The Intro

In early 1982, the future looked very bright for The Jam. They were at their commercial peak – Town Called Malice/Precious became a well-deserved instant number 1, and was their third chart-topper. However, by the end of the year, Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler had split up.

Before

The Jam’s second number 1 was the excellent (thought not entirely original) Start!, from the 1980 LP Sound Affects. However, despite the follow-up also being more than worthy, That’s Entertainment was perhaps too wistful for mass consumption – it only reached 21 in 1981. Two standalone singles came up next, and although they fared better, Funeral Pyre (their first jointly written 7-inch) and Absolute Beginners both peaked at four.

Work on what was to become their final album started in October 1981. The Gift saw The Jam work with new producer Pete Wilson, who helped point the way forward for Weller, showcasing a smoother, Northern Soul, funk and jazz sound, akin to the next project they worked on together – The Style Council. That didn’t sit well with Foxton and Buckler, however, who could probably see the writing on the wall. As Mods, The Jam were always in thrall to these sounds – but they’d never tried making these types of music themselves.

The title to Town Called Malice came from Nevil Shute’s famous romantic 1950 novel A Town Like Alice – however, there’s no link to the song and book other than the rhyming wordplay of the titles. The real inspiration comes from Weller’s working-class youth in Woking.

Precious was unlike any single The Jam had released up to this point – a psychedelic-funk-based love song, partly derived from Pigbag’s Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag.

This was also the first Jam single to move beyond the power-trio line-up, with extra help from producer Pete Wilson on organ, plus Keith Thomas on saxophones, Steve Nichol on trumpet and Russ Henderson on percussion and steel drums.

Reviews

Urgent, poetic and angry, Town Called Malice is Weller’s finest song. It updates his fixations on class, disaffected youth and striving to escape a society that’s left him out in the cold and brings them all strutting onto the dancefloor. And it’s a change in tack from his first number 1, Going Underground. This time, Weller warns his followers not to hide from society if they’re not happy – they need to work together to improve their lives: ”Cause time is short, and life is cruel/But it’s up to us to change this town called Malice’.

I’ve always loved Town Called Malice for its sound, but researching more in-depth here as proved to me how fine a lyricist Weller also is. There’s some great lines about urban decay and Thatcherism’s ‘no such thing as society’ here, including:

‘Rows and rows of disused milk floats,
Stand dying in the dairy yard
And a hundred lonely housewives
Clutch empty milk bottles to their hearts.’

Righteous anger you can dance to. Beautiful. And I love Foxton’s bass breakdown too. All The Jam’s number 1 singles are excellent, but this reigns supreme.

As always with videos by The Jam, you only get a bare bones performance, but it does the job nicely. The Jam perform against a black background, with the occasional dada-style speech bubbles popping up – ‘Anti Complacency League! Baby!’ and ‘If we ain’t getting through to you – you obviously ain’t listening!’.

Weller, as a huge fan of The Beatles, liked to ape their double-A-side single approach. However, while I always enjoy hearing the lesser-known songs such as The Dreams of Children and Precious, I don’t think they really stand toe-to-toe with their ‘real’ A-sides. It’s not like Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out, where both songs deserve top billing. They’re better classed as great songs in which The Jam can test the waters for experiments in their sound. And Precious does fit that bill nicely – I wish I’d heard it sooner. Weller analyses his love over a sprawling funk sound that sounds particularly interesting on the 12″ version. There’s nothing lyrically to match Town Called Malice, though I do like:

‘Lonely as the moors on a winter’s morning
Quiet as the sea on a cool, calm night
In your tranquil shadow, I’ll try and follow’.

It’s impossible to ignore the resemblance to Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag – but that’s no bad thing at all.

There’s no surprises to be found in the video for Precious. Like it’s flip side, it’s simply The Jam and extra musicians performing against a black background.

After

Town Called Malice/Precious shot straight to number 1 and The Jam celebrated by performing both songs on Top of the Pops. While the latter is now somewhat of a curio, the former will most likely fill dancefloors everywhere for evermore.

The Outro

EMI argued that Town Called Malice/Precious kept another classic – The Stranglers’ Golden Brown – from the top spot by having its sales aggregated. It’s a sign of just how strong the singles chart was in 1982 that Golden Brown wasn’t a chart-topper – although the quality control of 1982’s number 1s was about to drop for a while…

The Info

Written by

Paul Weller

Producers

Pete Wilson & The Jam

Weeks at number 1

3 (13 February-5 March)

Trivia

Births

25 February: Footballer Chris Baird
26 February: Gymnast Lisa Mason

Deaths

20 February: Arctic traveller Isobel Wylie Hutchison
21 February: Writer WE Shewell-Cooper 
22 February: Suffragist Annie Barnes
23 February: Author Elisabeth Kyle
24 February: Artist Keith Henderson
27 February: Henry Gage, 6th Viscount Gage 
2 March: Air chief marshal Sir Donald Hardman
3 March: Ivy Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland

Meanwhile…

19 February: The DeLorean car factory in Belfast is put into receivership.

23 February: The Glasgow coal ship St Bedan is bombed and sunk by an IRA unit driving a pilot boat that was hijacked in Lough Foyle, Northern Ireland.

25 February: The European Court of Justice rules that British schools cannot allow corporal punishment against the wishes of parents.

3 March: Queen Elizabeth II opens the Barbican Centre in London.