Of course, as a journalist you’re often afforded the luxury of access to musicians, celebrities and all manner of people in the public eye. I’d not been this tense since recent nerve-wracked landmarks such as the birth of my daughter and the similarly queasy experience that was Cardiff City’s Championship play-off final loss to Blackpool in May. To not put too fine a point on it and deviate from grammatical elegance, I was bricking it. ![]() Now, more than three decades after first discovering The Jam, I was set to be granted an audience with my idol. I had been set onto the path to musical fulfilment and my guiding light was Paul Weller. For a time in the ‘80s they were the biggest band in Britain and beyond. The Jam, however, were the real deal – a dazzling collision of serrated chords, sharp suited chic, razor sharp lyricism and an unstoppable self-belief that inspired rabid fanaticism amongst their adoring following. Prior to this epochal introduction to new wave, punk and rhythm ‘n’ blues, I had experienced a series of half-baked liaisons with every child’s favourite furry environmentalists The Wombles and teen pop teddy boys Showaddywaddy. The intoxicating, adrenaline rush of furious guitars, sneering vocals and visceral thrills were like nothing I had heard before. When the needle hit the record it was as if a bomb exploded in my mind. Picking up the album, with the impossibly cool trio of Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler staring back at me from the cover, I slid the black vinyl from the pristine white inner sleeve with a sense of excitement. He’s now my brother-in-law and has been since 1986.) It was transparent, even to my pre-pubescent eyes, that he was trying to butter up his girlfriend by cosying up to her little brother, but still, I wasn’t complaining. ![]() I was 10 and my older sister had a boyfriend who allowed me to borrow his copy of The Jam’s All Mod Cons album. It was 1979 when my world changed forever. I’m about to meet my rock ‘n’ roll hero – a voice of a generation who flicked the switch for me both musically, politically and sartorially 30 years previously. ![]() These steel-reinforced butterflies have been in an internal holding pattern from the day confirmation was agreed on an interview I’ve been waiting for my whole life. It’s a knotted ball of nerves, emotion and fear that are there for good reason. “If you can’t take the time or intellect to see what the song’s about – you haven’t got much chance of running the country, have you?” he muses.I HAVE a sizeable ache in the pit of my stomach that refuses to shift. I took that scenario and made a song out of it… it’s a microcosm of class. “It’s about class war, inspired by a right to work march from Liverpool going past Eton College. But when asked about David Cameron saying he liked Eton Rifles, a little bit of his old anger emerges. He avoids talking about party politics these days, having had his fingers burnt in the 80s, he says. The modfather says his latest album is about politics with a small “p”, including how he feels about the “nanny state” he believes Britain has now become. “It just felt like the right time to do it,” says Weller, “we were both losing loved ones and mortality comes into question, and it was born out of that.” We were both losing loved ones, and mortality comes into question.”Īfter virtually no contact since the band split, the singer told us he contacted old bandmate after hearing that Foxton’s wife was unwell. ![]() “It just felt like the right time to do it. The album also features the singer’s old bandmate from The Jam, Bruce Foxton, playing bass on a couple of the tracks. His dad, who Weller often described as his best friend, died last year, but for close on four decades he’d steered his rocker son through all his musical incarnations, including The Jam, The Style Council and nearly 20 years as a solo artist. The singer, now 51, has dedicated the album to his late father, John, who’d been his manager since the young Weller started playing in a band, aged just 14. And as he gets ready to tour with it, many critics are hailing Wake Up the Nation as one of the modfather’s best to date, universally giving it five stars. Paul Weller rarely gives interviews on camera, he says he doesn’t like talking about his songs, and prefers to let his lyrics do the talking for him.īut he sat down with Channel 4 News to talk about his tenth solo album, which comes nearly three decades after he disbanded The Jam.
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