This one’s only for the fans. That’s not to say that Paulo Hewitt’s biography of Paul Weller is worthless. It isn’t. However, Hewitt is much enamoured with the singer-songwriter. A close friend for over quarter of a century (a friendship that ironically ended with the publication of this book), his depth of knowledge is unquestionable – as is his appreciation of the music. But the writing is spoilt by the presence of the author in the timeline. There’s too much of the sycophantic “me and Paul” stance in this biography, which made me understand just a little why Weller perhaps ditched this supposedly close friend.
No matter. He’s a strange man, and his odd character is one of the reasons why I warm to him so much. Growing ever-grumpy with age, now to almost Van Morrison proportions, Weller has always been weirdly inarticulate. He’s never come across too well in interviews, especially in the Style Council days where he attempted to experiment with humour. Hewitt attempts to drill into us the fact that he was having a great laugh, although my memories of the 80s Weller are uncomfortable. As are the interviews with his Council cohort Mick Talbot at the time, a bit part player strangely almost completely absent from this book. But Hewitt also exposes his mood swings, erratic choices in life and cruelty of character, which somehow works in his favour. An archetypal artistic temperament perhaps, but Paul Weller is certainly a great artist.
It all began for me in 1979/1980 where as an English schoolboy amongst millions of English schoolboys I discovered The Jam. Looking back, the popularity, artistic brilliance and sheer excitement of this band is possibly second to only The Beatles. Sure, other bands such as The Smiths were subsequently bigger in my life, but The Jam hit me at the right time. It also helped that there was a huge Mod contingent at my school in south London, helped also by the fact that Mick Talbot and his band The Merton Parkas were ex-pupils (some of our Mod contingent later starred in a Style Council video for heaven’s sake). Weller became a huge talking point, and although I wasn’t as big a fan as my friends in the Mod contingent (a friendship that sat uncomfortably with my closeness to the New Romantic contingent) I was kept awake at night by Weller’s creative cleverness, and the brilliant run of singles that included Eton Rifles, Going Underground, Start!, Absolute Beginners and the rest.
Paulo Hewitt dwells, as you might expect any Weller biographer to do, on the fact that Paul split The Jam in 1982. They were at the height of their success at this time and he was only 24 years old. He could have kept it going for another five years at least (this is probably a mean prediction; the ex-members of The Jam are now touring 26 years later with From the Jam and with some success). Crazy perhaps at the time, although it all makes a kind of perfect sense now. Through experimentation with different musical styles throughout the 80s to his mature solo career from the 90s onward he has, as Hewitt rightly points out, outlived all of his contemporaries. The elitist punk bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash, who looked down on him as he came from Woking and not within the square mile radius of The Kings Road, through to Elvis Costello, who he has rightly usurped as the long lived elder man of music.
Most telling in this portrait is who Weller’s fans are and who Weller, a difficult man on a good day, himself likes. Alongside his obvious influences such as The Beatles and The Kinks, he’s also a big Syd Barrett fan, and has recently expanded his horizons to include Nick Drake. He’s also embraced Acid House music, although Polydor records refused to release the final and very experimental Style Council album in the late 80s. But, at least within the music business, Weller’s admirers are select. Of his contribution to Band Aid in 1984 Hewitt reports that nobody chose to speak to him on the day of recording. And thinking of the self-congratulatory images of Bono, George Michael, Simon Le Bon and the rest I love him more for it. He’s had run-ins with the likes of Pete Townsend, and mysteriously refused to meet his idol Steve Marriott. The journalist Paul Morley, who can only enthuse about that square mile radius of The Kings Road and its enduring effect on Manchester, is not a fan.
But I am. Read this for interesting anecdotes and facts, but otherwise listen to the music. Start with Wild Wood, then flip back to The Jam stuff. His latest, 22 Dreams, is fantastic too. And if you’ve read this far it isn’t just boy’s music. Driving back from a conference today with a work colleague we listened to a few Weller songs and quietly enthused about the greatness of man. And this with a girl. From an all-boy, semi-Mod school this meant a lot to me.
Music Time
Friday December 21, 2007
in music |
This is a brief review of some of my favouite music from the last year, a year when I found myself downloading just as much music as I bought in the shops. My favourite two albums of the year however were both hard copies, Back to Black by Amy Winehouse and Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys. I’ve come late to the music of the Arctic Monkeys, and Gordon Brown was already declaring that he liked them before I’d even heard any of their songs. But FWN has become one of my most played albums lately, and I think Flourescent Adolescent is a brilliant little pop song, up there with Up the Junction and Lady Madonna.
The good: The Arctic Monkeys
2007 was the year I feared the worst for myself. Waking up in the middle of the night panicking that I had become mainstream with my musical tastes. There’s no denying it, Amy Winehouse and the Artctic Monkeys are now both musical mainstream. I even quite like James Blunt. So I was relieved to find that I really, really like The Young Knives and their album Voices of Animals and Men. This was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize but lost out to The Klaxons. I haven’t heard The Klaxons album, so I can’t comment, but it must be pretty good to be judged better than The Young Knives. They’re a weird bunch, I can’t deny that, although not by Mercury standards. And any band from the excellently named Ashby de la Zouch who have a band member called House of Lords gets the thumbs up from me.
