45RPM: #99 When You're Young - The Jam

When You're Young / Smithers-Jones

Polydor

Produced by Vic Coppersmith-Heaven and The Jam

Released 25th August 1979

UK Chart #17

A-Side: When You're Young

Written by Paul Weller

B-Side: Smithers-Jones

Written by Bruce Foxton

You'd be hard pressed to find a duff single among the 19 that The Jam released between 1977-1982. Only two of them failed to reach the Top 30 (In The City stalled at #40 and The Modern World at #36). Nine of the singles were Top Ten including four #1 records: Going Underground/Dreams of Children (1980), Start! (1980), Town Called Malice/Precious (1982) and Beat Surrender (1982).

The band's first two releases of 1979 were both non-album tracks, Strange Town March 1979 #15) and When You're Young (August 1979 #17). 

As with pretty much all The Jam's Singles the B-Side was an absolute cracker, Smithers-Jones, written by Bruce Foxton, and one that many reckon was the best song he ever wrote for the band. An orchestral version of it appears on the Setting Sons album that once again showed that The Jam were a very clever band when it came to making albums. There's not a guitar, bass or drums in sight!

The single set in motion a period in the history of the band where they would come to enjoy far greater success than they could have imagined.