Paul Weller’s last-minute muse for a the classic Jam song ‘The Girl on the Phone’
Inspiration can strike at any moment when it comes to the world of songwriting.
Some of the most beloved tracks of all time have had their roots in the most unexpected origins, whereas others have been created by pure necessity. With an extensive discography covering nearly five decades and countless different styles along the way, Paul Weller has taken musical inspiration from virtually every aspect of his life. During the heyday of The Jam, in particular, groundbreaking mod rock anthems almost became second nature to the Woking songwriter.
Emerging from the sweat stains and safety pins of the punk explosion during the mid-1970s, The Jam were always a little different from their contemporaries. Sure, they had the defiant attitude of punk rock, but their image and sound harked back to a much more stylish time, when Carnaby Street was king and Italian scooters lined the streets outside London’s nightclubs. Armed with Weller’s visionary songwriting talents, the band quickly eclipsed the punk scene, inspiring a complete renaissance of the mod subculture and establishing The Jam among the most iconic groups of that period.
In The City, the band’s stunning debut album, hit the airwaves in 1977, and the next five years were something of a whirlwind for the young band. Performing sold-out shows across the nation, living on a tour bus, and appearing on Top of the Pops over and over, all the while under constant pressure from Polydor to deliver more material, The Jam kept to an exhaustive schedule. It is no surprise, therefore, that Weller pulled the plug on the band in 1982, closing that chapter of his career with the soul-drenched masterpiece ‘Beat Surrender’.
In many ways, though, that constant level of pressure was the push that the band needed to carry on going forward, creating new and expansive material. By the time The Jam came to work on their fourth record, Setting Sons, they knew what was expected of them, and Weller seemed to take it all in his stride. In fact, some of the most memorable moments on that beloved album, including the opening track, ‘Girl On The Phone’, were created in a matter of mere minutes.
Detailing a seemingly omnipotent stalker who knows every detail about the narrator’s life, from “Every book [he’s] ever read” to “the size of [his] cock”, the opening track is certainly memorable. A fairly light-hearted affair, complete with telephone sound effects and an unwavering ear-worm of a chorus, ‘Girl On The Phone’ kicks off Setting Sons perfectly, but it wasn’t a song that Weller poured over for hours on end.
As he once recalled to Uncut, “That song came from sitting in our office in Shepherd’s Bush with an acoustic guitar because we needed two more songs for the album. I just knocked out ‘Girl On The Phone’ and ‘Private Hell.'”
When the song was written, in 1979, Weller and the band had amassed such a degree of fame that the idea of an obsessive stalker was not all that outlandish, but, as it turns out, the real muse for the song was in American pop art. “The title is from a Roy Lichtenstein pop-art painting called ‘Girl On The Phone,’” the songwriter revealed, name-dropping the iconic New York artist.
It is certainly easy to imagine Lichtenstein’s comic book style accompanying the narrative of The Jam’s track, and that pop art influence seems to permeate much of The Jam’s discography. Still, it speaks to Weller’s unique power as a songwriter that he can rattle off a song as enduring as ‘Girl on the Phone’ using only the inspiration of a painting’s title.
