Paul Weller’s favourite album of all time: “It just blew my mind”
Everyone has a favourite album that changed the trajectory of their life as a music fan, which holds unmatched sentimental reasons, and Paul Weller is no different.
Weller was a fresh-faced teenager when he emerged on the map with The Jam. Before then, he’d already earned his stripes by playing gigs in working men’s clubs, and anywhere that would have him. It was clear that being in a band was his path, and nothing else was on the table as a viable option.
Many different moments occurred that placed Weller on this undeniable path, rather than him simply waking up one day with the urge to write ‘Going Underground‘. A handful of bands have played a vital role in his life and shaped him into the artist he is today. Like everyone else of his generation, this list of influences includes The Beatles, but there was one band that he found even more endearing.
While the Fab Four rightfully received their flowers and were treated like superheroes, it was a different story for The Zombies. They split up shortly before the release of their 1968 album Odyssey and Oracle, which was largely ignored upon release after the singles initially flopped. The band’s members quietly moved on to new musical ventures and thought the LP would be left in the past.
After they called it quits, it seemed far more probable that Odyssey and Oracle would become a musical secret cherished by a select few than a mainstream success story. For a while, it was this way, but the secret eventually got out of the bag, and the album grew to become appreciated as a seminal masterpiece. Thirty years after the release of Odyssey and Oracle, the band finally reunited and played tracks from the record live for the first time, kickstarting a renaissance era for The Zombies.
One person who spent decades banging the drum loudly for the band is Weller. He told the BBC in 2010: “The Zombies made one of the all-time greatest records in Odyssey and Oracle. It came out in 1968 and by the time it had come out, I think they had split. No-one bought it at the time. It was a fantastic record, and of all the albums that get some kind of recognition from that period, they always seem to get overlooked.”
While Weller, born in 1958, was too young to have been aware of The Zombies before they split, it did enter his radar at a crucial time of musical awakening. The ‘Modfather’ shared, “The first time I heard it was in the mid-70s, and it just blew my mind. When I listen to it, I’m instantly transported back to autumn ’74, sitting in my mate’s flat overlooking Woking Park and the leaves falling and turning gold and green and orange. We would be hanging out, writing songs together and plotting how we were going to make it.”
To this day, the album offers a window back into a snapshot in time when he and his friends would “be getting high and listening to as much music as possible and learning”. He referred to it as “a learning experience” before admitting, “I hadn’t heard music like that before.”
Weller then got down to the granular to explain precisely why it made him tick so much, stating, The harmonies were fantastic and so were the chord progressions. It’s got a very wistful, melancholic English sound, a very autumnal sound and I can’t think of many records that have got the same sort of sound.” He profoundly continued: “It made a very, very big impression and it’s still to this day probably my all-time favourite record.”
To mark the 40th anniversary of the seminal album, The Zombies celebrated the special occasion with three sold-out shows at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London in 2007. On one of the dates, Weller was fortunate enough to be backstage and meet his heroes, which thankfully went to plan. He commented: “I was a bit nervous about talking to them but they were lovely.”
After The Zombies’ Rod Argent retired from touring after suffering a stroke in 2024, the band have taken a step back. They held a tribute concert to their leader later that year in London, and he remains committed to continuing to record with them despite his health issues, while Colin Brunstone continues to tour their material. The legacy they leave behind is greater than they could have ever imagined upon parting ways in 1968, and waiting a long 30 years to enjoy their success only made it sweeter.
