― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 2 September 2004 17:04 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 17:07 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 2 September 2004 18:27 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:04 (nineteen years ago) link
Because it rhymes with "pubs."
― mike a, Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:21 (nineteen years ago) link
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.)
― mike a, Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― ccconor, Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:25 (nineteen years ago) link
― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:26 (nineteen years ago) link
― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Thursday, 2 September 2004 19:27 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:15 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:39 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:43 (nineteen years ago) link
― sexyDancer, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:50 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― sexyDancer, Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:57 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:06 (nineteen years ago) link
I'm bored with this whole stupid thing.
― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:13 (nineteen years ago) link
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― wellah, Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:18 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:22 (nineteen years ago) link
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).
― Chris W, Thursday, 2 September 2004 21:24 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― mike t-diva (mike t-diva), Thursday, 2 September 2004 22:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 3 September 2004 02:04 (nineteen years ago) link
― Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZT!! BZZZZZT!! (Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZ), Friday, 3 September 2004 02:31 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 3 September 2004 03:08 (nineteen years ago) link
Not that we should blame the victim or anything.
― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Friday, 3 September 2004 04:36 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 3 September 2004 04:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 3 September 2004 04:53 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― Neil Willett (Neil Willett), Friday, 3 September 2004 05:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 3 September 2004 05:09 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― aldo_cowpat (aldo_cowpat), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:24 (nineteen years ago) link
maybe he was in Dollis Hill, wherethe tube station indeed provides a handy cut through
― Porkpie (porkpie), Friday, 3 September 2004 07:43 (nineteen years ago) link
I DO THIS.
― Dr. C (Dr. C), Friday, 3 September 2004 09:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― Gerrit, Friday, 3 September 2004 12:49 (nineteen years ago) link
But the song is "Down In the Tube Station at Midnight!" I always pictured it as underground.
― mike a, Friday, 3 September 2004 13:54 (nineteen years ago) link
mmm, lessee... one crafty pork pie please.
― m0stly clean (m0stly clean), Friday, 3 September 2004 14:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― m0stly clean (m0stly clean), Friday, 3 September 2004 14:55 (nineteen years ago) link
Also, the first line 'The distant echo - of faraway voices boarding faraway trains', suggests a big station, possibly one with British Rail connections
― Joe Kay (feethurt), Friday, 3 September 2004 15:24 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Friday, 3 September 2004 17:51 (nineteen years ago) link
― Gerard Mc Cavana, Friday, 3 September 2004 18:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Friday, 3 September 2004 18:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ally C (Ally C), Friday, 3 September 2004 18:13 (nineteen years ago) link
― Anna (Anna), Friday, 3 September 2004 18:30 (nineteen years ago) link
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.
― Chris W, Friday, 3 September 2004 19:57 (nineteen years ago) link
OK, so let's give Bruce Foxton the right of reply here:
http://troubled-diva.com/brucetube.mp3
I did my best!
― mike t-diva, Friday, 5 December 2008 17:16 (fifteen years ago) link
^^^Bumping this for the office workers.
― mike t-diva, Monday, 8 December 2008 13:11 (fifteen years ago) link
Good effort!
― Chewshabadoo, Monday, 8 December 2008 15:57 (fifteen years ago) link
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
― piscesx, Monday, 16 March 2009 18:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Hurrah! No one can even MENTION it now withiut reference to this thread! =
Enshrined forever. As it should be.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 16 March 2009 18:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Now I want to hear that vocalese "So What" by Eddie Jefferson that's listed right below on that link.
― moe greene dolphin street (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 16 March 2009 18:36 (fifteen years ago) link
oh i said that twice. hm soz.
― piscesx, Monday, 16 March 2009 18:36 (fifteen years ago) link
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. CleanA piece of toast from the one you love most - and you leaveYou get the bus in the 8 o'clock rush,And catch the train in the morning rainMr. Clean - Mr. CleanIf you see me in the street - look awayCause I don't ever want to catch you looking at me - Mr. CleanCause I hate you and your wifeAnd if I get the chance I'll fuck up your lifeMr. 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 kindcause I'll make you think againWhen 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.
― Proger, Tuesday, 23 February 2010 12:22 (fourteen years ago) link
first time seeing this thread, crying with laughter, well done all
― Jamie_ATP, Tuesday, 23 February 2010 12:39 (fourteen years ago) link
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
― mweller, Thursday, 4 March 2010 15:38 (fourteen years ago) link
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?
― woodleywise, Thursday, 4 March 2010 16:02 (fourteen years ago) link
Is mweller any relation?
― woodleywise, Friday, 5 March 2010 10:25 (fourteen years ago) link
deserves a bump, as every time i hear this now i can't stop laughing
― Jamie_ATP, Thursday, 30 August 2012 11:37 (eleven years ago) link
People, check the Uncut Weller special, specifically the page where they review "All Mod Cons", you may find some parts you recognise...
― Mark G, Tuesday, 4 September 2012 20:34 (eleven years ago) link
..
― Mark G, Wednesday, 5 September 2012 13:30 (eleven years ago) link
Do tell.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 5 September 2012 16:38 (eleven years ago) link
this thread is all-time
― Odysseus, Thursday, 9 February 2017 16:07 (seven years ago) link
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, 9 February 2017 16:17 (seven years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FU0OC8IWYAEuYB5?format=jpg
― piscesx, Thursday, 9 June 2022 17:20 (one year ago) link
I've been spinning this song for 40 years, and now I don't feel like I've ever heard it at all.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 9 June 2022 22:17 (one year ago) link
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").
― everything, Friday, 10 June 2022 08:30 (one year ago) link
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.
― mike t-diva, Friday, 10 June 2022 10:29 (one year ago) link
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.jpgI 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?
― Stevolende, Friday, 10 June 2022 10:41 (one year ago) link
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
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Friday, 10 June 2022 10:55 (one year ago) link
'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
― woof, Friday, 10 June 2022 11:09 (one year ago) link
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???
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 10 June 2022 11:35 (one year ago) link
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
― mark s, Friday, 10 June 2022 11:49 (one year ago) link
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
― mark s, Friday, 10 June 2022 11:57 (one year ago) link
― 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.
― Doodles Diamond (Tom D.), Friday, 10 June 2022 12:01 (one year ago) link
so maybe the urban dictionary defn of "pulled out a plum" helps expand on the unspeakability here
― mark s, Friday, 10 June 2022 12:13 (one year ago) link
Did he conclude that he was a good boy?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 10 June 2022 15:50 (one year ago) link
"wine flat curry cold boy not so good" is his sad conclusion IMO
― mark s, Friday, 10 June 2022 15:55 (one year ago) link
David Quantick's regular page in Record Collector, dated July 2022
Just sayin...
― Mark G, Friday, 17 June 2022 07:30 (one year ago) link
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?"
― MaresNest, Tuesday, 9 August 2022 17:30 (one year ago) link
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.
― Ashley Pomeroy, Tuesday, 9 August 2022 19:17 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 10 August 2022 17:19 (one year ago) link
*punk/post-punk
I spy plumshttps://i.imgur.com/4lY2DaB.jpg
― Alba, Monday, 27 March 2023 18:07 (one year ago) link
taco laser dick
― hootenanny-soundtracking clusterfucks about milking cows (Neanderthal), Monday, 27 March 2023 18:17 (one year ago) link