How Paul Weller changed my life forever
by Jim McGuinn
September 10, 2014
I probably wouldn't be here if it weren't for Paul Weller.
Let's go back for a second to January of 1982. I'm a sophomore in high school, musically well-versed in classic rock: the Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Who, Springsteen, Petty … suddenly the bands that were popular didn't seem that interesting to me — I'm talking Styx and Foreigner, Journey and REO here. At the same time, I was fortunate enough to go to a high school with our own radio station, WDGC (Downers Grove, Ill.), which was run by a group of seniors, including Nell, a new-wave girl who seemed impossibly cool to me.
One day while learning how to splice reel-to-reel tape, Nell popped on a song. I remember it was a European 12" with a thin pink-and-black stripped sleeve. The music that emerged from the speakers transfixed me. Energy, passion, musicality — it referenced what I loved about the '60s while also expressing sentiment that was new and unique, especially compared to so much of what was passing for rock at that time.
I said to her, "This is like the Who meets Motown! I love it. Who is it?"
Nell told me it was the Jam's new single, "Town Called Malice." I asked, "Why isn't this on the Loop?", the name for WLUP, which was the KQRS of Chicago at the time.
She answered, "Because commercial radio sucks."
At that moment, my life changed. Nell loaned me the Jam's In the City and Setting Sons albums, along with some Ramones, Buzzcocks, Clash, and early Elvis Costello records. This entire universe opened before me. For me, it was like jumping off a train going one direction and onto one moving very quickly in the other. New bands, new sounds, new attitudes were dissected weekly. Between January and May of '82, my entire life was turned upside down. My clothes changed from suburban dork to slightly less dorky suburban faux mod. I started paying attention to politics for the first time — as Professors Strummer, Costello and Weller educated me about class, race, the recession, nuclear disarmament and the fact that right and left wing are positions in more than just hockey.
Now we live in a world of cultural plenty as we create our individual melting pot of personal pop-culture preferences, but back then, there was a real "us versus them" mentality — you were what you heard. I made some bad choices — as if Led Zeppelin suddenly werent' cool — but part of that was about figuring out who I was going to be. At that moment, to be "New Wave" or Punk definitely put you in the minority. So it became a badge, just as we wore buttons and badges that proclaimed the bands who were our favorites.
I missed seeing the Jam at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago that May. I was barely 16, and it was a school night. But I didn't miss seeing the Clash that August, at the same show that was also Tom Morello's first concert. Then, in September of '82, I heard the Jam were breaking up. Frustrated at a lack of success in the U.S. while fearing complacency with their massive success in the U.K., Paul Weller decided it was time to head in a different direction sonically. The Jam gave a farewell tour, then he headed off to start The Style Council before embarking on his solo career in the '90s.
I got serious about the guitar. Well, kinda. The beauty of punk meant that you didn't have to take lessons, you didn't have to have the technical skill of a Guitar Center employee, you just had to emote. And believe. My high school and college band, Reaction Formation, was inspired by the Jam, who had put out their first album when band leader Weller was barely 18. We didn't get that far, but it pushed us to self-release a 45 while still in high school. The 45 was not very good. My contribution was a song called "Suburban Wasteland," with horribly naíve politicized lyrics attempting to capture the angst of middle-class America. A rock star I was not destined to be. But at a weekly Mod night in Chicago that paired like-minded acts together, I first met Minnesota band The Dig, which featured a fellow young Wellerite in Ed Ackerson, who went on to front 27 Various and Polara, record hundreds of albums at his Flowers Studio, and nearly 30 years later invite me to play with him in BNLX.
But the passion that I felt in my soul from that moment hearing "A Town Called Malice" has fueled my life ever since. The Jam and those other bands set me on a road I still travel today — seeking out great new music, learning about the connections between the present and the past, and trying to share what I learn with fellow travelers. I ended up working in record stores, playing in bands, interning at record companies and finding my calling in radio, which took me from Illinois to Rhode Island to Vermont to Missouri to Pennsylvania — and finally to Minnesota.
It's way too much to try to explain all this to a guy like Paul Weller, who was on a similar journey of his own in the early '80s when I first encountered his music — learning from his heroes like Pete Townshend, Small Faces and others. But as I think about seeing Paul Weller now for the fifth time since 1992, I hope that when he hears the cheers from me and others tonight when he's onstage at the Varsity, that he'll somehow sense the impact that he had on me, and on others like me, then … and now.
Note: Big thanks to John Manion, who was part of the Chicago mod scene in the '80s, who posted these photos on his Facebook a few years back. He now lives in the Twin Cities and tonight we're going to see each other in person for the first time in nearly 30 years.
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