Those three things defined you as a person.”Ĭan you relate to the music your kids like? “There’s more to distract people now, isn’t there? When I was a kid there was music and football and clothes. I’d have to save up for weeks to buy an album when I was a kid, and that made it even more great for me when you finally got that thing in your hand. They certainly don’t feel the need to pay for it, that’s for sure. Which is great, but I think it kind of devalues it as well. “You can listen to music at any moment in the day or night. They probably devised the map.”ĭo you think young people today have a different relationship to music? “I can remember even as a little kid hearing ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ on the radio, early 1967, and I just thought it had been beamed in from outer space or something. They certainly changed my world, and many, many other individuals as well. I tend to think that was a sign that I was supposed to do this.” I had a little plastic guitar and she always used to tell me the story that I stood up in the aisles and was singing along to the film. My mum took me to see an Elvis film when I was about 2. And I just think, where is the outlet for the youth and for the new talent?” “Festivals are full of bands who’ve got back together or are trading on nostalgia. I couldn’t play the same songs night after night or just trade on my past glories, because it wouldn’t interest me as a person. I kind of take my hat off to bands who have been around for a long time and still do the same thing, because it’s hard to keep a band together for decades. ![]() You’ve never been afraid to change direction in your career. So it was a question of just starting from scratch and then chipping away until we hit a sound that I thought, ‘That’s what it should be.’” “I wanted to do something different, but I didn’t know what that different was until we found it. … I didn’t want to have an album of more traditional arrangements and acoustic guitars. “I just wanted to hear something fresh, something new. There are a lot of different sounds on this album. “I still feel I’m on this journey, and I don’t know where it’s going to, and I like that,” said the 57-year-old, who talked about about how music has changed, and why he’s not content just to perform his old Jam songs. But the vision is very much Weller’s, right down to the absence of an apostrophe in the title – he says it just didn’t look right. ![]() It features musicians including guitarist Steve Craddock, a longtime collaborator, and Josh McClorey of teenage Irish rockers The Strypes. His latest, “Saturns Pattern,” is a meaty blend of blues, soul, funk and psychedelia that marks yet another change of direction. Since he left post-punk power trio The Jam at the height of the band’s fame in 1982, Weller has ventured through soul and jazz, with The Style Council, and 50 shades of rock on his dozen solo albums. “There’s no future in nostalgia,” says Weller, looking razor-sharp from his artfully cut gray hair to his tan desert boots. But his own philosophy is: Don’t look back. LONDON – From teenage rock star to “The Modfather,” Paul Weller has been a sound and style icon to fans for more than 30 years.
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