"Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" by The Jam - What Does It Mean?

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 said - "I've a little money and a take away 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"
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight

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
It filled my eyes, ears, nose and mouth
It blocked all my senses
Couldn't see, hear, speak any longer
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight
I said I was down in the tube station at midnight

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 Awayday - 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
And 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
Don't want to go down in a tube station at midnight

I heard 'Down In The Tube Station At Midnight' by The Jam for the first time in years the other day, and was horrified to find that I could sing along to all the lyrics. It also occured to me for the first time ever that if our narrator IS down in the tube station at midnight, isn't it a bit strange for his wife to be "lining up the cutlery, polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork" at that late hour?

-- Andrew L (andrewlittlefiel...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

-- Tom (ebro...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

achy breaky heart. I would hang my head but then I realised that I have no shame

-- Menelaus Darcy (andje83...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

Not really, he could have been meeting friends in south east London.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

Because he is Paul Weller = because he is a thicko.

-- Nicole (ndwillet...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

where are you love?

I'm in the glovebox...

-- goeff (effexxo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Is it possible he is at the destination station, rather than the embarking one, as Tom assumes? The only thing that makes me think not is that he's faffing around buying plums in vending machines, which he surely wouldn't be doing if he was almost home and worrried about his curry going cold.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Did tube stations at any point have plum vending machines?

-- Tom (ebro...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

I don't know. This part puzzles me.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

it would have been even longer than half an hour too. back in the day were not last orders EVEN EARLIER!

-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Maybe he did that thing where you fall asleep on the tube and end up going all the way to the end of the line and then have to come back again? I of course have never done this but know people who have snoozed past Finsbury Park, ended up in Walthamstow and gone bouncing backwards and forwards on the Victoria line for much of the night.

-- Emma (emmaluvscak...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Hang on a minute. I've just realised that at no point in the song does he even say he has been to the pub. Tom has just projected his own life onto Weller's protagonist. He's probably just been working really late at the office. No, hang on, this is the 1970s and that kind of thing didn't happen. OK, he's been shagging his secretary in some grotty hotel room.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Now you are projecting YOUR life onto the song, N..

-- Edna Welthorpe, Mrs (edna_welthorp...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

un mundo ideal, un mundo identicoooo, un mundo para ti, para los dos...

-- goeff (effexxo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

re: weller's plum. allegedly this refers to a bar of cadury's chocolate (you know that deep blue foil they have). this is the best theory google could find me.

Startlingly this came from an essay about a longpigs song. oh dear.

-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Where's Lucy when you need her? I need her to tell me if this is a genuine piece of Woking slang. I suspect not.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Glasgow N. that's where.

-- chris (cbrown...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION YOU FOOL

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Not only that but he is wrrying about the wine going flat = Champagne socialist!!! I have you twigged Mr "man O' the People" Weller.

-- Pete (pb1...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Apparently, the real Little Jack Horner was anything but a good boy. The Bishop of Glastonbury had sent his steward, Jack Horner, to Henry VIII with a Christmas gift - a pie in which were hidden the title deeds to twelve manorial estates. On his way to the king, Jack popped open the pie and stole the deed to the Manor of Mells, a real plum of an estate. To this day the Horner family resides there.

So maybe if the narrator is a 70s era Jack Horner (perhaps even a descendent?), we have been on the wrong side all along. Let them duff the rotter in.

Actually, my best guess is that he was implying the God Squad aren't really believers in a true god at all. Either that or he was just painting a Dylan-esquely surreal portrait of the madness of the times.

And how does the victim place the odour of his attackers specifically as coming from Wormwood Scrubs, rather than any other correctional institute? Besides, in order for his attackers to actually SMELL of the place, they would either have to be off-duty prison officers, or fellow inmates who had just been released together that day - before going to the pub (or rather "pubs") to celebrate, and also before showering and changing (which would have removed the odour of the Scrubs).

And what's this about smelling of "too many" right-wing meetings? Because this implies that actually, there is a certain acceptable quota of right-wing meetings that one might reasonably attend, before a) becoming fatally morally compromised and b) developing a distinctive "right wing" odour.

Sorry, but I've been stewing about this for YEARS.

Because it rhymes with "pubs."

The only plausible reason I can think of for this is that the narrator is an observant Jew and he's heading home for Shabbat dinner (which doesn't start until after sundown, which would place this scenario around early summer). That would explain the wine as well...but still, that would place dinner no later than 9:30 pm or so.

(It would have to be Kosher curry takeaway in this scenario.)

And if that doesn't do it for you, remember that by the last verse he's suffered quite a few blows to the head, and may not be thinking straight.

Also, the lyrics never say it's bubbly. The wife could be pulling the cork off some cheap jug for all we know. Maybe that works better with the curry, I'm no culinary expert.

Also, the lyrics never say it's bubbly.

One would assume it was once from the line "The wine will be flat and the curry's gone cold".

