Paul Weller Quotes

In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.

You have to keep challenging yourself. I've always tried to do that, and I'm not saying I've always been successful. Maybe I've rewritten the same song; it's inevitable, but I've always been mindful of taking the writing somewhere else. You can't stick in your little comfort zone.

It's quite liberating to get to a certain age, 'cos you're not chasing number one hits or trying to be an international superstar. I've done all that. I'm not out to prove much more to anyone but myself really, to be an artist and see if there is a new undiscovered music out there for me to make.

There's always peripheral things that you like that you don't know, but starting with whatever his British influences are, are some of my favourite artists, and the American things are what I grew up on as well. In the end, for me, it's those foundations of the music business - those things that are a lot of the foundations of what music today is. You can hear a bit of all of those things that we talk about in almost all music today.

Bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names

I think anybody goes through a crisis of confidence from time to time. You have to kind of doubt yourself, sometimes. It's the way forward.

The first thing I bought that was really stylish was in 1969 when I was eleven. I saved up for a black, grey and white tie-dye grandad vest. It was too big - they weren't catering for kids my age - and hung off me, but I loved it.

I'm sure there's a subconscious 'go for it' thing with turning 50. You want to do as much as possible and there are thoughts of how little time we have on the planet. For a lot of musicians in their 50s, the best days are behind them. I'd like to try and show that there is a future.

The Beatles changed the world. They certainly changed my world, and many, many other individuals as well.

Even somebody like The Black Keys or Royal Blood, they all have this original roots base to what they do.

There have been records I've been really, really pleased with that haven't connected with people. But I felt good about them.

There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it's another facet of my character, and I need to do that.

I think part of what we do is there is a bit of dandy influence, always, or a little sprinkle of it. Not literal Savile Row dandy, but there's a bit of sartorial dandiness in everything that we do - every collection that we do.

I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.

Nothing wrong with pop!

The way that house music has become so white and so sanitized over the decades and the fact it's still going on, well I think it's sad really, but at the time I really loved it. I loved all the black house music that was coming out of Chicago and New Jersey, which I just thought was really soulful.

There's more to distract people, isn't there? When I was a kid there was music and football and clothes. And that was kind of it, really. Those three things defined you as a person.

Right from the start with music, I was like, 'I'm just going to do this, and I don't care about anything else. There are certain things you have to give up, even at 13, 14: your Friday and Saturday nights, having a regular girl, lots of things like that. I look at Amy Winehouse, and I think perhaps she just don't want to do it that much.

I could say that 'Exile On Main Street' was my favourite or whatever, but I'm more about the songs and the artists and the sound that they bring.

When I told my mum I was going to play my first gig when I was 14, she couldn't believe it, cause I was painfully shy at that time. But I just done it, put my head down and got through it. And I suppose there's still a little bit of that, even though it's many years later and I've been doing it for a long time.

When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.

All my children inspire me in life, and that always comes out in the writing.

I'd like to think I've left something in the world. Without in any way trying to be morbid, but life is very short, and I'd like to think I'd leave some body of work that would inspire other musicians long after I've gone.

I've not had Botox, no.

There was a time in my 40s where I thought, oh, it's all over - not just work, but I'm never going to feel young again, I'm always going to feel like I know what's going to happen, I'll know what to expect. Looking back I don't know if that was a midlife crisis, I don't know - but I don't feel that now. There's possibilities. It gets better.

I don't really wanna talk about politics, I'm not clever enough.

Why not go down the pub? A guy once came up to me at a gig and asked me if I had MySpace. I said, 'This is my space, and you're invading it.'

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion.

For me, my entry point, when I was old enough, was the skinhead/suedehead thing, sort of like '70/'71. People didn't have much money - they would save up, or whatever - but everyone always dressed up. You'd go to a dance at the football club on a Thursday night and all of us kids - all of us from maybe like 12 to 16 - were all dressed up.

If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you ... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise, you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there.

I suppose I was much more serious-minded in the '70s and '80s.

Being a musician is a noble profession.

I think people are just really disappointed, disappointed with Blair as well, who's just like Bush's lapdog. I think everyone's just disillusioned with politics in our country, and it must be the same in your country.

I was such a massive fan of all the '60s pop bands, but if I had to single out one band, it would definitely be The Beatles.

When I discovered blues - I was 12-years-old - I didn't discover it in America where it was from; I discovered it from Fleetwood Mac - the original Peter Green Fleetwood Mac, Saveloy Brown - like British blues interpretations of it,' which then, when I started the liner notes and seeing all these names, I was like, 'Who's Willie Dixon?' Then I go to the record store and ask the guy there and he goes, 'Oh, you don't know anything.' And so, to me, that's the root of most of it anyway.

In the '90s, I think I rediscovered my guitar. The Jam was obviously very guitar-based, but in the Style Council I just got really disillusioned with playing the guitar. The further it went on, the less and less I played, to a point where I couldn't pick it up any more.

Playing live is what it's all about for me. It's cathartic, it's emotional, it's about communing with people. The way you feel after a gig is a such a powerful thing.

I'm still a mod, I'll always be a mod, you can bury me a mod.

The '40s were quite austere and super glamorous.

When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.

Getting to No. 1 makes everyone feel better; of course it does. But it's swings and roundabouts with these things. Sometimes you make a great record, and it clicks with people. And other times it passes them by; there's nothing you can do. It's still the same record.

I've always liked my clothes, even before I could properly afford them. Clothes for me were never a cloak, a cover. They were how I chose to express myself.

I get bored quickly. I kind of take my hat off to bands who have been around for a long time and still do the same thing, because it's hard to keep a band together for decades. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't play the same songs night after night or just trade on my past glories, because it wouldn't interest me as a person.

