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

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.

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

Paul and Mrs Weller must have had an unusually continental lifestyle for England in 1977 if it was midnight and he was only then bringing the food home. What time would they finish eating, 2am? Also, who brings a takeaway curry home on the tube? Pick one up after you get off.

— Anon Opin. (@anon_opin) January 21, 2026

Tip of the iceberg, anon

Anyone who brought a curry on to a tube train would certainly not be popular with fellow passengers.

perhaps those lads who smelled of wormwood scrubs were reasonable outraged at Mr Weller, who was flagrantly breaking social conventions surrounding strong smelly foods on public transport. he should have sticked with the plum.

Best thread evah

ISTR in the Buddha of Suburbia Hanif Kureishi mentions his dad bringing takeaway curries home on the tube.

...in his briefcase.