The fact we’d been through all that and then we finally made it, got a record deal and then had hits. It gives you some kind of inner strength. It served us well, because you learn to take the highs with the lows. You’re not too phased by being out in the road or playing different places. It gets to half ten when they’re a bit half cut and they start enjoying themselves. I started when I was 14, playing clubs, and when you’re facing those kind of audiences, they’re not necessarily violent or anything, but they’re disinterested. It was a core strength as well, you’re not too phased by what gets thrown at you. I suppose the bond came from playing all those pub gigs and club gigs in Woking and Surrey to mainly disinterested punters. So we were not necessarily road hardened, but we’d done our apprenticeship definitely. We’d been together a good five or six years before we got a deal. You were working at it for a long time, weren’t you? But the main thing was, when we all got together we made a good noise. We all had our traits and our good points. We were all just very different characters. But when you’re 16 and someone’s 20 or 21 and they’ve got a car and a girlfriend, they’re a proper grownup and I’m a kid. What were our differences? Have I got to pick my words here, I’ve got to try and be diplomatic? I think the big difference at first was that they were three or four years older than me. I don’t know if we’d have hung out if we hadn’t been in a band. As personalities, I think we were all quite different really. What, with Bruce or the band? The strength was in us as a live band. What was the strength of that original partnership? His wife was dying, and that’s how we got back in touch. Were you in contact with Bruce during the intervening years? He played on Wake Up The Nation and I played a bit on his recent album. The return of Bruce Foxton surprised and delighted a lot of people.

I think I’ve probably got lazier in my old age, in terms of having an idea just before you go to sleep and then rushing downstairs and getting a guitar or whatever. So whether that’s a conversation I have with someone, or a phrase or a chord pattern or a melody, whatever it may be, they’re things I just store up. I don’t always actually do it, but I’m always looking to write. I always try and write, I’m always looking to write. It’s started from next to nothing and then just seeing where it goes, building it up, and doing a lot more writing in the studio and on the hoof as well.ĭo you work in sudden bursts of activity, or is it fairly consistent? But in recent years, on recent records, it hasn’t been like that. It’s set in a way, the tempo’s set, the rhythm’s set. So that’s the template and we would have to work round that. With Heliocentric, for instance, like most of the records before it, I will have written a song in its entirety at home or wherever I may have been – chords, the melody, the words – and that would have been it. I don’t think the Weller of 2000 would have been ready to receive that way of working. I have no idea… I’m definitely a lot more open to experimentation and try different styles of music as well. It’s like when people say, ‘What would the 16 year old Paul Weller think of the 56 year old?’ Fuck knows. You’ve got to be ready in life to receive certain things, haven’t you? I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d have been ready to hear it.

Code).What do you think the Paul Weller of 2000 would have thought of Sonik Kicks and the renaissance? This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. His father has been a constant support to him - as his mentor as well as his manager - and has always believed that his son had something special.įavourite track: Tin Soldier by The Small Facesīook: Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes In a rare interview, he describes the chronic shyness he had to overcome how he is still gripped by fear before each performance and how, after he had been dumped by his record label, he was unable to write songs and found that even picking up a guitar felt alien to him. As the lead singer of The Jam, the founder of The Style Council and a hugely successful solo artist, he is one of the most revered music writers and performers of the past 30 years and is cited as an influence by countless other singers. Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the musician Paul Weller.

Paul weller young