“To this day he still appears to distrust those he thinks are poorly dressed.”Įven in his mid-60s, with his expensively tailored suits and long, grey locks, Weller still dresses more sharply than virtually any other pop star you care to mention. “Modernism enveloped him, to the extent that he wouldn’t talk to other children unless they were wearing the right clothes,” he says. Nonetheless, as Jones says, his youthful embarrassment of the parochial Woking, and a feeling of being excluded from the cool London scene, was partly what drove Weller towards his love of Mod fashion. These things define who I am, my background, my upbringing”. In the new book he claims his “roots are strong” and that “it’s important to remember where you came from. Weller currently lives in London – he calls it “a magical place, the greatest city on Earth” – but spends a lot of time in his recording studio, not far from Woking. “Paul has been very eloquent in the way he writes about Woking because he developed an awful lot of affection for the place in later years.” Particularly with creative people, that’s very strong motivation – both the leaving and the returning. "And then, after a while, they come back again. “I think a lot of people are desperate to leave home when they are a teenager because they want to explore the world. “He had a love-hate relationship with Woking,” he adds. The son of a taxi-driver dad and cleaning-lady mum, working-class Weller was, according to Jones, “embarrassed about being “He seemed deliberately, almost confrontationally inarticulate, as though having a good vocabulary might somehow imply a betrayal of his class.” Weller just looked as though he’d tell you to f*** off and be done with it. “John Lydon looked as though he’d shout at you, Sid Vicious looked as though he’d thump you, and Joe Strummer looked as though he’d give you a lecture. Jones explains how the key members of Britain’s three main punk bands were very contrasting figures. Jones remembers first seeing The Jam play live at a pub called The Nag’s Head, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.Ĭoming from Woking, in the Surrey commuter belt, Weller and his bandmates played their early gigs in unremarkable towns like this across the west of London.Īlthough The Jam were revivalists of the 1960s Mod movement, they also espoused the punk sound and spirit. What he missed out on, perhaps, in terms of formal tuition was just drummed into him by the constant performances.” “The teenage band would play a lot of working men’s clubs and pubs which gave him a lot of practice. “Compared to most of his peers, he was performing at a very young age,” Jones tells the Daily Express. He admits Weller’s wasn’t the most traditional route to rock stardom, but insists the Surrey boy succeeded through dint of sheer hard work. After early members dropped out, The Jam eventually solidified into Weller on lead vocals and guitar, Bruce Foxton on bass, and Rick Buckler on drums.Ĭo-author of the new book, Magic: A Journal of Song, is former editor of men’s magazine GQ, Dylan Jones.
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