Monocled Alchemist

Article published in Sounds, 22nd September 1979

Paul Weller | This Is The Modern Poet | THE AMAZING thing about Paul Weller is his eyes. Whether he’s sitting or thinking or talking to you the rest of his body seems to shrink and make way for those big, clear, remarkably peaceful eyes that are given to wandering away into empty space and then suddenly switching back to your face on the crest of a brief burst of mumbled monosyllables, a piercing, blunt question.

He doesn’t like wasting words, gestures or time, the economy of his dress reflecting in most things he does and says.

He speaks like he sings, in a garbled cauldron of words, and he acts nervously though not neurotically in company, his hands, shifting around uneasily, again those eyes searching for somewhere to rest.

He is small, clean and tidy and today his wispy almost fly-like figure is seen darting back and forth to the studio adding finishing touches to some of the songs from the forthcoming Jam album.

Or, alternatively, resting uneasily behind the mixing-board listening to a play-back or chatting to one of the many fanzine scribes (or Sounds people) who clutter the studio.

“I’m very bland you know. That’s all there is to me. Just very bland.”

The words spill hurriedly over his shoulder as he steps briskly to the nearest watering hole in downtown Shepherd’s Bush leaving me in his wake.

You’re not gonna ask me any mod questions are you?

I keep quiet and we forge ahead.

Paul Weller | This Is The Modern Poet

THE FIRST time I met first Weller was the first and last time I went to that most repugnant of activities, the record company reception.

It took place in London’s glitzy Morton’s club, was held in awe of no less street-worthy punx than the Ramones and featured as guests the usual merry throng of fabulously boring people (Jimmy Pursey, wasn’t there) who preened one another’s tatty feathers and got drunk.

As the evening drew thankfully to a close Paul Weller and his girlfriend Jill were noticed furtively sneaking into a corner where they devoured lots of food and drink and generally kept themselves to themselves.

It was strange, but like a magnet Weller became the subject of attention from the lower orders of the function, the waiters, coat-boys and scavenging scruffs who’d obviously just wandered in off the street engaging him in loud, vigorous conversation.

Paul Weller | This Is The Modern Poet

And at the end of the evening the room was empty save for this small, sober and engrossed group. Weller talked of politics, gigs, songs, the Jam and at that time what was to be their next album, the immaculate ‘All Mod Cons’.

The chance meeting left an impression upon me as a particularly rich and vital piece of reality, and the rest is mere common local r’n’r history.

‘All Mod Cons’ proved the beautiful catalyst of the Jam’s career, an album of staggering inspiration upon which was built a smattering of memorable gigs (Wembley was perhaps the bizarre zenith of them all).

And a whole series of classic 45s in the elegant shapes of ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’, ‘Strange Town‘, ‘Butterfly Collector’ and the current ‘When You’re Young‘ / ‘Smithers Jones’.

All this following that astonishing, youth-culture-shock debut album and the mellower, but equally significant in terms of breaking down the punky wham-barn barriers, ‘This Is The Modern World’, the latter a record that will cause critical fervour for as long as rock and roll lives.

(My own pet theory is that ‘Modern World’ is a classic of its kind, fundamentally patchy but made good overall by its extra-musical connotations and the strange, time-span evocation of songs like ‘Tonight At Noon’ and ‘I Need You’).

Paul Weller | This Is The Modern Poet

The early autumn of ’79 sees the Jam perhaps at their career peak.

While their only other contenders for the first New Wave crown are either fumbling in the darkness of re-assessment (like the Clash) or working on another level altogether (clap hands for the mighty Fall), the Jam are mining their own little niche quite profitably straight down the middle of the r’n’r board.

Revealing themselves with ‘When You’re Young’ as a band of maturity and seemingly limitless resources, and Paul Weller in particular as maybe the strongest, most influential r’n`r performer in the world at this moment.

