This issue is dedicated to the memory of Stuart (Stu Who) Henderson, who was my first ‘boss’ when I was a seventeen-year-old screenprinter. Stu allowed and encouraged me to self-produce and publish my first fanzine during working hours, and so, sent me on my way... x
t’s winter 1980, and I’m salivating over an NME review of Sound Affects by Paul Du Noyer, whilst simultaneously sifting through a bag of second-hand clothes. I yearn to write like Du Noyer and at night brand new clothes drape my dreams. On the train trip to purchase Sound Affects I gaze at empty foundries, unaware that a
class war is being cruelly waged upon the hard-working people of my town and in every city north of London; for whilst bank notes fall like unholy confetti on the Westminster ‘elite’, us boys about town are more akin to shit paper caught in wind.
At Lark-hour I open my window and breathe in petrol as asthmatic cars out-shriek songbirds. A towel absorbs moisture on the windowsill and damp spots blot the woodchip. A box beneath my bed is crammed with music mags and cuttings of The Jam. ‘That’s Entertainment’once a maudlin working-class lament, now an end-of-show anthem - stirs me to life and reaffirms my pop-art approach to life; namely to conjure art from the everyday and find magic in the mundane. My solitude isn’t
tranquil, though; I long to kiss against a Munch-like landscape with a stale perfume promise on my lips.
Contrary to Buddhist teachings, ascetic living is not the route to spiritual and artistic fulfilment; undernourished souls crave comfort; Calor Gas heaters can’t fuel creatives and canisters full of coins are for Church roof repairs. My comprehensive education is far from comprehensive. In the absence of academic guidance, Weller’s words educate and inspire; they assert that poetic notions are not only the preserve of the ‘cultured’ classes: ‘I wanted to show that poetry wasn’t just for the highbrow’, he told Dylan Jones in the book Magic. I could relate to Weller’s sensitivity. The Jam were my comprehensive education and All Mod Cons my literary lexicon.
Like Weller, I’m torn too between romance and rage. On All Mod Cons, ill-tempered tirades coexist with unabashed confessionalsof love and longing, much like Eleanor Marx’s description of her father Karl: ‘he could hate so fiercely only because he could love so profoundly.’
Back then, when my ideals were as clearly defined as my jaw-line, Wellerian integrity and an Orwellian sense of justice were my life-code; enemies it can make, and trouble it can bring, but I never shirked from my Arthurian responsibilities.
Many of us have travelled upon the same route to 66 as Weller, negotiating our way through the wastelands of time and space; feeling the warmth of the ‘golden country’ breeze that whispers freedom; convening with nature and catching true glimpses of ourselves in the murky pools of adulthood - the black river that is ‘always moving but contained’. Incredibly, over four decades on from the release of the seminal Sound Affects LP, Weller has created one of his most beautifully realised LPs. 66 is an extraordinary piece of work; richly textured and as intricate and complex as Confessions Of A Pop Group, yet never overwrought.
I’m honoured to be sitting here listening to a pre-release copy of the brilliant new LP, courtesy, as always, of Polly at Paul Weller HQ. The spring sunshine filters through the blinds, but there is no damp towel on the windowsill, nor black mould on the woodchip. I sit in reasonable comfort as I write my review, conjuring imagery in my head; wrapping my tongue around words, and creating literary rhythms that fill me with the same feeling of élan that a fifteen-year-old boy felt in a cold council house as Sound Affects played and he conspired to change the world resplendent in second-hand clothes.
DREW HIPSON EDITOR
WORDS:cHRISTOpHe vaIllanT
o, I’ve been into the ‘mod thing’ ever since my teenage years. Strangely, there was a big mod gang in my little town of Avignon - south of France. And I was in. Like many young mods, I used to have a picture of Paul on my bedroom wall (it was the one from the Style Council era with Paul dressed with a coat and a cane with young mods in parkas watching him walking by). I started playing music in a French mod influenced band called Strawberry Smell in 1990 (we released several recordsincluding a 7" on the Detour mod label - and played all around Europe at mod events). After many many years playing in pop bands and releasing records as I was working simultaneously in a music shop, I started my own Le SuperHomard’s project in 2016. Le SuperHomard’s moniker comes from a 1966 french movie.
At the end of 2018 I was very surprised to learn that Paul himself had added a song of mine
called ‘Black Diamond on his end of the year playlist in Uncut magazine. (I learned later that it was his bass player Andy Crofts who has introduced him to my music - thank you Andy!).
Soon after that, in 2019, I started to communicate with Paul directly and he invited me and my new Le SuperHomard band to support him on his European tour (scheduled in 2020), but unfortunately the pandemic happened and everything was cancelled.
So Paul asked me to remix his song ‘On Sunset’, I did it, he enjoyed my work, and it was included in a remix EP released late 2020.
I started a new collaborative project with Australian crooner Maxwell Farrington at the same period, we signed with Talitres Records and started to tour intensively together in France to promote our debut album in 2021/2022.
I was still in contact with Paul and one day he sent me a text message: "Why don’t we try to write a song together ?" After the initial "Oh my god, oh my god!" reaction, I quickly sent him a couple of demos I was working on, trying to forget that it was intended for one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
The fist one was ‘A Glimpse Of You’ music - he enjoyed it, but
also noticed another piano demo song (‘My Best Friend’s Coat’) and said to me that he was gonna work on both to add vocal melodies and lyrics to them. Then one day I received the vocals and a picture of the handwritten lyrics from him; it was fabulous! I couldn’t believe it! Now these two songs were two Weller/Vaillant songs. It was real. Paul also asked me to add some synths on a new song of his called ‘Flying Fish’. Soon after that Paul told me that he would like to keep our two songs (and everything I had recorded at home: guitars, bass, piano, keys…) for his forthcoming new album 66 and Ben Gordelier recorded drums on them at Black Barn studios.
In early 2023 Paul invited Maxwell and me to open for him on his now rescheduled May European tour - so we did it - and I finally met Paul for real. We spent two unforgettable weeks with Paul and his band touring all around northern Europe and also for two other French dates in September. It was incredible.
I’d often read that Paul Weller is the smartest and most stylish man on earth; now I can confirm since I met him: he is pure class.
In June 2023 Paul invited me to join him at Abbey Road to watch the recording of the strings and horn parts of the new album. The over-talented Hannah Peel was conducting the orchestra in the Beatles’ Studio 2, and they
recorded orchestral parts of the album (including the two songs I have co-written with Paul). After this, I also spent a couple of incredible days at Black Barn with Paul and Charles Rees for the mix of the two songs. It was a real pinch-yourself week, as you can imagine. And now these songs are here, I am so proud of all this work we did together; what a journey! I hope you will love them, and the whole record, because 66 is a fantastic album!
