Published in NME, 11th December 1982

The Jam | Gig Review | Wembley Arena 1982 | AT LAST, a rock career which ends with a bang, instead of a whimper, a squabble or an overdose.

The manner of The Jam’s leaving carries a stamp of style and self-discipline, of honesty and suss — just the type of dignified exit, in fact, that their career deserves. It’s so often spouted, this ideal of quitting at the top (and The Jam are, quite obviously, still at the top) yet it’s so rarely done. Assuming Weller’s got the resolve to make this break stay clean, then it seems he’s chosen the best moment. I’m watching them go with a nice balance of feelings: half regret and half relief. Just right.

On the first night of the final four shows at Wembley, they start with ‘Start!’ and the crowd barriers are rushed, and the whole event soars to a level of instant intensity from which it never descends until the very end. How do they hope to maintain such impact, such energy, over all the farewell dates to come? I can only wonder. What’s clearest, though, is that the fact of The Jam playing Wembley means this thing has got as big as it should ever be allowed to get.

The Jam | Gig Review | Wembley Arena 1982

While The Clash might make something valid of stadium rock, The Jam demand something more direct and personal. They don’t make mega-band music; they’re not about grand gestures and heroic poses, dimly viewed from a seat two miles away.

It’s only the unique nature of this event, with all its attendant emotional charge, that saves the band’s onstage graft from getting lost in space. And then ‘It’s Too Bad’: “It’s too bad we had to break up”. And then ‘Beat Surrender’: not surrender in the sense of defeat, but as in giving yourself, as a positive act, up to a rushing force of excitement. ‘Away From The Numbers’ next, and ‘Ghosts’, which momentarily lets the pressure drop from premature suffocation point. ‘In The Crowd’, ‘Boy About Town’, ‘So Sad About Us’ . . .

It’s not an obvious set, since the numbers played tonight don’t include several acknowledged Jam classics (‘Going Underground’ for instance). But it’s good to hear a massive splash of the ‘All Mod Cons’ album: when they go into its first two tracks you suddenly recall what a revelation that vital third LP turned out to be at the time.

From the title cut, with huge cheers for Foxton’s urgent little bass run, it’s straight into ‘To Be Someone’, an early stirring of Paul’s broader writing abilities. And later there’s ‘Mr Clean’ — maybe more predictable, lyrically, but still boasting one of his finer guitar lines, and a dash of melody to sweeten the bitterness.

The Jam | Gig Review | Wembley Arena 1982

In between: ‘Great Depression’, ‘Smithers-Jones’. Like Rick Buckler, Bruce might be facing the group’s retirement with some reluctance; but both of them play with blatant determination to go down with all musical guns blazing —almost as though they’ve resolved to cram another eight years’ energy into as many single concerts.

‘Precious’ expands the sound —the trio are augmented by the full range of keyboard players, horns and back-up vocalists. ‘Move On Up’, the Curtis Mayfield standard, gives an object lesson in how to do a soul cover properly: not an exercise in forging some other man’s emotion, but instead a feat of capturing some spark of inspiration in the original, and matching its rhythm to your own pulse.

Vocal chords take a rest for the instrumental ‘Circus’, but the ‘Mod Cons’ era blasts back with ‘Tube Station’ and ‘David Watts’. ‘Pretty Green’ and ‘Trans Global Express’ send the set screeching up to a brink: the band withdraws, and there’s a long, long wait for an encore.

Once they’re back and we’ve had ‘A Town Called Malice’ revisited, history is turned full circle with The Jam’s first-ever release — ‘In The City’. It’s one of the few explicit reminders Weller makes in respect of this special occasion. He’d come on at the evening’s start with a clipped “hello and welcome to the Red Cow”, and signs off with typically awkward gruffness: “don’t wanna get too sentimental or anything . . . but thanks for the last six years”. Hardly anything else was said. But much, much more was felt . . .

. . . including the beginning of a small lump in this spectator’s throat as they took their final bow after the closing ‘Gift’. “Think of the future and make it grow.” (Paul Du Noyer)