Bruce Foxton – My Life In Music

MARVIN GAYE
“I Heard It Through The Grapevine”
TAMLA, 1968
The thing with that track, obviously it’s a great vocal, but it was the haunting bassline that started it off. I thought, ‘Wow, this sounds good.’ It gave me an idea of what a bassline can do. But also what’s top of the list for me, like with a lot of the songs we’re speaking about, is melody – my ears prick up when there’s a good melody. Motown played a big part in the early days. My brother was a real mod, a proper mod, an original mod. The clothes were very important at that time, and the music was fantastic, like The Four Tops for instance. There was a club in Woking called the Atalanta and that played a lot of Northern Soul.

DR FEELGOOD
Down By The Jetty
UNITED ARTISTS, 1975
I remember seeing them at The Gin Mill in Guildford, and I was blown away by Wilko and his eccentric moves and guitar work. Down By The Jetty was one of my favorites for quite a while. I just enjoyed the sheer rawness of it. Once I’d recorded over my brother’s Four Tops reel-to-reel, it was time to get out of the room… so Dr Feelgood was more what we were into. Prior to that, The Jam were playing working men’s clubs and it was all cover versions of “Blue Moon”. Not knocking it, but it was a bit tame and we were outgrowing that circuit. [Jam manager] John Weller made many trips up to London to see if he could get us some work in the pubs, where it was a bit more happening.

SEX PISTOLS
“Anarchy In The UK”
EMI, 1976
We saw the Pistols at The 100 Club, and Paul particularly got into them. It gave us a fresh direction to go in. What was different was the energy, it was totally stripped down. And clothes-wise, with the safety pins and the bondage trousers… We were actually the black sheep of the family on that one. Everybody else was wearing T-shirts and safety pins, and we were wearing two piece suits and collar-and-tie. But our sentiments were still the same as The Pistols and The Clash: back to the basics, and anyone can get up onstage and have a go. The music scene had got incredibly stale by ’72, ’73 and this was like a breath of fresh air. We hadn’t heard anything like it before that.

THE WHO
My Generation
BRUNSWICK, 1965
I probably heard them via my brother, and on the radio as well. Obviously the music was very exciting, and they looked great. They were all doing their own thing, but when it came to The Who, they all came together. When I was in the Casbah Club with Simon Townshend, Pete’s brother, we did a European tour with The Who. Tensions were running high between Pete and Roger, but they always managed to pull it together eventually. Roger would travel with the band, or this is my understanding, and then Pete went separately in a Lear jet. But the shows were always great, the ones we saw anyway. Incredible. The show must go on, you know?

SMALL FACES
Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake
IMMEDIATE, 1968
Small Faces songs were fantastic – “Itchycoo Park”, “Lazy Sunday”, these very melodic songs – and they always looked the part. On Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake they seemed to be pushing the boundaries again with the psychedelic aspect, trying something different. The album is not for everyone, but I certainly enjoyed it. I suppose that was the idea of the time, that you try something a bit out-there. And that fed into what The Jam was trying to do: not release the same stuff, churning out one track after the other. In our way, we were pushing boundaries in terms of instruments, [asking] ‘What should we try on this track?’ Steve Marriott certainly influenced Paul, as you can tell by some of the photos at the time.

THE KINKS
Something Else
PYE, 1967
“David Watts” was one of the tracks on that album, and I was pushed forward to do the lead vocal [on The Jam’s cover version]. I was on holiday in Cornwall when it got into the charts, and they wanted us to do Top Of The Pops. So I got an overnight train to my Mum and Dad’s, and then a bus to the BBC Studios at White City. You saw all these limos driving in, and I was on a double-decker bus. Ding! It was quite funny. I actually played “David Watts” at the Southbank [with Mick Avory’s Kast Off Kinks for Ray Davies’ Meltdown in 2011]. Ray Davies was there – he didn’t get up onstage, but he did send a nice ‘thank you’ letter for contributing. The Kinks were fantastic writers and performers. Like The Who, they were able to keep it together to a certain extent and have the fisticuffs later.

THE BEATLES
Revolver
PARLOPHONE, 1966
Some people said “Start” sounded very similar to “Taxman”. I can hear the comparison, but it was purely innocent. It’s probably a subconscious thing because we played this album a lot, particularly travelling around the States. We did two or three US tours, and they were all disastrous, apart from the last one. They didn’t get it, basically. Our management over in America thought it was a good idea to pair us up with Blue Oyster Cult, because they were pulling big numbers. The theory was that if we get a thousand of those punters interested in The Jam, it’s better than slogging your guts out doing small clubs. But they didn’t want to know. We went on to one or two handclaps and that was about it.

THE ROLLING STONES
“Start Me Up”
ROLLING STONES RECORDS, 1981
They’re just a great rock’n’roll band. What appeals to me about them is they way they can adapt from one style to the next, from rhythm and blues to disco to “Wild Horses”. Prior to “Start Me Up”, everybody was probably thinking that they’d had their day, then they come out with that, which was fantastic. I think Bill Wyman’s a bit underrated, but he’s a great bass player and he held it all together. I’ve never seen them live, believe it or not, but I saw Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman in Ripley, at a charity cricket match and they were only just about bigger than the bails. Were they any good? Well, they’re probably about as good as the England team at the moment…

Bruce Foxton & His All-Star Band are on tour; see agmp.co.uk for tickets and the full list of dates, including two nights at London’s Cadogan Hall on May 8 and 9