“Time to move on”: The moment Paul Weller realised he had to split up The Jam
Paul Weller‘s reluctance to reform The Jam despite the numerous lucrative offers thrown his way is a lesson in artistic integrity. If he were to get the band back together, it would be for the wrong reasons, and that attitude has kept the group’s legacy intact.
The Jam have become one of the lesser-sung heroes of British culture outside of the nation. Ask anyone outside of the UK, and they would likely list ten or 20 different bands who had changed music from the British Isles before they reached Weller’s The Jam. But, swap the interviewee around, and almost every member of your local British pub could hum you a tune or two by the new wave outfit.
The band’s impressive legacy might have been built on some stylish moments from Weller and the odd well-placed single, but the truth is, the band relied heavily on great songwriting. Weller was the voice of the group, and it was his compositions and lyric writing that turned them into a band of icons that still reverberate around bedrooms up and down the land to this day.
Remarkably, Weller was only 24-years-old when the group split. It wasn’t an amicable break-up with his bandmates, however, and Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler descended into a state of shock upon the news. They had no inclination that Weller wanted out, despite his head turning months before informing his colleagues. That alone partly explains why he thought it was time for a new venture.
Since that brave decision, Weller has never once glanced over his shoulder during his career. Instead, he’s remained focused on whatever the task at hand presented to him and never once considered a moment of regret at his bold manoeuvre.
Over the last five decades, while his ex-bandmates cling to the anthems he wrote during their youth, Weller has continued to prove why he’s ‘The Changingman’ with his shapeshifting activities. “I don’t know if I could pinpoint it to a specific time,” he explained regarding his decision to call a day on the group to Billboard in 2007. “I just knew generally toward the last sort of year or so. Before the Jam split up, I just felt it was time for me to move on, just artistically and creatively. I needed to find something different and different kind of avenues to make music, and a different way of making music.
“Even though the Jam only made records for, I don’t know, five years, or whatever it was, we were actually together for more like ten years,” he added. “We spent four or five trying to make it, so it was an awful long time as well. So whether it was a selfish move or not, for me, I just knew, instinctively, it was time to move on. The other things I wanted to try, I couldn’t have tried within the framework of the Jam. It had to be something different, or something looser”.
Weller would immediately thrust himself into The Style Council and took the first of many left-turns in his career. This exercise immediately alienated many fans of The Jam, who were unhappy with the musician as he began experimenting in a new sonic territory.
While preaching to the choir that worshipped him during young adulthood would have been the more straightforward road, it wouldn’t have sat well with Weller, and becoming a pastiche of his former self is something he’s tried to avoid at all costs. “It was the right thing to do,” he told NME in 2008. “It was an artistic decision, without sounding poncey. I didn’t want to be in the same set up for the rest of my life. I like to change and move on.”
Weller added: “Do I miss it? No, not particularly. I quite like what today is. It was a lot of pressure, being that kind of spokesman for a generation. Whether it was my own fault for setting myself up or not, I don’t know, but it was a lot of pressure for a young man. I certainly didn’t miss that.”
Weller putting dignity ahead of financial rewards is commendable, and it remains a decision that allowed him to create a body of work that he can look back on without any regrets. When reunions occur for the wrong reasons, it often shows. Although from the outside looking in, he ended The Jam prematurely, Weller knew the timing was right, and he was proven correct.
