How To Overcome Feeling "Creatively Barren"

Legendary UK singer-songwriter Paul Weller has never been afraid of a shift in sound or style, whether amidst the punk and new wave stylings of his ‘70s behemoth The Jam, the blue-eyed soul he favoured fronting Style Council in the ‘80s or the more chameleon-like nature of his subsequent quarter-century old solo career. His new album, Saturns Pattern, is the twelfth record to bear his name alone, and once again it ushers in a marked shift in direction: it’s eclectic, it’s ambitious and it’s definitely and defiantly Weller.

“I’m really pleased, yeah,” he admits. “I think it’s kinda different enough in terms of the arrangements and sonically, but there’s still really good tunes. And I think it’s different again – for me it’s another move on, so I am very proud of it.”

Despite having been on the world music scene for what seems like forever – he’s currently a very chipper and dapper fifty-six years young despite his protestations to the contrary – age certainly hasn’t blunted Weller’s creative ambition. Saturns Pattern is another stylistic shift for the man who’s displayed some shapeshifting tendencies of late – is it important for him to keep sonically evolving?
“Yeah definitely, especially the older I get,” he tells. “I can’t help thinking that time is running out – without being too dramatic – so that seems to make me want to try to go further and further with the music, hopefully without losing sight of what makes a good song. Because that’s the bottom line really – a good tune’s a good tune. But I think in terms of styles and sonics that I think I can still try and go anywhere with it, and hopefully I will do in my twilight years.

“I can’t help thinking that time is running out – without being too dramatic – so that seems to make me want to try to go further and further with the music"

“I had a very clear idea of what I didn’t want it to be. I had sort of seven or eight acoustic songs and some were nice tunes, but I didn’t want to make a record like that so I put them aside and then really started from scratch. And [co-producer] Stan Kybert was quite glad about that, because the other songs had arrangements and were fairly set in their way, so I think it was good for him to say, ‘Here’s a completely clear canvas and let’s just fucking see what happens and just kind of build it up as you go along’. It’s exciting, because you don’t know what’s going to happen really, then all of a sudden you get one tune that you feel ‘that’s where we should be going to’, and that sort of becomes the cornerstone of the record really, and you kind of build on that.” 

Weller explains that in this instance it was the record’s title track that acted as this conduit, “because I think it was, for me anyway, kind of different – it had that soul and R&B thing going on as well, but it felt kind of different in terms of arrangement and sound and that. That was sort of the major one for me, I thought, ‘Right, now we’ve really got something to build on’.”

Some of the album’s arrangements are fascinating, with lengthy tunes like Pick It Up and In The Car… almost coming across as a series of suites than one united entity.

“We did a lot of that with a lot of editing and a lot of edited pieces,” Weller explains, “and we really kind of arranged it as we went along. We’d play from the top, then we’d get an intro and then a nice verse and then a chorus – we sort of built it almost piece-by-piece really. It was just a bit of a different way of working, not that it came with any sort of formula – it was just a nice experiment that kind of worked as well.”

Importantly, Weller and his bandmates enjoyed this rather different studio approach, a feeling that seeps through Saturns Pattern’s pores.

“It was, yeah, we always have fun in the studio,” he enthuses. “It only ever really gets intense when it gets to the end mixing stage and all that, but I think up until that point it’s always really fun. Just trying loads of things and loads of ideas – some don’t work and some do –  but I think we did that whole thing of, ‘We’re making this all up as we go along’, but hopefully at the end it all makes sense as a record and not just people fucking around in the studio or something. But like any album I suppose, once you’ve got about three or four tracks you’re halfway there and can see what’s gonna happen and your will to build on that grows. Normally if you’ve got a good vibe about those early tracks then it just rolls on from that I think.”

Weller’s band seems in good nick despite the piecemeal nature of the album’s genesis, and the songwriter attests that they played an important role in the creative side of things.

“Yeah they did, in sort of different ways I suppose,” he continues. Two of them – Andy Crofts who’s my live keyboard player and his drummer Ben Gordelier, who has also played in my band – they sort of formed most of the band really. Ben the drummer played on most of the tracks, and Andy did some amazing backing vocals. Steve Cradock played on it too, but they all played on it at different times is what I suppose I’m saying. But it was great because I could get Steve to just come up for one night, and he’d play on three or four different tracks and maybe we’d use bits and pieces, whatever the case may be. It’s just great to have a fresh, new take on the track, and there might be something that completely turns it around at a point or makes you go somewhere else.”

Also roped in for the record was long-term guitar cohort Steve Brookes, who was not only childhood pals with Weller but was in the fledgling version of The Jam when they started kicking around back in the early-‘70s.

“It’s not the first time – he’s played on the last three or four of my records – but [having him there] is fun, because fucking hell I’ve known him forever!” Weller chuckles. “We’ve been close since we were about fourteen, and it was me and him who started The Jam – just the two of us when we were kids, and my dad was hustling us gigs here and there. So we’ve got some fucking history! But we kind of missed each other from the late-‘70s up until about ’95, but we’ve been pretty close since then. Whenever we sit down in the studio or wherever we may be and there’s guitars we always just play as well – not to do anything professionally, but I suppose it’s like we were when we were kids. We just play together because we like it and we enjoy it.”