I suppose he could just be generally moaning that his wife will have bought unsparkling wine again.

I'm bored with this whole stupid thing.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha

Could just be me, but I thought 'pulling out a plum' was a term used for pulling your finger/thumb out of its socket so it cracks (like cracking your knuckles).

Actually actually actually, my stepmother took possession of our first microwave in 1976 - a full two years before the release of this single. The point stands.

Besides which, re-heated curry tastes every bit as good as the original. He had better things to think about at this difficult time.

See, this guy's bought a chocolate bar (the 'plum' reference is just young-man cleverness - a Zadiesmithism if you will -after all Paul Weller was, what, 18 years old when he wrote this song? He's showing off his literary skills and stretching meaning as a consequence) to have on the way home. His wife will never know. It's like pissing in the sink.

During the day he's probably had a few toffees as well. Hence the wrappers.

Not that we should blame the victim or anything.

These poor people with nothing better to do than frequent tube stations at midnight (and - earlier in the evening, perhaps - attend excessive quantities of right-wing meetings with special smells) were DRIVEN to violence by "the victim's" incessant chatter about place-settings.

It's just the story of a random mugging, perhaps one with a little Daily Mail-esque opinion of 'Youth Thugs Today'. Weller was a Conservative at the time, so he may well have been reading the Daily Mail.

maybe he was in Dollis Hill, wherethe tube station indeed provides a handy cut through

I DO THIS.

But the song is "Down In the Tube Station at Midnight!" I always pictured it as underground.

mmm, lessee... one crafty pork pie please.

Also, the first line 'The distant echo - of faraway voices boarding faraway trains', suggests a big station, possibly one with British Rail connections

A bloke's in the tube station on his way home(lots of descripton), buys a ticket, gets spotted by thugs, they ask him for money, he gets beat up and they take his keys, the bloke worries because the thugs will get into his house and the bloke's wife will think it's him ("'Cause they took the keys and she'll think it's me."). Now by the time he gets home the wine his wife had pulled the cork on will be flat, and the curry he has will be cold.

check out the weller tattoo

Is Weller thick enough to print his adress on his keyring?? How the hell are the muggers going to know where the hell he lives by just stealing his keys?

I think this part shows the attack took place close to home because he seems sure that they will know the area well enough to get there without directions

Perhaps the thugs are local thugs who have seen him around. Perhaps they have a grudge.

Plum, because a yellow ticket would be banana but it doesn't scan.

Cheers otherwise.

I refer anyone to a station like Bank (there are many others) where you go down into the tube station to cross the junction. They do have said Cadbury's machines (though they normally are jammed) and they are a very good place to go if you are looking for a kicking.

I am surprised in my brief scan of this that noone has mentioned he is very unlikely to be getting a train. Turn of midnight, your kind of pissing in the wind with LU.

i'll field this one: as the older among us remember, there wasn't much of a premium on male colognes in Britain in the 70s. Brut 33 had to enlist the help of renowned boxer Henry Cooper to give their product the required masculine cache. Several other companies tried to jump on this bandwagon, often with disastrous results. I refer in particular to Estee Lauders' short-lived flirtation with macho chic: the scents 'pubs' and 'wormwood scrubs' were withdrawn from stores in 1979 after catastrophic sales. generally being seen as a sign of downward mobility by consumers, the bouquet of sweat, fear, fermenting fruit and woodbines these colognes gave off never took off in the UK, except in Northern Ireland.

Could Weller have been intimating that his assailants were Irish? republicans, even?

Or is that for another thread?

The entire lyric is clearly all slightly paranoid conjecture about what might have happened to him if he had attempted to go home by tube, rather than taking a taxi like any sane person would do if they'd bought a curry and didn't want it to get cold before they got it home to their wife.

He's obviously imagining all this after having comsumed best part of that bottle of wine, hence why so much of it appears not to make sense.

The clearly nonsensical bit about pulling out a plum occurs when he's temporarily distracted from his reveries by the discovery that the pudding that his wife's served up after the curry, is in fact plums and custard when he'd evidently been expecting something different; possibly rhubarb.

xpost wait I like Stewart's version.

I read to many thrillers

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 said - "I've a little money and a take away curry,

He's not saying "I've a little money and a take-away curry and a plum". Though, with drunken thugs in front of him, he's not going to hide this Fruit&Nut from them and anger them further, is he?
So the "plum" must refer to the curry, that he just took out of the machine. Probably a vegetable curry or it refers to a chutney, whatever. Or it really is just a clever Jack Horner reference.

In any case, it sheds light on why he's down in the tube station: to get the curry. He might live next door, for all we know.

there are wheels within wheels in this song

Oh and Beano = Bhoona, obv..

"Little Plum" recently.

This sent me scurrying back to the third line of the song:

"The glazed, dirty steps - repeat my own and reflect my thoughts."

Meaning that his thoughts are a) glazed and b) dirty.

