Should you ever wish to make a mod of late-1970s vintage come over all misty-eyed, just mention the Jam. The trio, with Bruce Foxton on bass, Rick Buckler on drums and the charismatic Paul Weller up front on vocals and guitar, smartened up the music scene with their neatly tailored suits and haircuts inspired by Steve Marriott, of the Small Faces, just as the country was coming out of the greyest years of strikes and inflation.
The band played fast, tight and extremely loud, and their lyrics, in songs such as The Eton Rifles — a favourite of David Cameron’s, much to Weller’s chagrin — and Bricks and Mortar, about expansionist developments, were every bit as sharp as their image. In short, the Jam, from Woking, Surrey, and proud of it, were cut from a different cloth than many of their punk-rock contemporaries.
Fast-forward 35 years from the release of their debut album and it is no surprise to find Foxton, who wrote some of their songs, doing very nicely, thank you, living in a faux Arts and Crafts-style house in the prime stockbroker belt — outside Farnham, in Surrey. To be precise, it is a £1.85m property with a two-bedroom cottage, a flat over the four-car garage block, two acres of parkland-style gardens and a pond. Yet after little more than a year there, he is selling. Why leave so soon?
The Jam didn’t drive Rolls-Royces into pools. Sure, we did have fans beating on our limousines. Unfortunately, they were all blokes “The simple answer is, I got married again last year, to Kate, and she has a 19-year-old daughter, Madeleine,” says Foxton, 56, in his clipped outer-London accent. “I’ve never had a child before, so I didn’t know anything about living with one, but I knew she’d need somewhere to live. I bought this place so she could live in the cottage.
Advertisement
“As it turns out, Madeleine is hardly ever here, because Farnham isn’t cool for a teenager. She prefers to live most of the time with her father near Guildford, which is cool. This is all fine, but it means the cottage isn’t used.
“Then I had planned to turn the flat over the garage into a studio, but, as it happens, I can manage quite easily in my study. I also use Paul Weller’s studio in Ripley.
“So it’s blindingly obvious that I have accidentally bought a place that is far too big for just the two of us, and, much as I love it, I’d prefer to get something a little smaller.”
There is another reason Foxton bought this property without giving it sufficient thought. His previous home in Wonersh, 14 miles to the east, was where his first wife, Pat, battled with cancer before her death in 2009. That house, which Foxton sold for £1.55m, had been her pet project. They bought it together in 2000, and she had decorated it and overseen a £200,000 extension in her final years.
Those years seem far behind Foxton as, in chirpy form on a flaming-hot May morning, he shows me around. The most surprising thing about this home is how devoid it is of rock-star bling. Decorated in muted pastels and creams, it could belong to a company director or, yes, stockbroker. “Yeah, you won’t find any crossed guitars on the front gates or gold discs on these walls,” says Foxton, who could, if he wished, furnish an entire room with gongs for the Jam’s 18 consecutive Top 40 singles, including four No 1 hits.
Advertisement
“Your tastes depend on your upbringing. I was brought up in a council house by a loving, working-class mum and dad, so that kept me grounded. Later, when I was in the Jam, we didn’t try to draw much attention to ourselves. Nobody knew where we lived. We liked it that way.”
Although it is a big house — with five bedrooms and 3,100 sq ft of living space — it flows so well, with the kitchen running into the dining area and from there to the living room, then on to the library, that it feels quite compact. Kate, 43, has been responsible for the minor bits of redecoration they have carried out over the past year. “The library was originally a light green, which I didn’t like,” she says. “I changed that to one of Farrow & Ball’s neutral colours to get more light into the room.
“The previous owners had good taste, though — it was pointless changing things for the sake of it. I particularly like the pippy oak units in the kitchen and the window seats, which give you these wonderful views, as if you are in the middle of a park.”
