Rick Buckler Remembered: “We did everything that we set out to do…”

While few would deny that Paul Weller was the driving creative force in The Jam, as with any great band, the musical chemistry between Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler, who has sadly passed away aged 69, was an integral part of what made The Jam the most successful British group since The Beatles.

“I’m shocked and saddened by Rick’s passing,” wrote Weller in a statement following the news of Buckler’s death after a short illness. “I’m thinking back to us all rehearsing in my bedroom in Stanley Road, Woking. To all the pubs and clubs we played as kids, to eventually making a record. What a journey! We went far beyond our dreams and what we made stands the test of time.”

A band is only as good as its drummer, as the adage goes, and in Rick Buckler The Jam had one of the best of the era. Born in Woking in 1955, Buckler met Weller, three years his junior, at Sheerwater Secondary School in 1971 and began playing with the group Weller had formed with guitarist Steve Brookes. Later joined by Foxton, The Jam became a trio after Brookes left and honed their skills playing R&B and rock and roll covers in youth clubs, pubs and working men’s clubs across Surrey and London.

Weller’s discovery of The Who’s first album and the fire lit by witnessing the Sex Pistols at the Lyceum in 1976 provided a creative catalyst and across six albums and an unbroken run of top 40 singles (including four number ones), their amphetamine-charged mod pop would develop into classic ‘60s-inspired songwriting, post-punk edged experimentation and excursions into blue-eyed soul and funk.

Sharp as the crease in a pair of Sta-Press trousers, Buckler’s tightly-wound playing and bursts of snare gave an electric edge to Weller’s songs of suburban life and longing. Just listen to how the nervous interaction between Buckler’s hi-hat and Foxton’s bassline creates a growing sense of dread on Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, the melancholy swing he gave Just Who Is The 5 O’Clock Hero? or his explosive tour de force on the band’s 1981 single Funeral Pyre.

Weller’s decision to disband The Jam in 1982, bowing out at the peak of their success to start afresh in The Style Council, came as a huge shock. Not least to Buckler and Foxton, who maintained they were blindsided by the news, coming just months after the band’s sixth LP The Gift had topped the charts.

After The Jam split, Buckler formed a new band Time UK in 1983 and reunited with Foxton in short-lived new wave group Sharp, who released one single, Entertain Me, in 1986. He rejoined Foxton again in 2007 in From The Jam, performing songs by their old group, but unlike Foxton, Buckler never performed with Weller again.

In 2015, Buckler spoke to MOJO’s Chris Catchpole and looked back at his time in The Jam, what they achieved and what he felt they still could have gone on to do together...

“Me and Paul sort of knew each other at school. Anybody who was interested in music used to hang around the music room and swap albums. Paul and Steve [Brookes, original Jam guitarist] had a gig and needed someone to play drums. He gave me a big stack of albums that were sort of Chuck Berry-style things and said, ‘Go away and learn some of those.’”

“In those days there were a lot of working men’s clubs, maybe the odd party that we used to do. I think we did a gig for Chelsea Football Club at one point. If anybody offered us a show we would do it. Then we discovered that there was a great pub rock scene happening in London. There were The 101-ers, Joe Strummer’s band, Dr Feelgood, The Stranglers, those sort of bands. Although the money wasn’t as good as it was playing in the working men’s clubs, we felt more at home there. Once Paul had seen the Sex Pistols and realised the content of the lyrics it changed for him then. It gave him a new direction.”

“The band was evolving all the way along the line and it almost stares you in the face when you look at it from a retrospective point of view. We were always pushing the boundaries of what we could do with a three-piece band. It meant that each album had its own identity. Just the diversity of tracks. The difference between Ghosts and Absolute Beginners and Funeral Pyre and Start!. They’re all totally different in the way they’ve been approached and recorded. I think in the early days we felt we had to prove ourselves to the record company or prove ourselves to an audience so that we could gain our own fan base. It just seemed to be an ethic that we carried on. Which is why when Paul said he was going to leave the band, me and Bruce felt that there was more to do. Maybe a couple more years or a couple more albums. There were still things that we could achieve. I don’t know what Paul felt when he did it. I think that secretly he knows he made a mistake.”

“It was a fabulous time and nothing really did go wrong as such. We did everything that we set out to do as far as touring and having hit records and recording albums. It was just that I didn’t see the end coming as it did.”

Original interview appeared in Q Magazine, September 2015.