Call Me (B Side of Come To Milton Keynes, 1985)
Paul and Family
ON FIRST HEARING this song, I naturally assumed it was a lover’s declaration, the message all lovers down the centuries have sworn to each other: I will always be there for you. Not so. Paul told me he wrote this as a parent speaking to a child – and this long before he had any children of his own. It is a good song, and one that explores the most important influence in his life.
John and Ann Weller gave Paul much; from Ann comes his drive, from his father his fighting spirit. Both lavished inordinate amounts of love on him, made him the very centre of their lives. Both made sacrifices, too, so that he would not go without. They have been hugely important role models, especially John, as he managed Paul from day one. It was a unique set-up, without parallel in British music. To give you an idea of the depth of their relationship, consider this quote from Paul: ‘If my dad was to pack it up, I would seriously consider quitting myself.’ That is not the Paul of today, of course. That is twenty-four-year-old Paul, his future still in front of him – just after The Jam had split up, in fact.
John Weller was born in Brighton on 28 November 1931. His family moved around a lot, eventually settled in Chichester, Sussex. At school, John took up boxing, excelled at the sport. He fought as a welterweight in the Southern Counties Championship and the ABA Championship, and also represented England. He was one tough fighter. Dean Powell, who works for the promoter Frank Warren, is also a huge Weller fan. He was chatting one day to Dave Stone, an old pro, and asked him who in his career had been his toughest ever opponent. ‘That’s easy,’ replied Stone. ‘This guy I fought years ago called John Weller. I hit him and I hit him and I hit him, but I could not put that man down.’ (Dean recently engineered a reunion between the two men.)
John left school at fourteen and worked briefly for the Chichester Observer as a junior reporter (ironic, given his distaste for the current practitioners of the noble art), but the wages were low and he quit. In 1949, he was called up for National Service. He served three years in the army as a physical training instructor, won the services championship for boxing. When he was twenty-four his parents moved to Woking. John found work at a local factory, and he also found Ann. They were married on 31 March 1957 at Woking Register Office. In 1958, their first son, John Paul Weller, was born. A daughter, Nicola, followed in 1963.
John and Ann doted on Paul. Neither had enjoyed close family relations when they were growing up, so it was natural they pour all their stored-up affection into their first-born. In doing so, they instilled in their son a huge sense of self. ‘If a child only has to yell for someone to come running to minister to him,’ Anthony Storr observes, ‘it must be easy for him to maintain the illusion that he is at the centre of the universe.’ Say hello to Paul. The self-belief that courses through his veins was put there by his parents. He later recognized the bad side of their mollycoddling of him, but as he always persuasively argued, ‘How can you blame someone for loving you too much?’
John’s main employment now was as a hod carrier on building sites, though he worked in various professions. There were many weeks when he was ‘knocked’ for his wages, meaning he wasn’t paid. For the first eighteen years of Paul’s life, lack of money was a big issue (an issue that did not unbalance Paul as it gave him a massive chip on both shoulders). The family was close-knit, defensive, insular. There weren’t many other relations, so they closed ranks. An us-against-them mentality was created, one that would be highly influential when father and son entered the music business. I remember standing next to John and Paul in a bar the night before his famous Glastonbury show in 1994 and hearing them speak about the headliner Elvis Costello as if they were ordering a hit on the man. Which, metaphorically speaking, I suppose they were.
In 1972, Paul and his close friend Steve Brookes played their first gig together at Sheerwater Secondary School. They then went about putting together a group that Nicky, Paul’s sister, would name The Jam. John got heavily involved in the band from the outset. It was he who would hustle the band gigs, badger pub and club landlords. He landed the boys their first ever public gig at the Woking Social Club because that was where he and Ann went every Saturday night. It was John who hired vans to transport equipment, John who pulled strokes. In 1974, for example, he got a contract to build an extension at the local prison, HMP Coldingley. John gave the prison two quotes. The lower offer included a condition that they allow his band to play to the inmates and that they be allowed to invite the press along for the occasion. The prison granted them the request, and as a result The Jam got some of their first ever press.
‘He was vital in terms of encouraging us to keep on doing it,’ Paul recalls, ‘and more importantly, he was vital in getting us gigs and motivating us to play live. There were loads of times when we could have split up, but he always pulled us back together again.’ Steve Brookes said of John, ‘John was two hundred per cent dedicated to getting the band off the ground and poured all his time and much of what little money he had into it … if the musicians in the band were the bricks, then John was definitely the mortar that held it all together. I doubt very much if the band would have gone so far as it did without his dogged perseverance.’
Yet it was John who showed real doubt when Polydor signed the band. To put it bluntly, he felt out of his depth. Booking pubs and clubs, a doddle. This was something else. He tendered his resignation to the band. They of course refused. John hooked up with Clintons, a firm of lawyers, and they guided him through the minefield of contracts and hidden clauses. He learned quickly, learned that the more you got up front, the more they had to work to get it back.
