"Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" by The Jam - What Does It Mean?

I fumble for change - and pull out the Queen
Smiling, beguiling
I put in the money and pull out a plum, Behind me
Whispers in the shadows - gruff blazing voices, Hating, waiting
"Hey boy" they shout - "have you got any money?"
And I said - "I've a little money and a take away curry,
I'm on my way home to my wife.
She'll be lining up the cutlery,
You know she's expecting me
Polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork"
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight

I first felt a fist, and then a kick
I could now smell their breath
They smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs
And too many right wing meetings
My life swam around me
It took a look and drowned me in its own existence
The smell of brown leather
It blended in with the weather
It filled my eyes, ears, nose and mouth
It blocked all my senses
Couldn't see, hear, speak any longer
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight
I said I was down in the tube station at midnight

The last thing that I saw, As I lay there on the floor
Was "Jesus Saves" painted by an atheist nutter
And a British Rail poster read "Have an Awayday - a cheap holiday
Do it today!"
I glanced back on my life
And thought about my wife
'Cause they took the keys - and she'll think it's me
And I'm down in the tube station at midnight
The wine will be flat and the curry's gone cold
I'm down in the tube station at midnight
Don't want to go down in a tube station at midnight

I heard 'Down In The Tube Station At Midnight' by The Jam for the first time in years the other day, and was horrified to find that I could sing along to all the lyrics. It also occured to me for the first time ever that if our narrator IS down in the tube station at midnight, isn't it a bit strange for his wife to be "lining up the cutlery, polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork" at that late hour?

-- Andrew L (andrewlittlefiel...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

-- Tom (ebro...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

achy breaky heart. I would hang my head but then I realised that I have no shame

-- Menelaus Darcy (andje83...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

Not really, he could have been meeting friends in south east London.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Also why on earth has he decided to go to a pub a half hour away from the tube?

Because he is Paul Weller = because he is a thicko.

-- Nicole (ndwillet...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

where are you love?

I'm in the glovebox...

-- goeff (effexxo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Is it possible he is at the destination station, rather than the embarking one, as Tom assumes? The only thing that makes me think not is that he's faffing around buying plums in vending machines, which he surely wouldn't be doing if he was almost home and worrried about his curry going cold.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Did tube stations at any point have plum vending machines?

-- Tom (ebro...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

I don't know. This part puzzles me.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

it would have been even longer than half an hour too. back in the day were not last orders EVEN EARLIER!

-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Maybe he did that thing where you fall asleep on the tube and end up going all the way to the end of the line and then have to come back again? I of course have never done this but know people who have snoozed past Finsbury Park, ended up in Walthamstow and gone bouncing backwards and forwards on the Victoria line for much of the night.

-- Emma (emmaluvscak...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Hang on a minute. I've just realised that at no point in the song does he even say he has been to the pub. Tom has just projected his own life onto Weller's protagonist. He's probably just been working really late at the office. No, hang on, this is the 1970s and that kind of thing didn't happen. OK, he's been shagging his secretary in some grotty hotel room.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Now you are projecting YOUR life onto the song, N..

-- Edna Welthorpe, Mrs (edna_welthorp...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

un mundo ideal, un mundo identicoooo, un mundo para ti, para los dos...

-- goeff (effexxo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

re: weller's plum. allegedly this refers to a bar of cadury's chocolate (you know that deep blue foil they have). this is the best theory google could find me.

Startlingly this came from an essay about a longpigs song. oh dear.

-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Where's Lucy when you need her? I need her to tell me if this is a genuine piece of Woking slang. I suspect not.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Glasgow N. that's where.

-- chris (cbrown...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION YOU FOOL

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Not only that but he is wrrying about the wine going flat = Champagne socialist!!! I have you twigged Mr "man O' the People" Weller.

-- Pete (pb1...), February 1st, 2002 1:00 AM.

Apparently, the real Little Jack Horner was anything but a good boy. The Bishop of Glastonbury had sent his steward, Jack Horner, to Henry VIII with a Christmas gift - a pie in which were hidden the title deeds to twelve manorial estates. On his way to the king, Jack popped open the pie and stole the deed to the Manor of Mells, a real plum of an estate. To this day the Horner family resides there.