Yup. He's pissed. Explains a lot.

Maybe the machine was so high up, he dislocated a testicle.

If it's behind him, that's a badly dislocated testicle!

(My God: the possibilities are endless. Only a lyricist of Weller's calibre could have introduced so much tantalising ambiguity in the space of one short line.)

He avoids the plum issue completely, though

chinese curry is sort of star anise-y and gloopy - which brings us closer to the plum sauce theory again.

however i do like the testicle idea: wellers agonised bellowing after trapping a nad in a chocolate vending machine attracts the unwelcome attentions of a group of thugs, closing in like hyenas.

He was on his way home with the curry at a normal time, eight maybe, was attacked, and four hours later is still there.

This is completely ridiculous. Even in the brutal times Weller depicts, a crumpled body would not lie in a tube station for four hours without someone coming to their aid.

I particularly like the notion of the front page headline of the Daily Mirror reading MR. JONES RUN DOWN BY FIRE ENGINE. The Toytown Gazette - maybe. The Daily Mirror - unlikely.

if it was set in the future, surely he would sing it in a comedy robot voice?

Yeah, well if plum=testicle, wouldn't he sound like Jimmy Sommerville?

I do.

Besides, there weren't anything like as many Tandoori's about in 1978.

There weren't that many Chinese takeaways either of course - but there were a lot more of them than there were Tandoori's.

I as particularly taken with this bit:

"Like most wives he knew, she often became unhappy when he was detained at work and had once or twice jumped to irrational conclusions."

I hope he failed his A'Level.

That may sound unkind but I think he really needs to get used to the concept as it seems destined to be his constant companion.

It could perfectly easily have been a Volvo estate rather than a 4x4.

She'll be lining up the cutlery,
you know she's expecting me.
'Bollocks in a glass' he said, pulling out the cork.

This shows the narrator (or "Charles", as we should perhaps start calling him) vainly attempting to "bond" with his potential attackers... even trying to buy them off with a slug or two of sparkling Shiraz.

So even when his did worked extra hours for a better wage and got lost in his task quite needlessly, he'd still have been safely home with the curry long before midnight!

Right, see, Woking Station has a stinky, pissy underpass and if you come through it from the south and walk a few yards up Broadway, there's an Indian restaurant which used to (still does?) have as its unique selling point CURRIES AT 1978 PRICES, 1978 being the year it opened, so that's about £4.50 then. Unfortunately, the curries are also of 1978 quality, but there you go. And if you'll consider this map here you will notice that it is just around the corner from one Stanley Road. So, the theory is that Weller is writing about an environment with which he is familiar, but changing 'train station' to 'tube station' to make it seem all glamourous like.

With regard to the issue of whether or not Asian people are more or less likely to get takeaway curries, there used to be a curry house on Walton Road (off Stanley Road, see?) which did truly excellent proper pakistani food to which several of my asian pals were sent to purchase dinner for several when their mums couldn't be bothered to cook. Unfortunately, the truly excellent curry house was closed down because of druggist dealings in the room upstairs and the rub 1978 restaurant is still there. However, he is not a Good Muslim if his wife is pouring out the vino.

Another interesting fact about Woking is that a charred corpse was discovered in the park the other day.

I can give no insight into plums, sorry.

Woking's not actually on the underground, is it?

btw. the shout is "Hey Bwoy" as in "Slave" which is what black people are to any dumb racist, yeah?

I believe I have traversed that underpass - maybe my hair grew a little longer, maybe my shoes were a little sharper as I did so. Didn't get my head kicked in, so there is no conclusive proof that the "vibes" of that time are still hanging around

Mr. Weller thought Woking was on the tube; Jimmy Pursey thought you could hear the sound of Bow Bells in Hersham....

I don't think a curry could have anything like that much in 1978.

According to my calculations, if a curry cost £4.50 in 1978 (which I find very difficult to believe anyway, since a pint cost less than 50p in 1978!) and the cost of curries had risen in line with the UK RPI it would now be aproximately £17.34.

I'd be very surprised if a curry in 1978 cost much more than about £1.00 - £1.50.

Mr. Jones got run down.

I still find this curious. Even in 1978, newspapers were no longer quite this formal and deferential. Surely this isn't simply a case of a young and still impressionable Weller getting carried away and trying too hard to ape his hero Ray Davies?

Instead, I submit that this was a local newspaper, and that the photograph on the front cover depicted someone of the narrator's acquaintance: A neighbour maybe, or a shopkeeper, or a prominent member of the Woking Rotary Club. (("My God, that's poor old Jonesie...")

Or - and here it gets really interesting - could this news item actually refer to the untimely demise of Semi-Detached Suburban Mister Jones? If so, then this represents a breathtaking leap of daring on Weller's part.

Please stop (a) failing to properly read things I have written and (b) not believing me about the price when I have eaten there.

Cheers pal.

http://www.i-way.co.uk/~tristang/DADS/jones.JPG

"They don't like it up em sir, etc. etc."