CHRISTOPHE VAILLANT
Paul Weller and Christophe Vaillant, Paradiso, Amsterdam, May 2023.
‘e're all buzzing on it, obviously, or we wouldn't be doing it. But, of course, when that comes to an end, when you've completed it, it's like “Oh fuck, now we’ve got to play it to everyone else!” And I don't know what they're going to think of it. I don't know. So you never know, you’ve just got to do it the best you can, and make it what you believe in. And then you put it out into the world…a bit like children, really. Put all this love and dedication into it, and then you have to go “Off you go, mate!”
That’s Paul Weller talking to me about the new album 66, words that I never thought I’d be typing or saying out loud. The funny thing about that quote is that it could quite easily be written by me about my Paul Weller Fan Podcast series. Launched in December 2020 as a silly idea created in lockdown, Desperately Seeking Paul, my true story of giving up my career as a radio presenter with one big regretnever getting to interview my
hero, the legendary singer, songwriter and musician Paul Weller. What became a threeyear labour of love - an incredible series of 180 episodesculminated in a wonderful two hour interview with Paul Weller, recorded at Black Barn Studios at the end of 2023. Thankfully the reaction was incredible; off the scale. Amazing feedback from everyone - fans, the Weller camp, band members, podcast guests, the media and more. What I couldn’t say at the time was that Paul and the team at Weller HQ also asked if I’d interview Paul about the new album. Content that would be filmed and used in the promotional push for the LP. Of course, I said yes. And obviously Paul would like you to hear the album first. Well if he insists!.
What followed was a WeTransfer of the songs, along with the track listing of the album, and a heap of notes for the credits, along with a second email with a bunch of bonus songs. “He wanted you to have everything”. Hilariously, I was just about to take the kids to swimming lessons. Damn! The first listen would have to wait. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure if I really enjoy a first listen or not these days. It’s a lot of pressure. What if this is the one that I don’t like? This time around, there’s the added pressure of what if I have to lie to Paul and tell him that I like it? What if I have to interview him knowing that in the back of my mind I’m faking it?
What I can say is that I needn’t have worried. This isn’t that album. 66 is yet another astonishing piece of work. From jaunty album opener ‘Ship Of Fools’ - with what would appear to be a scathing political lyric by Suggs, that is up there with the best of The Style Council - to a bunch of wonderfully uplifting soulful stompers (created with Dr Robert, Noel Gallagher and Bobby Gillespie) and a beautiful love song called ‘Nothing’, which has an even deeper meaning when you discover the story behind it. A couple of songs created with Christophe Vaillant from Le SuperHomard are really special and have that beautiful, unique sense of melody that French musicians seem to have.
What’s really lovely about this album is that every single instrument and every moment can be heard; nothing is buried in the mix. If it couldn’t be heard, it was removed. So, we hear Steve Brookes and Richard Hawley playing side by side, left ear, right ear on my headphones on ‘I Woke Up’; we hear Say She She gloriously shining though in the mix on ‘In Full Flight’, with an astonishing sonic palette created by White Label and we hear the duelling electric guitars of Josh McClorey and Steve Cradock on ‘Soul Wandering’, with huge, layered backing vocals from Louise Marshall and Sumudu Jayatilaka. All fabulous and fresh with nods to the past but always driving forward.
Album closer ‘Burn Out’, with lyrics from Erland Cooper, is a career highlight to my ears. There’s an end of an era vibe to it, but there are embers of hope, I guess, as at the end of the song Paul sings, ‘I'm not tired of living, I'm all right’.
We get some great vibes from Max Beesley across a few tracks and lush strings, recorded at Abbey Road, from Britten Sinfonia, with arrangements by Hannah Peel.
Special mention also goes to Jacko Peake; his return to the band playing sax and flute has added so much to the live experience over the past couple of years, and the same is true of his contributions to this LP. As Paul said to me, ‘I just think his playing has always been good, but now he's just exceptional, and I just love hearing him play.’
It’s a huge honour to have been trusted with the album advance all those months ago. But here’s the funny thing; I caned it in the lead up to the interview with Paul, but then put it back in the box, hidden away for release day. I’m a fan. I’ll always be a fan. And like you, I want to get swept up in that release day buzz. A new album from Paul Weller. It’s only fair that we all get to experience that together.
DAN JENNINGS
WORDS:STeve TRIgg
ovember 7th, 1980 - I parked my Lambretta outside Bracknell Sports Centre and made my way inside to witness one of the best gigs I’d ever been to - the best band in the fucking world, live and dangerous. Fast-forward to December 3rd, 1982, and I’m stood, broken-hearted, as I watch the same band take a final bow at Wembley Arena. Fast-forward again to April 23rd, 2024, and I’m getting ready, as the cameras roll, to perform two songs from the new Weller album 66 for a select audience as part of the new series of Later!
Back track to January 2022 to Black Barn studio, where I’d just finished recording the last few horn parts I’d arranged for ‘In A Silent World’ and was just about to pack up, when Paul asked us to play a short simple riff that he wanted to drop into a new song that we hadn’t actually heard; it was just a few chords at that point – it turned out to be ‘Rise Up Singing’ – two album tracks in the
bag and we never knew it. It was a year further on before we were back at Black Barn - February 2023. This time to lay down ‘Gotta Get On’ and ‘Jumble Queen’ I’d really gone to town on the arrangement for ‘Jumble Queen’. Working on a few basic ideas that Paul had hummed to me, I multilayered sax and trumpet and even added in a bit of piccolo trumpet for good measure –luckily, my efforts met with the Weller seal of approval, and we celebrated with a nice cup of tea!
Another year on and by now we knew the album was happening and it was sounding amazing. This time we were laying down ‘Soul Wandering’ and ‘Nothing’; probably my two favourite tracks. Paul at his most mellow and introspective, so I channelled my inner Burt Bacharach and came up with the twin flugelhorn parts courtesy of myself and fellow Stone Foundation brasser Dave Boraston.
If you’d have told the scrawny little mod peering up in awe at The Jam back in 1980 that one day he’d be helping Paul Weller celebrate his 66th birthday with what may well be his best, and certainly his most personal set of songs for years, I’d have laughed at you. I’m honoured, blessed, grateful, disbelieving and just a bit smug, all in equal measure.