It is all a long way, financially if not geographically, from 124 Albert Drive, the three-bedroom semi on a London overspill estate in Woking where Foxton grew up. He was still living there in the early 1970s, when the Jam first played together, filling spots after the bingo in the seediest of social clubs. “We’d play some Beatles numbers and they’d go down all right,” he recalls. “Then we’d play our own stuff and we’d see all these old dears with their fingers in their ears.”
Advertisement
The band paid their dues for a good few years more at local venues such as Michael’s, a late-night drinkers’ club where they would earn £5 a night, most of which went into the kitty to buy their new white shoes. Later, they moved up to the London pub circuit and venues such as the Marquee, which were more prestigious, but barely paid better.
Then, in 1977, they got their break with the album In the City. In true “boy done good” style, Foxton bought his parents’ council house for them for £4,500. In 1980, the story goes, Pat, his girlfriend of the time, stayed for the weekend and never left, so he bought them another house — a pleasant but unpretentious executive home on Connaught Road, in Brookwood, Woking, for about £80,000.
As he sits on the terrace, with the paddocks in the background and birds flying over the pond, it seems time has drained any rancour about what came next: the surprise break-up of the Jam in 1982, while they were still at the peak of their popularity, and the subsequent falling-out with Weller, who left to form the Style Council and reached new heights of fame and fortune.
While Foxton never matched his early success, he didn’t do too badly, either. He spent 15 years with the Northern Irish punk band Stiff Little Fingers before refloating the Jam’s music in a band called, somewhat unimaginatively, From the Jam.
In 1984, he moved into a four-bedroom detached house in Bramley, with half an acre of grounds, for which he paid £95,000, then, in the early 1990s, he bought his first house in Wonersh Park, one of Surrey’s plush executive estates, for £575,000. He remained in that house, Three Gables, until 2000, when he moved to the property opposite, mainly because it was on a bigger plot, paying £750,000.
Advertisement
Although he has owned expensive properties, Foxton has never strayed too far from his home patch. A Woking boy at heart, he still meets the mates he made when working as an apprentice printer in his teens. “Even when we got famous, we remained down to earth,” he says, taking me on a tour of the grounds, past the quiet little pond and summerhouse. “We shied away from the celebrity parties and didn’t drive any Rolls-Royces into swimming pools. Of course, we had our moments — fans beating on our limo and all that. Unfortunately, they were all blokes.”
Professionally, things are going well. He has a new album, Foxton, out on October 1 — and, significantly, Weller is playing on three of its tracks. After decades of acrimony, the pair buried the hatchet three years ago: the Modfather phoned Pat on New Year’s Eve, when she was ill in hospital. After that, Foxton worked on two tracks on Weller’s 2010 solo album, Wake Up the Nation, then, to the delight of Jam fans, joined him for three numbers during his Albert Hall show in May 2010.
In the meantime, Foxton is hoping to sort out his living arrangements. He and Kate, civic secretary for Guildford council, already have their eyes on a new home. “It’s a lovely little 16th-century house near Tilford, with an Aga,” she says. “It’s about the same price as this, but a lot smaller. It will be so nice to be a bit closer to neighbours.”
First, they must sell their existing property — although that shouldn’t be a problem. This is a sought-after area, with Frensham Pond, which has sailing and a beach, next to the grounds. Damon Hill lives down the road and Sebastian Coe is in Tilford. A £1.6m 1930s house with four acres in nearby Churt recently sold within three weeks of coming onto the market.
Advertisement
What of the longer term? Will Foxton continue to live in his beloved Surrey, pumping out the Jam’s golden oldies until he can no longer swing his bass through A Town Called Malice? “As long as people will pay to hear our music, I’ll play it for them,” he says. “And when I can’t do that, I’ll pack it in and downsize to somewhere in Cornwall, near a golf club and a spa.” What, I wonder, would the angry young mods of the Jam generation make of that?
Gorse Cottage is for sale for £1.85m with Hamptons International (01252 763451, hamptons.co.uk)
