PAUL WELLER TOUR 2015 MOD

Who are some of your favorite singers, new, old or whatever? The instrumentation behind you has changed a lot over the years, but your singing style has been consistent for a long time now. Now I just enjoy the use of words, the rhythm of the words. It’s like those political songs I wrote back in the ‘70s and ‘80s – they came naturally. With politics, you need to find a new language for it. Is it difficult to translate your political point of view into songs? I don’t know if it really makes any difference which party comes in. Is this a new step backward, or the same old song? The Tories won a big unexpected victory in Britain lately. Whenever there’s an economic crisis, the people on the lowest rung get hit harder. But writing about politics … anything I write will be the same thing I wrote 40 years ago. Politics and social class were an important part of your early music – does that stuff still matter to you? When you pick up a new guitar, you play differently. I used them mainly because I wasn’t familiar with them. On this record I used a lot of new guitars – Gibson guitars, a Danelectro, and a Vox Teardrop. What kinds of guitars and amps are you using these days?

I wanted something different, but didn’t know what it was until I heard it. I had two or three books of songs I’d been working on for a few years. Once I got the band and the producer, I wanted a big drum sound and more grooves. Your new record is expansive and forceful, with some psychedelia, some soul, some love songs … What kind of style or sound were you going for with this one, and did it change much as you went along? The Modfather is currently touring behind his new album, “Saturns Patterns.” Salon caught up with him around the time of his sound check in Chicago. In fact, that and the two that followed – “Setting Sons” and “Sound Affects” – are as close as any band has come to matching the consecutive triumphs of the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

PAUL WELLER TOUR 2015 MOD

That’s part of the reason it’s startling to hear him saying that today’s musical and economic climate is so tough on young bands that if they were coming up today, the Jam would never have lasted long enough to make its third record, “All Mod Cons,” which marked the beginning of the band’s mature state. He continues to love old music but is neither a Luddite nor a nostalgist. Weller is known for digging what he’s up to at the time and refusing to look back. (When Weller broke up the band, he formed the Style Council, an R&B-and-cappuccino kind of group that moved in a very different direction.) But for many, he’ll always be the singer, guitarist and main songwriter for the Jam, the mod revivalists and punk-rock band that lasted from 1976 to ’82 and helped bring British rock back to guitars, craftsmanship and tight, ‘60s-influenced songs.

A video for 'Brand New Toy' has been made by director Joe Connor and features Paul actually inside a giant kaleidoscope to create the brilliant psychedelic effects.Paul Weller is a popular, much decorated solo star in the United Kingdom and regularly shows up on the cover of Mojo and other smart British magazines for his recent work. A brand new track – released for 2014's Record Store Day – 'Brand New Toy' is also included. Some of Paul's best singles are here such as live favorite 'From The Floorboards Up' to the never-off-the-radio 'That Dangerous Age'. Not bad for an artist approaching 40 years in the music business. Both 2010's spiky and restlessly experimental (and Mercury Prize nominated) Wake Up The Nation and 2012's Sonik Kicks, in which Weller crams about as many ideas and sounds into futuristic three and a bit minute pop songs as humanly possible, are rightly regarded alongside 22 Dreams as among the very best records he's ever produced. The creative fire sparked by this new way of creating music quickly spread onto his next two albums.

22 Dreams was a dazzling kaleidoscope of unexpected shifts, sonic experimentation and head-spinning inventiveness all marked by a wide-eyed sense of new-found artistic freedom, it bowled over both fans and those who had long since written off Weller as merely a dependable traditionalist. When Paul released '22 Dreams' in 2008, it marked one of the most remarkable creative re-births of recent years. From 'Heliocentric' to 'Sonik Kicks' Paul proved that his fire hasn't gone out. There are few artists with as many incarnations as Paul who can claim to have achieved such an ongoing renaissance, keeping each of their album releases sounding fresh and showered with plaudits. These 15 years have seen a constant artistic high, with each subsequent album release being heralded as 'his best yet'. More Modern Classics is a fitting title: a high quality stylish collection featuring tracks taken from Paul's albums of the last 15 years of his solo career.

Paul weller tour 2015