March next year and Going Underground by The Jam is 45 years old. I know, right? Perhaps the saddest thing is that the twenty year old Paul Weller’s lyrics are as relevant now as they were during the purveying nuclear nightmare at the height of the Cold War.

So is it this that makes it a timeless classic? Musically it’s still muscular and leaps and barks like a chained up dog. Even the production which can so often date music seems light-touch enough to have avoided such pitfalls… and lyrically? …well what more can be said… The ‘Boys Brigades’ are still sabre rattling, the ‘Braying Sheep’ are on more a whole lot more than the three channels we had back then… and of course the kidney machines are forever supplanted by rockets and guns… Plus ça change!

I watch the video and perhaps it’s here that the times are revealed. Certainly Foxton’s wardrobe and barnet says 1980… and Rick looking like Dennis Waterman behind the kit… so thats another tick in the consigned to history box.. but Weller… Weller is different gravy… always has been… his Mod sensibilities and eye for detail make him stand out stylistically… he should be anachronistic… pop art shirt, the paisley scarf, the Rickenbacker guitar… it could by The Fabs around their Revolver period. Certainly the LP was a heavy influence on Weller at the time, musically as well as sartorially. And yet, look at the images of The Beatles around the time and nothing screams 1966 more than their styling. The Paisley shirts that Persian teardrop motif that via Kashmiri weavers returned to the UK and its epicentre for production in wealthy Scotland and the town of Paisley who shared its name worldwide for a centuries old middle-eastern design… very Empiric… ‘the public gets what the public wants’ indeed.

So how is it that Weller can pull off a timeless look and The Beatles are forever anchored stylistically to the sixties? The answer is that Mod is a Magpies art! The original Mods often wore paisley scarves and cravats… little new in this of course but this was part of the artifice, the rarity was these items being in the hands of the working classes. This subversion, this artful revolution was at the heart of the Modernist outlook. No acceptance of the pre-ordained place in society for these new-age sons and daughters. Style as a revolutionary act. Where this line gets blurred is what separates Weller from The Beatles. A few years after the paisley neckerchiefs and the bespoke tailoring, the insurrection goes from underground to overground… the pop-art perversion of flags and RAF roundels are a much more in-your-face “Fuck you!” to society and the generations before. This is a key part of Mods legacy… Iconography… despite it being a world away from the original coded signals for the cognoscenti.

Iconography is a Pop art phenom… the ubiquitous target roundels, the Rickenbacker guitars with their Paisley aping headstock teardrop, the 45 centre… 66 clothings new silk scarf collection starts with a clone of Weller’s sublime paisley scarf sported in the Going Underground video, via Lennon’s Revolver era paisley shirts, the Rickenbacker teardrop and the 45 centre all combine to add a knowing nod to the stylistic inspirations of the Mods… which you choose to wear is up to you… its what appeals to the ‘magpie’ in you…

45 years on and Weller still gets it right stylistically… he still studies the magpie art… and the boy still sings, and the boy still shouts for tomorrow

The Paperback Rioter