The Ned Wood Archive

The white knight is talking backwards

and the red queen’s off with her head

Jefferson Airplane

And now, at last, the exams were over.  Annie met me straight after the Geophysics exam and we rushed to catch a bus to the station.  We were off to sunny Bournemouth to see the Jam.  At last the Jam.

After eight exams in eight days, I was in need of some serious entertainment.  I’d been looking forward to this for ages.  Since buying the tickets at the Stranglers gig about two weeks earlier.  Since seeing the Clash at the Wolverhampton Civic Hall when we were expecting the Jam.  Since being locked out of the Strangler’s gig at the Roundhouse when the Jam were the support.

And the exams had been tough.  Even the last one, the Geophysics one which I thought I knew, was far worse than I had expected, and the second petrology paper was soooo bad I nearly…

But you don’t want to hear about it, and I certainly don’t want to talk about it.  I wanna tell you how good the Jam were.  OK, right, so we got to the Top Rank Suite which is round the back of some car park in Bournemouth, like I said, the place we saw the Stranglers.  We were beginning to think we owned the place by now, having been there before.  But, trouble was that, whereas the Stranglers were on at 9:00 or so, the Jam decided they weren’t going to start till 11:00.  Which meant we could see about fifteen or twenty minutes of them before we had to leave to catch the last train.  I asked Annie how quickly she could run and tried to guess whether there was any chance of the train being late, but they never were, so even with a long sprint we’d only see three or four songs.  Annie was pretty fit back then.  She’d given up smoking.  She told me she hadn’t been able to run much when she smoked, but now she could keep up with me when we had to leg it to catch a bus or just to get somewhere quickly because we were young and enthusiastic.  (And, let me tell you, if I haven’t already said, I was pretty damn fast in those days meself, being a regular athlete and having won the Staffordshire Schools when I was seventeen.)

Next thing, I asked all of the bouncers and bar staff and DJs and any one else I could find that might look official just to make sure that the Jam were in fact going to be on at eleven, not ten or twelve or whenever.  And I’m remembering when I was young and went to see David Bowie and missed the last train home and nearly had to stay in Birmingham all night.  I suggested to Annie that we stay on the beach all night, it might be a fun thing to do, especially for young lovers, but she didn’t take too kindly.  I don’t think she was as big a Jam Fan as me.

So then I spotted Rick Buckler, the drummer, in the bar.  He was a really nice guy, had a lot of time for all the fans, and was just generally chatting to everyone.  This being before the gig, obviously, but I say that cos you don’t often see it with some folk that think they’re stars and want to preen themselves before they go on.  So I went up and asked him for a ride back to Woking.  I figured that they’d be going back on the A3 and they’d be passing near Southampton, and we could walk from the Winchester Road, after all I’d done it with Sonia.  But he said they were going west that night, so, much as he’d like to, he couldn’t offer us a lift.  Fair enough I suppose, if indeed, that was the truth.  But he did suggest I try the support band who, he knew for a fact, were going back to London that night.  So we did and they told us to Fuck Off.  Which was tense for them because it was immediate bad karma and after that they never sold another record, never became famous, and had to go back to their day jobs.  So let that be a lesson to you.

And then me and Annie saw Rod and Jerry.  Did I tell you Jerry was the guy that organised gigs in the Union?  He’d managed to get himself on the organising committee pretty early on during his first year and spent all of his time trying to book bands.  But what he didn’t know, I guess, was that no punk band has ever played Southampton, so he had to put up with Camel and the Pink Fairies all those other student bands.  (I exaggerate, but you get the picture.)  He lived in Chamberlain, so I knew him to speak to.  It turns out that he has blagged free tickets for tonight’s gig from The Record Company and has driven here.  We’re in luck, I think.

Have you noticed how all American films these days have English actors playing the villains?  You can tell who the villain is as soon as they open their mouths.  I should have known.  You can tell that Jerry is the villain of this story by his accent.

‘Jerry, can you give us a lift back, just me and Annie, there isn’t another train, and the Jam aren’t on till eleven.’

‘Fuck Off’

And, so Jerry lost ten thousand karma brownie points, which was a pity, because it meant he had to leave University that summer and get a job managing the Pleasers.  So let that be a lesson to you.

So it ends up, me and Annie stay to see four songs, seven Paul Weller leaps, nine Paul Weller arm windmills, and three Bruce Foxton grimaces and then we leave.  We leg it to the station, make the last train, and sit breathless in the carriage as it pulls out.  It was deserted, of course, not a soul in our carriage or any of the others, and it reminded me of when I used to go to Birmingham with Rosie Jones to go to the soul clubs when I was fifteen and we’d get the last train back alone.  Me and Annie looked at each other and laughed and cuddled up close to enjoy our own good karma.