What do you think the Paul Weller of 2000 would have thought of Sonik Kicks and the renaissance?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d have been ready to hear it. You’ve got to be ready in life to receive certain things, haven’t you? I don’t know. It’s like when people say, ‘What would the 16 year old Paul Weller think of the 56 year old?’ Fuck knows. I have no idea… I’m definitely a lot more open to experimentation and try different styles of music as well. I don’t think the Weller of 2000 would have been ready to receive that way of working. It’s all tied in with that. With Heliocentric, for instance, like most of the records before it, I will have written a song in its entirety at home or wherever I may have been – chords, the melody, the words – and that would have been it. So that’s the template and we would have to work round that. It’s set in a way, the tempo’s set, the rhythm’s set. But in recent years, on recent records, it hasn’t been like that. It’s started from next to nothing and then just seeing where it goes, building it up, and doing a lot more writing in the studio and on the hoof as well.
Do you work in sudden bursts of activity, or is it fairly consistent?
I always try and write, I’m always looking to write. I don’t always actually do it, but I’m always looking to write. So whether that’s a conversation I have with someone, or a phrase or a chord pattern or a melody, whatever it may be, they’re things I just store up. I think I’ve probably got lazier in my old age, in terms of having an idea just before you go to sleep and then rushing downstairs and getting a guitar or whatever. Now I’m too fucking tired. Hopefully I’ll remember it by tomorrow.
You don’t have a tape recorder by your bed?
No, I have got one. My missus bought me one. But, no. I’m always looking to write. I play guitar every day pretty much. Not necessarily to write, but just to keep my chops up and because I enjoy it.
Do you get much chance to write with two young kids in the house?
I have to wait until they all go to bed, that’s the main thing. Got no chance of doing it otherwise. I have to wait until everyone’s in bed. There’s always the late morning hours, the early morning hours, twelve o’clock, the witching hour. It’s nice just to play for myself and sometimes songs come out of that. Sometimes I’m just practicing or rehearsing and enjoy playing.
The return of Bruce Foxton surprised and delighted a lot of people. Are you likely to work with him again?
It’s possible, you know. Obviously not in any reformation way. But I’m sure we will do. He played on Wake Up The Nation and I played a bit on his recent album. But it was alright, it was nice.
Were you in contact with Bruce during the intervening years?
We hadn’t spoke for a long time. Decades, probably. His wife was dying, and that’s how we got back in touch. It was that straightforward. But it was fine, it was good. I enjoyed the whole experience.
What was the strength of that original partnership?
What, with Bruce or the band? The strength was in us as a live band. As personalities, I think we were all quite different really. I don’t know if we’d have hung out if we hadn’t been in a band. What were our differences? Have I got to pick my words here, I’ve got to try and be diplomatic? I think the big difference at first was that they were three or four years older than me. Which is nothing now. But when you’re 16 and someone’s 20 or 21 and they’ve got a car and a girlfriend, they’re a proper grownup and I’m a kid. So that was a big difference initially. We were all just very different characters. We all had our traits and our good points. But the main thing was, when we all got together we made a good noise.
You were working at it for a long time, weren’t you?
Yeah. We’d been together a good five or six years before we got a deal. So we were not necessarily road hardened, but we’d done our apprenticeship definitely. I suppose the bond came from playing all those pub gigs and club gigs in Woking and Surrey to mainly disinterested punters. It was a core strength as well, you’re not too phased by what gets thrown at you. It was good, that was our schooling. I started when I was 14, playing clubs, and when you’re facing those kind of audiences, they’re not necessarily violent or anything, but they’re disinterested. It gets to half ten when they’re a bit half cut and they start enjoying themselves. It hardens you. You’re not too phased by being out in the road or playing different places. It served us well, because you learn to take the highs with the lows. It gives you some kind of inner strength. That was the bond, I think, really. The fact we’d been through all that and then we finally made it, got a record deal and then had hits. That was the glue that held us together. The fact we’d all come on this trip, this journey together. And with my dad as well. He was the fourth member of the band. I always remember, when we first got signed up, after six months or whenever it was, he was saying to us, “I’m not sure I’m right for this now, I don’t know if I’m the right person to look after you now we’ve got this far into it.” To give everyone their due, everyone was like, “We’re all doing this together. We’ve come this far, we’re seeing it through.”