What other Internet sites say about Paul Weller

www.wikipedia.org (The online Encyclopedia)

The Jam
Weller first burst onto the national music scene in 1977 with his first band, The Jam, which he had formed four years earlier as a teenager in Woking with his friends Rick Buckler (drums) and Bruce Foxton (bass). Weller himself took lead vocal duties and was a talented lead guitarist.

The Jam's 1982 album The Gift.1977 was the year after the first wave of punk bands such as The Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks and The Clash had arrived in the public eye. Although The Jam's music had much of the fire and the passion of those bands, in terms of song writing ability and lyrical content, The Jam were more in the mould of the so-called 'new wave' bands who came later on. Also, being just outside of London rather than in it, they were never really part of the tightly-knit and resentful punk clique, perhaps inspiring Weller's lines in The Jam's very first single In The City:

"In the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you, but every time I approach you, you make me look a fool."

Nonetheless, The Clash were suitably impressed by The Jam to take them along as the support act on their White Riot tour of 1977. Politically, Weller was inspired by the left-wing stance of the senior band's Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. The Jam went on to be far more successful, at least in terms of the singles charts, than The Clash in the UK.

In The City took The Jam into the Top 40 for the first time in May 1977, although it would take another two years and eight singles before they were sufficiently engrained in the British national consciousness for The Eton Rifles to break the Top 10, hitting the No. 3 spot in November 1979.

From then on their blend of pop tunes and politically-aware lyrics made them hugely popular, and in 1980 they hit No. 1 for the first time with what many believe to be the 'definitive' Paul Weller song - Going Underground, which was to become in effect the band's signature tune. A popular story has it that Going Underground hitting the charts at all was in fact an accident - allegedly, it was supposed to be only the B-side to Dreams of Children, a less-remembered song, but a mistake at a French pressing plant meant both songs were given 'A' status on the label so they had to be released as a double A-side. Whether this is true or apocryphal is unknown, but whatever the case, after Going Underground, The Jam - and Weller in particular - were UK superstars.

Weller was strongly influenced by 1960s bands such as The Kinks and The Who, both great favourites of his whose presence can be felt in much of The Jam's material. However, that did not mean that he was averse to finding inspiration in the works of many other artists: the Jam's second No. 1 single, Start! borrows heavily from The Beatles' Taxman, for example. The group's third No. 1, Town Called Malice, which has more recently found renewed fame on the Billy Elliot soundtrack, has a driving bass line very reminiscent of The Supremes' You Can't Hurry Love.

In the early 1980s, The Jam were possibly the biggest band in Britain. They even had one single, That's Entertainment, that reached No. 21 in the UK charts despite not even being released in that country - it got there purely on the strength of the huge number of people buying import sales of the German single release. Weller, however, was eager to explore other musical avenues he felt he could not go down with The Jam. Later Jam songs such as The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) - often described by critics as "a Style Council song pretending to be a Jam song" - showed that he longed to write in a perhaps more melodic, soulful style. He felt had taken The Jam as far as he could and was eager to move on.

Thus in late 1982, Weller shocked fans and the press - as well as his bandmates Buckler and Foxton - by announcing that The Jam were to disband at the end of the year. Their final single, Beat Surrender, became their fourth chart topper, going straight in at No. 1 in its first week, which was still very rare at the time, and their farewell concerts at Wembley Arena were multiple sell-outs.

The Style Council
At the beginning of 1983, The Jam were no more and the press and public wondered what was next for Weller. The answer emerged in the form of a collaboration with his friend, keyboard player Mick Talbot, to form a new group called The Style Council. A very different band to The Jam, the Style Council played a whole range of varying musical styles, from outright pop to jazz, soul and the occasional ballad. Weller and Style Council back-up vocalist Dee C. Lee (ex-Wham! back-up singer) formed a romantic relationship during this period and later married.

However, the Style Council were not completely untouched by the spirit of The Jam - indeed, one of their early singles A Solid Bond In Your Heart was originally written and recorded during The Jam era, and this earlier version later turned up on that band's Extras compilation. And as The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had to Swallow) is sometimes labelled as a Style Council song pretending to be a Jam song, so 1985's Walls Come Tumbling Down is often compared to a Jam song, hiding under Style Council colours.

The Style Council's 1988 album Confessions of a Pop Group.Although the Style Council were never as successful chart-wise as The Jam had been - they never had a No. 1 single, for instance - that didn't stop the mid-1980s from being possibly the peak of Weller's high profile in the UK. He appeared on 1984's famous Band Aid record Do They Know It's Christmas? (although his major contribution was probably to mime the unavailable Bono's part on the Top of the Pops performance of the song) and the Style Council were the second act on in the British half of Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985.

