“I’m sure there must be many fathers who sometimes think: “Am I fucking this up? Am I a good father? Am I a good partner? Am I a good person? Have I done the best I could do?” All of those questions… and then Glad Times is about when you’re married with kids, especially, it’s easy to pass each other, isn’t it? Everything’s practical, and then when you do get a bit of downtime, you just want to be on your own… read a book, watch TV, not talk to anyone, not be asked questions. “Failed was written after a row, yes,” he says. Weller and Bruce Foxton on stage during a Jam gig in 1978. One is romantic (Glad Times) and one is not (Failed). There’s a couple of relationship songs, too (Weller is married to Hannah Andrews, and they have three young children, twins John Paul and Bowie, nine, and three-year-old Nova). When’s it going to stop? As a human being, to see your fellow human beings suffering is fucking wrong.” “I can only say that anyone, regardless of race or colour, should be horrified by what happened, and is still happening, and that has happened for centuries. He wrote it immediately after seeing the murder of George Floyd. Fat Pop, the LP’s heart, is about how music can get you through the bad times Cosmic Fringes is Weller imagining the life of a keyboard warrior: “I’m a sleeping giant, waiting to awake, I stumble to the fridge, then back to bed” That Pleasure is his take on the Black Lives Matter movement. “It was a conscious decision to make it like that.” Weller talks about some of the tracks. “Yeah, they’re all short, like three minutes, and they’re all immediate,” he says.
It’s a strong album, a collection of banging singles. This preparation meant that last summer, when Britain started opening up again, everyone was ready to record, and Fat Pop (Volume 1) was finished by October.
A couple of songs involved other vocalists (the Mysterines’ Lia Metcalfe Andy Fairweather Low) and they did the same. At Black Barn, he’d record his voice and guitar, then send the resulting tracks to his band – Steve Cradock (guitar), Andy Crofts (bass), Ben Gordelier (drums) – who’d work on their parts.
U TUBE PAUL WELLER PLUS
Black Barn consists of a large, comfy studio, an adjoining office (platinum discs, selection of old photo-booth pictures), plus the house next door, with garden and trampoline. “I was working a three-day week.” He had “four or five” tracks left over from the recording of his previous album, the chart-topping On Sunset, so he worked on those at his home in London before popping here, to his Black Barn Studios, every so often. “Nothing else to do, was there?” he says. Work-wise, though, his lack of patience seems to have become even more acute recently he’s brought out an album every year for the past four years, and used the most recent, locked-down 12 months to create his 16th solo record, Fat Pop (Volume 1). Though he’s not cross all the time, by any means. By his taste shall ye know him (he’s also wearing old Prada trousers, and a jumper he designed himself for Ivy League outfitters John Simons)… alongside a just-under-the-surface anger, a time-is-ticking impatience, a suspicion of the elite. He is, and has always been, about music, and clothes, and details.
In an inconsistent world of ever-changing rules, Weller is a constant.
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