For many years Paul Weller had a conflicted relationship with the oldest parts of his back catalogue. It was rare to hear more than one of his pre-1990 songs in concert. Then he started slipping them in, but only a couple. Tonight, he’s clearly at peace with the whole of his long and varied career, playing seven songs by The Jam and four by the Style Council in a set well over two hours long. It’s a joy to hear these gems scattered with vital precision among the eclectic smorgasbord of what came after.
Weller has always been a lean, urgent presence and he remains so. Chewing gum, iron-grey of curtained hair, in a tailored blue denim jacket, there’s a wired-ness about him, albeit without the underlying snarl that once defined his live performances. Around him, on a cloud-flecked summer evening, in the surrounds of a spectacular Norman castle, is an eight-piece band, including two drum kits and a three-piece horn section. Palestinian flags are prominent onstage.
He kicks off with a meaty take on the Madchester-flavoured 2008 cut “Rip the Pages Up” before giving his funky side full vent with “Precious”, once the flip to The Jam’s third chart-topper, “A Town Called Malice”, blending it straight into Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” (a song The Jam also covered back in 1982).
Sartorially, only the bassist is competing with his employer, clad in white sailor pantaloons and a white tee (apologies for not getting a name). At his other side is long-term sideman Steve Cradock, who’s introduced via 1993’s “The Weaver”, as it was the first Weller song he appeared on.
Weller strums an acoustic for “Come On/Let’s Go” with its exhortation to “sing, you little fuckers, sing like you got no choice”. We soon do as he surprises us with the Jam double-punch of “Strange Town”, his caustic punk-tinted ode to London’s unfriendliness, and the deliciously sad sliver of left-leaning melancholy, “Man in the Corner Shop”. The enlivened then have a chance to jig around to the lilting skank-funk of “That Pleasure” from the Fat Pop, one of Weller’s most consistent late period albums.
After the riff-bounced “Hung Up” he says he’s going to play “Village” from 2020’s On Sunset album. A small cheer greets this. “Thank you for that,” he jokes, “all three of you.” At its end, clearly pleased, he announces, “When you get home you can stream the fuck out of that tune.”
He swaps to piano for “Broken Stones” then comes “My Ever Changing Moods”, dedicated to the people of Gaza. Before it, he gives his longest inter-song chat. Weller was once famous/notorious for his outspoken politics, but he states that this dedication is not political, simply the only human response to such vicious grotesquery, “babies being starved” and more. It’s one his greatest songs, and when he hits the closing lines, “I wish we’d come to our senses, and see there is no truth, in those who promote the confusion”, it hits home.
But he’s not done with The Style Council yet and follows it up with the rebel-rousing anthem “Shout to the Top” and his jazz-pop contribution to Julian Temple’s 1986 flop movie Absolute Beginners, “Have You Ever Had it Blue?”. Later he will play “Long Hot Summer” too, with the weather falling into line, providing pink-hued sunset clouds drifting high above the stage’s arc roof.
I was at this venue a few nights back seeing an Eighties pop band and, while they were not in the same league as what Weller gives us tonight, the crowd were much more fun. There are some tonight who sing along as Weller requests and boogie a bit, but far too many are in stock-till, I’ve-come-to-stare, “entertain-me-now” mode. This doesn’t stop a lively minority getting stuck in. They greet “Stanley Road” and “The Changingman” with vocal glee, and “That’s Entertainment” becomes a folk sing-along.
The concert expertly showcases Weller’s musical range. 2020’s “More” has a mellow psychedelic roll that culminates in a flute solo, “Shadow of the Sun” drifts into a Seventies-style rock jam, and the strummed slowie “Rockets”, with its Pink Floyd-ish guitar solo from Cradock, recalls David Bowie’s early work. It’s unimaginable that raging young Weller would have gone in these directions but they fit him well in his seventh decade.
But, for the old lags, his inclusion in the first encore of “English Rose” (this one even has the stone-faced sorts singing) and the venomously righteous “Eton Rifles” sends spirits sky-highwards, the latter, perhaps, a hat-tip to the troubled times we live in, as it was when The Jam released it in 1979. The band leave after “Rockets” but then Weller leads them back on and says they have time for one quick last one and, yes, it’s “A Town Called Malice”, a song whose suburban existentialism is as lyrically perfect as its Motown-gone-new wave pop. It’s an exhilarating end to a smasher of a set.
Below: watch shonky but spirited footage of Paul Weller and his band performing "Shout to the Top" at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre the day before the gig reviewed
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