Paul Weller
Being a musician is a noble profession.
In all honesty, I don't know what one song can change.
The Jam were a good band, however I feel that the Style Council were better. A lot of people I know will disagree with me. Some things we did with The Style Council were misinterpreted or over their heads.
I had a total belief in The Style Council. I meant every word and felt every action.
I really enjoy playing America. I like the audiences there. It's the home of a lot of music I grew up with.
I take my hat off to people like the Stones, but it's not for me. I couldn't do that. Jagger is brilliant and long may he rock. I couldn't make my career out of old songs; it would do my head in.
Most people my age, their musical life ended in the '80s. They stick with what they know. But my tastes are much broader. And I don't want to stop learning.
Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.
In my old age, my mind gets more open, and I listen to so many different types of music and I guess that all reflects in my work.
There are so many artists who get to my age that get comfortable and just stick in a groove, and I really don't want to do that.
I still love playing music. It was all I ever wanted to do, and I got the chance to do it.
I think I come from a time when all the artists I grew up with and I loved always used to try and push the boundaries, and there doesn't seem so much of that, really.
It is nice to make a record and people like it, and it's encouraging.
I never saw myself as a spokesman for a generation. It was all a bit heavy for me. I saw myself as a songwriter and wrote for myself, which I still do, and I also wanted to communicate with my audience.
I suppose I was much more serious-minded in the '70s and '80s.
Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.
Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with.
I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.
I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really.
I'm fine with being thought of as a guitar player, and if I can get any recognition or respect for doing that, that's a pretty good thing for me.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.
There was a time in my 40s where I thought, oh, it's all over - not just work, but I'm never going to feel young again, I'm always going to feel like I know what's going to happen, I'll know what to expect. Looking back I don't know if that was a midlife crisis, I don't know - but I don't feel that now. There's possibilities. It gets better.
I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.
I'm so lucky, I'm just really grateful for what I've got around me - children and my wife and everything else.
When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.
Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.
If you're into a certain band, you're into the way they dress.
I'm always looking for something. Not in an unhappy way. I just like to try different things. I don't want to be morbid, but I'm not getting any younger.
I want to see where and how far I can go as an artist. I look back and see what I've done, and I want to do as much as I can in my lifetime. I love doing it. If I didn't have that passion or love for it, I wouldn't do it.
We can't stop a baby in Africa from starving to death... but we can afford enough technology and weaponry to blow the world up a million times over.
I don't like the royal family, I don't like the establishment, I don't like the civil service.
Of course I'm proud of what I've done, but I'm interested in what's next. I want to be relevant now, in 2012. I've done my bit for the past. I've only ever been about what's next, really, and I'll be that way until I keel over.
I don't think about what I can't do or what I shouldn't be doing. I just think there are endless possibilities musically, really. And I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.
People say you make your best work when you're in despair and all that, and at your lowest - but for me, I think happiness makes you positive, and I think that's a good creative place to write from.
I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do. It's just lazy journalism, but people start to accept it. If people spent an hour in my car driving around London and listening to the stuff I listen to, they'd hear some interesting stuff.
When I got into the Beatles, I must have only been about six or seven but old enough to take notice. We used to have an old radiogram which, for readers of a certain age, was like a big cabinet thing with a record player inside it.
I hear an album so many times during the course of making it that when I've just finished it, I don't want to hear it again. After you've taken a little bit of time away from it, you can come back to it, which can be scary. I'm happy with 'Sonik Kicks,' man.
I'm still a mod, I'll always be a mod, you can bury me a mod.Collection: Mods
I don't feel old or young, I just amCollection: Young
Sometimes you're ahead of the game and sometimes people don't get it and that's just one of those things you have to accept and carry on.Collection: Games
Life is a drink and you get drunk when you're young...Collection: Drunk
I think anybody goes through a crisis of confidence from time to time. You have to kind of doubt yourself, sometimes. It's the way forward.Collection: Thinking
I don't like to get pigeonholed. I don't like it when people think they have you sewn up.Collection: Thinking
Why not go down the pub? A guy once came up to me at a gig and asked me if I had MySpace. I said, 'This is my space, and you're invading it.'Collection: Space
People say you make your best work when in despair, but I think happiness is a good place to write from.Collection: Writing
I'm always looking forward to what I'm doing now, and what's ahead.Collection: Looking Forward
My own personal theory is that all popular music, in whatever form it is, to me, it all comes from Africa. Whether it's filtered through America or whatever - African-American. But I still think there's something in that roots music that's very, very African, and I think that's what unites people.Collection: Thinking
I look for that stimulation constantly. I'm looking for inspiration and stimulation. Not bored with what we've done.Collection: Inspiration