To Be Someone. Ian Stone

      Foreword

      I first heard The Jam when I was fourteen. It was on John Peel’s late night show on Radio One. On this particular evening, he was playing slightly more esoteric stuff than normal. There may have been something vaguely Nordic and shouty, it’s hard to recall but I was thinking of turning it off. And then he announced, in those flat, Scouse tones of his, ‘This next tune is “In The City” by The Jam.’ Paul Weller’s impatient, angry guitar started up, Bruce Foxton came in behind with the bass and Rick Buckler kicked in with the drums. I felt like I’d been smacked in the head. That energy, that power, that noise. Nothing has ever come close.

      From that moment on, I bought every record they ever released and every magazine with their picture on the front cover. I had Jam badges on my jacket, Jam posters on my wall. I played their singles and albums constantly. I knew every word, every hook, every beat. When I finally persuaded my mother to let me go, I criss-crossed the country to see them live thirty-two times and watched as they grew into one of the biggest bands in Britain.

      They wrote some of the best tunes I’ve ever heard. The look was cool as fuck, the attitude was defiant and angry. They played fast and loud and they were not much older than I was. The lyrics were beautiful and honest. They talked about youth and young ideas and they seemed to be about and for me. It was a turbulent and divisive time to grow up in Britain and Paul made sense of it all. Through The Jam, I started to see more clearly what was actually going on.

      Five years later, when I was nineteen and ostensibly a grown-up, Paul Weller announced that the band were splitting up. I was devastated. I’m just about over it now. This book is my story of that time. Those five years from 1977 to 1982 when three young lads from Woking stretched my (and thousands of others,) hitherto limited horizons way beyond anything I’d previously imagined. When I was, when we all were, in the presence of, as John Weller correctly put it, ‘the best fucking band in the world’.