John’s management style was to put everything into his son, to take note of no one else but Paul Weller. This stance threw up some funny stories. When Noel Gallagher offered his band as a surprise support slot at one of Paul’s Manchester shows, Weller liked the idea and told Noel to get his agent to call his father, arrange the details. Oasis had just hit the big time. They were everywhere. Their debut album was number one, they were on TV and radio constantly, and on the cover of every magazine. You couldn’t move without seeing a picture of or hearing about Oasis.
Noel’s agent called John, told him Oasis would be up for supporting Paul.
‘Oasis? Where they from then?’ John asked.
‘Manchester,’ said the agent.
‘Oh, local band,’ John replied. ‘Give them fifty quid then.’
John supported Paul in everything he did, even if he vehemently disagreed with it. He loved The Jam and spent time trying to persuade Paul not to break them up while, in 1988 he had no idea why his son had suddenly started writing classical overtures, and then disco music the following year. He dreamt of Paul headlining at Madison Square Garden, a venue to which as a boxer he was greatly attracted, and spoke about it often. Paul shrugged his shoulders. He was never that interested in breaking America. John saw the business as a money-making operation; Paul had another agenda he wanted to follow.
‘I have never had to write for money,’ Paul once told me, and that was his father’s greatest achievement: collecting enough moolah for his son to indulge his every whim.
That conversation took place in the mid 1990s, in a hotel, on tour with Paul. Afterwards I went downstairs and found John in a reception room, staring gloomily into a fire.
‘Hey, John,’ I said, sitting down opposite him, ‘you OK?’
He looked up at me, serious concern written across his red-cheeked face.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘do you think I’ve been a good manager for Paul?’
The abruptness of the question caught me absolutely off guard.
‘I mean, I’ve played it really straight with him. You know, album, tour, that kind of stuff. You don’t think he would have been better off with a Malcolm McLaren type?’
I wasn’t lying when I told John that he was easily the best manager for Paul Weller. Apart from the fact that a McLaren-type regime, full of scams and stunts, would never have suited Paul’s nature in a million years, John’s drive to earn money gave Paul what he needed most: total artistic freedom. The riches he piled up in banks for his son allowed Paul to follow his muse wherever it took him. In the latter half of the eighties particularly, Paul ended up in some fascinating places. The fact that he was so musically diverse is, I would say, John’s greatest achievement as his manager.
Certainly without him Paul struggled. In 1995, days before the band were due to fly out and start a Japanese tour, John Weller fell gravely ill and was taken into hospital. He needed heart surgery. Paul was given the chance to cancel the tour but decided to go ahead, probably on the grounds that this is what his father would have wanted. (Some years later, in Liverpool, when Paul’s drummer Steve White was called back to London following his brother’s death, I asked Paul when the rearranged gig would be. ‘Oh, we went ahead and played it,’ he replied to my surprise. ‘We did an acoustic set. The show always goes on.’) His father’s welfare was not the only upsetting element on that tour. One of the musicians Paul had picked to play in the band was clearly out of his depth, and it showed every night onstage, thus adding to the man’s irritation. He couldn’t even lose himself properly in his music.
One night, as he sat in my hotel room with me and the director Pedro Romhanyi, who was making a video of Paul, his frustration reached boiling point. He picked up a massive armchair and smashed it through the double-glazed window. All of us bolted. The next day the management took Kenny Wheeler, Paul’s minder, to the room to show him the damage. Kenny tried to explain Paul’s actions. He was simply picking up the chair, he said, and slipped. Unfortunately, as he did so he lost control of the chair, which fell through the window. An unfortunate accident, but these things happen. Really, said the manager. So how do you account for that? he asked, pointing at the marks on the room’s ceiling which had obviously been made by chair legs being scraped across it. Ah, said Kenny, and reached for his chequebook. The room was on the fiftieth floor and a crane had to be brought in for repairs to take place. The cost probably swallowed up the tour’s profits.
Funny now, but at the time Paul was badly shaken. The idea of working without his father had become a reality for the very first time. John recovered and spent many more years on the road, until he retired.
My favourite memory of John is this. We had booked into a hotel in Italy, and as it was such a nice afternoon, Paul, his father and I went out to get a coffee. We found a café in a park and sat down at a table. As the autumn sun began to dip, John gave us his thoughts on many subjects – his worldview, if you like. Paul and I just sat there and absorbed his words, his wise insights born of experience. It was the best half hour I ever spent with John Weller.
Ann, too, has a warm heart. When I interviewed her for my Jam book, she asked me questions about myself. When she heard that I’d lived in a children’s home in Woking, she said, ‘Oh, you should have said. You could have come and lived with us.’ Although she had had a tough start in life, she was not the complaining type. She just got on with things. This is the way of the world, this is how it operates, no good moaning about, get on with it. Ann was a cleaner, and even when the money rained in she carried on with her part-time jobs. Still does today.
Ann is far more sociable and gregarious than John. She likes people, has a wide circle of friends and is compassionate to those less fortunate than her. Her principles have had a huge influence on Paul’s development – it is why he works so hard. Between her spirit and John’s determination lies a large part of Paul Weller.