(a) sorry, I'll certainly try harder in future;
(b) I don't disbelieve you abou the price they're charging for the curries at all; I disbelieve the curry vendors assertion that they were able to persuade anyone to part with four and a half bleedin' quid for a ruby in 1978 and I think enormous fun could be had in challenging them to prove this.

This line's always jumps out at me because "black" leather just wouldn't work here - for various reasons.

Or maybe - if we accept the theory that the song was indeed written from the future - the newspaper headline refers to the untimely demise of the "Mr. Jones" from the annoying Counting Crows song of the same name. (Who, by this time, would surely be the "big star" that the song condiently asserts that he will become.)

I need some fresh air.

Careful where you go now

Liv
x

You should call them Curryoke Machines

In what sense "beguiling"? Does he really think that a coiny likeness of HRH is giving him the glad eye?

Is it this that prompts the (involuntary?) reaction in his sadly singular "plum"?

Liv
x

" Smiling, beguiling
I put in the money and pull out a plum"....

it is actually the curry afficionado himself who is doing both the smiling and the beguiling.
in fact, if "plum" does indeed refer to testicles, it's a fairly heavy-handed attempt at beguiling.
read this way, perhaps the attackers are simply local rent boys who rise to the bait, request confirmation of sufficent funds beforehand, and are then driven to violence by his meandering, overly detailed answer, as postulated by yourself in your post of 3rd September, 2004.

In which case - is the rapidly cooling "take-away curry" literally a "take-away curry", or code, palare, for some special sexual feature or predilection, recognised only by a select few?

And if so, how much would it have cost in 1978?

This would make perfect sense because, of course, anyone who made a habit of wandering about down in a tube station at midnight accompanied by an asian rent boy; and with one of his bollocks hanging out of his trousers; back in the unenlightened days of 1978; was bound to get his head kicked in before too long.

Does anyone happen to know whether £4.50 might have been the going rate for asian rent boys in the Woking area in 1978?

i think finally we have an exegesis that addresses the true complexities of the song. we understand more deeply weller's rendering of those insomnia prone, feverish late 70s days, when as morley put it "we were all pale hysterical ghosts of who we are now"; that bygone era swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash(ed) by night.

Not a strange thought. But Weller referring to this person as a 'Curry' is clearly racist - then why berate his attackers for smelling of 'right-wing meetings'?
Unless he only called his rent-boy a 'curry' to their faces, to come over as "one of them" (hoping to avoid the kicking).

It does have quite some implications.
When the thugs shout "Hey boy", they may well have been addressing the prostitute, and not the narrator. If he hadn't opened his big mouth, they might have completely left him alone - it's the prostitute's money they were after.
Of course, it also means the song gets a lot darker, as "the curry's gone cold" probably means they killed his companion.

As has already been observed, he actually commented that they had attended too many right wing meetings - the implication clearly being that attendance at such meetings (like the using the occasional racist slur) was OK as far as Mr. Weller was concerned, provided that it was in moderation.

"Paul Weller - My Rimming Shame"

Does anyone actually know what the "D" and the "C" in "D.C. Lee" stand for?

It couldn't possibly be "David" and "Christopher" or "Derek" and "Colin", could it?

Really? Running around with male prostitutes at all hours, while his wife is, as we now know, not just "lining up the cutlery", but making their supper as well [he isn't bringing any].

A new question: do you think that 'the deed' had already been done at the time of the attack? "I've a 'little' money" he says, so he has probably already paid up.

what a great lyric.

"Down a back alley with an asian rent boy at midnight
Whoa Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh"

It would certainly explain why the queen in question was "smiling, beguiling".

It'd be just the thing one of these tabloids might print, unaware that it's an urban legend.
It also explains why Weller has to take the tube in the first place: he wasn't able to complete his driving test.

I'm staring to move towards the belief that when "he fumbles for change" (within himself) he's actually wrestling with his own conscience because he knows that he shouldn't be lurking about in subterranean passageways, seeking out opportunities to provide hand-relief to passing homosexuals, when his wife is at home "polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork" and generally fulfilling her role as a dutiful wife, in blissful ignorance of his sordid hidden activites and proclivities.

However he ultimately loses this battle and gives in to his baser instincts.

too many right wing meetings ?

An 'acceptable' number being one. Where you go 'fuck that bollox' and never go again.

(fwiw, I have not.)

No, wait, sorry, those weren't right wing meetings, they were right wing rallies.

Exactly.

(Unless they were of the same prim Victorian mindset that resulted in piano legs being covered up with little velvet curtains, that is. "My God... those steps... they're practically NUDE.")

I put it to you that what Weller actually wrote was:

"I'm partially naked, except for toffee wrappers and this morning's papers. etc."

This fits the "tube nutter" theory admirably. Drunk, shirtless, covered in litter, one bollock hanging out of his trousers, rent boy on his arm, rambling on about his transexual "wife"... well, you can see why he might have attracted some unwelcome attention.

