
2008’s 22 Dreams was a sprawling epic, a White Album-esque manifesto that set Weller apart from acts half his age as an artist who was still a true force to be reckoned with. “I never really gave a fuck before, but I’ve made a conscious decision to only please myself,” he told me in the same interview. I don’t think I knew where to go next.”īut sobriety and a new marriage, now going on nearly 11 years, seemed to give Weller not only clarity of purpose and focus, it appeared to unshackle him from trying to please anyone but himself. “I thought the album we’d made, As Is Now, was really good, but people just didn’t seem to take to it the way I thought they would. “That was a weird time,” he told me in 2012 of receiving the coveted Outstanding Contribution to Music award at the BRITS in 2006. His third act really took off with 1993’s Wild Wood, even in America, where The Jam and Style Council had risen above cult status, and 1995’s epic Stanley Road merely sealed the deal.īut by the mid-’00s, Weller - though still a huge live draw internationally and still racking up hit singles and albums in his homeland - felt his well had run dry. His next band, the Style Council, took ’80s outrageousness to a whole other level, though that sensibility has a timeless nature to it (as was made clear in the recent Showtime documentary Long Hot Summers: The Story of the Style Council) that helps his ’80s output to still feel fresh and vital while his counterparts in the Greed Decade’s hit parade feel carbon-dated, to say the least.Īfter the Style Council crashed and burned thanks to the group’s label refusing to release its last album and several disastrous gigs in front of fans unwilling to go where Weller’s house music muse was taking him, he reinvented himself as a solo artist who predicted the ’90s fetishization of all things Swinging London long before the likes of Oasis, Blur and Radiohead. The songs Weller wrote for The Jam - his first band, the Mod- and R&B-influenced punk trio that, like The Clash, rose from the ashes of punk’s Year Zero to greater and more adventurous artistic heights - always exhibited his wry take on the world around him. “Yeah, man, I’m just more comfortable in my own skin, I think,” he says. But Weller, who turns 63 later this month, is now more than a decade sober, and over that time, he’s become more and more willing to flash his keen sense of humor. Paul Weller - the only figure from punk’s Class of ’77 still making new, vital music the ’80s soul crooner the progenitor of Britpop and, of course, the man known to his faithful legion of fans as the Modfather - has always been a tough nut, especially toward unsuspecting journalists. Just sort of normal sort of daywear like that, really.” “And then like a smoking jacket and a pipe.
#Paul weller 80s professional#
Paul Weller's agent information cannot be provided without a professional booking consultation.“Normally, I’m in silk pajamas and those sort of poncy slippers with the initials on them,” Paul Weller deadpans when I ask what the man long considered a style icon has been wearing around the house during lockdown. We will negotiate and forward your next event’s details to create the optimal circumstances to secure the best booking for the best price. We have booked and worked closely with leading industry corporations and organizations to book top talent like Paul Weller. Paul Weller BOOKING AGENTįor Paul Weller's agent’s contact information, our seasoned booking agents can speak on your behalf, in a friendly professional manner with Paul Weller's agent. Just as importantly, many observers, acknowledged that Weller was one of the few rock veterans who had managed to stay vital within the second decade of his career. By the mid-'90s, he had released three successful albums that were both critically acclaimed and massively popular in England, where contemporary bands like Ocean Colour Scene were citing him as an influence. Weller's solo records were more organic and rootsier than the Style Council's.

As a solo artist, Weller returned to soul music as an inspiration, cutting it with the progressive, hippie tendencies of Traffic. As the Style Council's career progressed, Weller's interest in soul developed into an infatuation with jazz-pop and house music, which eventually led to gradual explosion of his audience.

During the final days of the Jam, he developed a fascination with Motown and soul, which led him to form the sophisti-pop group the Style Council in 1983.
#Paul weller 80s mod#
As the leader of the Jam, Paul Weller fronted the most popular British band of the punk era, influencing legions of English rockers ranging from his mod revival contemporaries to the Smiths in the '80s and Oasis in the '90s.