STEVE TRIGG
n the Saturday night before 66 was released my phone rang unexpectedly. It was Charles Rees, the manager and engineer at Black Barn studio. Charles enthused to me about how great he thought 66 was, and, while doing so, made an interesting comment: in the 20-plus years he’d been working with Paul, he said, it’s the only album that they’ve produced at the Barn entirely alone. No producer, no co-producer, no interference of any kind. All the major decisionmaking was Paul’s. For that reason, Charles felt 66 was especially “pure”. I thought 66 had a particular quality that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe that was it – that 66 is the most intensely unalloyed Weller album he’s made this century. It’s Paul aged 66, exactly as he is, and exactly as he wants to be.
But here’s the rub – 66 is also one of his most collaborative records. If it has one immediately obvious feature, it’s the sheer number of
other well-known musicians and writers who’ve contributed to the songs, including Noel Gallagher, Suggs, Bobby Gillespie, Le SuperHomard’s Christophe Vaillant, Erland Cooper, Richard Hawley, Dr Robert, Mick Talbot, White Label’s Tom Doyle and Anth Brown. Even Suggs’ old mate Chalky (as pictured on the inner sleeve of Madness’s first album) gets a look-in. The brilliant Hannah Peel arranges the string parts and, yes, let’s not forget Steve Cradock, Jacko Peake and other stalwarts from Weller’s live band also feature.
It’s a generous thing for a songwriter like Paul to open up his music to other people. He’s admitted that, on a purely practical level, 17 solo albums into his career it’s exciting – or perhaps necessary – to get new angles and fresh ideas from people you respect. But the thing is, it totally works. I don’t think at any point on 66 I felt I was listening to anyone else but Paul Weller. In fact, it reminds me a little of The Style Council’s Café Bleu, a record on which Paul played the auteur yet, even when it was, say, Everything But The Girl (in-all-but-name) performing ‘The Paris Match’, it felt like it was totally him
66 welcomes you in gently with the delightful strum of ‘Ship Of Fools’, a song dating from Weller’s 2021 sessions with Suggs and featuring, according to the MOJO cover story by Will
Hodgkinson, a Suggs lyric about the strange, imbalanced vessel that is Madness – and life in general, of course. Yet Paul’s vocal delivery on the bridge section is so impassioned and personal it becomes about him; and it’s the same with the glam rockin’ ‘Jumble Queen’, with a Noel Gallagher lyric that, in Paul’s hands, becomes bitter and angry and cathartic in a way Noel’s plaintive songwriting isn’t and probably will never be. I can also imagine Andrew ‘Chalky’ Chalk, who these days lives quietly in a caravan by the sea, was pretty impressed with the transformation of his poem into the epic, joyful soul of ‘Nothing’, all portmanteau synth, rippling piano and subtle woodwind.
In fact, the more I listen to 66 the more I see it as primarily a soul album. The uplifting, sophisticated neo-disco of ‘Flying Fish’ – a great, great tune – and ‘Rise Up Singing’ both have a genuinely elevating, spiritual feel, and while ‘Soul Wandering’ is –despite its title – a rock tune, with some great wiggy guitar, it’s ‘still searching’ bridge inhabits that same trippy, jazzy soul territory as Bowie’s last recordings. A curious kind of deeply British modern soul music. And the dark, Gallic waltz of ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’ –music by the suitably French Christophe Valliant – and the tumbling and melodically beautiful ‘A Glimpse Of You’ transport me back again to the Café Bleu era. The first time I
played them, they felt like old friends who’ve lived a whole life somewhere else, only suddenly to arrive back on your doorstep, careworn with age and experience but still recognisable as your much-loved companions.
Then there’s ‘Burn Out’, the last track on the album – and a survivor of the Fat Pop sessions –that serves the same valedictory purpose as ‘Rockets’ does on On Sunset, evoking a celestial journey to beyond, as our world, and us, slowly burns out. It’s a wonderful end to a fantastic record.
Charles Rees had rung me that Saturday night to put a case for the track ‘I Woke Up’, which my 140-word capsule review of 66 for MOJO found fault with Paul for over-emoting vocally on (I said the same of ‘Sleepy Hollow’, a similarly slow, acoustic-based number). I must confess, a few days later ‘I Woke Up’ had become probably one of my favourite tracks. For, if anything, 66 is a grower, a shapeshifting creature that reveals itself in its own time, and changes along with your own ever-changing moods.
So, like I said, the most Weller of Weller albums this century…
PAT GILBERT Writer at MOJO Editor,
MOJO Special Editions www.patgilbert.co.uk
WORDS:DReW HIpSOn
t’s been a long and winding road on the route to 66, from the backstreets and hedgerows of Woking to the summer lawns and early morning mists of Surrey riverbanks and the sandpits of Horsell Common, where the embers of yesterday smoulder and drift above the wheat fields and country lanes where lovers’ kisses are captured forever neath dripping trees; above the Post Office Tower and a Pimlico flat, where nestled in a nook, a green belt boy pens songs that stir a generation. It is a journey of transit vans and cross-channel ferries; airport bars and tour bus card schools. A journey from Marble Arch to the ChampsÉlysées; from Brighton promenade to the boulevards of France; a journey through the wilderness and back to Stanley Road; to Marriott Lane and the wild woods of Woking; to the loss of a colossus and a Shelley-esque quest to wake a sleeping nation; a journey to the cosmic fringes of the stratosphere, beyond the
gravitational pull of compromise, to a stardust-sprinkled barn in deepest Ripley where magic is conjured and a career-best album is created beneath a million stars.
Though there has rarely been a bump in the road on the journey to 66, many critics felt that Weller had taken the easy route during his solo career: ‘a mid-life ramble’, according to journalist Iestyn George. ‘He’s motoring along,’ wrote Stuart Bailie in the NME, ‘the wind in his hair, the maps discarded, steering away from the public at large; he has become the rock ’n’ roll equivalent of a Sunday driver’, whilst Caroline Sullivan in The Guardian opined that ‘not only does he feel he’s ‘driving nowhere, going no place, just drifting’, he sounds it’.
Many critics also frowned upon Weller’s worship – both musically and sartorially - of Steve Marriott and the Small Faces and used the desultory term ‘Dadrock’ to label what they perceived as his ‘earnest musicianship’. It also afforded them the opportunity to dismiss The Style Council as some sort of musical aberration: ‘He’s recovered from his cod-soul illness and is now hooked on the Small Faces’ (Paul Moody, NME); ‘The frilly blouse that was The Style Council’ (Fiona Leith, Scotland On Sunday’); ‘A collective specialising in weedy white soul and ersatz jazz’ (Mat Snow, Vox).