Despite this success at home, the Style Council were little more successful internationally than The Jam had been, with My Ever Changing Moods providing them with their one and only single to ever make the US Billboard Chart's Top 40. As the 1980s wore on, the Style Council's popularity in the UK itself began to slide, with none of their singles even reaching the Top 20 any more. For the first time in Paul Weller's career, he found himself somewhat in the shade, and the death-knell of The Style Council was sounded in 1989 when their record company refused to even release their fifth and final album, Modernism - a New Decade, although this did eventually have a limited vinyl run and appeared on The Complete Adventures of the Style Council, retrospective box set.

Solo career
In the early 1990s, Weller disbanded the Council and went quiet for a few years, before returning to prominence as one of the major influences behind the mid-1990s 'Britpop' movement that gave rise to such bands as Oasis and Blur, both of whom were heavily influenced by The Jam in particular. Weller even appeared as a guest guitarist and backing vocalist on "Champagne Supernova" of Oasis's seminal 1995 album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, perhaps the defining moment of Britpop . In particular, Weller was an important influence in the development of Ocean Colour Scene, and members of that band, particularly guitarist Steve Cradock, often played in Weller's backing band.

Weller's 1995 solo album Stanley Road.However, his role was not purely that of a mere influence: his own 1995 album Stanley Road took him back to the top of the British charts, and went on to become the best selling album of his entire career (the album was allegedly named after the street in Woking where he had grown up, although this Stanley Road was knocked down in the 1980's to make way for a supermarket). It marked a return to the more guitar-based style of his earlier days, albeit with a more grown-up mature edge than the sheer adrenaline rush The Jam had provided. The album's major single, The Changingman, was also a big hit, taking Weller back into the Top 10 of the singles charts. (Weller's detractors, however, noted that the song's descending guitar riff bore a strong resemblance to the one used on the Electric Light Orchestra's debut single, 10538 Overture).

His influence over the 1990s generation of British guitar bands, coupled with his love of 1960s Mod-era music, had earned him the affectionate nickname 'The Modfather', and the late 1990s saw him cement his position as one of Britain's major musical figures. In 1996 he collaborated with Oasis's guitarist / songwriter Noel Gallagher and none other than Paul McCartney to form the 'super group' Smokin' Mojo Filters, releasing a version of The Beatles' hit Come Together. New Jam and Style Council 'best of' albums took his earlier career back into the charts, and his own solo 'best of' collection Modern Classics was a substantial success in 1998.

The year 2000 saw the release of his fifth solo studio album and seventh solo effort overall (as well as the Modern Classics compilation, there had also been the 1994 live album Live Wood), called Heliocentric. There were rumours at the time that this was to be his final studio effort, but these proved unfounded when he released the No. 1 hit album Illumination in September 2002, preceded by yet another top ten hit single It's Written in the Stars. Between these two albums he had also released a second successful live album, 2001's Days of Speed, on which he performed acoustic versions of some of his best-known songs not just from his solo career but from The Jam and Style Council back catalogues as well.

On September 14th, 2004, Paul Weller released an album of covers entitled Studio 150. It debuted at No. 2 on the UK charts and included a cover of the classic Bob Dylan song, "All Along The Watchtower". The album consisted of the singles "The Bottle", "Wishing On A Star", "Thinking Of You" and "Early Morning Rain" which was a double A-Side along with a cover of The Beatles "Come Together".

On July 18 2005, Paul Weller released his most recent single "From The Floorboards Up" to be featured on the new album As Is Now. The album also includes the singles "Come On/Let's Go" and "Here's The Good News".

Legacy
Proving that interest still remained in his seminal days of the 1970s and 80s, no less than three of his songs - two Style Council numbers and one song from The Jam - turned up on the soundtrack of 2001's hit British movie Billy Elliot, bringing him a whole new generation of fans to discover his music.

Evidence of his continued popularity was provided by a poll run by British national radio station Virgin Radio in December 2002 to find the Top 100 British Artists of all time. More than 25,000 listeners voted, and in the final results revealed on 31st December, The Style Council came in at No. 97, Weller as a solo artist at No. 21 and The Jam at No. 5 - ahead of such acts as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Clash and Weller's own heroes such as The Who and The Kinks.

In February 2006 Paul Weller will be recieving the Lifetime Achievement award at the Brit Awards.

