Subsidised by the Style Council's hits, once they dried up it had to be sold in 1990 in order to fund a Paul Weller suddenly in reduced circumstances. There you go."Īnother costly investment was his Solid Bond studios in Marble Arch. I got it wrong, and wouldn't do it again. Who wouldn't? To do a label properly, you have to devote to it as much time as you do your own work, or else something's going to suffer, which it did. People tried to talk me out of it, but I just fancied having my own label. During parts of the '80s I was so far up my own arse that I wouldn't like to try to make any logical sense of things at that time. It's hard for me to remember what I was thinking. "There was some of that, but it never come to nothing. Did he have a vision, like Andrew Loog Oldham's '60s Immediate label, of a snappy pop brand for the Swinging '80s? In his pomp he had started his very own record label, Respond, but quality control was spotty and he failed to establish in pop's firmament the names of Vaughan Toulouse, Tracie Young and the Questions. Lee (ex-Wham! backing vocalist, former fellow Style Councillor and occasional solo singer), Paul Weller can look back on a decade that began by his breaking up Britain's most loyally supported rock group, the Jam, and, despite moaning from the rearguard, carrying his audience with him for four years of jazz-funk experiment, sartorial extravagance and oblique whimsy. Father of Nathaniel, five, and Leah, two, by his wife Dee C. Wild Wood's mood of pastoral nostalgia, like Traffic born of "getting it together in the country", also reflects the stage of life in which our man now finds himself. I wouldn't just lift a sound I see no point in that." But I'm always conscious of how people constantly hear these different references in my music, and whether, in a sense, they can hear me. I'm always playing and thinking about the records from the mid-'60s onwards that I grew up with. "I'm kind of a librarian of rock music, and those sounds are always on my mind. "I much prefer those sounds to the state-of-the-art digital sounds now, and consequently my records sound that way," he says. This time a major reference point is Traffic's classic 1967 album Mr Fantasy its wistful English mood suits Weller's voice and songs to a tee. A pop fan and traditionalist through and through, Weller has always shaped his trademark pulpit-thumpers, elegies and beady-eyed observations through the sounds of yesteryear. His attempt to switch the interview onto the offensive before it's even begun is easily parried because there is, in fact, a great deal to like about the record. "Well then," he snapped, "tell me what you liked about my record." But four hours earlier it had been a different, spikier story. They've already got their minds made up," he explains as our interview winds down with the late afternoon sun. People have so many preconceptions about me. "Maybe it's my complexes, but I get the impression that most people dislike me anyway, so I always start every conversation from that point. Nor, heralded by perfunctory handshake and a botched attempt to relax his frown muscles, does he slip into interview mode like a comfy pair of carpet slippers. He relaxes also when confronted by photographer and punk-era veteran Pennie Smith, though the on-camera Weller smile remains as elusive as ever. He derives no pleasure from making videos, or indeed any form of self-promotion, but the reassuringly familiar presence of his old chum, director Pedro Romahanyi, makes the day relatively painless. Installed in a grotto-like doorway under the cameraman's light-bouncing canopy, Weller strums an acoustic guitar and mimes to this gloomy yet oddly addictive bucolic lament. Clambering over stiles and wading through long grass, we make our way to a ruined Jacobean manor house whose roofless and crumbling walls have been reclaimed by the trees of old England. It is here he recorded his September-released second solo album, Wild Wood, and he's back to shoot the promotional video for the title song. We are at the Manor, the residential recording studio formerly owned by Richard Branson and now an EMI asset, an oasis of rural repose in deepest Oxfordshire that Paul Weller has almost come to feel is his second home. The tan, he jests, healthily confirms the popular belief that here is a white guy who wishes he were black. The desert boots are of a hue so subtle that they must have cost a fortune, while his sawn-off Small Faces haircut betrays the golden highlights of recent Spanish weekend break. He is tall, reed-slim and sheathed in navy cords and skinny-ribbed T-shirt. Reading on mobile? Click here to view Wild Wood videoĬalculated by mathematicians to be no less than 35 years old, Paul Weller in person appears to defy this fact by looking exactly as he did when he broke up the Jam over 10 years ago.
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