So maybe if the narrator is a 70s era Jack Horner (perhaps even a descendent?), we have been on the wrong side all along. Let them duff the rotter in.

Actually, my best guess is that he was implying the God Squad aren't really believers in a true god at all. Either that or he was just painting a Dylan-esquely surreal portrait of the madness of the times.

And how does the victim place the odour of his attackers specifically as coming from Wormwood Scrubs, rather than any other correctional institute? Besides, in order for his attackers to actually SMELL of the place, they would either have to be off-duty prison officers, or fellow inmates who had just been released together that day - before going to the pub (or rather "pubs") to celebrate, and also before showering and changing (which would have removed the odour of the Scrubs).

And what's this about smelling of "too many" right-wing meetings? Because this implies that actually, there is a certain acceptable quota of right-wing meetings that one might reasonably attend, before a) becoming fatally morally compromised and b) developing a distinctive "right wing" odour.

Sorry, but I've been stewing about this for YEARS.

Because it rhymes with "pubs."

The only plausible reason I can think of for this is that the narrator is an observant Jew and he's heading home for Shabbat dinner (which doesn't start until after sundown, which would place this scenario around early summer). That would explain the wine as well...but still, that would place dinner no later than 9:30 pm or so.

(It would have to be Kosher curry takeaway in this scenario.)

And if that doesn't do it for you, remember that by the last verse he's suffered quite a few blows to the head, and may not be thinking straight.

Also, the lyrics never say it's bubbly. The wife could be pulling the cork off some cheap jug for all we know. Maybe that works better with the curry, I'm no culinary expert.

Also, the lyrics never say it's bubbly.

One would assume it was once from the line "The wine will be flat and the curry's gone cold".

I suppose he could just be generally moaning that his wife will have bought unsparkling wine again.

I'm bored with this whole stupid thing.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha

Could just be me, but I thought 'pulling out a plum' was a term used for pulling your finger/thumb out of its socket so it cracks (like cracking your knuckles).

Actually actually actually, my stepmother took possession of our first microwave in 1976 - a full two years before the release of this single. The point stands.

Besides which, re-heated curry tastes every bit as good as the original. He had better things to think about at this difficult time.

See, this guy's bought a chocolate bar (the 'plum' reference is just young-man cleverness - a Zadiesmithism if you will -after all Paul Weller was, what, 18 years old when he wrote this song? He's showing off his literary skills and stretching meaning as a consequence) to have on the way home. His wife will never know. It's like pissing in the sink.

During the day he's probably had a few toffees as well. Hence the wrappers.

Not that we should blame the victim or anything.

These poor people with nothing better to do than frequent tube stations at midnight (and - earlier in the evening, perhaps - attend excessive quantities of right-wing meetings with special smells) were DRIVEN to violence by "the victim's" incessant chatter about place-settings.

It's just the story of a random mugging, perhaps one with a little Daily Mail-esque opinion of 'Youth Thugs Today'. Weller was a Conservative at the time, so he may well have been reading the Daily Mail.

maybe he was in Dollis Hill, wherethe tube station indeed provides a handy cut through

I DO THIS.

The all-enclosing womb metaphorised as 'the tube' - the sense of entrapment by and within the smothering female - I think we have hardly touched upon this matter.

New People!

This is the ""Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" by The Jam - What Does It Mean?" thread.

Read All, and smile.

Revive! I've just done a phone interview with Bruce Foxton, during the course of which I took him to task about some of the more troubling lines.

He has no idea what Weller meant by "I pulled out a plum", and has been puzzling over it for years.

The maximum quota of right wing meetings that one might reasonably attend before picking up their distinctive odour: "Not even one."

And he thinks that the wine might have been a Lambrusco. (He tried palming me off with the "flat" = "stale" argument, but I persisted.)

I hope this helps.

this thread! holy shitbags what a joy.

but he pulls out a plum "behind me" when he's put the coin in the machine, which is presumably in front of him?

No, it's his assailants who are behind him, not the plum

I always thought the line was "too many right wing beatings", not meetings.

No, it's his assailants who are behind him, not the plum

― Ich Ber ein Binliner (Tom D.), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 16:03 (44 minutes ago)

That's not how it sounds on the record. It's all very well be clever with the commas on the lyric sheet Mr Weller.
I've always puzzled about where that plum got pulled from myself
it was a troubling part of my youth

Best thread ever.

