‘Going Underground’: The Jam song that shaped Graham Coxon’s worldview
As one of the guitarists who came to define the irresistibly raucous tunes of Britpop, Graham Coxon surely has a knack for seeking out riffs that will prove timeless.
As Blur’s guitarist, Coxon plays with a nostalgic sensibility, taking notes from his predecessors across new wave, punk and alternative undergrounds to hone his own sound. In his chords, you can hear the remnants of grunge, for instance, enmeshed with folk, contrasts that made for surprisingly charming songs. His amalgamation of influences deemed Britpop a subgenre for anyone, where even the most resistant music head could acknowledge that stylistically, Blur would endure to define a generation.
Coxon’s prolific tastes show an eagerness for craft, finding a thrill in hearing a tune that could light his own creative spark, regardless of genre or time period. This voraciousness is reflected in his curation of his nine favourite songs for The Line of Best Fit, a list that he refers to as “gateway songs”. Some are relatively obvious choices, whether for their popularity or similarity to the guitarist’s own style, yet they show a side of Coxon the fan, an avid listener who seeks to absorb each song’s teachings and adopt them for himself.
One of his selections is ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, whom he describes as “a woman that I thought could only exist in the realms of my imagination”. He names ‘Blow by Blow’ by Duke Ellington and Paul Gonsalves and its “naughty, hectic, harmonically challenging solo” as having “a huge effect” on him as a child, while listening to his dad’s copy of the album Jazz Concert growing up. He also reminisces on his school years with nods to his childhood friend, James Hibbins, for turning him onto ‘Happiness Is Easy’ by Talk Talk and ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ by King Crimson.
The first on his list, however, is ‘Going Underground’ by The Jam. Coxon names the mod revivalists as his favourite band as a youngster, telling a story of the song’s impact on shaping his outlook on the world at a formative age. “I don’t know what excited me so much about The Jam when I was 13,” he mused, “It was almost Ray Davies-like, it’s kind of the idea of this very young person’s worldview who’s like a 40-year-old, you know? It sounds incredibly advanced as a teenager.”
Coxon found solace in a youth club, The Townhouse on Colchester High Street, where a disco was held every Tuesday night. Mod kids across Essex would flock to the basement venue, and it was there that ‘Going Underground’ would enter his consciousness, forever. He recounted, “sitting there at the side in my Jam shoes and boating blazer, watching this boy in a Parka dance to ‘Going Underground’, and it was one of the best things I ever saw. And all the girls were dressing totally proper ‘60s, black miniskirts, white tights and groovy tops and bobbed haircuts. It was a really great scene to get on the bus and go there every Tuesday, and this song reminds me of that.”
Not to be too caught in his nostalgia, Coxon remembers The Jam’s song with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. “I think with a lot of mods, when you’re 16, you feel slightly better than everybody else,” he admitted, “And I think The Jam made me feel kind of better than everyone, or a little more intelligent than people that were listening to Simple Minds.”
His memory evokes the feeling of hearing a song for the first time and having a satisfied, sinking feeling that it will be permanently etched in your memory, able to suddenly transport you back in time to that very moment, even after decades away from it.