There are so many artists who get to my age that get comfortable and just stick in a groove, and I really don't want to do that.

I love soul music, that's my real love in life and in whatever shape or form it is.

The Jam went through a phase of wearing satin jackets. But that was pre-getting signed and making it, when we were still playing the pubs and clubs - around '75. Shocking, really - what would you call them apart from 'horrible?' We'd wear these white zip-up bomber jackets with black kind of loon pants and black and white shoes.

We can't stop a baby in Africa from starving to death ... but we can afford enough technology and weaponry to blow the world up a million times over.

I try to have an open ear, but at the end, it would never change direction to where I think I should go. Because if I listened to everybody else, they're thinking about what's right now or what was the last thing - they're not thinking about what's next.

The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.

I want to see where and how far I can go as an artist. I look back and see what I've done, and I want to do as much as I can in my lifetime. I love doing it. If I didn't have that passion or love for it, I wouldn't do it.

I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.

I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.

I am aware of the words 'national treasure' being attached to me occasionally. It just makes me feel old.

If you're into a certain band, you're into the way they dress.

I still want to do what I want to do, but we also have to think about some sense of protecting the business that's out there as well.

Young people can listen to music at any moment in the day or night. Which is great, but I think it kind of devalues it as well. They don't feel the need to own it. They certainly don't feel the need to pay for it. I'd have to save up for weeks to buy an album when I was a kid, and that made it even more great for me when I finally got that thing in my hand.

I had a total belief in The Style Council. I meant every word and felt every action.

I'm fine with being thought of as a guitar player, and if I can get any recognition or respect for doing that, that's a pretty good thing for me.

I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.

I hear an album so many times during the course of making it that when I've just finished it, I don't want to hear it again. After you've taken a little bit of time away from it, you can come back to it, which can be scary. I'm happy with 'Sonik Kicks,' man.

There's such a wealth of great music, clothes or whatever. There is so much great stuff out there, that why would you not still be interested if you've grown up in that kind of culture?

I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really.

I wanted to make a record that sounded like a continous piece

When you look at so much of what we all love, there's either soul-based to it, or it's the blues. It's really the beginnings of any kind of music. It really is; it all starts there. Because after that, it's music of the moment.

I think politicians are so far out of step with what people really want.

I wear jeans and a T-shirt sometimes. I just like clothes - since the first time I can remember, like age ten or eleven; I was just obsessed with music and clothes. Just like a lot of people in England from my generation.

I only put an album out every two or three years.

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with.

I kept the first Rickenbacker I ever got, a little short-scale John Lennon-type model. And I've got a couple of 12-string models, which are really nice, and I've got a Pete Townshend model, which Pete gave me a few years ago. But that's about it.

Worldwide, most people dress more casually these days, don't they? They have done for the last 20 or 30 years, I suppose. So, every place that I go to, the majority of people really wear jeans, trainers, T-shirt - everybody seems to dress more for comfort. Whereas, even in my lifetime, even up to the early-'70s, there was still that thing of dressing up.

It can get boring. Not the playing the songs necessarily, or doing the clothes. You know, you need stimulus.

I just pretty much love from 1966 to 1972, that's my time. I think everything that needs to be said was said within that time. That's just a subjective thing, as well.

When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.

I'm so lucky, I'm just really grateful for what I've got around me - children and my wife and everything else.

Today, we're even into the whole sweat thing. They'll wear a [suit] jacket like this, but they'll wear it with sweat pants and sneakers. But I do think there is every generation - and it won't be as big as it was when you and I were those ages - but every generation all of a sudden experiences that they want to dress up.

I never get too many problems. You can never please everyone anyway, obviously. And some people take the easy route and just play the greatest hits, and their audience is happy to hear that as well, and that's fine, but it wouldn't please me. But it doesn't trouble me.

It's a global fashion thing; because of the Internet it has gotten really small. It's cluttered, but it's gotten small.

I play out my role, I've even been out walking -They tell me that it helps, but I know when I'm beaten ...

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

You do your runway show, and it's all over the Internet before I see anything on there.

I have to do what I'm doing at the time. That's the most important thing. You might lose some people along the way, and you might gain other people on the way, that's just the way it is. But nevertheless, if you're driven by something, there is no argument about it; that's what you have to do.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do. It's just lazy journalism, but people start to accept it. If people spent an hour in my car driving around London and listening to the stuff I listen to, they'd hear some interesting stuff.

I suppose it's nice to have some surprise in life and to surprise yourself in life and see what else you can do.

Our campaigns have always been based on what we consider music icons that transcend generations and they're not of the moment - they continue to evolve.

I don't feel old or young, I just am

In the early-'60s, when you look at that period of time - up to the mod time - when everybody was wearing skinnier suits and skinny lapels and skinny ties - that came out of the States, and that was quite cool.

Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.

If you gave me a fresh carnation, I would only crush its tender petals ...

The whole nostalgia thing, and just sticking with what you always liked and what you know and not taking a chance on something or expanding. I think especially after a certain age.

I think if you're a creative person, then you're always kinda looking to move things along - 'Where else can I go? Where can I take this?' From painters to photographers - anything creative in the arts - if you're a true artist, I think you'll always look to do something else. 'Where else can I go with it?' Do you know what I mean?

No man should have cowboys boots in his wardrobe. That's fair enough, isn't it? Unless you're a cowboy, of course.

You can't live a lie. You have to follow your heart.

I don't like the royal family, I don't like the establishment, I don't like the civil service.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

It's just something internal that says, 'I've got to do this now. This is what I'm doing now.'