Weller’s left-wing leanings came under fire too; even though his lyrics during the solo years were, for the most part, personal ruminations rather than political. Roger Morton in the NME regarded the Small Faces influence as a ‘Mod-Stalinist rewriting of pop history’, whilst Stuart Bailie described Weller’s music as ‘rock ‘n’ roll socialism’. Worst of all though, was Hamish Smash (reviewing Weller live for The List), who described songs from the first two solo LPs as ‘loony lefty ravings’!
Weller has always been suspicious of the predominantly middle-class music press, whom he metaphorically threatened to cut down with a Marley-esque
axe on ‘Woodcutter’s Son’, and not so metaphorically, in the case of journalist David Quantick: Weller called Quantick to settle matters physically following a review that he considered too personal. Ironically, his biggest press faux pas was of his own doing: prodded by a Polydor press agent to make ‘good copy’, and eager to distance himself from the trendy left of punk, he professed allegiance to the monarchy and proclaimed that he’d vote Conservative at the next general election –comments that, not surprisingly, came back to haunt him. Weller quickly learned to let his lyrics convey his thoughts: ‘I wouldn’t say I’m a very articulate person,’ he told a journalist in 1979, ‘but I
seem to be able to articulate when I write lyrics.’ Eager to avoid being overanalysed, he described himself as ‘dull and simple’ in reference to the first-person character of ‘David Watts’.
However, as an ardent autodidact (his bookshelf included, amongst many others, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism And Letters of George Orwell, and a tome on Trotsky) he became increasingly more politicised and utilised the press to convey his message: ostensibly to oust the Conservative Party from power in the general elections of the 1980s. Though part of a loose collective of like-minded leftwing musicians, like The Redskins, Billy Bragg and Elvis Costello, not all of his peers approved. Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout, for instance, felt that Weller’s political invectives had no place in popular music, which was ironic, as Marvin Gaye, so revered and eulogised by McAloon (on the Steve McQueen track ‘When The Angels’) had created a seminal LP (What’s Going On), which was essentially a socio-political commentary on American politics, ecological issues, racism and the after-effects of the Vietnam war.
The most intriguing aspect of Weller’s work is the symbiosis of romance and rage; both expressed with equal intensity. On All Mod Cons, for example, he
threatens to fuck up the life of a lecherous businessman and then longs from afar his English rose Gill Price. Likewise, his harrowing tale of a right-wing assault in the bowels of the London Underground (‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’) coexists with one of the most poignant paeans to first love ever written (‘Fly’). As well as penning polemics that seethed at authority he also stuck a stick in the ant nest of mass conformity: the small town teens already submerged in the alehouse-stale attitudes of their elders (‘Away From The Numbers’).
Like Orwell, Weller railed against consumer capitalism, and in particular, the ‘swill bucket’ of modern advertising (superbly observed in the lyrics to ‘Shopping’); a world of vulgar slogans and empty promises, where Mellow Birds won’t make you smile and a Coke song won’t bring harmony. Like Orwell, his concern was the political ennui created by a culture of pop art packaged, mass-produced emotion (the sub-text of Sound Affects). Weller’s dichotomy is that the ‘over-the-counter culture’ that he is critical of (‘More’) was the foundation of pop art and formed the linear aesthetic of modernism.
It was perhaps inevitable that Weller would commission British pop art pioneer (and creator of his beloved Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve) Sir Peter Blake to create the cover
art for Stanley Road.
‘We got in Peter Blake to design the cover. I was overawed at first and it took a while for us to communicate properly and for me to get across exactly what I wanted. I didn't like his first draft so I did a sketch of how I thought it should look. I gave it to him nervously. He was really nice and we finally got it right. He asked me to bring along objects and photos that meant a lot to me. We settled on using my Small Faces' Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane figurines and pictures of Aretha Franklin, John Lennon, and George Best - I was into football when I was a kid.’
Though the sleeve art for 66 is somewhat basic compared to Blake’s customary pop art collages, it may be more symbolic of its contents than its simple design suggests: the egg-yolk yellow numbers dominating a black background could be interpreted as the theme of rebirth which underpins the lyrical content: ‘I’m born again’ sings Weller on the final track ‘Burn Out’.
What Weller exudes most is integrity; it oozes from his every pore. On the route to 66 he has rarely wavered from his firmlyheld beliefs and has steadfastly stuck to his principles: he called out the punk imposters of the 70s and the ‘cocktail set wankers’ of the 80s, and has refused to prostitute his greatest hits on
nostalgia tours or pimp himself as a heritage act. He is indifferent to industry awards, and, unlike Costello – who put ‘old doubts and enmities aside’ – declined a knighthood. He values artistic freedom most and gauges his success by the standard of his work.
Weller inherited a strong work ethic from his father and like Bernard Crick’s description of Orwell in his biography A Life, ‘could only see a holiday as a chance to begin a different kind of work.’ For example, whilst cooped up in a caravan in the seaside town of Selsey during a break from touring and recording, he crafted one of his finest songs - ‘The Eton Rifles’. Ironically, though, it was during his first ‘proper’ holiday – a two-week trip to Italy – that he reconsidered his role and decided to split The Jam.
At the peak of his literary powers Weller created Orwellian sitcoms set to music; no more so than on Setting Sons with its bleak behind-the-curtains vignettes, with, at its apex an Orwellian take on Terry & June (‘Private Hell’) and an astonishing treatise about a trio of teen idealists torn apart by the realities of adulthood (‘Thick As Thieves’). Weller’s finest fusion though, is the aforementioned masterpiece ‘The Eton Rifles’, in which he pits Citizen Smith-like ‘urban guerrillas’ - whose manifestos are formed in London pubs - against middle-class
What Weller exudes most is integrity; it oozes from his every pore. On the route to 66 he has rarely wavered from his firmly-held beliefs and has steadfastly stuck to his principles.
Marxists who compose ‘revolutionary symphonies’ and bed ‘charming young thing[s]’ - a direct reference to the wealthy left-wing book publisher Ravelston and his girlfriend Hermione from Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying; the novel which later inspired the lyrics to ‘Going Underground’.
Yet, as much as Weller was proud of his working-class roots, his objective was to become classless (inspired by a chapter in Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia). He was frustrated by the off-thepeg punks, mods and skins who posed no threat to the status quo and bleated slogans like ‘Smash the system’ without knowing what it actually was - hence the sardonic laugh following the line ‘What’s the system?’ in ‘Saturday’s Kids’; as Owen Jones (described, incidentally, as ‘Our generation’s Orwell’) wrote in his revelatory book The Establishment: ‘We don’t know who or what [the system] is, or what it looks like –which suits its members rather well.’
