An audience with the Modfather

From the angular, angry edge of The Jam to the sophisticated, Solero grooves of the Style Council, through to his remarkable solo career, Paul Weller proves why his is the voice that spans generations on new album Wake Up The Nation.

In the canon of rock there are few stars who have remained both active and vital for as long as Paul Weller. His career, stretched out over four decades counts numerous top ranking chart positions, whilst his music and indeed even his style has gone on to influence generations of younger bands. Far from resting on his laurels as many of his more successful contemporaries have done, his albums have remained at the forefront of the British consciousness, picking up a BRIT award just last year for Best Male Solo Artist. Following up on 22 Dreams, the album that helped Weller to the win, he returns with a raw, heavy shot to the jugular, Wake Up The Nation. Real Groove caught up with The Modfather in a swank London private member's club to talk about making it up as you go along, creating an enduring legacy and the importance of pop music.

At their height they were one of Britain's most beloved bands. They were labelled as mod-revivalists for their use of 60's rhythms and soul but they just as easily fit into the current stream of punk rock and new wave that was spewing out on to the streets of England in the late 70's when they began to release music. The Jam's songs spoke to the people of Britain about the class division, the wintry bleakness of those times and the beauty and love amongst the rubble. For 18 consecutive singles they charted in the Top 40, many of those landing in the Top 10. Their sharply cut suits were in direct contrast to the shredded apparel of their peers, whilst their musicianship put their rivals to shame. With many bands like The Smiths, Oasis, Blur, and Arctic Monkeys all indebted to The Jam for their sound, some have even gone so far to mimic the fashion style of Weller in his early years.

“We just thought we needed a look and needed to separate ourselves from everybody else,” says Weller of the choice for their tailored suits. “So when we got signed up it was in the punk days but we still kept that look, which some people saw as amusing because they saw it as being dated, but it worked for us, it set us apart really. Everyone had their own look, you know The Clash had their own look with their painted clothes and that stuff and the Pistols with Malcolm and Viv's shop and all that. Any decent band would have a look, it was just a matter of what you were trying to say to people really.”

In 1982 after the release of the hugely successful album The Gift, Weller suddenly announced that the band were to split up at the end of the year, much to the astonishment of their loyal fan base. Their farewell concerts sold out over consecutive nights at Wembley Arena whilst their final single “Beat Surrender” went straight to the number one position in the charts on its release.

Paul Weller was not a very popular man for the decision he made to leave and effectively disband The Jam. Fans were distraught to witness the dissolution of their beloved band, whilst Mike Foxton and Rick Buckler experienced a mixture of sadness, regret and inevitable anger over the move. Some 28 years later however Weller is as adamant as ever that it was the right decision to make.

“There wasn't any major kind of falling out at the time, but then no one was happy about me wanting to leave,” states the singer. “They wanted to keep going so it wasn't the most popular decision for Bruce and Rick and me Dad who was the manager at the time. They were all like 'fucking hell, what are you doing?' But I just needed to move on in life and any relationship that breaks up is always tough. But what do you do? You either stay in it and live a lie or you go off and do what you have to, that's life.”

Drawing Weller into the past is not what he's here for today in the plush surrounds of the posh Mayfair club we are seated in, though with his own history weaving throughout that of British music it is inevitable that we touch on aspects of his whole career. And as he points out later, he's been answering questions about The Jam and what chance – if any, there is of them getting back together for the last 28 years (it's precisely zero by the way). I am here to talk to the ever stylishly dressed Weller about his new album Wake Up The Nation, his tenth over 18 years as a solo artist. Produced by Simon Dine who has contributed to two other Weller albums, it is the result of the two starting off with several mood pieces prepared by Dine and fleshing out the ideas. At the time Weller didn't even have plans for his next album, let alone what shape it would take. However with the exciting nuggets from Dine lighting the fires of creativity, the pair quickly expanded those raw beginnings to eight workable tracks, calling in other musicians to help expand on what the two had already laid the foundation for.

“He had a very definite idea about the direction of the sound and where he could take the music,” says Weller of Simon Dine. “That's great because my job was made a lot easier too. I hadn't bothered to try and write anything beforehand. I just waited until we got to the studio and I reacted off the music and went with it. It was a different method for me because usually I'll go in to the studio at least with a chord sequence or some of the song formed in my head or something. It was nice after so many years of making records to find a new way of working too, it was really refreshing.”

As with many of Weller's solo albums, Wake Up The Nation boasts a heavy duty array of collaborators, from the My Bloody Valentine eccentric noisenik Kevin Shields, to Clem Cattini, one of the most prolific session drummers in England in the 60's and 70's and even ex-The Jam bassist Bruce Foxton. It was this working with Foxton again that had rumour mills turning with the possibilities of a reunion, but Weller immediately downplays the mere mention of Foxton appearing on the album.

“Let's get something straight,” he asserts quickly. “This in no way points to any sort of reformation of the band. I wasn't really that bothered whether it would fan the flames of rumours about it happening either. But it wasn't that weird you know. I don't know how it was for Bruce but for me it was okay. I mean 28 years is a short time in rock'n'roll, we just got on with it and didn't reminisce about the old days.”

Keeping the creative process fresh for the sessions, Weller would largely improvise the lyrics without trying to say anything too particular. For a man whose lyrics have spoken to generations with their sweet ballads, disaffected views on social classes and politics, it may come as a surprise that he would put such little onus on meaning. He explains that it was very liberating to approach the songs in this manner, focusing instead on the meter and timing of the words instead. I wonder though what formed the basis of the pointed lyrics that found their way through songs like “Eton Rifles” and “Going Underground”.

