How northern soul inspired Paul Weller: “It just blew my mind”
Every music obsessive has that one song or sound that hits them like an epiphany, forever altering their life and creative output. For ‘The Modfather’, Paul Weller, that sound came in the form of northern soul.
Paul Weller was never one to follow trends. Back in the 1970s, when the advent of punk meant that every up-and-coming young band had to shave their heads and don a thousand safety pins, Weller and The Jam went in the complete opposite direction, opting for retro-infused rock and sharp Italian suits. In turn, The Jam outlived the punk explosion, inspiring a complete resurgence of the mod subculture and establishing themselves as a defiant voice for Britain’s youth.
As a lifelong devotee of the mod subculture, Weller took many of his cues from the golden age of the 1960s, when young mods ran riot over England’s capital. Dressed to the nines, hopped up on amphetamines, and obsessed with the sound of Blue Beat, American soul, and the mod rock sounds of groups like The Kinks, The Who, and the Small Faces, the mods were a subculture like no other, and their influence on Weller has never wavered.
By the time the 1960s came to a close, many of those first-wave mods had moved on from all-nighters and street fights, and so the subculture began to splinter off. While the ska-obsessed sect of the cult shaved their heads, donned some Dr Martens, and became skinheads, the soulies sought refuge in the north of England, where an entirely new movement was brewing. In the industrial towns and cities of the north, thousands of young people found solace in obscure, overlooked, and impossibly rare American soul singles during the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, down in Woking, a young Paul Weller was listening obsessively to 1960s pop. Despite his mod credentials, it took him a little while longer to be exposed to the infectious sounds of northern soul. “I’d heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it,” he once revealed to The Guardian. “On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell, who ran a ’60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.”
Croasdell first began DJing at The Last Chance on Oxford Street in 1980, and has since gone on to become a vital figure within the northern soul scene of the UK, performing at a multitude of soul nights and becoming involved with the soul reissue label Kent Records, too. In other words, Weller could not have hoped for a better tutor when it came to the world of northern soul.
That beating rhythm of northern soul clearly left an impact on the songwriter, as the marks of the sound can be heard in a lot of his subsequent work. The Jam, for instance, went from punk-adjacent anthems of defiance to soul-infused masterpieces like ‘Beat Surrender’, which was backed with multiple soul covers, seeing Weller take on Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move On Up’ and Edwin Starr’s ‘War’.
Even in the post-Jam years, Weller’s adoration of northern soul only seemed to increase, becoming a core component of the sound of The Style Council. His expansive solo material continues to bear the hallmarks of the northern sound to this day, so the style has clearly had a colossal impact on Weller both as a songwriter and a music obsessive. It seems we all have to thank Ady Croasdell for first setting ‘the Modfather’ on that incredible path of soul discovery.