Weller’s work has endured because he cares; the privations of living in a Victorian terrace house with an outside toilet are cemented to his psyche like mortar. His working-class roots are his socio-political reference point; the gradient that keeps his feet on the ground and maintains distance from the chattering classes. He instantly related to a poem written by Suggs’ mate
Andrew ‘Chalky’ Chalk, about their lifelong friendship formed in London’s dilapidated Victorianbuilt Cavendish Mansions: ‘I immediately connected with the words,’ he told Dan Jennings, ‘I could think about me and my family, how we started off with fuck all.’ The poem became the beautifully heartfelt ‘Nothing’.
Like Orwell, Weller’s political focal point has always been ‘common decency’ (the term used by Orwell when asked what he was fighting for during the Spanish Civil War) hence donations collected at recent concerts on behalf of the charity Gaza Go Bragh, which sends emergency assistance to the displaced communities of Gaza.
Weller has stated that 66 is not a concept LP; however, there is an overarching theme that stretches back to This Is The Modern World (inspired by Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest): the effect of state control (enforced lockdowns during the pandemic) on the individual and the resultant loss of identity. ‘I Woke Up’ conjures a John Wyndam scenario of waking to a world irrevocably changed forever: ‘Waiting out the long, long days/With nothing much to say’. Similarly, ‘Flying Fish’ - a song that shimmers like salmon in sunlight - mentions that ‘the roads are silent too/No car, no bus, no clue/Stuck between two walls’,
and ‘Burn Out’ (written by Erland Cooper) references being ‘Lonely in my own home’ and not seeing ‘the others for days or months’. There is metaphorical use of water, streams and oceans throughout the album, which is used to convey the idea of being emotionally adrift, a detail also noted by John Lewis in his excellent review of 66 in Uncut: ‘A recurrent theme seems to be water,’ he wrote, ‘there is much talk of standing by the shore, of ships, of the apparent freedom of the sea. The oceanic metaphor is connectivity, and 66 seems soaked in a quest for community and comradeship.’ The Suggspenned ‘Ship Of Fools’ (apparently about Madness, but interpreted by Weller as being about ‘Boris Johnson’s cronyism
and all those pricks in positions of power’), ‘Flying Fish’ and ‘Burn Out’ all suggest a populace drowning in waters as polluted as the morally soiled ‘inner circle’ of the Eton ‘elite’.
The loyalty of Weller’s fan base can never be underestimated; however, many of the unchanging men - who would gladly see him betray his musical instincts and reform The Jamhave bemoaned the dearth of ‘angry songs’ on 66 and the fact that it is the spectre of The Style Council which looms large.
‘I suppose there are touches of the Style Council's À Paris EP and Café Bleu: ‘Down In The Seine’, ‘The Paris Match’, and all that stuff,’ Weller told John Lewis in
‘Ship Of Fools’, ‘Flying Fish’ and ‘Burn Out’ all suggest a populace drowning in waters as polluted as the morally soiled ‘inner circle’ of the Eton ‘elite’.
Uncut, ‘My lyrics were trying to tap into that vibe, get into that mind-set of strolling down the Champs-Élysées, hanging out down by the Seine.’ Indeed, it seems that Weller has tapped into Scott Walker’s interpretations of Jacques Brel (‘I approached the words to ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’ as if they had already been written in French,’ he told Will Hodgkinson in MOJO, ‘and I was doing the translation.’) and the cinematic jazz of movie score composers such as Krzysztof Komeda, Georges Delerue and Francis Lai, all of whom inspired the Euro-mod aesthetic of The Style Council.
‘We were inspired by a lot of French new wave films,’ Mick Talbot told me, ‘At the time that we started, there was a season of French new wave films on TV, and we would come into the studio the next morning and discuss many diverse things about the film we'd seen the night before. It could be anything from the mac a character was wearing in a café to the type of organ we thought they were using on the soundtrack. I remember being particularly pleased to find a soundtrack EP from Un Homme Et Une Femme [a 1966 3-track EP featuring soundtrack music by Francis Lai from said film] in a charity shop some while after, and on hearing it, it immediately cast me back to early 83.’
The Left Bank authenticity of ‘The Paris Match’ and the À Paris EP
version of ‘Party Chambers’ can be attributed to the distinctive accordion style of Parisian musician Jean-Louis Rocques, similarly, it is the contributions of French songwriter and musician Christophe Vaillant (Le SuperHomard) that lend ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’ and ‘A Glimpse Of You’ an unmistakeably Gallic feel. ‘I can’t explain it in musical terms,’ Weller told John Lewis in Uncut, ‘but his songs have that French thing going on. There’s something in the harmonies and the melodies’. On ‘A Glimpse Of You’ Weller retraces the lyrical steps of ‘The Paris Match’ ‘down the avenues and cobbled mews’, and ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’ not only references ‘Down In The Seine’ (‘Down by the river in soulless penury’), but also uses a similar leitmotif of unresolved musical spirals.
Weller and Talbot returned to said source of inspiration for the final Style Council LP, which, according to Paul Lester in Uncut, ‘provides the most credible and most compelling depiction of the real Paul Weller: the sentimental, wistful romantic luxuriating in European melancholy.’ It is a description that could be equally applied to much of 66, with its shared musical grandeur and sense of melancholy; not forgetting the recurrent refrain of ‘It’s A Very Deep Sea’: ‘I’ll come to the surface and come to my senses.’
One of Weller’s key strengths is
his acute ear for melody, and it is when he has strayed from this that his work has been noticeably weakened. The melodies on 66 are extraordinary, with several tracks transcending even his own high-water mark: ‘Nothing’, ‘My Best Friend’s Coat’, ‘I Woke Up’, ‘A Glimpse Of You’, ‘In Full Flight’ and ‘Burn Out’. The result is one of Weller’s most beautifully crafted and most fully realised LPs, and in retrospectives will be regarded as a major work in the Weller canon.
Like On Sunset (of which 66 most resembles), the LP ends with a Bowie-esque flourish, though whereas ‘Rockets’ has distinctly Hunky Dory chords and phrasing, ‘Burn Out’ taps into the dense ambience of Bowie’s ‘Sons Of The Silent Age’ from the Heroes LP. Weller mournfully croons an apocalyptic lyric by Erland Cooper, whilst engineer Charles Rees - who co-produced the track – takes on the role of Tony Visconti. Like Bernard Herrmann’s title theme for the film Taxi Driver, saxophone (wonderfully played by Jacko Peake) drifts over the surface lending a similar tension, which suggests a disorientating mental state. The finality of the song, is suddenly shattered as the music subsides and the narrator awakes from a fevered-dream (the murk of lockdown), back to normality with Weller and the band heard tinkering in the studio.