A big thing to say? I think not when you consider the hapless grabs currently being made for Weller’s credentials by mod(ern business rock). Or the golden- age he’s going through as a writer.

Not the successive records he’s released that have simply outclassed anything else on the mainstream scene for over a year now.

Or the growth of a perceptive r’n’r mind those records have traced in the same way the early Who and Kinks singles did for Townshend and Ray Davies.

Like those kids at the reception had sensed, Paul Weller is beginning to acquire respect and stature in the most meaningful sense of the terms. What follows is the rambling documentation of a sunny afternoon’s conversation with the man:

the interview

Let’s get it over with. What do you think of mod?

I just think it’s good that there’s lots of new bands, new blood, but all this . . . it
doesn’t matter to me if they’re good or bad, at least somebody’s having a go. Cynicism can really bog you down, and it got like that with me a while ago. That’s why I still think mod is good, though I still think the actual term mod is a load of bollocks.

None of the bands seem to have any idea what they’re about.

That’s what I thought. Some of these new groups haven’t learnt anything, have they? It’s like everybody’s asking them about Hammersmith Odeon and they’re going ‘Oh no, no way. That’s what we thought but if you’ve got 3,000 people suddenly wanting to see you, you’ve got to accommodate them, and they should have learnt from us and seen you’ve got to do things like that.

Have you seen any mod bands?

Only a few. I don’t like gigs, I much prefer records these days. I don’t give a shit about live anyway, it’s purely superficial and only lasts an instant. Records last a lifetime.

It’s a different situation for me though, a bit like double standards in a way, ‘cos when I get up on stage that’s great, but even bands that I really like, like the Nips, I can’t sit and watch them.

The Clash thing is a load of bullshit

Is that paranoia about being recognised at gigs?

I wouldn’t say it’s paranoia. I don’t know, it depends on what circumstance you’re recognised in, it’s a bit embarrassing sometimes. I’m not a Geldof or Pursey type character who thrives on it, I get by.

Do you find respect in current mod copies of the Jam or do you despise plagiarism the way the Clash, for instance, do?

I think that Clash thing’s a load of bullshit. Nah, I like to think we’ve influenced people, but not in a conceited way, but in the way we were influenced by thousands of people. It’s good to know that maybe our stuff is rubbing off onto other people’s stuff in the same way.

What differences have you noticed in yourself in the past three years?

I’ve become less cynical. I think I’ve squeezed out all the cynicism I had originally, not completely, but most of it. When I was aged between 14 and 18 I was really cynical.

I used to take the piss out of everybody, I never took anything seriously, and in that way I’ve changed. I try to be more thoughtful now instead of cynical in what I write. Rather than rushing into things and saying ‘this is where the Jam are at!’ I try to take a more methodical look at things and take in all the different aspects of a situation.

You seem to have had a knack for getting the headlines early on. Was that a conscious attempt at press?

Partly, ‘If it gets you on the front cover it’s fair enough,’ that sort of thinking. I read the first interview we did the other day and it was so naive, you know ‘the unions are taking over the country’ and shit like that, things that I’d go back on now.

mandies

That was for publicity. It made good headlines. That’s why nobody likes doing articles on us anymore ‘cos we’re so ordinary we’re bland . . . but I’m not gonna make up how many mandies I dropped last night for people like Pete Silverton.

What you gotta learn is you can’t win. If you act yourself you’re bland. People want personalities and I don’t want to be a personality, I want to be myself.

Things would appear very smooth, very comfortable for the band now.

I don’t think we’ll ever be happy. The day we are happy will be the day we have a nice little formula worked out and that’ll probably be the day we’ll pack it in. I’m talking in terms of the group now, not personally, and I’m talking about . . . nah, it sounds crass . . . ‘complete control’, we’re still striving to get complete control.

I want to get to the position where you’re not bogged down by conventional ideas of how to behave in a pop group, of what the public or the audience even expects.

Do you think you’ve made many compromises so far?

