ELEGANZA

ELEGANZA

THE GREAT ENGLISH ROCK GROUP by Iman Lababedi

The Smiths broke up recently. No need for tears. The Smiths were a fine band, sure, but I doubt they made your life—and if they did you’re in the minority. About the time the Smiths first came to the States, back in late ’83, Paul Weller broke up the Jam. No need for tears. The Jam never made it big in the States; their fifth LP, The Gift, entered the English charts at #1 and didn’t make a dent Stateside.

There’ll always be bands who make it at home but don’t travel very well; yet not the way the Jam and the Smiths did. No less an authority than England’s legendary rock critic Nick Kent has dubbed the Smiths the only important new group of the ’80s. If you didn’t follow the Jam from mod-clad Who-influenced conservatives to social signifiers for white kids on liberalism, then trust me. Because they were. And they were very important.

The relationship between the Jam and the Smiths and their respective English audiences was more than symbiotic: in a manner that Springsteen can only guess at, these bands defined and accelerated a view of life. The Jam raised themselves from the rubble of punk as leader/songwriter Paul Weller developed a view of England that allowed for patriotism and pride while laying it on political conscientiousness. Post-World War II socialism and the Welfare State had been stopped dead in their tracks with the advent of Thatcherism; unemployment was rampant—especially among teenagers, many of whom would never have a job in their life. What Weller did was give them a unified sense of self-worth, certainly among white teen boys. A sense of worth not based on the Americanized England, where the term net worth would be more accurate. The Jam mattered, not because their music was so great (I still think they never improved on their third LP, the brilliant All Mod Cons), but because it was so English. Much more English than the Kinks or Squeeze; English to the exclusion of all other cultures.

And English which, like its Mod roots, often rested on the genius Black pop of Motown and Stax—unlike the Smiths, who took over the Jam’s crown. The Jam were English to exclusion, the Smiths were white and English to exclusion. If the Smiths’ politics were less bedrocked on a political certainty than the Jam’s were, it’s because the rules of the game had changed. The Jam promised some semblance of euphoria: a new England. The Smiths, seeped in depression, sexual ambiguity, a generation wasted, could only promise moments of pleasure—minutes, seconds, a passsing glance. If it wasn’t suicide, it was hope. The Jam were absolute believers; they and their audience could afford to be. The Smiths, from industrial, working-class Manchester, couldn’t afford the luxury of believing.

“Hang The DJ,” Morrissey once sang; English society had become not only class segregated but racially segregated. Which is not to call the Smiths racist—I know they weren’t. Rather, that they were part of a strata of society where even music couldn’t make the twine meet.

The Jam were hope, the Smiths were the hope of hope. In America’s Reagan Disneyland, neither had much of a chance of selling. They were the two most important groups of the ’80s in England. Try any and all of their albums. I’ve often felt England and the States were like Grandfather and Grandchild, and twilight in America will eventually arrive: the Jam’s and the Smiths’ LPs are social documents. Be prepared.