As well as marking Weller’s 66th year around the sun, the title also
references a landmark year in British culture. As well as England winning the World Cup, 1966 was also the year that The Beatles released Revolver, the album that had such an impact on Weller in the 1980s, particularly the track ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which was used as the intro music on several of the solo tours. As he told Miranda Sawyer in The Observer magazine: ‘’Tomorrow Never Knows’ was 1966, and that's still yet to be bettered, in terms of forward-looking, futuristic sound.’ 1966 was also the year of Pet Sounds, Face To Face and Unity; the year of Alfie, Georgy Girl and Un Homme Et Une Femme; the year that the Class Sketch is aired on The Frost Report (and later inspires the lyrics to ‘Man In The Corner Shop’); the year when Batman first crusades on the small screen and Cathy comes home; when The Kinks laze on a sunny afternoon, The Who get ready for a quick one, The Action hold on, The Creation create and The Beatles change the musical landscape at Chiswick House.
Weller’s journey to 66 takes us past the rivers and silent roads, through the silver trees that lead us home; beyond the rolling tides and the majesty of the sea and a million stars, where we hope to catch a glimpse of something greater than you and I, as Weller sings to the sky, and to us too.
Drew Hipson
PAUL WELLER: 66 TRACK BY TRACK
SHIP OF FOOLS 8/10
DREW HIPSON
This is an uncharacteristically mellow album opener for Weller. The allegorical lyrics, penned by Suggs, are aimed at Boris Johnson (who is likened to a poisonous species of jellyfish) and his rudderless government, this maritime metaphor reads like the central theme of The Jam’s ‘Going Underground’ about the rejection of ‘striving to be better’.
PHIL MONGREDIEN
THE GUARDIAN
The vocal melody recalls Team America’s ‘The End of an Act’, which probably was not intentional.
PAUL WELLER
Suggs’s lyrics on ‘Ship Of Fools’ [are] having a bit of a dig at the
sense of corruption and cronyism under Boris Johnson and the rest of the Conservative Party.
FLYING FISH 10/10
DREW HIPSON
Picks up from the discorama dance groove of a section of ‘Mirror Ball’ from the On Sunset LP with its pulsing bass by Josh McClorey and programmed drums and shimmering synths by engineer Charles Rees. As much as the songs on 66 were sculpted over a period of three years, none of the vitality of the songs have been lost in the process, and ‘Flying Fish’, with its soaring chorus recalls the Manic Street Preachers’ Abba homages on the LP The Ultra Vivid Lament (‘like The Clash playing Abba’, according to singer-songwriter James Dean Bradfield), which, coincidentally, also deals with the emotional impact of lockdown isolation.
ALEXIS PEDRITIS
THE GUARDIAN
‘Flying Fish’ rests on disco drums and burbling synths and features a distinctly Abba-esque melody: to be specific, it sounds pleasingly like ‘The Winner Takes It All’, but its gleeful buoyancy makes 66’s preoccupation with ageing and the passing of time seem curiously besides the point.
JOHN LEWIS, UNCUT
A fairly standard 12-bar blues that is completely transformed into a piece of throbbing electronica by Vaillant’s contributions on
analogue synths, such as the Roland Juno-6, the Oberheim, and the Minimoog.
PAUL WELLER
That was another early one we did. I wanted to move it away from the demo, which was me playing this rhythmic guitar and Josh totally got it.
JUMBLE QUEEN 7/10
DREW HIPSON
In light of Noel Gallagher’s marital situation, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that the lyrics are a stinging slight about the pre-nuptials aimed at his ex-wife. Musically, the two-chord attack is similar to the Fat Pop co-write ‘True’ bolstered with horns by Stone Foundation’s Steve Trigg and Dave Boraston.
JOHN LEWIS, UNCUT
A stomping piece of glammy punk called ‘Jumble Queen’, which sounds like ‘New Rose’ being covered by The Stooges, accompanied by a colliery banda riot of growling guitars, echoswamped drums and Beatles-y horns.
PAT CARTY, HOT PRESS
Noel Gallagher helps with the parp and clang of the ‘checking news for conspiracies’ ‘Jumble Queen’, a cut that bubbles with the class of vim that Mr G.'s solo records would benefit from.
NOEL GALLAGHER,
MOJO
I was on my way to get something to eat when a message appeared:
“I’ve got this tune. Do you want to write some lyrics?” I knew he was making a record, but I didn’t know what stage he was at, because I hadn’t seen him in a while. He caught me at a good moment. I scribbled down some train-ofthought stuff, sent it back to him half an hour later, and that was ‘Jumble Queen’. It was all inspiration.
NOTHING 10/10
DREW HIPSON
A song that is so beautifully judged and weighted harking back to some of Weller’s more intimate songs, such as ‘It’s A Very Deep Sea’. Lyrically it is about the inseparable bond between children raised in inpoverished circumstances, with a lyric penned by Andrew ‘Chalky’ Chalk, about the friendship between himself and his lifelong friend Suggs. It features a terrific shuffling backbeat by Ben Gordelier and an unexpected moog solo, which is the icing on the cake.
DARYL EASLEA RECORD COLLECTOR
‘Nothing’ echoes ‘Remember How We Started’ from his debut album: ‘Walking back through the silver trees/The light summer’s evening breeze across my face,’ Weller sings at his most soulful.
JOHN LEWIS, UNCUT
A smoky, slow-burning quiet storm soul ballad, based around smoky Rhodes chords, muted trumpet and a ‘Long Hot
Summer’-style squelchy synth solo, with pastoral lyrics that refer to a lost love.
ROBIN MURRAY, CLASH
‘Nothing’ is a soul ballad by way of a jazz-funk deep cut, the synths reminiscent of Kool & The Gang’s immortal dancer ‘Summer Madness’.
PAUL WELLER
[The lyrics] could be about a lot of things and, for me, I related them to my family growing up. We had fuck all, but we had fun and jokes and love, and what you don't have, you don't miss anyway, do you? We had each other.