This short Biography is courtesy of Wikipedia, the on-line Encyclopedia

He introduced us to suburban mod revivalism with The Jam, espradilles and cappuccinos with the Style Council and became a forerunner of Britpop revivalism as a solo artist in the 90s. Although Weller never totally aligned himself with the punk movement he became a reluctant (and surly) spokesman for disaffected youth, his music mixing suburban bile and bitterness with soul and a punk thrash.

Paul Weller was born on 25 May, 1958 in Woking, Surrey. He formed The Jam while still at school in 1973 together with drummer Rick Buckler and bassist Bruce Foxton. They were managed by Weller's father, John, who still manages his son's solo career today. Peddling amphetamine charged, retro R&B, influenced by The Who and The Kinks, as well as the emerging punk scene, The Jam launched themselves on the London club circuit in 1976. They signed to Polydor Records in 1977 and released their debut single In The City, later that year. The song cracked the Top 40 and an album of the same name soon followed. The album bristled with adolescent fury at Weller's urban surroundings on tracks like Sounds From The Street and Bricks and Mortar. Despite a punk ethos, Weller and co were a band apart from the Kings Road loafers. Image wise the band were always kitted out in Mod era sharp suits, parkas and scooters as the preferred mode of transport.

The album This Is The Modern World swiftly followed in 1977 and spawned the Top 20 hit All Around The World. Weller dented his angry young man image though by confessing to NME that he voted Conservative. But the band's third album, All Mod Cons managed to paper over any political cracks. Arguably the band's finest album, Weller's cutting edge social reportage was at its bitterest peak. The band had been dissed by the punk cognoscenti for being out of step and conservative. Weller struck back on songs about sell-out rock stars (To Be Someone), the middle class (Mr. Clean) and hooligans Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. The songs savagery was tempered by Weller's soulful vocals, their punky thrash broadened with brush strokes of folk-tinged psychedelia and even love ballads.

In a period of rising 'yoof' unemployment, Weller's socially aware lyrics seemed timely. The bile-spewing attack on class, Eton Rifles, would become the band's first Top 5 single in 1979, proving that Weller had come closer than anyone to updating The Kinks%u2019 Ray Davies' class conscious agenda. The resulting album, Setting Sons also hit the Top 5 and spawned a further hit single in Strange Town.

In February 1980the band went straight in at No.1 with the single, Going Underground, another snarling attack on the establishment. Follow up single, Start, taken from their new album, Sound Affects, also entered the charts at No.1. The song, complete with the bassline rip-off of The Beatles' Taxman, marked a further musical development for the band as they allied studio trickery and sophistication to their musical anger. Sound Affects, released in 1980, marked a shift away from power-punk aggression with subtle acoustic strums on That's Entertainment and the use of horns on tracks like Pretty Green and Man In The Cornershop. By now The Jam were one of the biggest bands in Britain although their defiantly British sound didn't translate to American success. The band were at No.1 again in 1982 with the Motown-tinged single, Town Called Malice.

The resulting album, The Gift would prove to be their swansong as Weller broke up the band at the peak of their fame later that summer, signing off with another No.1 single, Beat Surrender. Weller announced he was off to explore his soul fixation with The Style Council - the first of many musical rebirths. Bassist Foxton went on to join Stiff Little Fingers in 1990 while drummer Rick Buckler forsook musical polish for the real thing and became a furniture restorer.

Within a matter of months Weller had formed his new soul collective with former Merton Parkas keyboardist Mick Talbot and drummer Steve White (who would go on to partner Weller in his solo ventures). Inspired by the 70s soul of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, Weller fashioned a mixture of white funk and breezy pop, scoring immediately with the Top 5 hit, Speak Like A Child. Later that year the group went Top 3 with the Long Hot Summer EP, its sultry lead track creating a blueprint for the Style Council sound. The band's debut album, Cafe Bleu was a lush fusion of summery jazz and high street soul spawning the sumptuous 1984 hit My Ever Changing Moods.

As the %u201880s wore on, Weller became increasingly political - the rousing funk of Shout To The Top and Walls Come Tumbling Down also hinted at the direction The Jam may have taken had they still been together. With the miners strike in 1984, Weller released a benefit single, Soul Deep, under the Council Collective banner. The project included Jimmy Ruffin, Junior Giscombe and Style Council backing singer Dee C. Lee, who Weller married. 1985's album My Favourite Shop was a well-crafted series of funk outings on such topics as industrial decline, political violence and social change and included the hit Walls Come Tumbling Down. By 1986 The Style Council were heavily involved in the Red Wedge movement alongside the likes of Billy Bragg and The Communards. The aim was to educate music fans into voting Labour at the upcoming elections. The movement proved a failure as the Tories romped home to victory and the failure of the project seemed to inform the band's next album, the doleful The Cost Of Loving. 1988's follow up album, Confessions Of A Pop Group lacked focus, sinking in a series of string arrangements and classical pretensions and Weller disbanded the group when Polydor refused to release a proposed new album.

