Tom Dunne: How Paul Weller's ever changing moods coloured his genius output
Paul Weller plays in Cork and Dublin over the weekend. Picture: Henry Nicholls/ AFP via Getty Images
I am reading reviews of Paul Weller’s recent Liverpool show. He admitted to being completely overcome by the sheer emotional intensity of the welcome. This means he has reached that point in his career — just like Paul McCartney before him — where simply seeing him walk on stage is too much for most people.
I might be among those people. He has been entertaining us now for almost 50 years. For over half that time, he has been known simply as The Modfather, a tip of the hat to his incalculable influence on Britpop. Between that, The Jam, The Style Council and the solo renaissance, it’s all too much.
He is probably as close as my generation has had to a McCartney figure. It is no longer possible to draw a line between the man and the myth. Not that you’d want to. As McCartney has long established: the truth is only interesting up to a point.
For those of us who got on that particular bus during the Jam years, his upcoming gigs in Cork and Dublin will be an emotional affair. The set is kind of chronological. It starts with The Jam, veers in the Style Council, and re-grounds itself in the solo era before heading back to The Jam.
I tell you this as it might help you prepare. The demise of The Jam still hurts. There will still be a sizable part of the audience that would have liked that part of the set to go on forever.
“The Style Council,” they say, “Comin’ over ‘ere, with their jazz timings, and their brass, and their beautiful Dee C Lee, and their inventive chord shapes.” And that's before we even mention “their vastly superior music foil Mick Talbot!”
Those who got on the Weller bus later on, in the solo years, or perish the thought, actually during his jazz era, probably don’t get how big The Jam were. I mean the Pistols, The Clash, the Stranglers, they were all good, but the end of year polls, the readers polls, were just The Jam, The Jam, The Jam.
The Jam really were The Beatles of the punk/new wave era. They were critically acclaimed and topped the charts. They grew up in public. They went from a quickly recorded debut, to era-defining classic, in just three years. They had 18 consecutive top 40 singles, four number one singles and four number one albums!
But it’s the end-of-year readers polls that really convey the depth of public affection. From 1978 onwards, as critics tipped their caps to PIL or Joy Division or Marvin Gaye or Elvis Costello, the public vote was resolutely for The Jam. They were the people’s band, even after their break up.
Looking at Weller’s set, you could be forgiven for thinking he gets that himself. When it veers into the Style Council era, it is stonking hit after stonking hit:
“Look at us,” they seem to say, “Bloody good songs too, you know!” There is still room for three of the greatest songs of all time: and during which you can reflect that you are in the presence of one the greatest writing talents of his generation, a man who gave voice to what it was to be young in the late 1970s.
You might reflect too on why The Jam had to go. Talents like Paul Weller tend to outgrow bands like The Jam. Unless you discover an equal in the band, Lennon & McCartney, Bono & Edge, it can be an issue. When one writer is developing at breakneck speed the formerly stellar output of his school day friends can struggle to keep pace.
Hence old school producers had a fierce reputation for side lining all newly signed bands and replacing them in studio with session musicians. It’s why Brian Wilson replaced the Beach Boys with the Wrecking Crew on It’s harsh but it works. The artist has to make the most of their talent, and tragic as it is for us fans, they can’t really let sentimentality get in the way of that.
Paul Weller will give fans in Cork and Dublin a 31-song snapshot of what that lack of sentimentality looks likes this week. Go on admit it, we are all the better for it. That’s entertainment, indeed.
