the time I found them. They were so huge over there. Yea if you are in a trio you have to be a good bassist…no doubt.
      I’ve played in a few and it’s fun but no rest…you fill in the gaps.

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      1. At the time, that angle was used. Plus they cut a few songs by those two bands. I think David Watts is on All Mod Cons. I had a live album by them on my spin cycle recently. Their sound and energy catches my ear. I like them a lot. Still sound good to me, Big Earl (son) has been a recent recipient of a bunch of these albums (He loves this era. Clash, Billy Bragg etc) but only if his behavior is good.

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      2. Yea I was going to go with David Watts…I passed some of mine down to Bailey. He really gets into them… he will end up with more than I had…and that is saying a lot. I love the vinyl.

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  9. I was lucky enough to see the Jam live ten times between 1977 and 1982 – and some atmosphere those gigs had, only matched by The Clash at the same period. The Jam were the soundtrack of my late teens/early twenties.

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    1. I got into them later and just on some import albums but yea…it was better than what was going on here…to me anyway.

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  10. After a great debut album, their follow-up ‘Modern World’ wasn’t at all well-received, and fans were wondering if they had burnt out. Then came ‘All Mod Cons’ which was a universal success. I remember a critic’s comment that AMC had brought the band back ‘from the dumper to the front line’, which just about summed things up. I really liked Billy Hunt and David Watts from AMC, but Down in the Tube Station is good, too. I think on reflection they rushed their second album, which a lot of bands were pressured to do at the time, then took proper time to finish AMC.

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    1. I sure wished we would have heard them at the time. To me…if you took The Kinks and combined them with The Who…you would have something like The Jam. Maybe it’s just me but I hear both of those bands in them.
      Record companies do the dumbest things. Yes they probably rushed them.

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  12. Cool choice. I find it difficult to understand his accent sometimes. Sometimes I prefer their more mellow, relaxed songs, like b-sides and deep cuts. But they released a lot of great material in a short time.

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  14. Definitely the lyrics, and Paul Weller’s accent in the delivery, might be too British for someone not from the UK. Someone below linked them to Britpop, and Weller actually had a huge solo album in 1995, ‘Stanley Road’, after many new bands mentioning him as an influence.

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  15. I saw The Jam in 1981, Bingley Hall at Stafford, and they could cut it live, the crowd were certainly wild, but my memory is standing on a coke can so I could get a better view (taller people at concerts are always a challenge for me) 🙂

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