Now without a band or a record label Weller was forced to re-evaluate his career. He regained his passion for music with the new look, low-key Paul Weller Movement, featuring Steve White, Jacko Peake, Paul Francis, Max Beesley, Damon Brown, Chris Lawrence and DJ and ex-NME scribe Paulo Hewitt. The band's first single, Into Tomorrow, on the Freedom High label, suggested Weller had been holed up with his favourite 60s R&B and psychedelia records. The single was a Top 40 hit and Weller subsequently whittled down the group, signed with Go! Discs in 1992 and released the single Uh Huh Oh Yeh. The song shot into the Top 20 and the Paul Weller revival was up and running. His eponymous debut album followed - politics were ditched for intensely personal songs and 1993 follow up album, Wild Wood was decidedly pastoral, drawing on 70s influences such as Traffic . The title track and single Sunflower saw our working class hero in meditative mood and the album reached No.2, forcing the music press to reassess the chino-soul of the Style Council years. And now, with the emergence of Britpop and the likes of Oasis citing Weller as a guiding influence, Weller came to be known as the Modfather (a title he hates) - a guiding light to the hordes of mop-topped, baggy-trousered chancers clogging up the charts.

Logically Noel Gallagher guested on Weller's next album, 1995's Stanley Road. The record was earthier than anything Weller had released since The Jam. Peviewed by the blistering single The Changingman, the album included a cover of Dr. John's I Walk On Gilded Splinters and the tender ballad You Do Something To Me. The album debuted at No.1 in the UK album charts and despite a few critical cries of tired dad-rock, Weller's star was in the ascendancy once again. He kept his profile high with numerous live appearances including a guest spot at Oasis' triumphant Knebworth shows. Now signed to Island Records after the demise of Go! Discs, Weller returned in 1997 with the Heavy Soul album, a raw blend of mod, psychedelia and rock. After a Greatest Hits set, Weller released the Heliocentric album in 2000, a life affirming blend of soulful, retro influences, especially on the brooding There Is No Drinking After You're Dead.

After 2001 live album Days Of Speed, Weller returned in 2002 with the Illumination album. Fending off cries of tired dadrock, the album found Weller refining his art and Modfather status. With contributions from Noel Gallagher and Stereophonics Kelly Jones the album was alternately rustic and muscular.

Fly On The Wall, released in 2003, was a 3-CD box set of b-sides and rarities, featuring some excellent cover versions including Neil Young's Ohio and Traffic's Feelin' Alright, and a number of credible Beatles' interpretations. The following year saw Weller making a musical stopgap with the covers album, Studio 150 which featured hit and miss covers of The Carpenters, Sister Sledge and Jimi Hendrix. Any cries of %u2018creative block%u2019 suggested by Studio 150%u2019s release will soon be allayed with Weller's new album, As Is Now. Recorded swiftly over a fortnight at Oasis' Wheeler End Studio, the new album finds Weller at his most relaxed, sporting and funky. We might even see him smiling...

www.yeproc.com
Paul Wellers USA Record Company

2007 will mark the 30 year anniversary of the beginning of Paul Weller's career with The Jam. In 1977, they released their debut album In The City and overnight Weller became one of the most influential songwriters of his generation all around the world.

Between 1977 and 1982 The Jam released six wildly successful albums and still hold the UK record for most simultaneous Top 75 singles with 13 of their songs charting in 1982 the week they announced their break up. The band's legendary song "Town Called Malice" from their final album The Gift was a smash success for them in the U.S.

Following his dissolving of The Jam, Weller turned his attention to his new project: The Style Council. His new band scored 19 consecutive hits on the UK charts including "My Ever Changing Moods" which was the band's breakthrough song here in the United States. The Style Council also held a coveted slot performing at the original Live Aid.

Since 1992, Weller has been a solo artist, releasing eight critically acclaimed studio albums. His third - "Stanley Road" - is considered one of the best British rock albums of all time. Just this year, Paul Weller was awarded the coveted Outstanding Contribution To Music Award at The Brits (the UK version of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award). It was a fitting tribute to a man whose music single-handedly shaped the sound of the UK music scene forever and inspired countless artists to pursue their musical careers.

On January 23rd, 2007 - Yep Roc Records will release Weller's first ever career retrospective - Hit Parade. Already a platinum album in the UK, Hit Parade marks the first time all of Weller's material (Jam/Style Council/solo) has been collected on one single CD. Hit Parade will also be available as a limited edition four-CD set with every single ever released by The Jam, The Style Council and Paul Weller represented in the box set.

