There Is No Drinking (When You Are Dead) (Heliocentric, 2000)
Paul and the Demon Alcohol
THIS SONG WAS probably written as a riposte to those concerned about Paul’s excessive drinking. Musically it is no great shakes, although at the time it made ripples by echoing the Jam song But I’m Different Now with its chopping Beatles (Dr Robert) style riff. It does, however, make clear Paul’s position on the subject of why he drinks so heavily. The thinking is this: who knows what tomorrow will bring? Today is but a second, you may die tomorrow, so enjoy yourself, lose yourself.
Paul started drinking at a very early age. As kids, he and his sister Nicky were taken to their grandmother’s every Saturday night while John and Ann Weller went to relax at the local working men’s club down the road. Nan would give both children regular sips of her drink. By dint of playing pubs and clubs, Paul began to drink regularly at fourteen. Since then, alcohol has been a consistent factor throughout most of his life. Tellingly, his longest time off the booze began when The Jam disbanded (1982) and continued through the best part of The Style Council’s career (1983 to 1985). During this period he wrote some of his best songs. Typically, he now bullishly refers to this time as ‘fucking boring’.
Not hard to see why. Alcohol helped to turn a shy, fear-ridden teenager into a confident person. It gave him speedy exhilaration, served to loosen him up, especially when fame first swamped him. Keith Moon’s biographer Tony Fletcher, who knew Weller well in his Jam days, made a very perceptive point on this subject. ‘Paul only really enjoyed being a pop star when he was drunk,’ he once pointed out, and there remains much truth in this statement (see To Be Someone). Paul never used to drink before a show, but in recent years a ‘couple of liveners’ have helped to loosen the nerves before playing. But he never went too mad at this point. It was afterwards that he would drown himself.
Paul grew up in a drink culture. His father drank a lot, and around Woking there wasn’t really much else to do except get into pubs and try to get served as soon as you could. Playing in bands around town allowed Weller this privilege. He learned to drink prodigiously. In the Flexipop piece he wrote (see The Modern World), he recalls his parents worrying about him being an alcoholic – and this was in his teenage years.
Yet drink was never really an issue until the nineties when a new hedonism came into play, symbolized by bands such as Oasis and publications such as the highly successful lads’ mag Loaded. Such was Weller’s consumption from this period onwards that everyone close to him at some point came to him and expressed their concern.
Paul brushed off the subject lightly, and then wrote this song.
There are many incidents with Paul where drink is involved. On the night he bumped into Martin Carr from The Boo Radleys, who had consistently made his dislike of Paul known in the press, Paul stood over the seated Carr, castigating him. Later Paul said: ‘To be honest with you I was so pissed I can’t remember what went on.’ (What went on was that Noel Gallagher and I pulled Paul away from Carr and ushered him outside. Paul then tried to get back into the club, but the bouncers were having none of it. Noel saw Paul home. ‘Why you stopped me slapping him I’ll never know,’ was Paul’s comment the next day.) On age, his real bug-bear: ‘I had my sort of crisis last year when I was thirty-nine. I drank my way out of that one.’ On the hotel room in Paris that he and his guitarist at the time, Matt Deighton, helped rearrange: ‘Drink, I am afraid … excessive amounts of booze … I was too pissed to remember it.’
On tour, Weller tended to spiral out of control, indulging in lengthy drinking sessions (fifteen hours on one occasion) that saw in the morning sun and sometimes waved goodbye to the evening sun as well. On his return home, he would tell friends he had been ‘drinking for England’. He would then take a break from the madness, stay off the hard stuff for a time. But pretty soon he would start up again, by his own admission boozing until every drop in the house had gone.
The fact remains that one of life’s greatest pleasures for Paul Weller is getting smashed to pieces and listening to music at a very loud volume.
What kind of drunk was he? That depended on who he was that day or what had happened. Sometimes he was hilarious, brilliant company, witty as hell; other times alcohol seemed to set loose his inner rage, and it was then that he became a mean drunk, offensive and foul-mouthed to everyone around him. Not a pretty sight. Some of the time, both personalities merged into one during a session.
A good example of this would be the night we went to see Brian Wilson play his Pet Sounds album at the Festival Hall. There were a few of us in the party: my partner, Paul’s sister Nicky, her boyfriend Russ, and Gary Crowley. As soon as we reached the venue, we headed for the bar, downed a few. Wilson then came on and played hits for about an hour. He was absolutely stunning. During the interval we went back to the bar, all of us now fired up by Wilson’s music, Paul in particular on good form. Neil Tennant from Pet Shop Boys came over to say hello. (As he approached, Weller whispered to me, ‘Here he comes, Neil by mouth …’) The second half of Wilson’s show maintained its incredible musical standard. Probably the best gig I have ever witnessed in my life. It was like watching a modern-day Mozart. I didn’t want the music to end.
We left that hall all of us on a huge high. Excitement and wonder tingled through us. The night was too good to stop now. As Paul, Nicky and Gary lived in Maida Vale we headed for a bar there, carried on drinking. We settled at a table. Paul gave Gary money for the first round. He went to the bar, came back to the table with the first set of drinks. Weller misread the situation, thought it was the whole round. Within a flash, he turned on him and killed the mood stone dead.
‘Where’s my fucking change, Gary?’ he demanded.
‘I haven’t got all the drinks yet,’ Crowley explained. ‘I’m just paying for them.’
‘Make sure you fucking give me the change,’ Paul angrily stated.
In an instant the collective mood of happiness had been extinguished. (‘If you give me a fresh carnation I will only crush its tender petals …’) Now everyone was wary. Now no one knew what to expect. Conversation faltered.
