Paul Weller In Brixton - The Guardian Gig Review!

Paul Weller
Brixton Academy, London

5 / 5
Betty Clarke
The Guardian, Wednesday November 26 2008

On a giant screen is an image of John Lennon, the former Beatle who always believed the number nine was lucky. On the stage below struts Paul Weller, his rejuvenated career proof that Lennon was right.

Weller's ninth album, 22 Dreams, has garnered the Modfather his best reviews for a decade. Dispensing with the dadrock he has been mired in since the mid 1990s, the double album is awash with dreamy folk, lush psychedelia and Philly soul, linked by unlikely interludes into krautrock and free-form jazz. At 50, Weller is celebrating being once again at the vanguard of British rock with the first of three sold-out shows at the Brixton Academy.

Weller bounces up and down, wolf-whistles down his mic and throws a triumphant hand in the air. "Oh, it's good to be home!" he says, gleefully.

The classic rock of Peacock Suit and Changingman feed off the energy of new songs like 22 Dreams. The subtly nuanced songs All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You) and Have You Made Up Your Mind slot snugly beside You Do Something to Me and an effects-driven, dub-version of Wild Wood.

That's Entertainment and The Butterfly Collector are highlights of an unplugged segment, while Eton Rifles sees Weller playing so hard his guitar strap breaks. Though he gets lost in the meandering Picking Up Sticks and mundane Wishing on a Star, Weller has still re-acquired the power to surprise and doesn't disappoint with a thought-provoking, if mood-killing, montage of scenes from 9/11, the Vietnam War and JFK's assassination. Temporarily stunned into silence, the crowd's boisterious chants bring Weller skipping back for not one but two encores, his confidence sky high. Or as he puts it: "Fucking yes!"

From The Guardian

Comments

Steve White On The Passing of John Weller...

It wasn't unexpected to get the news that John Weller had passed away , it was a beautiful sunny morning in fact , but the news still stung even though the anticipation existed .

I finished work today , a day peppered by texts and calls , I missed the call that mattered but made ammends and spoke to the one person I needed to speak to , I raised a glass at dinner and reminisced with my beautiful partner of days of travel and nights of glory that followed , and after a little to much wine the drowsiness lifted and the harsh reality that someone very special had passed hit me , I wanted to say that , with my emotions bubbling very much to the surface , I wanted to remember those decades and shows and nights that we all spent together , indestructible , laughing and making the music of our dreams , wide eyed vagabonds not quite believing .

I remember the day on arriving back from Sydney, John telling me it was all over and he had enough of "this lark" , that was 24 odd years …

John Weller Obituary From The Independent...

For thirty years, John Weller managed the career of his son Paul, through the salad days and success of The Jam in the Seventies and early Eighties, the ups and downs of The Style Council and Paul’s re-emergence as a solo artist in the Nineties. Theirs was a unique father-son relationship in the music industry, built on John’s unwavering belief in Paul’s talent and shared values like hard work and pragmatism.

John could be blunt, and once refused to have lunch in a record company’s executive dining room, remarking to the managing director: “I didn’t come here to eat, I came to do business.” But his bark was worse than his bite.

John’s success was all the more remarkable since he started in his forties after years working in factories, on building sites and driving a taxi. When The Jam signed to Polydor in February 1977, for a £6,000 advance and a six per cent royalty rate, John admitted he didn’t have a bank account and asked for cash instead of a cheque. A&R man Chris Parry duly we…

Paul Weller's Son, Natt Gives A Candid Taxi Interview

Where else to meet the musician son of the agelessly groovy Modfather but at London’s trendy Met Bar? And there’s more than a hint of moody Mod style about the Japanese parka that Paul Weller’s eldest child Natt has slung over his Vivienne Westwood top.

Yet there all similarity ends, for singer-guitarist Natt has inherited the exotic beauty of his mother – former Wham! and Style Council backing singer Dee C Lee – rather than the famously angular features of his father.

‘Everybody always goes, “Luckily he took after his mum…”’ laughs Natt, whose mother is from France and St Lucia and whose great-great grandma was Japanese. Hence Natt’s fascination for Japan, where he moved in 2006 for a year to learn the language.

To pay for his studies, he modelled and deejayed, ‘I felt like an outsized monster,’ confides Natt, 21, a 6ft 1in beanpole. He returned a fan of Japan’s popular culture – from manga cartoons to punk-goth music – and with a different spelling to his name, which now features two ‘…

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