‘Has My Fire Really Gone Out?’: The song that Paul Weller used to lash out at critics
It may have been the decade of the modern British rock revolution, but the 1990s did not start out well for the Modfather himself, Paul Weller. With the Jam having broken up approaching ten years prior and even his second incarnation, the Style Council, now gone down the drain, Weller was under a lot of pressure as he set about embarking on a solo career for the first time ever.
The songwriter was on thin ice. Over the latter half of the 1980s, he had gained the somewhat unfair reputation of being a ‘has been’, given the Style Council’s rapidly declining public popularity, with only one top ten single under their belt after 1985. After the band’s legacy had been left in ruin, Weller attempted to branch out on his own—but the reception of his eponymous debut solo effort was difficult to define in many ways.
Thoughts were mixed, to say the least. Some lapped up Weller’s return to his classic sound, while others thought his sonic creativity was a bridge too far. In fairness to Weller, that conflict is bound to leave anyone feeling confused, so he knew he had to follow it up by fighting.
The result of that was the subtly named ‘Has My Fire Really Gone Out?’ from his sophomore solo effort, Wild Wood, in 1993. A man of few but profound words, in four of the song’s 12 total lines, Weller considers: “Something real is what I’m seeking/ One clear voice in the wilderness/ And put an end to all your doubts/ Has my fire really really gone out?”.
Although the sentiment may seem deep, in reality, Weller was only having a dig at those who had doubted him. He explained: “It was me just taking the piss, really. Because I was written off, especially from the late-Style Council onwards. And on that first album, there were some shocking reviews. You know saying, ‘He’s over… he’s finished.’ I was like, ‘Really? We’ll see about that.’ That always puts the fight in me, which is a good thing.”
It certainly was because the album that ‘Has My Fire Really Gone Out?’ featured on went on to be triple Mercury Prize nominated, putting Weller back in the good books of the critics and buoying him with a new energy to continue. From there, he went on to master his true cultural resurgence in the form of 1995’s Stanley Road, by then mingling with emerging firecrackers like Oasis, who would later create the Britpop boom.
This era led to Weller being slapped with his special Modfather moniker, a status that confirmed his space among the real greats of rock music history. Some might say it was never in doubt, but as his shaky peg period of the early part of the decade had gone to show, it wasn’t always a fate that was fully sealed. However, it was the mark of Weller that his comeback lay in the hands of his own self-confidence and tenacity – because when he was faced looking down the barrel of obsoletion, he knew only he possessed the power to claw himself back.
