The Eternal and Ever-Living MOD
Britrock icon Paul Weller speaks about his new album 22 Dreams and why his influence on acts like Arctic Monkeys and The Enemy has proved a source of gratification and inspiration.
Dave Fanning, 04 Nov 2008
Having established himself with The Jam, contenders for the title of finest post-punk singles act of the late ’70s, Paul Weller split the band at a creative peak in 1982 and immersed himself in modernist lounge, soul and jazz with The Style Council. By the early ’90s he was in the doldrums, without a record or publishing deal, and was forced to go back to working the clubs. But 1993’s Wild Wood album re-established him as one of the UK’s biggest selling and most enduring solo acts. Since then, he’s hardly looked back.
DAVE FANNING: You’ve called 22 Dreams a musical journey. Should we listen to it as one whole piece, and not just pick one song out of it?
PAUL WELLER: Well that’s how it was intended, so it’s a proper album in that respect. When I started this record last spring I was obviously mindful of the fact that I was going to be 50 this year, so I thought, ‘I’m really going to go all-out to do something different and try and create what could possibly be my best work ever.’ Just to be contrary I suppose, and to show myself and other people that I can do it. It just seems quite a monumental age. I’m half a century, and that’s really quite unbelievable. But if I don’t think about it I don’t feel any different than how I did when I was 30. I mean, I’m kind of enjoying life a lot more at the moment, so perhaps it suits me, I don’t know.
Were you enjoying life at the beginning when The Jam started?
I loved it, loved all the early days of The Jam. I even liked the bits before we made it. We always had so much fun just driving up the A3 from Woking to London and back doing gigs. And that initial rush of when you’re starting to make it, and you can tell you’re getting more popular and more people are coming to gigs – you kind of only get those times properly once in your life really, that real initial excitement. That was a very exciting time but I enjoyed most of it. I think it was just quite a lot of pressure towards the end. It was, I felt, quite a heavy pressure for a relatively young man as well. So The Style Council was a kind of relief for me, a real weight lifted.
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