Once we're done with this thread, I think Oasis's 'Wonderwall' could use some of our expert analysis too.

OK, so let's give Bruce Foxton the right of reply here:

http://troubled-diva.com/brucetube.mp3

I did my best!

^^^
Bumping this for the office workers.

Good effort!

Hurrah! No one can even MENTION it now without reference to this thread! =

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/table/2009/mar/16/people-and-places-1000-songs-everyone-must-hear

Though it seems straightforward enough, the lyric of Down in the Tube Station at Midnight has provoked a memorably tortuous thread on music-geek discussion site I Love Music. Ostensibly the tale of a man beaten up on the way home to his wife, it does pose some curious questions. His assailants apparently smell of “too many right-wing meetings” (begging the question, how many is acceptable?). For that matter: why is our hero transporting a curry on the tube in the first place? And would his wife really be laying the table and uncorking the wine in expectation? Whatever, it’s textbook punk-era Weller: a deftly observed, quietly shocking suburban vignette. MH

Hurrah! No one can even MENTION it now withiut reference to this thread! =

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/table/2009/mar/16/people-and-places-1000-songs-everyone-must-hear

Though it seems straightforward enough, the lyric of Down in the Tube Station at Midnight has provoked a memorably tortuous thread on music-geek discussion site I Love Music. Ostensibly the tale of a man beaten up on the way home to his wife, it does pose some curious questions. His assailants apparently smell of “too many right-wing meetings” (begging the question, how many is acceptable?). For that matter: why is our hero transporting a curry on the tube in the first place? And would his wife really be laying the table and uncorking the wine in expectation? Whatever, it’s textbook punk-era Weller: a deftly observed, quietly shocking suburban vignette. MH

Enshrined forever. As it should be.

Now I want to hear that vocalese "So What" by Eddie Jefferson that's listed right below on that link.

oh i said that twice. hm soz.

Perhaps clues can be found in another of Weller's songs, Mr Clean. Look at the evidence in the lyrics.

Daylights dawns, you wake up and yawn - Mr. Clean
A piece of toast from the one you love most - and you leave
You get the bus in the 8 o'clock rush,
And catch the train in the morning rain
Mr. Clean - Mr. Clean
If you see me in the street - look away
Cause I don't ever want to catch you looking at me - Mr. Clean
Cause I hate you and your wife
And if I get the chance I'll fuck up your life
Mr. Clean - etc. -
IS THAT SEEN!
Surround yourself with dreams, of pretty young
girls, and anyone you want, but -
please don't forget me or any of my kind
cause I'll make you think again
When I stick your face in the grind -
Getting pissed at the annual office do -
Smart blue suit and you went to Cambridge too -
You miss page 3, but the Times is right for you -
And mum and dad are very proud of you -
Mr. Clean - etc.

It could be Mr Clean himself lying battered in the Tube station. Did Paul Weller catch up with him and give him the promised kicking and stick Mr Clean's face in the Grind? Paul is able to see the result of this somewhat class-based hatred as well as the anticipation of it.

first time seeing this thread, crying with laughter, well done all

To retread some old ground re the too many right wings odour, I wonder if a visual representation helps? See: http://crappygraphs.com/user_graphs/?id=5443

Previous posters have assumed that "they took the keys and she'll think it's me" means that the thugs will use his keys to get into his home.

My interpretation is that he will get home very late and will have to wake his wife up to let him in. He will say that he had his keys stolen but she will think that it is him who lost them.

PS Who is this Paul Weller you all speak of?

Is mweller any relation?

deserves a bump, as every time i hear this now i can't stop laughing

People, check the Uncut Weller special, specifically the page where they review "All Mod Cons", you may find some parts you recognise...

..

Do tell.

this thread is all-time

There was Throbbing Gristle song about Genesis P-Orridge getting beaten up down in a tube station (hour not specified) that I'm certain Paul Weller never heard before writing this.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FU0OC8IWYAEuYB5?format=jpg

I've been spinning this song for 40 years, and now I don't feel like I've ever heard it at all.

