#Paul weller child professional

“I was kind of pretentious enough and arrogant enough, or whatever it was, to think it was only a matter of time. “I never had any doubt about it,” he told me recently. ‘I was pretentious and arrogant enough to think was only a matter of time’ “Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft”), but it has also shared equivalences with the career of an artist Weller was previously equivocal about (“For years I only liked Low”), David Bowie.

#Paul weller child professional

This desire to dabble and evolve has not only mirrored the professional playfulness of The Beatles (“After ‘Please Please Me’, we decided we must do something different for the next song,” Paul McCartney told the band’s biographer Hunter Davies. His solo career has been testament to that, a three-decade cavalcade of experimentation that, in the past ten years or so, has seen him develop an extraordinary desire for experimentation. Weller’s way of dealing with this was to ignore them and to push ahead, coaxing himself through the tributaries of the music industry, leading where others wanted him to follow.

While other artists were encouraged to experiment and dabble, Weller’s constituency, both in concert halls and in the media, seemed determined to create their own kind of creative cell for him, damning him whenever he decided to leave it, which was often. He had to drag many of the diehard Jam fans with him to The Style Council (many of whom were blindsided by Weller’s understandable desire to move on) and those who came with him were repeatedly assaulted by changes in direction. ‘Your dad’s band was the catalyst for all of it’Ĭonversely, he has seemingly gone out of his way to persistently challenge them, in the way that great artists often do, be they Bob Dylan, David Bowie or Weller’s own North Star, The Beatles.