I don’t think we’ve made any compromises at all, not the sort people like the Banshees have made anyway. We’ve certainly learnt a lot about the business. All the time you’re on top you have a sort of complete control, but once you start going under, that’s when they put the screws on you.

But I’m not gonna moan about the record company ‘cos everybody does that and it’s boring. Business is business and art is art, it’s only sometimes that the two cross and that’s when things get fucked up.

Your lyrics are interesting. You achieve what most popular bands strive for, you’re simplistic with words but not naive.

Butterfly Collector

Yeah, it’s really hard to keep hold of that without being dishonest. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I think people should make music that makes people think. Like ‘Butterfly Collector’, there’s a certain ambiguity about that song and in your review you thought it was about the record business, but it’s really about a guy who used to go down the Roxy and literally collect groups.

How do you look back on those old Roxy days?

That Roxy myth is a load of bollocks. It was never a working-class, street club. It was full of bourgeois idiots dressed-up in Nazi gear.

Do you ever listen back to the first album these days?

I played it a while back actually. I tend to cringe a bit when I hear it. I’m not ashamed of it ‘cos it was honest, but I cringe at my voice and some of my lyrics. I try to sing properly now and attempt to get at notes instead of shouting at them, but I’ve always tried to sing honestly.

I used to try and emulate Otis Redding and that was before the New Wave, but it’s impossible, so I suppose I try and sing like I speak now.

Was ‘Tube Station’ from personal experience?

It wasn’t actually. Did you read that thing in the papers about those guys getting stabbed at Elephant And Castle station though? It was the same sort of thing. I went through a period when I wrote about the most terrifying things that could happen to you, but I’ve got over that now. I think it’s good to scare yourself now and again.

Little Boy Soldiers

Like in that first song I heard from the new album ‘Little Boy Soldiers’ do you mean?

That’s a dig at British Imperialism. I don’t like talking about politics. I don’t believe any politician, I think they’re all out to feather their own nests . . . but ‘Little Boy Soldiers’ is about all these people who lost their lives in the last war fighting against something.

You got the same situation nowadays, it’s all coming back again, all those lives meant fuck all, it’s just a waste of time . . . the way Britain in the 1800’s or whatever raped the world and now they don’t wanna know when those people have only come back for what’s theirs. All that makes me sick.

It seems to me the Jam are moving towards some kind of climax, perhaps even in the theatrical ‘Tommy’ opus sense . . .

That’s what I think now. I think it’s got to end somewhere and that’s got to be the definitive Jam. What do you do after that? Those ‘Tommy’ sort of theatrics are done in a very humorous, melodramatic way on the new album. I think people miss the humour in my songs a lot.

rock films are really boring

Even ‘Tube Station’ had humour in it. But I’m really concentrating hard on the lyrics for the new album. I’m actually trying to create a kind of story or poem or something. The album’s a play in a way . . . rock films are really boring, I’d rather do a play.

It’s still only a vague written synopsis, but it’s about three kids who sort of plan what they want to do in life (I’m sorry I can’t tell you this very articulately!) and a civil war comes and it leaves one of them sort of on the left wing, one on the right wing and the other one an abstainer who doesn’t want to be involved at all.

They meet years after and the left and right wingers don’t want to know the one who abstained. In the end though, each of them are right in their own way, the abstainer sits on this sort of wasteland and says fuck all, I know what I believe in and what I feel . . .

Survival

Is it an allegory for yourself?

Partly. It’s partly based around the band. Like I think all life’s a parody, it’s comical, everything gets repeated over the centuries in different guises. The key word is survival, that’s the reality.

Have you ever thought of acting or writing plays?

We’ve been offered a few scripts of plays, but they’ve all been in the ‘struggling group who makes good’ vein, but that isn’t real life. I think TV plays are much better. Did you see Abigail’s Party and Catchpenny Twist recently? They were incredible, brilliant acting, everything.