So he's at very least imagining what it would be like to wander 'round the cities subterranean transport system "partially naked, except for toffee wrapers and this morning's paper....".

In reality 'though I don't think he's prepared to risk the shame and public humiliation attendant on his actually being caught wandering 'round the tube station completely starkers, and is forced to settle for surreptitiously pulling out one "plum", attempting to disguise the action of so doing by pretending to be getting his money out of his posket and purchasing either a ticket or a bar of chocolate from a vending machine (it is unclear which).

These are strangely prescient newspapers. My money's on The Fortean Times.

(For just after he loses consciousness, his attackers push his body over the platform edge, where he remains until savagely mowed down by the first train of the morning.)

I can't believe it has taken so long to deduce this simple, yet crucial, fact.

He's obviously tried it on with some guy, but it's a setup and his mates are going to beat the shit out of him. In a panic he makes some story up about having a wife, who's getting ready for the curry, but being in a panic the story is confused and illogical and doesn't save him from the inevitable beating.

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

I think all this business about "madmen on the rampage" is just an elaborate cover story that he's dreamed up to try to explain to his wife why he's so late home after she's spent her entire evening lining up the cutlery, polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork while she waits for him to get home; when in fact he's been off doing the nasty down some back alley with an asian rent boy he picked up for four and half nicker.

However he's now going over this story in his mind, rehearsing it and panicking as he imagines himself having to keep coming up with ever more elaborate stories to cover repeated absences, until eventually he has to fake his own death in some sort of as-yet-undefined motor-vehicle related accident (hence the vague "Mr. Jones got run down").

"Have an Awayday - a cheap holiday. Do it today!"

Please note the use of the phrase "a cheap holiday". Recognise it from anywhere?

"A cheap holiday, in other people's misery..."

...from "Holidays In The Sun" by the Sex Pistols: a song which stole its introductory riff from The Jam's debut single, "In The City".

By lifting these three words, Weller deftly closes the circle, and rights a monstrous wrong.

"My life swam around me
It took a look and drowned me in its own existence"

What do these tell us (I mean, apart from the fact that Weller was a pretentious little wanker, obv.)?

I think that, far from "righting a monstrous wrong", Weller was actually using the lyrics to this song to take another cheap shot at the 'Pistols!

He's having an out of body experience, much like his dislocated testicle.

"At midnight" - the hysterical present tense to which the lyric inevitably returns despite its efforts to escape - our protagonist is trapped in a loop in which queens, plums and corks are forever being "pulled out", he is forever on the receiving end of a kicking, and the curry is forever cooling.

There can be no "awayday" from this eternally recurring moment - hence the sneer implicit in the edict that it be undertaken on a "today" which can never arrive.

"Today's" newspapers can tell "of tomorrow" because neither truly exists; there is only Wellerian "midnight"; we are not on the social realist London Underground, but in Paris, on the existentialist Metro.

The tube tickets in the seventies were green and the wine could have been the sparkling matteus rose variety which would have made a waepon like a bat so wifey should have been fully protected

Well, they're a symbol of the attractively eye-catching but ultimately disposable veneer that covers the surface our modern consumer-driven society and conceals the sweetly seductive but ultimately insubstantial product within, which lacks any real nutritional value and ultimately serves only to corrupt and destroy our souls like so many decayed and rotting teeth awaiting the dental care of spiritual enlightenment, obviously....

Could the lyric actually be the voice of the narrator, talking to police, trying to excuse his part in a mugging or attempted bombing? In which case, are we to trust the narrator? It could all be an alibi attempt. This raises new and puzzling possibilities.

He needed a vitamin 12 booster. Local news. Don't you love it?

Why if he'd just made a bit more effort to eat a few less takeaway curries - and maybe to pull out a plum just a little bit more often instead - this nutritional disaster might have been avoided!

I suppose that he could have his home address on his key-fob. But if he and his wife are that bloody paranoid about things then she's probably going to have a spyhole that she checks every time before opening the door to anyone. And probably electrified door handles to fry any unsuspecting scumbags.

Mr. Grout OTfuckin'M: "best thread ever"!

'She'll be lining up the cutlery,
You know she's expecting me'

Here lies a symbolic expression of the author's primal fears of impotence, of not performing in the way his wife expects. 'The wine's gone flat' is another. It would be more honest to say 'my joystick's gone limp'.

He doesn't want to go "down in the tube station" - the birth canal?

His horror of being unmanned before, or enclosed within, the female body is matched only by his terror of the gynaecologists and obstetricians - probably women, too - who heckle and harass him within the womb ("hey boy"); particularly those in private practice ("have you got any money"), and whom he metaphorically depicts as a gang of male muggers (their *surgical* scrubs being translated into "*Wormwood* Scrubs").

I think what's been missed here is that the term "right-wing" in the line "too many right-wing meetings" is undefined.

