Paul Weller’s favourite David Bowie album
Trading bondage trousers and safety pins for Burton suits and Beatles haircuts, The Jam stood out among the backdrop of their punk contemporaries. Their refusal to follow trends and uncanny ability to cause trends of their own allowed the band to enjoy one of the most enduring careers of any band to come from the punk movement. Frontman Paul Weller has shown an unwavering commitment to reinventing himself and staying truly original, something he shares in common with one David Bowie.
The Modfather and David Bowie have a complicated history. While the mod tendencies of early Bowie might endear him to Weller, The Jam frontman once publicly called the Brixton-born songwriter “pish”. The ‘Changingman’ has always had a penchant for giving outrageous, off-the-cuff remarks to the press; back in the 1970s, he even told NME readers in 1977 that The Jam would vote for the Conservative party in the next election.
His swipe at Bowie, on the other hand, did not occur during his adolescent days of punk shock-tactics. In 2007, David Bowie was honoured with a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the Brit Awards, cementing his position as a national treasure and worldwide icon of pop and rock music. Weller, in contrast, saw the songwriter differently. Speaking to The Sun at the time, Weller derisively said, “I like about three records of his. The rest of it’s pish.”
What The Style Council frontman omitted to mention was that one of those three albums makes up one of his favourite records of all time. After his comments on Bowie caused a rift between the two artists, Weller clarified to Mojo, “I’m a born-again Bowie freak! […] Low’s one of my favourite records anyway. Whatever gripes I’ve had about Bowie in the past, Low’s been a constant since I bought it in 1977.”
Low is heralded as one of Bowie’s finest efforts. The first of three albums that would become known as ‘the Berlin trilogy’, the record was constructed during a time in which Bowie and Stooges frontman Iggy Pop moved to mainland Europe in an effort to get sober.
Weller’s love for Low was not simply a throwaway tactic for burying the hatchet. The songwriter lists the record as one of his all-time favourites. Talking about the life-altering quality of Bowie’s album, he told Goldmine, “Hearing this album was a shock. It showed how pop music could also be. Deconstructed pop and very Euro influenced.”
He added, “It wasn’t well received at the time with critics, but nevertheless, its import was all over the post-punk and ’80s scene.”
The songwriter’s comments seemed to ease tensions between him and Bowie, with the latter emailing Weller to joke, “Nice one, Paul. Can I have (my) haircut back now?”. In a stunning full-circle moment, Weller paid tribute to his love for Bowie and Low during his 2018 album True Meanings. On the song ‘Bowie’, Weller deals with love and loss, centred around his deep appreciation for the legendary glam rocker.
