“No bullshit”: The indie band who reingivorated Paul Weller’s passions for music
It must be hard. Imagine starting a band, making history, making a huge name for yourselves, merging rock and punk into something fresh and then disbanding, all before you even turn 25. Where do you go from there? Ask Paul Weller.
Surely everyone has that same crisis, right? People hit their quarter life and freak out about whether their best years are already behind them. For most, that’s reflecting on fun times at uni or old memories with friends who are growing distant as adult life pulls people in different directions. But for Weller, his 25th birthday crisis was about what to do after The Jam split up.
After six albums and several hit singles that are now timeless hits, they disbanded after just about a decade together. Weller, the band’s leader, was only 24. I can’t even imagine how existential that would make a person, to write ‘Town Called Malice’, but then it all be over. Sure, those songs were chart toppers and their albums had done well, but back then in 1982, Weller had no idea that he’d already written himself into the musical history books and would become one of Britain’s most defining figures. He likely just thought it was all over.
But obviously, it wasn’t. Decades down the line, Weller is still one of the most well-known rockers around and one that has navigated his reputation in a really respectful way. It’s not just that he’s stuck true to the ethos and ethics the early punk act held in the day, fighting the good fight when it comes to politics. But Weller has consistently used his platform to share the spotlight with new talent.
For a lot of those older rock stars, they seem to struggle with that. The existential crisis that gripped them before settled into a long-running form of jealousy that seems to keep them from enjoying or engaging with modern acts carrying their torch. But Weller isn’t like that as he’s welcomed names like The Mysterines, The Staves, Amelia Coburn and more into his projects.
It’s clear that the way he navigated that fear of ‘what’s next’ was to simply keep going, including keeping on going to gigs. While it would have been easy to watch the music world around him and watch it become harder and weirder with the dawn of streaming services and the various new genres of various quality levels and become incredibly jaded, falling out of love with it all.
“To be fair, man, I’ve put the time and effort in,” he said about exactly that to Word Magazine, “And the times when I have taken me eye off the ball it’s gone down the pan. You’ve got to keep your eye on the prize, all the time. Once you stop caring about it, it slips from under your feet.”
But he added that the more engaged you stay, the more you benefit, stating, “Every now and again, you get more inspired.”
In particular, he thanked one band for a boost of that. “The other night I saw The Kings Of Leon, right,” he said, reflecting on a gig from the American indie troupe, “I’m 47 and I’ve been doing this for years but to get inspired again by a bunch of kids, a four piece band playing rock’n’roll, no light shows, no frills, no bullshit costume changes or any of that cobblers, and just getting off on that.”
It not only revived his hope in guitar music, but it reminded him of the point of it all; “It goes across boundaries and cultures, it lives and breathes. It’s real. It’s more real than fucking most things, man.”
