“Horrible man”: the singer Paul Weller thought offered nothing
Over the course of his illustrious career as ‘The Modfather’, Paul Weller has rubbed shoulders with a litany of rock stars, musical greats, and pop performers. Throughout it all, though, there is one man who seems to have irked the songwriter more than anybody else, and that man is, of course, Sting.
Hating Sting is not an overly original route for Weller to go down. There are, after all, a multitude of performers, artists, and, indeed, audiences who cannot stand the former Police frontman – including his own bandmates from that new wave outfit. Seemingly, his penchant for Jivamukti Yoga, peyote sessions, and tantric sex put the songwriter at odds with the attitudes of mainstream society. The exact root of Weller’s detest of him, though, is up for debate.
Either way, Weller’s enduring resentment of his fellow songwriter is rather inarguable. Over the years, there have been a number of snide, studs-up comments from the former Style Council boss directed at his north-eastern contemporary, the most vicious of which occurred at a Teenage Cancer Trust benefit gig back in 2007.
In one of his usual cheery moods, Weller reportedly gobbed on a poster of Sting, decrying him as a “fucking twat” in the process. Around the same time, he also declared in an interview that Sting is a “fucking horrible man”.
“Not my cup of tea at all. Fucking rubbish. No edge, no attitude, no nothing.”
Paul Weller on Sting
While it is difficult to fault the facts of what Weller is saying, it does seem a rather intense hatred to pin upon Sting. After all, there are countless artists without edge or attitude, who could well be described as “fucking rubbish”. Yet, it was only Sting who found himself on the receiving end of Paul Weller’s rallying outcry.
It was during the age of punk rock confrontation that both songwriters got their first taste of success, even if The Jam’s brand of mod-rock rebellion was always markedly more aggressive than The Police’s reggae-fused new wave. If nothing else, his experiences in punk’s epicentre of the Roxy Club gave Weller an education in how to resent other bands, which is perhaps where his dislike of Sting arises.
Alternatively, it could be the fact that Sting found himself cast in 1979’s Quadrophenia, the definitive cinematic rendering of the mod subculture, from which Paul Weller was curiously absent despite being a much bigger star and representative of that subculture at the time – not to mention his undying adoration for The Who, whose 1973 album formed the basis of the film.
Whatever the root cause of the rift between Weller and Sting – perhaps the pair exchanged glances over the Band Aid studio during the mid-1980s, or perhaps Sting’s output really does just rub Weller up the wrong way inexplicably – it doesn’t appear as though ‘the Modfather’ has mellowed into his old age with regard to that hatred of Sting.
For his part, Sting has never really exercised his right to reply, at least not publicly. Then again, he and Weller occupy vastly different spaces within the musical landscape, so it doesn’t appear likely that they’re crossing paths on a regular basis. If they do, though, Sting would do well to buy himself a spit-guard, it would appear.
