‘Funeral Pyre’: The Jam song that predicted the sound of indie sleaze
Bands don’t last forever. Regardless of a group’s quality, acclaim, or commercial success, the wheels are bound to fall off eventually. Whether it is better to fade away into obscurity, with every album release becoming a little less exciting than the last, or go out with a bang is a debate that could rage on for the entirety of this article. The fact is, The Jam went out with a bang. At the peak of their popularity, with ‘Beat Surrender’ at the top of the charts in 1982, Paul Weller pulled the plug on the mod revivalists, but that certainly did not put a halt to the band’s incredible and enduring legacy in British music.
First formed as a high school outfit by Paul Weller, giving him an opportunity to expand upon his undying love for groups like The Beatles, The Who, and The Kinks, it wasn’t until the cultural revolution of the punk age that The Jam began to make an impact on the British music scene. Although Weller and the band never really subscribed to the aesthetics of punk, most often found with cropped hair and sharp suits than bedecked in safety pins and bondage trousers, the songwriter’s attitude and socially-conscious lyrics reflected the grassroots revolution of punk.
Within a few short years, The Jam rose from the sticky floors of The Roxy in Covent Garden to the glitz and glamour of the Top of the Pops studio, achieving a wealth of hit singles and inspiring a complete renaissance of the mod subculture. Moreover, their celebrated discography, including legendary tracks like ‘The Eton Rifles’ and ‘Going Underground’, had an undying impact on the landscape of British guitar music, even as the scene diversified into post-punk and indie rock during the early 1980s.
Even when Weller disbanded the group, instead pursuing his interest in pop-soul with The Style Council, The Jam’s dedicated audience remained gripped by albums like Sound Affects and even the often-maligned All Mod Cons. Countless young bands came together in the wake of The Jam’s heyday, but their legacy within British music has lasted far longer than the band’s tenure itself.
Guitar music has come in and out of fashion multiple times since the demise of the mod band, but the mid-2000s saw a particularly exciting renaissance for guitar-based indie rock. Even Weller himself could not help but bask in the brilliance of groups like The Strokes or The Libertines. However, if you listen a little closer to the output of this new age of indie rock, it is easy to identify some familiar sounds.
In 1981, The Jam unveiled their hit single ‘Funeral Pyre’, a unique composition that didn’t feature on any of their album releases and was born from a jam session (pardon the pun) between drummer Rick Butler and bassist Bruce Foxton. It is a fairly unique track within The Jam’s repertoire, adopting much darker lyrical themes – “We feast on flesh and drink on blood” – and bass-heavy instrumentation, owing largely to Foxton’s role in the song’s composition.
That bassline, in particular, bears resemblance to the bass-heavy tracks of 2000s indie sleaze outfits, with the likes of Milburn and early Arctic Monkeys being notable examples. Even the adoption of darker lyrical themes is something that ‘Funeral Pyre’ shares in common with a lot of 2000s indie tracks.
While it would be bold to suggest that the entire indie sleaze scene is indebted to this one song, ‘Funeral Pyre’ certainly played a role in influencing that generation of guitar-led indie bands. The parallels that can be drawn between the 1981 single and the scene that developed over two decades later speak to the enduring legacy of The Jam and the endless appeal of grassroots guitar rock.