The mad: The Young Knives
In the last year I also continued to keep a close watch on Damon Albarn, and his The Good The Bad and The Queen project was a masterpiece. His old mucker (or should that be mocker?) Graham Coxon released a criminally ignored EP together with Paul Weller called This Old Town. Other favourites were Thirst for Romance by Cherry Ghost and Yours Truly, Angry Mob by The Kaiser Chiefs. However, I may have saved the best till last. Although I only bought it yesterday, An End Has a Start by Editors is already shaping up to be something special. if you like dark, serious, emotional stuff then this is it.
The scary: Editors
My favourite bands aren’t the most photogenic. I’m glad of that.
And at last I’ve found a job where they let us listen to music in our quieter moments. Until next year, happy listening…
Somewhere in my record collection is a blue vinyl copy of Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus, a record featuring performances by The Fall, John Cooper Clarke, The Buzzcocks and Joy Division. This 1978 event is recreated in Anton Corbijn’s new film Control, with an amusing cameo from Clarke playing his younger self. It’s good to see him again; thirty years older but still on fine form. I didn’t spot any other such appearances and I was grateful; there were enough in-jokes in 24 Hour Party People, the other film telling the story of Ian Curtis and Joy Division and a film that was just a little too pleased with itself.
Control is a far more mature piece of cinema, based on the book Touching From a Distance by Deborah Curtis and filmed in stark black and white by Corbijn (who was responsible for many of the memorable monochrome stills of the band taken in the late 70s). Control tells the true story of four friends – Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris – who form a band after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in Manchester. The most enigmatic of the four was the now legendary Curtis, who spiralled into despair after being diagnosed with epilepsy. He committed suicide in 1980 aged 23 on the eve of Joy Division’s first US tour.
Control, attempts to unravel why such a young man – and one with such an unusual talent – chose to end it all on the brink of major success. The Joy Division story is a well documented one and I’m a huge fan of the music, and would cite them as one of the most influential bands of all time. You can hear the distinctive sound in new music today, and the established group The Killers cover a Joy Division song in the closing credits of Control. You can just tell they see this an the greatest of honours. But putting the lagacy of the music aside, the film still revealed for me a hidden side to Ian Curtis as it tries to piece together what went wrong.
I did know Curtis left a wife and young child behind when he died; I didn’t realise that they were barely out of school when they married. I also hadn’t really considered his ordinary working class Macclesfield background. The tower blocks of his youth and the cramped house he shared with his wife Deborah add to the sense of claustrophobia we see in him. There’s also the dual nature of his existence; the post punk icon writing lyrics at home in a break from decorating his living room, the enigmatic band leader returning home to face nappies and bottled baby milk. One scene shows him walking down a street in smart clothes and a tie at the height of the punk movement. The camera moves round to show the word hate daubed on his back. The scene ends with him entering the premises of his day job – the labour exchange. Such contradictions in his life can only have served to push him further into despair.
Sam Riley as Ian Curtis and the other actors playing the members of Joy Division radiate sheer energy in performance and are compelling to watch, although the film gives equal time to the singer’s home life. Domesticity takes a desperate turn when Deborah learns of his affair with a Belgian journalist. As, I suppose fittingly, Love Will Tear Us Apart plays in the background we see her rifling through her husband’s things. Boxes of Bowie and Lou Reed clippings, books full of lyrics and poems. She finds a name and number scribbled on an album cover. As their life begins to crumble, the life of Ian Curtis appears reduced to a few treasured possessions; the influences on his writings and music. In his final hours he plays a copy of Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. There is something about getting inside the mind of Curtis that preoccupies this film. We see his bedroom as a teenager covered in Bowie posters, there’s even a book of military uniforms by his bedside that hints at the band’s supposed flirtation with fascism (although the film doesn’t go on to explore or question this). Mostly, Curtis continues to remain a mystery. Deborah finds it hard to connect with him or his band; when she turns up at a gig heavily pregnant they, along with Factory boss Tony Wilson and the group’s mouthy manager Rob Gretton, are taken by complete surprise. Watching the band in performance she can only look on in wonder and she becomes the key figure in this film as we realise we can’t penetrate either the mind of this intensely introverted artist. Ironically, we see Joy Division in the studio recording the song Isolation- although I immediately thought of Deborah rather than Ian.
Control is a great movie thanks to the performances of Samantha Morton as Deborah and in particular Riley as Ian Curtis. His portrayal is stunning but it’s much more than just an impersonation. He can do the strange Curtis dance perfectly, he can do the facial mannerisms, but he also he brings across the sadness of an ordinary guy who’s life is torn in too many directions, and who faces life with an unbearable illness. Someone who wrote great lyrics but couldn’t appear to communicate with anyone directly. Despite this, Control isn’t depressing. It’s very sad, and what happened is indeed tragic but I always feel inspired when I hear the music of Joy Division, and this is the lasting feeling I’ve had from seeing this film. See it for the music, but also for the impressive photography and brilliant perfomances. And it’s not all doom and gloom, there’s also a lot of humour in the film. After all, they were all just ordinary lads.
Music Time
Wednesday December 27, 2006
in music |
The time of the season continues to mean lists, and here’s another one. So without further hesitation, here is a list of my favourite albums of 2006. Yes, I know that a couple of them came out last year, but I’m behind on my listening. And this is almost my last list of 2006.
The Beatles and The Stones
I’m about a quarter of the way through Dominic Sandbrook’s massive White Heat, a history of Britain 1964-1970. It’s a fantastic book, that’s very well written and serves as a great antidote to the endless dull and repetitive documentaries I’m tired of seeing about the period.
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