MY BEST FRIEND’S COAT 10/10 DREW HIPSON
An extraordinary slice of cinematic soul with a spiralling musical motif of unresolved emotion that is as hypnotic as Bernard Herrmann’s main theme for the Hitchcock film Vertigo. Huge credit to Christophe Vaillant, who not only composed the piece, but also plays every instrument on the track, bar the drums. Lyrically, it resurrects the baroque splendour of Our Favourite Shop track ‘Down In The Seine’. Weller’s concept for the lyric was to present them like an interpretation of a Jacques Brel song.
WILL HODGKINSON,
MOJO
‘My Best Friend's Coat’ features whirling Hammond organ, harpsichord and vibraphone running through a cyclical chord
structure reminiscent of Michel Legrand's ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’. That comes from Le SuperHomard, a French quintet led by Christophe Vaillant with a European take on the 60s Mod aesthetic.
JOHN HARRIS, UNCUT
‘My Best Friend's Coat’ is a dramatic minor-key waltz, the kind of thing that you could imagine Édith Piaf singing, filled with oblique, drunken, despairing lines.
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
THE IRISH TIMES
‘My Best Friend’s Coat is a baroque pop buzz that sounds like a mash-up of faintly recalled songs by 1960s one-hit-wonders Peter Sarstedt and Noel Harrison.
PAUL WELLER
You know when you’re onto something good, because you almost can't get it down fast enough. You draw upon fragments of real life – hence lines like ‘in the depths of despair, I had another drink’ – but really, when you have a melody like that, it’s asking you to overdramatise, because that’s what that chanson tradition leans into.
RISE UP SINGING 10/10
DREW HIPSON
A collaboration with Dr Robert of The Blow Monkeys this slice of uplifting soul is a rebuild of its previous carnation on the Monks Road Social LP and conveys the finger-click defiance of ‘Town
Called Malice.
DARYL EASLEA RECORD COLLECTOR
Hannah Peel’s orchestral arrangements are stunning, yet never overwhelming, offering a feeling of the richness of Johnny Franz’s work with Scott Walker or even Burt Bacharach on the sumptuous ‘Rise Up Singing’.
PAUL WELLER
[Me and Dr Robert have] been working together since the early 90s, or possibly even since the late 80s, with the Blow Monkeys. He played and sang on my first few solo albums. He has this collaborative project called Monks Road Social, where he’s the producer, working with lots of guest artists. He sent me a backing track and some lyrics, and I re-did the topline and changed some of the words around, which became ‘Rise Up Singing’. It crept out without anyone noticing. So we worked on it again for this album, replayed it and put an orchestra on it. I think we’ve really done it justice.
I WOKE UP 10/10
DREW HIPSON
This is essentially a lockdown blues lament which begins with a simple three-chord acoustic guitar refrain and slowly builds up into a heart-wrenching orchestral epic with a sublime string arrangement by Hannah Peel and flamenco guitar work by original Jam member Steve
Brookes.
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
THE IRISH TIMES
‘I Woke Up’ is a sublime, orchestral channelling .of primetime Paul McCartney.
PAUL WELLER
[Weller remembers a formative episode of The Avengers that aired when he was just ten years of age called The Morning After]. Steed walks outside into this little town and everyone’s been knocked out with sleeping gas. I think that, looking back, there’s a post-Covid thing happening there, this sense that nothing can ever be the same again.
A GLIMPSE OF YOU 10/10
DREW HIPSON
Another track penned by Vaillant, who once again plays every instrument, except the drums. An astonishing piece of soul that captures the best moments of Marvin Gaye’s seminal What’s Going On LP
JOHN LEWIS, UNCUT
‘I Woke Up’ seems to reflect how Covid has changed our society forever.
SLEEPY HOLLOW 7/10
DREW HIPSON
Weller’s gnarled vocals are wrapped around a skipping piedpiper lullaby that skits dangerously close to being mawkish. There is more than a passing nod to The Beatles’ White Album track ‘Goodnight’,
with Weller crooning like Ringo and the combined backing vocals of Tom Heel, Steve Pilgrim and Jake Fletcher similarly harmonising the ‘goodnight’ refrain.
JOHN LEWIS, UNCUT
The clawhammer folk of ‘Sleepy Hollow’ is slowly transformed into a piece of dramatic soul through the flute and horns of Jacko Peake and the vibraphone of Max Beasley.
JORDAN POTTER, FAR OUT
Since the 1980s, Weller has honed a soulful croon that helped him to distance himself from his punk roots as the front man of The Jam. In ‘Sleepy Hollow’, these vocals come out in full force for a Sinatra-styled evocation of Washington Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’.
IN FULL FLIGHT 10/10 DREW HIPSON
A hymnal to truth, love and beauty in a world where ‘lies become the truth’ this co-write with Tom Doyle and Anth Brown (collectively known as White Label) is a ghostly musical lament with psychedelic flourishes and a wonderfully emotive vocal by Weller. The song hits extraordinary musical crescendos as the strings and celestial backing vocals by Brooklyn trio Say She She swell and Weller loses himself in a symphonic whirlpool of unrelenting heartache mournfully reflecting on a world derailed and a country
plunged into an abyss by corrupt and immoral politicians.
ROBIN MURRAY, CLASH
‘In Full Flight’ is a psychedelic symphony, the layers of backward guitars interlocking with the digital pulse of the drum machine. Moving between past, present, and future, Paul Weller’s vocal attempts to find meaning in the totality, and comes tantalisingly close.
ALEXIS PETRIDIS THE GUARDIAN
A fantastic collaboration with production duo White Label, offers up a kind of dubbed-out, psychedelic take on early 60s soul, if such a thing can be imagined.
STEPHEN DALTON CLASSIC ROCK
The reverb-drenched avant-doowop swooner ‘In Full Flight’ is one of the finest, and strangest, things [Weller] has ever recorded.
DARYL EASLEA RECORD COLLECTOR
The Style Council documentary broadcast in 2020 seems to have assisted in Weller’s rejuvenation. The fun and sense of mischief that marked the group’s early years was such a breath of fresh air, and being reminded of it has sparked joy in Weller – if there is a frame of reference on 66 it’s his time as a Council operative. With its line, ‘All down the avenues and cobbled mews’, ‘A Glimpse of You’ – co-written with Christophe
Vaillant – is pure sunrise-on-Seine Style Council.
PAUL WELLER
I had the instrumental for a long time, but I didn’t know quite what it needed to be. In the end, that very process was the key to it, because it’s a song about keeping faith and not giving up. Faith is constant, but sometimes you stray from it. What you believe in doesn’t go away, but sometimes you lose sight of it. So that song is really a sort of note to myself.