"I think with Noel [Gallagher] he’s used to more being at home on his own"

Saturns Pattern also features a guest appearance by The Strypes’ Josh McClorey, but he very nearly wasn’t the album’s biggest interloper; at one stage the UK press were mooting that Noel Gallagher had been recording during the sessions, although sadly this partnership hasn’t come to fruition. Yet.

“Well, we have been trying to write something together, and we’ve still got a really good idea but it just never made the record,” Weller explains of his potential collaboration with Gallagher. “I was going to try and write some words and a melody thing for it, but I never got around to doing it. But yeah, it could be really good but it ain’t made this record. It’s difficult really me and him, because we’ve both got different ways of writing, you know? I’m quite up for it. Especially these days, I’m quite up for spontaneous things and just sort of seeing what happens, but I think with Noel he’s used to more being at home on his own and just arranging it. So I think it might be difficult really. A lot of those things sound good on paper but we’ve all got different ways of working, really – it’s the same but its different, if you know what I mean. But hopefully it will happen anyway.”

Even songsmiths of Weller’s stature sometimes struggle at their craft – does he find that songwriting gets easier with experience?
“I always find that you have to work on it, definitely,” he ponders. “I think it’s one of those weird things – after I’ve made a record I’m a little bit creatively barren, if you like, for a bit and I just sort of think, ‘Am I ever going to write another batch of songs?’. But then once you’re in it, it just kind of seems… not easy, but you’re, like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s how it goes’. I think it’s always been like that, it seems fucking insurmountable at the foot of the mountain, but once you’re halfway up it you go, ‘Alright, I remember this’. I would never apply the word ‘easy’ to it – I’ve been very prolific, but I still wouldn’t say it’s easy. I always think it’s fucking hard most of the time, although now and then you get really lucky and a song just arrives in your lap and kind of writes itself. Although for me that’s fairly rare anyway.”

Does he find that he generally spends more time on the music or the lyrics whilst constructing a tune?

“Hmmm, probably the lyrics really,” he muses. “Obviously it gets harder not to repeat yourself, not just with lyrics but probably in everyday conversation as well. Recently I’ve tried to use more words that are a sound as well – without sounding too pretentious – but I like the sound of the words and the meter of the words, and just enjoying the words really. So it’s a bit more abstract than just literal, linear lyrics. A lot of the lyrics are like dipping into mid-thought or mid-conversation – not on all of them, but on a few of the songs anyway – which I think more than anything else just interests me at the moment, because I’m bored with just writing A-B-C-D-E, you know what I mean? I think also that potentially it’s about whatever it means to the people who listen to it – unless it’s something very literal – and I like that, and that’s what good art is about as well; interpretation. I’m all for that.”

Weller remains an enthusiastic – even voracious – listener of new music, and he explains that while lyrics are important to his enjoyment of a song they’re not the be all and end all.

"Now and then you get really lucky and a song just arrives in your lap and kind of writes itself"

“I kinda hear the whole thing, to be honest with you,” he tells. “To me there’s lots of good songs around, but when you hear a great song – which is obviously very subjective – but for me when you hear a great song everything just fucking hits you. The melody is probably first and the vocal and the delivery, but if the lyrics are really good as well then that’s like a bonus. But I hear the whole thing – what the bass player’s doing, what the drummer’s doing. Not in a technical way but just with the sound; ‘Bang!’ That’s what hits you first and foremost, really.” 

And, rock royalty or not, it’s always such a great feeling when a song connects with you like that.

“Yeah, and you think you’ve had all those moments and you think you’ve heard it all, then all of a sudden – whether it’s new or old or whatever – you’re suddenly thinking, ‘How come I’ve never heard that in my fucking life?’” Weller chuckles. “It hits you again, and I find that it always just reignites the passion for it. I find it a never-ending source of amazement really, that there’s just so many tunes out there that I’ve never heard and may never get to hear in my fucking lifetime. If it’s great you want to hear it, and it’s like an education as well.”

Weller and his band have been on the road in the UK of late and dropping doses of new material into his (admittedly lengthy) sets, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive; not just in relation to the entire gig, but in regards the reaction to the cuts from Saturns Pattern.

“Surprisingly they’ve been really kind of easy to get together, and I was pleasingly fucking surprised because I thought it was going to be tough,” he gushes. “But I think, in all honesty, that in all my time in music I haven’t had a better reaction to new songs that people had never heard before. It was quite outstanding really and really exciting. Even going back to The Jam days it was still always tough playing new stuff just because people were checking it out and listening, but the reaction to this new stuff was really great and heartwarming. Whatever the record does commercially, I just thought that the fact that you can play these songs that no one’s heard before and get that reaction was really special for me. Hopefully we’ll get to play them down your way eventually – it won’t be this year, but maybe early next year with a bit of luck.”