Nicky and Russ read the signs. Nicky in particular could see what was coming. One day, returning from tour, she and Paul had shared a cab from the airport. Nicky was sober but Paul was, as he liked to say, ‘absolutely rotten’. He handed the driver a CD containing the song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and demanded he play it again and again and again. When they got to Maida Vale, he even made him drive round their houses in a circle until his lust for the song had been satisfied.
The bar called last orders. Paul seemed to be OK, so Gary suggested going back to his flat, a few yards away. Cigarettes were needed, and there was an all-night garage around the corner. At that garage a girl sat slumped against the wall, begging. Paul saw the girl and straight away sat down beside her.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked her. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, it’s wrong.’ The girl tried to explain – she had no choice, she was homeless – but Paul kept saying, ‘You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s wrong, it’s wrong.’ He then pulled out a wad of notes and stuffed them into the girl’s hand. ‘Go and get yourself a room for the night,’ he said, ‘and look after yourself.’
The girl looked at the money, amazed. She couldn’t stop thanking him. Then she said, ‘You know, you really look like Paul Weller.’
Paul replied, ‘I know, but don’t worry about that, just stop doing this, OK?’
Back at Gary’s flat, more drinks. Then Paul noticed Gary’s computer. As we know, he hates them with a vengeance. He thinks the internet is the Emperor’s new clothing. I don’t. I think it’s an amazing tool. Paul started coating computers off.
‘Fucking internet, load of bollocks …’
I’d heard him do this a million times. I started arguing with him. Immediately, the anger returned.
‘You want to go outside and talk about it?’
I didn’t. I wanted to go home. Which I did.
It had been a typical night. Weller had by turns been funny, charming, generous, obnoxious, threatening, stupefied, unable to walk, and a pain in the arse. On some nights he was just plain funny, but on too many occasions alcohol let loose the volcanic anger inside, and then it was a case of may God have mercy on those in his range.
I can also remember going to see The Zombies with him at a central London venue. He was pissed by the time we got there, only interested in drinking more. I escaped early, so sharp and nasty was his tongue that night. Once, on tour in Italy, his invective pissed me off so much I asked John to get me a flight home. The next day when I told Paul what he had called me, and others, he professed not to remember.
There have been several occasions like this, especially as the years have rolled by. He went to New Orleans, a town whose music both he and I adore. I have always wanted to visit the place, the home of Allen Toussaint, The Meters, Lee Dorsey. I have always wanted to track down their record shops, stock up on their music.
‘Did you get any tunes out there?’ I eagerly asked him on his return.
‘Oh, you know what we’re like,’ he airily replied. ‘We didn’t get out of the hotel bar for three days.’
Often Paul and his drinking partners (John, Kenny and Steve Cradock, me at times) didn’t even get out of the airport. They would arrive and drink before check-in. On the other side they would then drink again until boarding. Then they would drink on the plane, and on arrival drink at the airport they were in before pouring themselves into taxis. On one occasion he drank so much prior to a flight to Ireland that the authorities wouldn’t let him on board. They sent him home, and he had to come back the next day.
One time Paul and his dad were on the lash in Woking. They ended up at the Wheatsheaf pub. The pair went to the bar. Paul ordered the drinks.
‘Can serve you, but not your dad,’ the barmaid said.
‘Why not?’ Weller demanded.
‘You seen him?’
Paul looked round. His dad had passed out on the floor.
‘Just the one, then,’ Paul said.
Recently, alcohol has become a test of manhood for Weller. Those unable to keep up the pace are ‘pussies, lightweights’. He would say about being on tour, ‘It’s a man’s life in the army.’ Those unable to keep up – forget about them. Journalists were a constant source of baiting. ‘You lot are rubbish,’ he would tell me. ‘I did this interview the other day. Four hours in and the guy could hardly walk … lightweight!’
If at home alone and he found himself drunk, Paul would often call up friends, sometimes to berate them for some slight, sometimes to tell them that he loved them. He has done both with me. More than likely he would want to play down the phone a track he’d been listening to at full volume which was the ‘fucking cunting bollox’. On numerous occasions I have let the phone ring at two in the morning, knowing full well who it is, and what he wants. The next day on the answer machine: ‘Oi, Hewitt, check out the fucking drums on this song [holds phone up to a John Coltrane record] … Fucking amazing! Punk before fucking punk! The cunts! And what is this fucking song you’ve put on this tape for me? [Drunkenly tries to change tapes, finally succeeds, hits play button.] You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? Peace out.’ And the line goes dead.
Sometimes he would drink himself into such a stupor that you wouldn’t even understand what he was saying. The words would come out of his mouth but drop into his chest and just lie there. Often he went into surreal ramblings about cornflakes or toasters, or whatever came to mind. He always had one constant beef, and that was someone who had annoyed him (see Walls Come Tumbling Down) by putting out a crap record or book or film. Or indeed someone just putting out a record, a book, or a film.
When he woke up in the morning and was told of the damage he had caused, the people he had hurt, he would temporarily feel bad. But soon he would tell himself not to worry. Whatever happened the night before was justified. After all, there is no drinking when you are dead …
Is he an alcoholic? No answer there, but also no way that man will go to AA if he is one. ‘Fucking Christian bollox,’ he once said to me about that organization. It wasn’t a surprising remark. To enter AA, one has to find humility. Paul, humble? Paul, sitting in a circle with strangers, sharing his experiences? Oh look, four elephants in fur coats have just flown past your window … The pride is too big, the craic too enticing. So raise your glass to the big sky, for tomorrow you may die.
Though as the writer Dorothy Parker always pointed out, you rarely do.