Hey Music Mag - Issue 2 - October 2018

FEATURE PAUL WELLER
“If it’s in your blood,
it’s a hard thing to stop
doing, whatever level
we’re talking about”
third studio album, True Meanings was
sitting at No.2 in the UK Album Charts as
this issue went to press. Celebrated for an
eclectic body of work over his solo career,
his latest longplayer, with its delicate but lush
orchestration, has been described in some
quarters as “folk-rock”.
In a behind-the-scenes mini film about the
making of the album, Weller admits: “I don’t
know what sort of genre it is, I have no idea.
For me, they’re just good songs, you know,
lyrically, melodically, quite simplistic.
“Whenever you get an acoustic guitar out
and some strings, it always sounds kinda
sad anyway. But I don’t get a sadness from
it. I think it’s quite the opposite for me. It’s
just stating where I am at the moment, really.
One man’s journey up to this point.”
In fact, it’s Weller’s most collaborative
album to date, input coming from Rod
Ardent of the Zombies [Soul Searchers and
White Horses], folk legends Martin Carthy
and Danny Thompson [Come Along], Lucy
Rose [Books] and Noel Gallagher [White
Horses and Books].
After accumulating songs over a five-year
period, Weller enlisted the help of co-writers
to finish some of them. One of the four joint
efforts on True Meanings is Bowie, which
Weller composed with singer-songwriter
Erland Cooper. The song is a tribute to the
late David Bowie – cleverly incorporating
some Bowie quotes into the lyrics – as
well as a broader reflection on loss. Like
Weller, the Starman enjoyed a long-lasting
career defined by transformation and Weller
confides Bowie’s death in 2016 affected him.
“It made me sad for an awful long time.
Because he had done so little for so long
and then he came out with The Next Day
and then a couple years later with Blackstar.
There was all this activity and I thought,
‘Great, he’s well again and he’s back on it’.
So it was a shock for me when he died and I
was saddened by it.
“When me and my wife had twin boys six
years ago, he sent us a very nice bunch of
flowers and a card saying congratulations.
That was really sweet. One of our boys is
called Bowie as well, obviously named after
him. My wife is an even bigger fan than me.”
Age does not seem to have mellowed the
fire in Weller’s stomach when it comes to
politics. Many of his songs with The Jam
14 OCTOBER 2018