When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.
Paul Weller
You can't live a lie. You have to follow your heart.
People say that if you're still angry at 52, you're not an angry young man, just a grumpy old git.
The only time I ever really got into rap was back in the early '90s, and bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Gang Starr. Musically, they were really interesting. But when hip-hop acts start sampling Sting or Phil Collins, then I just don't get it at all.
Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.
No one told Miles Davis or BB King to pack it in. John Lee Hooker played literally up to the day he died. Why should pop musicians be any different?
I wear jeans and a T-shirt sometimes. I just like clothes - since the first time I can remember, like age ten or eleven; I was just obsessed with music and clothes. Just like a lot of people in England from my generation.
Right from the start with music, I was like, 'I'm just going to do this, and I don't care about anything else. There are certain things you have to give up, even at 13, 14: your Friday and Saturday nights, having a regular girl, lots of things like that. I look at Amy Winehouse, and I think perhaps she just don't want to do it that much.
I had a total belief in The Style Council. I meant every word and felt every action.
I'm not big on rap, to be honest. I just don't get it. It's angry people shouting. I like a song, melodies, people singing.
I've always had self-belief, though my sensitive side has never been fully appreciated. For every 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,' I've written an 'English Rose.' People forget.
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.
Being a musician is a noble profession.
I never, ever wanted to be the Rolling Stones. Bless their hearts, but I don't necessarily want to go on doing the same old thing for the next 10, 20 years... I could see how easy it is to get into that rut, the whole touring mindset.
I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell who ran a '60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind.
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.
'Ageism,' or whatever you want to call it, is a very English phenomenon. You don't get it too much in many other cultures. And no one says it about authors or poets or filmmakers. 'Oh, they're too old to make films or write books.'
When I was a kid in Woking, every week you went to the football dance, and every week the top kids would be wearing something different. You were constantly trying to catch up with them - which you could never do because, by the time you'd saved up enough to buy the item, they'd moved on to something else. That's the whole Mod thing, I suppose.
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.
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.
Led Zeppelin would never have reformed if he or Jimmy Page were bald.
I am aware of the words 'national treasure' being attached to me occasionally. It just makes me feel old.
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.
The Jam went through a phase of wearing satin jackets. But that was pre-getting signed and making it, when we were still playing the pubs and clubs - around '75. Shocking, really - what would you call them apart from 'horrible?' We'd wear these white zip-up bomber jackets with black kind of loon pants and black and white shoes.
You have to keep challenging yourself. I've always tried to do that, and I'm not saying I've always been successful. Maybe I've rewritten the same song; it's inevitable, but I've always been mindful of taking the writing somewhere else. You can't stick in your little comfort zone.
In the '90s, I think I rediscovered my guitar. The Jam was obviously very guitar-based, but in the Style Council I just got really disillusioned with playing the guitar. The further it went on, the less and less I played, to a point where I couldn't pick it up any more.
When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? 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.
There is a shy side to me that evaporates when I play on stage, and I like that. I think it's another facet of my character, and I need to do that.
Music is the most natural thing in the world. When we go to a gig and we all like it and we share that experience, it's the same sense of communion as a sacred rite in Borneo or wherever it may be; it just gets dressed up different. Its good for the soul.
When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.
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.
I don't really wanna talk about politics, I'm not clever enough.
No man should have cowboys boots in his wardrobe. That's fair enough, isn't it? Unless you're a cowboy, of course.
When I told my mum I was going to play my first gig when I was 14, she couldn't believe it, cause I was painfully shy at that time. But I just done it, put my head down and got through it. And I suppose there's still a little bit of that, even though it's many years later and I've been doing it for a long time.
I get labelled as just being about one thing, but there's lots of layers to what I do.
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.
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.
It is nice to make a record and people like it, and it's encouraging.
There have been records I've been really, really pleased with that haven't connected with people. But I felt good about them.
I don't like the royal family, I don't like the establishment, I don't like the civil service.
If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise, you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there.
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.
If you're into a certain band, you're into the way they dress.
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'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.
Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.
I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.
I want to hear as much music as I possibly can before I leave this mortal coil but it's impossible to hear it all because there's so much of it.
I've always liked my clothes, even before I could properly afford them. Clothes for me were never a cloak, a cover. They were how I chose to express myself.