The morning paper is probably the NME or Sounds. Weller was a teenager and would be oblivious to the normal tabloids (cf. It was Foxton, a few years older, who composed "News of the World"). This part of the song references the biggest news story for mods that year - Keith Moon's death ("headlines of death and sorrow") and the poor reception that Kenney Jones received as his replacement in The Who ("Mr Jones got run down").

I've found the transcript of my interview with Bruce Foxton in 2008, which concludes thusly:

That’s all my main questions, but I have got a couple of cheeky extras for you, because I can’t resist the opportunity to take you to task over some of the lyrics of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. It is one of your greatest songs, and I know you didn’t write it, but I’ve always found some of the lyrics a bit puzzling.

Firstly, there’s the moment when the man in the song uses a vending machine, and the line goes “I put in the money and pull out a plum”. Now, even in 1978, I don’t remember seeing vending machines that sold fresh fruit. Was that a metaphor?

(Laughs) You’ve got me there! I think you’d best ask Paul about that. That’s one that has bemused me for a while.

And then we meet his assailants, who “smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many right wing meetings”. What is the maximum quota of right wing meetings that you might reasonably attend, before being tainted by their characteristic odour?

Well, I wouldn’t want to go to one! They were cheeky questions, you’re right.

And right at the end of the end of the song, when he’s lying semi-conscious on the platform, he says “the wine will be flat and the curry’s gone cold”. Now then, sparkling wine with curry? These people were fancy.

Now, I can answer that one. It could go off, couldn’t it? I’m not sure what wine he was drinking, but it may have been a Lambrusco or something. (Laughs)

She would have done better to have left the cork in until he got home – but thanks for clearing that up.

You’ve made me think about those other couple. I’ll put my thinking cap on. But it was a pleasure, anyway.

Do remember vending machines on tube station platforms but can't remember exact contents. Fruit being left in a vending machine would tend towards rotten fruit and a spread of mildew anyway. Might be something you might find on teh continent with adequate technology etc but not in dear old blighty.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/8c/0a/418c0aa98772339b08fe5c399439531d.jpg
I thought of this but grape doesn't rhyme as well as plum and so on. But did remember a purplish fruit on the packaging.

& isn't plum a lift from Little Jack Horner or something?

Right, see, Woking Station has a stinky, pissy underpass and if you come through it from the south and walk a few yards up Broadway, there's an Indian restaurant which used to (still does?) have as its unique selling point CURRIES AT 1978 PRICES, 1978 being the year it opened, so that's about £4.50 then.

need to know if this place is still going

'It's a muddle ok palimpsest if you like' makes most sense to me: weller wants to write a song about getting mugged in a tube station but all the concrete details come from Woking experience - he's remembering picking up a curry and cutting through the station; he's trying to re-imagine it as a tube journey, so he adds in the ticket machine which dispenses a 'plum' - plausibly a 70s dark pink cheap day train return to London from Woking, because that's the ticket he's most used to seeing. (I can find period examples on eBay from Guildford that could plausibly be 'plums').

The sneaky chocolate bar hypothesis is very appealing, but I suspect he's just picturing the wrong kind of ticket.

no idea about that wine though

Weller can be pretty Bernard Sumneresque when it comes to lyric writing, pulling out any old rubbish just because it rhymes. There's that line in Paris Match "As I tread the boulevard floor, will I see you once more"... Tread the boulevard floor???

the entire curry discourse comes from a speech whose sole purpose is to save him from a mugging = nothing in that entire quotation need to be taken as truthful (the curry does not exist, it is a feint, his wife's supposed activities are invented to make him seem harmless and likeable and not worth a mugger's energies)

his return to the curry and win all post-beating is thus to be read as a crestfallen and ironic analysis of the failure of this speech to do the work intended: hence "the curry is cold" means "my spur-of-the-moment invention failed and curdled bcz i was set upon anyway, thus all aesthetic endeavour" [swoons, dies*]

as for plum: it's a metaphor entirely interrupted by the arrival of the crime - he pulls out a "queen" (= smiling, beguiling) and then a "plum" (= characterisation never arrives), there's a rhythm to the figure (one metaphor followed by another) but his happily inept and self-absorbed attempted poetics is smashed to pieces by harsh hateful reality and we never learn how effective his metaleptic device was going to be: thus all art (good or bad) in the face of implacable violence

*more metaphor maybe

in conclusion the gang is basically saying "tear him for his bad verses" (shakespeare) and the tragedy is that we never discover if they're right abt how bad they are

ADDING
the implied and hoped-for response to thumb-pulling out a plum is the audience affirming the plum-puller's judgment: "what a good boy am i!" but THIS audience is impatient to teach him another response and while doing deny him even the complacent completion of his literary performance

There was Throbbing Gristle song about Genesis P-Orridge getting beaten up down in a tube station (hour not specified) that I'm certain Paul Weller never heard before writing this.