“Being conscious of the class system that is present in this country, that really came from my upbringing,” explains Weller of what fuelled his views and eventual song lyrics. “Seeing how the privileged classes live in this country too, that had an effect. But it was more born out of the people I grew up listening to. People like Ray Davies, early Townshend, Lennon as well, people like that. For all the moments of 'She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah' there were later moments where people would write about deeper issues and social conditions, people like Ray especially. So for me, growing up, music was not just about entertainment, it was an education as well. It informed me, gave me some kind of world view, it was everything to me. It inspired me and I guess my own music was just a continuation of that. I think that as song-writers that's what our role is. Pop music to me is like the modern folk music. Folk was always about entertaining people but it informed them as well. It's writing about current issues but also about the important things in all of our lives. Pop music is no different to that, it's only different because of the commercial aspect of it but the actual art itself is the same really.”

One other vocal statesman from Weller's past was Joe Strummer from The Clash, a man whose vision of revolution through music was so total that it didn't end with the demise of The Clash, it merely shifted focus. The Clash were in fact early supporters of The Jam, inviting them to tour with them in 1977 for their White Riot tour. It was a tumultuous time in England, a time mirrored through the frantic, urgent fervour of punk and the media reaction of the filth and the fury. Weller remembers that much of the uproar about punk and the divisions painted between mods and rockers were largely media manipulations that got distorted beyond their true size.

“I don't think it was so much being a mod, it was that whole thing of how the media whipped up the whole Pistols thing in '77 and all that bollocks. But it was a very violent time, the 70's, I mean every gig there was always a fight, every fucking night and it was like that for a long time too. It's very different to that now, people are much more sophisticated these days and much more broad minded. We did encounter some trouble in those early tours but it was more because of what people had read in the papers, it was a backlash against that really. There were a few morons who would read this shit in the paper and then go out and become that, but it was just a very violent time. It was much more tribalistic; there were all these little groups of teds and mods and punks, it was that kind of world really.”

Weller's instinct was to counter the media distortions with lyrical snapshots of how he saw the country. “That's Entertainment” was apparently written after a drinking session, taking in both the day to day mundaneness and few simple pleasures that conjured up a picture of working class life in Britain perfectly. It is a sentiment that lives on in Weller, evidenced by the title track to Wake Up The Nation.

“I think at the time of writing some of my earlier songs that looked at where England was at, back in the days of The Jam and Style Council things were much more extreme then and they were much more black and white. I think now that politics and media and TV and lots of other things are just very bland. The personalities are all very interchangeable aren't they? The politicians, it's hard to tell the difference between any of them or their policies. I think English people as a whole have really moved on in the last fifteen years or so and they're quite modern. I just don't think the media and the politics have really caught up with that yet and they're still trapped in the past. We still seem to be spoken to like idiots, talked down to and underestimated. But I wouldn't like to say that the album is any kind of major political statement either. There's all sorts of stuff on there and some of it I haven't got a fucking clue what it's on about. You know I was just making it up, but I quite like that sort of stuff too, it's quite nice to unravel that sort of stuff over time you know. Sometimes you don't find any meaning and sometimes you find loads of it after a time.”

As we talk more of the different phases that Weller has been through we touch for a time on his reason for leaving The Jam, the Style Council. Though the band was never as successful as his first one, it was an outlet for his creativity that he couldn't express through The Jam. From 1983 through 'til the end of the decade Weller, along with Mick Talbot, Steve White and Dee C. Lee followed a pathway of soul, jazz, and more electronic influences whilst still injecting their songs with politically aimed barbs and wry observations on the state of things. Showing a much more complex style of arrangement than he did with The Jam and showing an open mindedness that eventually saw the band toying with house music and acid jazz, the band proved a little too clever for themselves, falling out of favour with the public and consequently their record company. When the Style Council split up it was the first time Weller had been without a band or a record deal for his adult life.

“It was a very odd time in my life that was, because it was time for us to finish the band but I was coming up to my thirties and being a father for the first time. But then I didn't even have a band or a record deal which were the things I'd always been used to. So I was cut off from everything and felt adrift in uncharted seas really. It took me a couple of years to get my bearings again and get back on my feet. It was probably the strangest time in my life, I thought it had just all finished and that was it. I only found myself really through work, through getting back out there on the road and playing. And eventually my muse and the focus came back but it was a very odd time.”

Since then it seems that Weller has been working harder than ever, rarely leaving more than a two year gap between albums, extensively touring and collaborating with other musicians. I sense this is not because he can't handle being in one place for too long, but because of an innate desire to create and to indulge his muse. With such a long career and no end in site I wonder if even he is surprised that his place in music has been relevant for so long.

It has surprised me yeah,” he says genuinely. “I'm surprised to be at this age anyway, I mean who ever thinks they'll make it to the age of 51 or 52 when they're young? It's like another fucking planet innit? But all of a sudden I am this age and I am still doing it, but it was never the plan that's for sure. I never even had a plan, I just made it up as I went along really. I still am I suppose. I think if anything, I feel more comfortable in my own skin now and I just think this is what I do in life, this is me and I play music and make music and I'm grateful for the fact that this is what I'll always do as well. The only scary thing about it all is how fucking quick it's gone. I mean people talk about events that happened 30 years ago and that seemed like only a few years ago to me. So I suppose if anything, if the next 20 or 30 years go as quickly then I've got to do as much as I can and create as much work as possible really. I think for any artist you want to leave a body of work in the world because that's what you're here to do. It's what my purpose on this earth is, apart from looking after me kids and family, that's what I'm here to do. That drives me, the fear of mortality, it drives me to work as much as I can.”