We have to remember that this song was recorded in the General Election year of 1979. Therefore, a lot of active Conservative parliamentary groups would have been meeting frequently to plan Mrs. Thatcher's election campaign.

I therefore suspect that the assailants, rather than being National Front, are tired, irrascible members of the Conservative Backbench 1922 Committee, who are letting out the frustrations of endless meetings on polling strategies, tax-and-spend policies, anti-union laws etc. by beating up a harmless passer by.

The tragedy is that if Weller had been less coy about identifying these assailants, the resulting scandal might have fatally damaged the Tory election campaign, with the possibility of us being spared the predations of monetary economics.

To conclude: It's because of that cunt Weller we no longer have a steel industry.

Appendix 4 is now written!

This thread cheers me up like nothing else. it's got to the stage where i giggle when i see Weller records in used bins

The all-enclosing womb metaphorised as 'the tube' - the sense of entrapment by and within the smothering female - I think we have hardly touched upon this matter.

New People!

This is the ""Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" by The Jam - What Does It Mean?" thread.

Read All, and smile.

Revive! I've just done a phone interview with Bruce Foxton, during the course of which I took him to task about some of the more troubling lines.

He has no idea what Weller meant by "I pulled out a plum", and has been puzzling over it for years.

The maximum quota of right wing meetings that one might reasonably attend before picking up their distinctive odour: "Not even one."

And he thinks that the wine might have been a Lambrusco. (He tried palming me off with the "flat" = "stale" argument, but I persisted.)

I hope this helps.

this thread! holy shitbags what a joy.

but he pulls out a plum "behind me" when he's put the coin in the machine, which is presumably in front of him?

No, it's his assailants who are behind him, not the plum

I always thought the line was "too many right wing beatings", not meetings.

No, it's his assailants who are behind him, not the plum

― Ich Ber ein Binliner (Tom D.), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 16:03 (44 minutes ago)

That's not how it sounds on the record. It's all very well be clever with the commas on the lyric sheet Mr Weller.
I've always puzzled about where that plum got pulled from myself
it was a troubling part of my youth

Best thread ever.

Once we're done with this thread, I think Oasis's 'Wonderwall' could use some of our expert analysis too.

OK, so let's give Bruce Foxton the right of reply here:

http://troubled-diva.com/brucetube.mp3

I did my best!

^^^
Bumping this for the office workers.

Good effort!

Hurrah! No one can even MENTION it now without reference to this thread! =

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/table/2009/mar/16/people-and-places-1000-songs-everyone-must-hear

Though it seems straightforward enough, the lyric of Down in the Tube Station at Midnight has provoked a memorably tortuous thread on music-geek discussion site I Love Music. Ostensibly the tale of a man beaten up on the way home to his wife, it does pose some curious questions. His assailants apparently smell of “too many right-wing meetings” (begging the question, how many is acceptable?). For that matter: why is our hero transporting a curry on the tube in the first place? And would his wife really be laying the table and uncorking the wine in expectation? Whatever, it’s textbook punk-era Weller: a deftly observed, quietly shocking suburban vignette. MH

Hurrah! No one can even MENTION it now withiut reference to this thread! =

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/table/2009/mar/16/people-and-places-1000-songs-everyone-must-hear

Though it seems straightforward enough, the lyric of Down in the Tube Station at Midnight has provoked a memorably tortuous thread on music-geek discussion site I Love Music. Ostensibly the tale of a man beaten up on the way home to his wife, it does pose some curious questions. His assailants apparently smell of “too many right-wing meetings” (begging the question, how many is acceptable?). For that matter: why is our hero transporting a curry on the tube in the first place? And would his wife really be laying the table and uncorking the wine in expectation? Whatever, it’s textbook punk-era Weller: a deftly observed, quietly shocking suburban vignette. MH

Enshrined forever. As it should be.

Now I want to hear that vocalese "So What" by Eddie Jefferson that's listed right below on that link.

oh i said that twice. hm soz.

Perhaps clues can be found in another of Weller's songs, Mr Clean. Look at the evidence in the lyrics.

Daylights dawns, you wake up and yawn - Mr. Clean
A piece of toast from the one you love most - and you leave
You get the bus in the 8 o'clock rush,
And catch the train in the morning rain
Mr. Clean - Mr. Clean
If you see me in the street - look away
Cause I don't ever want to catch you looking at me - Mr. Clean
Cause I hate you and your wife
And if I get the chance I'll fuck up your life
Mr. Clean - etc. -
IS THAT SEEN!
Surround yourself with dreams, of pretty young
girls, and anyone you want, but -
please don't forget me or any of my kind
cause I'll make you think again
When I stick your face in the grind -
Getting pissed at the annual office do -
Smart blue suit and you went to Cambridge too -
You miss page 3, but the Times is right for you -
And mum and dad are very proud of you -
Mr. Clean - etc.