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Thursday, February 9, 2017 4:17 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

1977! Jubilee! There's a lot of stuff in the lyric about Prince Philip doing unspeakable things to the Queen.

so maybe the urban dictionary defn of "pulled out a plum" helps expand on the unspeakability here

Did he conclude that he was a good boy?

"wine flat curry cold boy not so good" is his sad conclusion IMO

David Quantick's regular page in Record Collector, dated July 2022

Just sayin...

https://www.mixcloud.com/FrenchSpurs1/retropopic-727-the-jam-the-evolution-of-down-in-the-tube-station-featuring-drummer-rick-buckler/

"Alongside two group classics The Saint talks with The Jam's drummer Rick Buckler about the creation of "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight'.

Why did Paul Weller throw the lyrics of Tube Station in the bin? What was so complex about the song? Who was responsible for the group revisiting the song until completion? How highly did the group themselves regard the song? On what basis did they insist on the song being a single? What was their attitude towards their record company? Why were The Jam not necessarily the best judge of just how great some of their songs were?"

That's a lot of questions. A lot of questions.

I'm puzzled by the line about fumbling for change and then pulling out the Queen. Presumably a £1 note, but a £1 note was never change, and it would have been too much. And yet the narrator doesn't seem displeased. This is what the ticket machines used to look like:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/London_Underground_ticket_machines_-_Flickr_-_James_E._Petts_%281%29.jpg

The wording implies it's a ticket for the tube, and perhaps the line that Weller used most often had plum-coloured tickets, but they don't seem to have been all that common though:
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection?f%5B0%5D=collection_type%3ATickets&f%5B1%5D=object_type%3Aticket&f%5B2%5D=topics%3ATube

If that was the case how come no-one else used that slang? Was it just Paul Weller's mum? Hmm? Paul Weller and his mum, and no-one else? Not even his bandmates? When they were on Top of the Pops did Topper Headon and Billy Bragg look at Paul Weller and think "what's he talking about" and "I have no idea what I'm singing" and "this is rubbish" and "at least The Human League make sense".

Is Weller implying that the machine crushed his thumb, so it looks like a plum? Is it plumb, like a plumb line? Is it "pulled out aplomb" but someone has misheard? On a more serious level my reading of the lyrics is that they're padded out for style, and a more mature Paul Weller would probably be more direct and less Pete Bloody Sinfield.

I've never got The Jam. They were massive from 1979-1982, when I was three years old, but unlike e.g. Madness or The Clash they were never played on the radio after that point - they didn't have wide, uncontroversial crowd-pleasing appeal - so if you weren't alive at the time they were lost to time and memory. The same thing happened to most of Elvis Costello's singles, at least the ones that aren't "Oliver's Army".

I mean, I don't remember hearing their hits on the radio when I was growing up, but there was Madstock, and Keith Floyd's TV shows had The Stranglers, but the other second-wave Ska / Mod / post-punk-punks seemed to vanish from the airwaves post-1982.

I grew up in the western United States, far, far from Woking. The Jam have always struck me as the most British of the post/post-punk bands. To my mind, Setting Sons is a near-perfect snapshot of lower-middle-class life in the U.K. in 1979 (keeping in mind that I have never set foot in the U.K.). Nevertheless, I have always found them to be a particularly compelling band. I think this comes primarily from Weller's vocal delivery, in which I find no artifice, even when his lyrics are risible (or unintelligible), as well as the instrumental chops of the band, which are as good as anyone's of that era. I mean, it's 40 years on, and the opening of The Gift still gives me chills. From the video evidence, they were a very potent live band as well.

*punk/post-punk

I spy plums

https://i.imgur.com/4lY2DaB.jpg

taco laser dick