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

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.