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

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.