It could be Mr Clean himself lying battered in the Tube station. Did Paul Weller catch up with him and give him the promised kicking and stick Mr Clean's face in the Grind? Paul is able to see the result of this somewhat class-based hatred as well as the anticipation of it.

first time seeing this thread, crying with laughter, well done all

To retread some old ground re the too many right wings odour, I wonder if a visual representation helps? See: http://crappygraphs.com/user_graphs/?id=5443

Previous posters have assumed that "they took the keys and she'll think it's me" means that the thugs will use his keys to get into his home.

My interpretation is that he will get home very late and will have to wake his wife up to let him in. He will say that he had his keys stolen but she will think that it is him who lost them.

PS Who is this Paul Weller you all speak of?

Is mweller any relation?

deserves a bump, as every time i hear this now i can't stop laughing

People, check the Uncut Weller special, specifically the page where they review "All Mod Cons", you may find some parts you recognise...

..

Do tell.

this thread is all-time

There was Throbbing Gristle song about Genesis P-Orridge getting beaten up down in a tube station (hour not specified) that I'm certain Paul Weller never heard before writing this.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FU0OC8IWYAEuYB5?format=jpg

I've been spinning this song for 40 years, and now I don't feel like I've ever heard it at all.

The morning paper is probably the NME or Sounds. Weller was a teenager and would be oblivious to the normal tabloids (cf. It was Foxton, a few years older, who composed "News of the World"). This part of the song references the biggest news story for mods that year - Keith Moon's death ("headlines of death and sorrow") and the poor reception that Kenney Jones received as his replacement in The Who ("Mr Jones got run down").

I've found the transcript of my interview with Bruce Foxton in 2008, which concludes thusly:

That’s all my main questions, but I have got a couple of cheeky extras for you, because I can’t resist the opportunity to take you to task over some of the lyrics of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. It is one of your greatest songs, and I know you didn’t write it, but I’ve always found some of the lyrics a bit puzzling.

Firstly, there’s the moment when the man in the song uses a vending machine, and the line goes “I put in the money and pull out a plum”. Now, even in 1978, I don’t remember seeing vending machines that sold fresh fruit. Was that a metaphor?

(Laughs) You’ve got me there! I think you’d best ask Paul about that. That’s one that has bemused me for a while.

And then we meet his assailants, who “smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many right wing meetings”. What is the maximum quota of right wing meetings that you might reasonably attend, before being tainted by their characteristic odour?

Well, I wouldn’t want to go to one! They were cheeky questions, you’re right.

And right at the end of the end of the song, when he’s lying semi-conscious on the platform, he says “the wine will be flat and the curry’s gone cold”. Now then, sparkling wine with curry? These people were fancy.

Now, I can answer that one. It could go off, couldn’t it? I’m not sure what wine he was drinking, but it may have been a Lambrusco or something. (Laughs)

She would have done better to have left the cork in until he got home – but thanks for clearing that up.

You’ve made me think about those other couple. I’ll put my thinking cap on. But it was a pleasure, anyway.

Do remember vending machines on tube station platforms but can't remember exact contents. Fruit being left in a vending machine would tend towards rotten fruit and a spread of mildew anyway. Might be something you might find on teh continent with adequate technology etc but not in dear old blighty.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/8c/0a/418c0aa98772339b08fe5c399439531d.jpg
I thought of this but grape doesn't rhyme as well as plum and so on. But did remember a purplish fruit on the packaging.

& isn't plum a lift from Little Jack Horner or something?

Right, see, Woking Station has a stinky, pissy underpass and if you come through it from the south and walk a few yards up Broadway, there's an Indian restaurant which used to (still does?) have as its unique selling point CURRIES AT 1978 PRICES, 1978 being the year it opened, so that's about £4.50 then.

need to know if this place is still going

'It's a muddle ok palimpsest if you like' makes most sense to me: weller wants to write a song about getting mugged in a tube station but all the concrete details come from Woking experience - he's remembering picking up a curry and cutting through the station; he's trying to re-imagine it as a tube journey, so he adds in the ticket machine which dispenses a 'plum' - plausibly a 70s dark pink cheap day train return to London from Woking, because that's the ticket he's most used to seeing. (I can find period examples on eBay from Guildford that could plausibly be 'plums').