SOUL WANDERING 8/10
DREW HIPSON
Voodoo soul with a Rolling Stones rattle and a Lou Reed shuffle, Bobby Gillespie’s lyrics could have been penned by Weller himself, as it ties in with the recurrent ocean motif and the sense of disorientation.
PAUL WELLER
Maybe it’s an age thing. When you see the state of the world, what a mess it all is. It’s about having something to hold on to, I think. You haven’t got to be a Christian, you just have faith in something else beyond the cruelty and the disgusting behaviour of the humans. Look for the good in things.
BURN OUT 10/10
DREW HIPSON
The fact that it was originally conceived as a possible film soundtrack probably explains the extraordinarily meledromatic atmospherics, which convey the
sensation of being overwhelmed and immersed in the murk of lockdown. It has the feel of a career sign-off (hopefully not!) and of floating off into the ether. A fitting finale.
TONY CLAYTON-LEA
THE IRISH TIMES
‘Burn Out’ sounds like The Beatles’ Abbey Road suite partnering with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon.
PHIL MONGREDIEN
THE GUARDIAN
Paul Weller peaks with the smouldering ‘Burn Out’, underpinned by strings and sublime saxophone.
JORDAN POTTER, FAR OUT
Weller bows out on the album’s most psychedelic note. Ethereal slide guitar runs meet kaleidoscopic orchestration at intervals throughout the track. ‘I’m not tired of living’, Weller sings during the late crescendo, suggesting that he is far from burning out.
PAUL WELLER
There is definitely a sense of reaction against lockdown, a desire for unity and connection: Erland Cooper’s lyric on ‘Burn Out’ is filled with references to that, like that weird government directive under Covid that creative people should all train as bricklayers or whatever. What a load of bollocks that was!
Craig Cowan • Andrew Lindsay • Dan Jennings • Christophe Vaillant
Steve Trigg • Pat Gilbert • Nick Roylance • Nick Keen • Julie Love
Dad & Jane • My two beautiful daughters Aimée & Mia and Marcanthony
Paul Huckerby • Alan Anderson • Eric Traa • Jean Vincent Ferrer • S & Gar
Daniel Ferguson • Gareth Ashton
Philip Baker • Alan Frier • Mike Vinton
Kay Thompson • Paramjit Bhogal • Stevie Mochrie • GARETH UTV JONES
Garry Hutson • Gordon Waring • Max Thomas • Steve Wilson
Spencer Williams • Paul Thompson • Paul Homer • Simon Clements
Neil Ward • Kevan Hackett • Curtis Tappenden • Colin Atter
Darren Williams • John Kitching • Ian Blanckley • Gary Coulson
Luke Peppard • Tracey Flynn • Stuart Scott
Beat Fretz • Kevin Payne
Gary White • Peter Equi • Nick Young
Tony Gibson • Charles Vincent Morris
Shaun Gaskell
Wayne Spencer • Ian Pickard
Kevin Dodd • Philip Binfield • Malcolm Birch • Mikio Nakamura
John McVey • Karl McShane • Kevan Hackett • Ian Duke
Christopher Marklew • Brad Rogers • Graham Jones • Neil Smith
Michael Anderson • Beth Lauren
Mark Hoffman • Jim Innes
Gary McAlees • Francis Fenegan • Stuart Robertson • Paul Harrison
John Speirs • Jonny O Brien • David Douglas • Sean Bell
Gary Rhodes • Steven Cartwright • Charlene Baker • Ian Brown
Steve Neale • Davis Paton
Rune Johansson • Rick Thomas
Sam Taylor • Karl Peacock • Andrew Tait • Joseph Bazan • Bill Worboys
Trevor Davies • Andrew Chalet
Tony Gibson • Lee Rowland
Tony Johnston • James Bull • Paul Hodgkinson • Cuqui Weller
ENGLISH ROSE
ERIC TRAA
My favourite song is ‘English Rose’ because it always reminds me of the exciting early-eighties visiting places like London and Brighton and hitchhiking from Amsterdam when I discovered the mod scene.
YOU DO SOMETHING TO ME
JEAN-VINCENT FERRER
My favourite Paul Weller song is ‘You Do Something To Me’. Twelve years ago, I met my partner Lorraine Rucklage. The Royal Festival Hall concert in 2018 was magic.
DOWN IN THE TUBE STATION AT MIDNIGHT
WAYNE SPENCER
The lyrics to this song opened my mind to the possibilities of what songwriting can really do in the space of four minutes; It’s like a novel being relayed to us with emotional force, and a story that we’ll never forget. I first bought this aged 11 in October 1978, two months after starting secondary school. The song amazed me that in just a short period of time so much can be conveyed, and reach our mind and our heart. I still love it now aged 57, and even the cover photo means a lot to me; so much so that I stood on the exact spot of the cover photo recently at Bond Street tube station. This is a song to take to our heart, stunned by the story in the brilliant lyrics that remain with us forever.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
CHARLES VINCENT MORRIS
‘That’s Entertainment’ is by far the best song by The Jam.
ENGLISH ROSE
PHILIP BAKER
This was my and my late wife Vanessa’s favourite go-to song when we first got together forty years ago, and the song she chose at her funeral.
MAN IN THE CORNER SHOP
GARETH ASHTON
The point where Weller could be considered one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, combining lyrical eloquence with a sublime melody. Although only just into his 20s, he had constructed a threeminute articulation of the British class system. The increasing stature of the factory worker, the small business shopkeeper and the big business factory owner, each wanting something better than what they have, not happy with their lot. The only thing that makes them allegedly equal is that they worship the same God. ‘Man In The Corner Shop’ was the peak of Weller’s increasing songwriting maturity, soon to be complimented by tracks such as ‘That’s Entertainment’, ‘Ghosts’, and ‘Carnation’.
WILD WOOD ALAN FRIER
The first time I heard it live (Town & Country Club, Leeds, 17th November, 1993) it blew me away. It is still an uplifting song for me. The lyrics are amazing and beautifully sung by Paul.
SHADOW OF THE SUN
GARY WHITE
Picking a Weller song is a nightmare! So many great songs written by the Woking wordsmith that resonate from 77 to date! But, I have gone for ‘Shadow Of The Sun’ from the album Wild Wood. As mentioned by a certain Mr Cradock in a recent documentary, it’s a banger! I can remember this live at the Phoenix Festival; a long time ago and great memories. Talk about a journey; it starts calming, soothing and picks you up and takes you on that magic carpet ride. This tune sticks in my head and will always be on my Weller playlist.
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