Music Maps

A double A-side with Kinks cover David Watts, the road referred to in The Jam’s 1978 ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street single is located in London’s Soho, running from Leicester Square up to Oxford Street.

The street’s most relevant occupant was the Marquee Club, which moved from Oxford Street to Wardour Street in 1964 and stayed there until the side was sold for redevelopment in 1988. The club played host to a huge number of major acts in the 60s, and did so until the club folded at its Leicester Square site in 2005 (the Marquee name was continued at a new, much smaller venue on Upper St Martin’s Lane, but closed for a final time earlier this month), including one of “the gigs that gave birth to a legend”:

They ended up as big as any band since The Beatles, but you would never have guessed it had you been inside London’s Marquee Club one evening in January 1977. The Jam were supporting a band called Bearded Lady, and they were having difficulty rousing a laid-back audience who, as was often the way back then, were happy to sit cross-legged on the floor. Frustrated at the lack of crowd reaction, singer Paul Weller threw everything into his performance. At 18, he was a gutsy, aggressive front man who barked out his clipped, gruff vocal lines while flailing energetically at the strings of a red Rickenbacker in the style of one of his heroes, the Who guitarist Pete Townshend. All this, though, was to little avail. The cross-legged crowd remained resolutely rooted to the spot.

The rest of Adrian Thrills’ article can be read at Independent.co.uk.

And to finish off - a video of The Jam performing ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978.

The Deluxe Edition of All Mod Cons, featuring ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street and its fellow a-side David Watts, is available at Amazon. Be sure to also check out eil.com, who have several rare versions of the LP in stock.