Paul Weller Featured In Record Collector!

As Paul Weller celebrates his 50th birthday, John Reed investigates the secret history of an English icon.

Paul Weller’s 50th birthday was on 25 May, not that he’d thank us for reminding him. Rumours suggest it was not exactly something he was celebrating. And yet, as he reached his half century, Weller had much to feel proud about. As his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Brits in 2006 reflected, the once angry young man from Woking is inarguably the most successful British musician to have emerged from the punk wars of the late 70s – whether that be in terms of commercial success, critical acclaim, iconic status or musical influence.

Forever restless, Weller is still consumed with ‘the Now’, consistently scornful of nostalgia, preferring to speak enthusiastically about his new double album, 22 Dreams, which just might be the most ambitious and eclectic work of his entire career – his ‘White Album’. Although betraying Weller’s long held love of psychedelia, Motown, Mod-rock and more recent passions for the mysticism of English folk and the rustic charms of 70s journeymen like Ronnie Lane, 22 Dreams is a positively schizophrenic experience at odds with any previous solo effort.

This is scarcely the behaviour of a quinquagenarian comfortable with his bank balance, with one eye on his dotage and the other on his musical legacy. It’s also a far cry from his erstwhile …

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Paul Weller Interviewed During Maida Vale Appearance For BBC Radio 4!

Fresh back from a short tour of the US and Japan, Paul Weller talks about the 30th anniversary of The Jam's sixth and final studio album, The Gift, and where he's at right now. Repost From The Huffington Post By: Jason Holmes Paul Weller bounds into his chair, an electronic cigarette gripped in his hand. We're in the BBC's Studio Three in Maida Vale. Visibly calm owing to post-tour exhaustion and a morning trip to the gym, Weller is here to be interviewed by John Wilson for BBC Radio 4's Mastertapes series. "Back in those days, bands put out an album a year, you toured with it for a year, then you went back in the studio and repeated the process. Looking back, I was glad I experienced that pressure. It helped me refine my craft and find myself as a writer. It kept me on my toes," says Weller, Gibson acoustic on knee. "It wasn't a treadmill, it was just what bands did back then. I never questioned it." Lest the passing decades dim...

New Unofficial Forum

A new Unofficial Weller chat forum has been created in place of the recently-closed Official Forum. Click below to visit. Have a good week!

Paul Weller Interview With The Quietus!

Sins Of The Modfather: Paul Weller Speaks About Leaving His Comfort Zone Julian Marszalek , April 19th, 2010 06:55 A feature on the musical landscape since the late 1970s, it can become all too easy to take Paul Weller for granted. Indeed, the popular perception of a gruff geezer stuck in some kind of 60s timewarp is one that does a disservice to a artist who has, over the course of his career, challenged himself as much as his audience. This, after all is the man who broke up The Jam – one of the most popular and important bands of their generation – at the height of their fame to pursue new ideas in a new realm. Certainly, the passage of time has served to obscure Weller's sonic detours with The Style Council in the 1980s, while his early endorsement of house music evidenced not only a then lone voice on the wilderness, but an artist whose keen musical ear kept him excited by what music still had to offer. 2008's 22 Dreams found Weller rekindling his muse as he explored...

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