The Modfather: My Life with Paul Weller

by David Lines

  ‘Man In The Cornershop’ is the standout track for me on Sound Affects. It paints a vivid image of the differences between those earning a crust by their own hard work and staying small, like the man who runs the corner shop, and the grander experiences of the boss of the local factory. The song tells the tale of the two men and how they secretly envy each other, one wishing he was free to put up the closed sign whenever he wants, and the other jealous of his customer, owning such a large factory. To finish, Paul sticks the two characters in church on a Sunday and points out that in God’s eyes, we’re all equal whether we’re bankers or bakers or whatever. Again, it’s another song for Rik despite not really thinking so at the time. His dad was a banker, mine once a barber. They both made cuts where they had to, I suppose.

  ‘Boy About Town’. Now, here’s a classic Jam song.

  Whenever I hear this, I feel that it’s not so much about me at school, me in front of my peers, it’s more about the way that maybe my family saw me. Swaggering, confident in my modernism … I felt removed from them, distanced. Some days, I even felt like I was dreaming them. This played in my head every time I left the house, even if I was just nipping out for a pint of milk. I’d begun to do my best to make sure that wherever I was, whenever I was out, I looked as sharp as possible. It wasn’t just a mod thing; oh no – this went much further than that … this was a Weller thing.

  The other tracks on Sound Affects are all excellent, but those are my top tracks. I haven’t included ‘That’s Entertainment’ in this selection because it has a different story to tell and deserves a piece all to itself.

  ‘That’s Entertainment’ is possibly the song that non-Jam fans most associate with the band. It was recorded in September 1980 at the Townhouse Studios, Shepherd’s Bush, and produced by Vic Coppersmith-Heaven along with The Jam. This song, for me, painted a picture of the life I was living. It painted the view from my window, my walk to school, the conversations I had while I was there and it painted my walk home and what I came home to. It was my world, and it was written in song.

  It was the theme tune from the minute I got out of my bed to the moment I climbed back into it. ‘That’s Entertainment’, with its wailing baby and blinking lamplight, the howling of a stray dog, the pneumatic drill constantly on overdrive, hard at work on next door’s drive, the tomcat’s cry that kept us awake every night, watching the news, watching the telly, the hot summer days – these were the things which drove me, and yet at the same time drove me to boredom. They combined, via this song, to chart my everyday living.

  It’s such a visual number, filmic even. The pictures it conjures up are harnessed for the single sleeve itself. Paul uncovered a BBC sound effects album in the studio whilst recording and was inspired to recreate the images on the album with tiny pictures of elements referred to in the song. It was never officially released as a single in the UK, only in Germany, but the band were so almighty over here that on import alone it crashed into the charts and peaked at twenty-one, which is a huge feat for an import with no publicity, and it stayed in the top seventy-five for seven weeks. I love it as much today as the first time I heard it.

  It’s a little known fact that the basis for ‘That’s Entertainment’ was a poem of the same name which was submitted to Paul’s publishing company by a very clever, unknown writer by the name of Paul Drew. I was submitting poetry of my own at the time, and wonder to this day if I was ever close enough to get as lucky as this guy. What an achievement.

  Finally, after months of dithering and hanging around outside drama club, I summoned up the courage to go in and get on with it. It wasn’t difficult – in fact it was the first time I learned that there’s nothing more scary than fear itself. I felt instantly at home there. I was surrounded by pupils who all shared a love of the written word, of timing, of comedy and of a love of playing at being other people. We used to act out sketches from TV comedy shows. It was, I learned, just a tiny after-school club which had no plans to perform outside of its own little circle and we were content just to keep it that way: we could show off to each other without being seen to be show-offs by anyone else. Quickly, I gained confidence and drew on the fact that performance had been a big part of Grampa Lines’s early life. Again, I felt acutely aware of the passing of more than a year since his death and I began to see how quickly time passed. I began to feel the need to develop my newly realised passion. I didn’t have to wait for very long.

  7

  Precious

  THE FIRST TIME I heard ‘Precious’ I thought that there’d been a horrendous mistake at the pressing plant. I almost phoned Polydor to check, because it didn’t sound like anything that The Jam had done before. ‘A Town Called Malice’ was different enough, but for me at the time ‘Precious’ was such a radical change of sound, it was asking a lot from me. Until I’d heard it for the second time, that is.

