This was one of the most keenly anticipated gigs that I have ever been to, and in some ways one of the most disappointing. The Jam were playing two nights in Leicester on their "Trans-global Unity Express" tour, and a lot of my friends had been the previous night. They had apparently played for about two-and-a-half hours and had played pretty much everything that you would want to hear.
The gig was a sell-out and De Montfort Hall was absolutely rammed. The support band Rudi were a punk band from Belfast, but I don't really remember very much about them. I remember The Jam's set was pretty firmly weighted in favour of the current album "The Gift". They had a keyboard player and a brass section on stage with them to enable them to do justice to the newer material. They had been on-stage for about an hour when Paul Weller's guitar started to cut out really badly. This had happened a couple of times earlier in the set but had appeared to have been fixed. However this time it seemed that things were irretrievable and Weller completely lost it. He took his guitar off, smashed it and his amplifier up and stormed off-stage.
The crowd became increasingly restive as the minutes ticked by. Eventually the cockney geezer-ish tones of John Weller (Paul's Dad and manager) came over the PA announcing that the gig was over and asking everybody to leave. He then added that he was sure that we would agree that we'd had our money's worth. This was a grave error as the audience went beserk! People invaded the stage and smashed up the band's gear. When people started to throw seats from the balcony onto the stage my mates and I decided it was time to leave. At least the pubs were still open......
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