The sneaky chocolate bar hypothesis is very appealing, but I suspect he's just picturing the wrong kind of ticket.

no idea about that wine though

Weller can be pretty Bernard Sumneresque when it comes to lyric writing, pulling out any old rubbish just because it rhymes. There's that line in Paris Match "As I tread the boulevard floor, will I see you once more"... Tread the boulevard floor???

the entire curry discourse comes from a speech whose sole purpose is to save him from a mugging = nothing in that entire quotation need to be taken as truthful (the curry does not exist, it is a feint, his wife's supposed activities are invented to make him seem harmless and likeable and not worth a mugger's energies)

his return to the curry and win all post-beating is thus to be read as a crestfallen and ironic analysis of the failure of this speech to do the work intended: hence "the curry is cold" means "my spur-of-the-moment invention failed and curdled bcz i was set upon anyway, thus all aesthetic endeavour" [swoons, dies*]

as for plum: it's a metaphor entirely interrupted by the arrival of the crime - he pulls out a "queen" (= smiling, beguiling) and then a "plum" (= characterisation never arrives), there's a rhythm to the figure (one metaphor followed by another) but his happily inept and self-absorbed attempted poetics is smashed to pieces by harsh hateful reality and we never learn how effective his metaleptic device was going to be: thus all art (good or bad) in the face of implacable violence

*more metaphor maybe

in conclusion the gang is basically saying "tear him for his bad verses" (shakespeare) and the tragedy is that we never discover if they're right abt how bad they are

ADDING
the implied and hoped-for response to thumb-pulling out a plum is the audience affirming the plum-puller's judgment: "what a good boy am i!" but THIS audience is impatient to teach him another response and while doing deny him even the complacent completion of his literary performance

There was Throbbing Gristle song about Genesis P-Orridge getting beaten up down in a tube station (hour not specified) that I'm certain Paul Weller never heard before writing this.

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Thursday, February 9, 2017 4:17 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

1977! Jubilee! There's a lot of stuff in the lyric about Prince Philip doing unspeakable things to the Queen.

so maybe the urban dictionary defn of "pulled out a plum" helps expand on the unspeakability here

Did he conclude that he was a good boy?

"wine flat curry cold boy not so good" is his sad conclusion IMO

David Quantick's regular page in Record Collector, dated July 2022

Just sayin...

https://www.mixcloud.com/FrenchSpurs1/retropopic-727-the-jam-the-evolution-of-down-in-the-tube-station-featuring-drummer-rick-buckler/

"Alongside two group classics The Saint talks with The Jam's drummer Rick Buckler about the creation of "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight'.

Why did Paul Weller throw the lyrics of Tube Station in the bin? What was so complex about the song? Who was responsible for the group revisiting the song until completion? How highly did the group themselves regard the song? On what basis did they insist on the song being a single? What was their attitude towards their record company? Why were The Jam not necessarily the best judge of just how great some of their songs were?"

That's a lot of questions. A lot of questions.

I'm puzzled by the line about fumbling for change and then pulling out the Queen. Presumably a £1 note, but a £1 note was never change, and it would have been too much. And yet the narrator doesn't seem displeased. This is what the ticket machines used to look like:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/London_Underground_ticket_machines_-_Flickr_-_James_E._Petts_%281%29.jpg

The wording implies it's a ticket for the tube, and perhaps the line that Weller used most often had plum-coloured tickets, but they don't seem to have been all that common though:
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection?f%5B0%5D=collection_type%3ATickets&f%5B1%5D=object_type%3Aticket&f%5B2%5D=topics%3ATube

If that was the case how come no-one else used that slang? Was it just Paul Weller's mum? Hmm? Paul Weller and his mum, and no-one else? Not even his bandmates? When they were on Top of the Pops did Topper Headon and Billy Bragg look at Paul Weller and think "what's he talking about" and "I have no idea what I'm singing" and "this is rubbish" and "at least The Human League make sense".

Is Weller implying that the machine crushed his thumb, so it looks like a plum? Is it plumb, like a plumb line? Is it "pulled out aplomb" but someone has misheard? On a more serious level my reading of the lyrics is that they're padded out for style, and a more mature Paul Weller would probably be more direct and less Pete Bloody Sinfield.

I've never got The Jam. They were massive from 1979-1982, when I was three years old, but unlike e.g. Madness or The Clash they were never played on the radio after that point - they didn't have wide, uncontroversial crowd-pleasing appeal - so if you weren't alive at the time they were lost to time and memory. The same thing happened to most of Elvis Costello's singles, at least the ones that aren't "Oliver's Army".

I mean, I don't remember hearing their hits on the radio when I was growing up, but there was Madstock, and Keith Floyd's TV shows had The Stranglers, but the other second-wave Ska / Mod / post-punk-punks seemed to vanish from the airwaves post-1982.

I grew up in the western United States, far, far from Woking. The Jam have always struck me as the most British of the post/post-punk bands. To my mind, Setting Sons is a near-perfect snapshot of lower-middle-class life in the U.K. in 1979 (keeping in mind that I have never set foot in the U.K.). Nevertheless, I have always found them to be a particularly compelling band. I think this comes primarily from Weller's vocal delivery, in which I find no artifice, even when his lyrics are risible (or unintelligible), as well as the instrumental chops of the band, which are as good as anyone's of that era. I mean, it's 40 years on, and the opening of The Gift still gives me chills. From the video evidence, they were a very potent live band as well.

*punk/post-punk

I spy plums

https://i.imgur.com/4lY2DaB.jpg

taco laser dick