The only way to go forward is to diversify I think, do other things like this TV play we’re trying to line up, so that we don’t have to depend on one sort of single income for the band.

It must be nice doing whatever you want, so you don’t exhaust your own talent. Like I’m starting my own publishing company with a friend of mine who’s helped me out before, Dave Waller (he’s an amazing poet) and I’m trying to arouse enough interest in it from people. I want to try and find people like myself who just write the odd bit of poetry and want to have them published.

We should have a book of about 35 poems coming out in October.

Saturday’s kids

Does it ever frighten you to think that you write about things people associate with and expect more and more of the same?

I don’t think about it like that. But I hope it means something to somebody, I hope it says ‘I’m on your side’ to somebody. I can’t stand youth leaders and you know what I’m talking about.

I tend to shrug a lot of that off but it means a lot to me, meeting a kid after a gig who says that song meant a lot to him. That’s enough for me.

‘Saturday kids live in. council houses Wear V neck shirts and baggy trousers Drive Cortinas with fur-trimmed dashboards Stains on the seats — in the back of course!’

WHAT EVER HEIGHTS or depths the new Jam album touches upon musically (and I’ve only heard five tracks), it should undoubtedly prove Weller’s greatest lyrical achievement yet.

The caring frame of mind with which he’s approached the task of surpassing the direct, clean and tidy fundamentals of the ‘All Mod Cons’ themes is shown in the reams and reams of lyrical drafts he shows me, with words black-pencilled and replaced here and there or whole verses omitted at a later stage.

English civil war

‘Little Boy Soldiers’ begins with a nasal, neo-Steeleye Span chant, Weller’s voice sounding remarkably ‘proper’ and musical compared to the snarling venom of the first album. The song soon swoops into a typically fierce and melodic Jam framework but retaining an ‘English Civil War’ aura on the chorus which runs:

‘These days I find that I can’t be bothered To argue with them, well, what’s the point Better to take your shots and drop down dead Than they send you home in a pine overcoat.’

‘Saturday’s Kids’ is simply classic Jam. A racey, wordy fish ‘n’ chip series of verses, which are in themselves marvellous social observation (like ‘Pictures Of Lily’, ‘Lazy Sunday’ drive merrily into a bitch of a chorus, which is more subtle in the context and less Purseyesque than it appears:

‘These are the creatures that time has forgot Not given a thought — it’s the system! Fight the system — smash the system!’

Personal favourite in the studio playback was the scintillating ‘The Eton Rifles’ which tentatively sounds like one of the best things the band have ever done.

Again it’s an unusually English redcoats feel for the Jam, with chants of ‘hurrah hurrah’ and a wiplash chorus of ‘E-ton Rifles, E-ton rifles’ which two weeks later still rings round my head.

‘Wasteland’ will be the dramatic closing touch on the album, the lyrics and the mood of the album if I remember correctly slowing down for the final monotone of:

‘Later this day We’ll sit and talk and hold hands maybe For there’s not much else to do in this drab and colourless place.’

And those words on ‘Meet Me On The Wasteland’ are markedly similar to much of Paul Weller’s private, non-lyrical poetry that he (somewhat bashfully and humbly) later showed me, some of which is included in the excellent ‘All Mod Cons’ songbook that is very much worth investigating.

spiritual side

The poems inevitably reveal a more personal, reflective Paul Weller, highlighting his wit and a meditative, almost spiritual side that hasn’t so far been brought out on record.

The poems, the publishing exercise, the play, not least of all the songs, it’s all quite an achievement for a shy, unforthcoming twenty-one year-old, but praise is too conscious and deliberate a reward.

Better to end with Weller’s own words from ‘Letter To Dave Waller’ which say more about Weller himself than you or I ever could.

‘There are those who are held in high esteem who do no deserve It in the light of you. And on the day you do come to power, I’m sure the authorities Will burn all past records of literature and start again.’