With an astonishing 45-year recording career behind him, Paul Weller is one of rock’s most prolific artists of all-time.
Since starting with his first band The Jam’s debut single In The City in May 1977, the Woking-born legend has enjoyed the kind of adulation that few songwriters or performers experience.
He’s earned a place in British music history with a string of chart-topping albums across five separate decades.
An age with a Beatles ring
The boy wonder who helped sharpen millions of teenagers’ political awareness in the ’80s with his gritty anthems of proletarian rebellion turns 64 next month – an irony surely not lost on the lifelong Beatles aficionado.
His latest tour follows on from a live album recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Recorded last May at London’s Barbican Centre and featuring guest vocalists Celeste, Boy George and James Morrison, An Orchestrated Songbook is about as far removed as it’s possible to get from Weller’s early years fronting sharp-dressing power trio The Jam.
They scored number ones with the incendiary singles Going Underground, Start!, Town Called Malice and Beat Surrender.
The veteran shocked the music world – and especially bandmates Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler – by calling time on The Jam in late 1982.
The Style Council
He later helped cultivate a new genre branded “sophisti-pop” with his next band, the frequently experimental Style Council, where he gave his passion for jazz, soul and house free rein.
Big hits for the Long Hot Summer outfit started to dry up in the late ’80s, and Weller eventually re-emerged in 1991 with the Into Tomorrow single under his own name, going on to release his eponymous debut solo album the following year.
Heavily influenced by ’60s R&B, the modest-selling opus set the tone for where the troubadour would take his career over the rest of the ’90s, starting with the psychedelic folk strains of its more commercially successful follow-up Wild Wood.
‘Modfather’ of Britpop
By the middle of the decade Weller was being hailed as the godfather – or more specifically the “modfather” of the booming Britpop movement – and his era-defining albums Stanley Road and Heavy Soul were among the highest profile of his career.
No fewer than 12 studio offerings have since followed in the past 22 years.
A few, like 2005’s As Is Now and Wake Up The Nation (2010) have gone close to recapturing some of the fire of Weller’s vintage work.
But more often there’s been a hazy, stripped-back vibe to much of his latterday output suggesting a mature artist at peace with the passage of time.
There haven’t been too many radical departures musically on the more recent records – unless a desire to go deeper into folk territory counts – but clearly the father-of-eight’s adoring fans don’t care about that as his albums continue to sell in bucketloads.
Solo albums soar up the charts
Incredibly, 13 of his 16 solo studio releases have reached either number one or two on the UK charts, continuing a trend started all the way back in the early ’80s with The Jam LPs Sound Affects and The Gift.
Weller’s creative wellspring has continued to overflow in recent times, with four studio albums appearing in as many years in the shape of A Kind Revolution, True Meanings, On Sunset and Fat Pop (Volume 1).
He set out on tour with his five-piece band at the end of last month and plays the Caird Hall in Dundee on Tuesday and Edinburgh’s Usher Hall the following night, with the gigs winding up on home turf in London’s Kentish Town.
Despite recent orchestral dabblings, reviews of the concerts thus far have highlighted the presence in Weller’s line-up of two drummers, Ben Gordelier and Steve Pilgrim – who also plays guitar – which perhaps points to a renewed focus on the icon’s previous penchant for potent blues rock.
Known for a resolute determination to play copious samples of his latest material even in festival settings – as was the case when he appeared on the main stage at T in the Park’s last-ever Balado edition in 2014 – Weller can be seen by some as something of a curmudgeonly figure.
This is perhaps an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of his famously earnest dedication to his craft.
The good news for those hoping to hear some of the biggest hits from his back catalogue next week is that favourites such as Shout To The Top, That’s Entertainment and The Changingman continue to figure in his live sets.
Paul Weller plays the Caird Hall, Dundee, on Tuesday April 12. Doors open 7pm.