And on February 6th, Hit Parade will be released as a 2-Disc DVD collection. Compiling almost all of his videos (Jam/Style Council/Solo), this DVD also includes SIX hard to find performances by The Jam from the legendary UK show, Top Of The Pops, and a classic performance on The Old Gray Whistle Test.

U.S. fans can catch Paul Weller and his band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on January 31st and Jimmy Kimmel Live on February 5th performing classic songs from his illustrious career. Weller will also spotlight each period of his career with a sold-out three night stand at Irving Plaza in New York from January 29th - 31st, followed by a three night stand in Los Angeles at The Avalon on Feb 3rd, 4th and 5th.

www.answers.com

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

As the leader of the Jam, Paul Weller fronted the most popular British band of the punk era, influencing legions of English rockers that ranged from his mod revival contemporaries to the Smiths in the '80s and Oasis in the '90s. During the final days of the Jam, he developed a fascination with Motown and soul, which led him to form the sophisti-pop group the Style Council in 1983. As the Style Council's career progressed, Weller's interest in soul developed into an infatuation with jazz-pop and house music, which eventually led to gradual erosion of his audience -- by 1990, he couldn't get a record contract in the U.K., where he had previously been worshipped as a demigod. As a solo artist, Weller returned to soul music as an inspiration, cutting it with the progressive, hippie tendencies of Traffic. Weller's solo records were more organic and rootsier than the Style Council's, which helped him regain his popularity within Britain. By the mid-'90s, he had released three successful albums that were both critically acclaimed and massively popular in England, where contemporary bands like Ocean Colour Scene were citing him as an influence. Just as importantly, many observers, while occasionally criticizing the trad rock nature of his music, acknowledged that Weller was one of the few rock veterans who had managed to stay vital within the second decade of his career.

Weller's climb back to the top of the charts was not easy. After Polydor rejected the Style Council's fifth, house-influenced album in 1989, Weller broke up the group and lost both his record contract and his publishing deal. Over the next two years, he was in seclusion as he revamped his music. In 1991, he formed the Paul Weller Movement and released "Into Tomorrow" on his own independent label, Freedom High Records. A soulful, gritty neo-psychedelic song that represented a clear break from the Style Council, "Into Tomorrow" reached the U.K. Top 40 that spring, and he supported the single with an international tour, where he worked

out the material that comprised his eponymous 1992 solo debut. Recorded with producer Brendan Lynch, Paul Weller was a joyous, soulful return to form that was recorded with several members of the Young Disciples, former Blow Monkey Dr. Robert, and Weller's then-wife, Dee C. Lee. The album debuted at number eight on the U.K. charts, and was received with positive reviews.

Wild Wood, Weller's second solo album, confirmed that the success of his solo debut was no fluke. Recorded with Ocean Colour Scene guitarist Steve Cradock, Wild Wood was a more eclectic and ambitious effort than its predecessor, and it was greeted with enthusiastic reviews, and entered the charts at number two upon its fall 1993 release. The album would win the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection the following year. Weller supported the album with an extensive tour that featured Cradock as the group's leader; the guitarist's exposure on Wild Wood helped him successfully relaunch Ocean Colour Scene in 1995. At the end of the tour, Weller released the live album Live Wood late in 1994. Preceded by "The Changingman," which became his 17th Top Ten hit, 1995's Stanley Road was his most successful album since the Jam, entering the charts at number one and eventually selling nearly a million copies in the U.K.

By this point, Weller decided to stop attempting to break the United States and canceled his North American tour. Of course, he was doing so well in the England he didn't need to set his sights outside of the U.K.. Stanley Road may have been greeted with mixed reviews, but Weller had been re-elevated to his status as an idol, with the press claiming that he was the father of the thriving Britpop movement, and artists like Noel Gallagher of Oasis singing his praises. In fact, while neither artist released a new album in 1996, Weller's and Gallagher's influence was felt throughout the British music scene, as roots-oriented, '60s bands like Ocean Colour Scene, Cast, and Kula Shaker became the most popular groups in the U.K.

Weller returned in the summer of 1997 with Heavy Soul. Modern Classics: Greatest Hits followed a year later. Heliocentric -- which at the time of its release he claimed was his final studio effort -- appeared in the spring of 2000. The live record Days of Speed followed in 2001, and he released his sixth studio album, Illumination, in 2002. The covers record Studio 150 appeared in 2004. As Is Now arrived in October of 2005 on Yep Roc. The live album Catch-Flame! followed in 2006.