AFTER HEARING the Jam’s debut LP In the City in the late spring of 1977, many concluded the group were a collection of gimmicks. Of a piece with the broader cynical response, a BBC journalist asked the band in July of that year if they should be taken seriously, referencing the fact they had recorded the Batman theme and their image was borrowed from the 1960s. There was a beat-length pause before Rick Buckler’s frosty reply: ‘There’s no mickey take really’. It was clearly going to be another uncomfortable interview for the emerging three-piece.

There was some justification for the accusation of parody. The ‘Batman Theme’, track six on the Jam’s In the City, had also appeared on the Who’s 1966 album, A Quick One. The Jam's debut album title had been a Who B-side and the title track had precisely the same ‘the kids know where it's at’ spirit as the Who’s ‘My Generation’. If you put the two bands’ debut albums on shuffle, the only discernible difference at certain points seems to be Roger Daltrey singing in a shiny American accent and Paul Weller in a commuter belt bloke snarl.

The BBC journalist continued, trying to slot the Jam somewhere into 1977. He understood that, unlike the Sex Pistols, the Jam supported the Queen. You could almost hear the crackle in the air in the silence that followed. ‘No we don't support the Queen,’ Paul Weller replied. The interviewer ploughed on, asking which punk bands had influenced them. ‘None, I shouldn't think,’ Weller answered.

The reality was that punk and mod music shared at least some of the same influences. From across the pond, punk took something from MC5, the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, and mod from Detroit's Motown, Stax Records and Atlantic Records. But the sound of both could also be traced to the Shel Talmy-produced songs of the Kinks and Who. As far as the Sex Pistols and the Jam were concerned, the clearest dividing line was the Pistols wanted to burn down the past and the Jam resurrect it.

A few moments later the journalist circled back to the accusation of parody and asked his most cutting question. ‘Aren't you worried… you’re… copying ideas from a decade ago?’ And then, very quietly and pithily, Paul Weller reframed the idea of influence. ‘No we are not copying ideas, we are using ideas,’ he said. ‘It's part of our heritage, you know.’

‘It's part of our heritage.’ From kitchen sink drama to bands of the British invasion, 1960s influences were washing through the new wave of the late 1970s. More conspicuous examples included the Pretenders covering the Kinks’ song ‘Stop your Sobbing’, and Chris Difford lifting the title of Squeeze’s ‘Up the Junction’ from the BBC One Wednesday Play, a gritty piece of social realism first broadcast in 1965. But for these groups the 1960s provided influences, which they sometimes wanted to downplay; for the Jam the decade was an inheritance to be proclaimed. The ethos felt brand-new: Hail British music heroes. Claim your cultural past.

The Jam’s mentality was bound up with the mod revival they espoused. Paul Weller's Rickenbacker guitar, Lambretta moped and the music of the Who had all been part of the subculture’s first iteration, which the 1970s rebirth celebrated. Same subculture but different decade. By the late 1970s the mod revival’s natty threads and propulsive beats were out of key with the country. After the invigorating cultural explosion in the 1960s, Britain had become a tired and threadbare place, clapped-out and exhausted. There was widespread youth unemployment, the British government had to go to the IMF for a financial bail out and some were claiming that the unions were not only holding the nation to ransom but hijacking British democracy. Having gained connotations of cool a decade before, the Union Jack had been hijacked by fascists. ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, send the bastards back,’ rang out from football terraces and gangs of skinheads. It wasn't long before the Jam’s mod aesthetic got caught up in the politics. Claiming they would vote for the Conservative Party and festooning their stage with Union Jacks was enough for the British music papers to label them right-wing. ‘We are against things like fascism and communism,’ Paul Weller clarified. ‘But I don't want to get too involved in direct politics. The important thing is the music.’