  The single sounded like disco but with added desperation. It’s got a funky, relentless backbeat which thumps along like it’s beating out panels and it’s got Paul laying down a jangly guitar which kind of dances around on top of Bruce’s heavy, pounding bass. Its jazz-funk and Paul’s knocked-back vocal gives ‘Precious’ a sort of ghostly, echoey sense. It goes up and down, fades in and out and it’s a hundred miles removed from what the rank and file fans at school had got used to. I was the only one who really, really liked it. I liked it because it sounded so good, so new, but I also liked it because I could hear Paul pushing himself, going to new places just like I wanted to. And was about to …

  I’d made some great new friends, pupils who were in other forms and whose orbit I’d never have entered were it not for drama classes. One of my new friends was Lizzie Marlow, who looked like a younger version of Julie Walters, auburn hair in ringlets and a smile as wide as you like.

  She was quite tiny, wore Kickers and was bold enough to cross cultural style boundaries hitherto uncharted by doubling them up with a boating blazer – some days she looked like a walking, talking dressing-up box. She dressed like Victoria Wood would, if you know what I mean. She was also quite a big Jam fan, had spectacular breasts and a boyfriend who was roughly the same size as our garage. Despite the spectre of her boyfriend James, we’d become quite close mates and we started our own little comedy writing club. Lizzie told me that James wasn’t too keen at all on our weekly get-togethers round at her house – and she also told me that she rather liked the fact that he was not too impressed.

  We would meet at Lizzie’s house, which was almost identical to ours, or in The Link – the sixth-form block which everyone could use – after school where we’d churn out all sorts of nonsense, page after page of it. Reading it back we sat there like six-year-olds and just howled. Lizzie had eyes like an owl’s and when they looked at you, they didn’t so much look at you as entered you. So much so that I had to start concealing my thoughts when we were together, discreetly blotting them out, gently nudging them out of view with my foot when she wasn’t looking, because I was entirely convinced that she could actually read my mind. After just a couple of weeks she’d started finishing my sentences for me … which was no bad thing because Lizzie’s lines were far funnier than mine could ever be. There was an unwritten rule which existed between us, and that was that some things were best left unsaid. And we knew that it was the writing which bound us together like glue.

  We’d sit across the desk from each other, frantically jotting down jokes and scribbling out scenes which didn’t come up to scratch. ‘That’s a funny line. Write it down, David, before we forget it.’

  ‘Um … sorry?’

  ‘Are you staring at my cleavage?’

  ‘No. Most certainly not.’

  ‘Good. And make sure you don’t. Now come on and get your biro out.’

  Drama classes were great for another reason. I got to go and see real plays! Life was suddenly good for me. It had become rich and varied and I’d got a new haircut to match. It was basically a pair of curtains just like Paul’s and was pretty high mai
ntenance at the best of times. The curtains hung down over the front of my forehead and there was a kind of sticky-up bit at the back of my crown. If I didn’t concentrate hard enough whilst styling this cut I ended up looking like a very passable impersonation of Helen Shapiro. In Garforth, this was a look best avoided; if I got it just a little bit wrong I may as well have waltzed down Main Street in a miniskirt.

  One drama trip took me to Sheffield. We were going with the new Head of Drama, Marshall Sapherson, to see a play at the Merlin Theatre called One In Ten which was about disabled teenagers and how they coped with puberty and the added disadvantage of being in a wheelchair. Marshall had baggied the minibus for the night and it was due to leave the school gates at five fifty-five.

  ‘Are you going out looking like that?’

  I was about to leave for the theatre and Mum was staring at my new haircut. ‘Yep. Why? What’s wrong with my hair?’

  ‘Nothing … it’s just that … nothing. Your hair’s fine …’

  ‘It’s just that what?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just that … and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like a girl.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Do you want a pack-up?’

  I was at the back of the bus and there was a spare seat next to me. Lizzie wasn’t going because she was seeing James, but had made me promise to take extensive notes and to deliver a full critique when we met the next week. Marshall was just about to close the doors when from nowhere there was a blur of bright yellow plastic and a girl exploded into the seat next to me. I could hardly catch my breath – she was heart-stoppingly beautiful and a few years older than me. I’d never seen her at school before, she must have been in the sixth form and surely she needed a licence for those eyelashes. She looked at me, batted them once and the downdraft wrecked my hair for the rest of the night. She had big, brown cow eyes and hair the colour of an aubergine and smelled faintly of Silk Cut. I’d been taught to stand up when a lady sat down, but I couldn’t because my knob was standing up like a cocked pistol. I took out my notepad to cover my crotch and started scribbling a poem – this girl beside me had inspired me! Maybe I’d send it to Paul.

  The drive from Garforth to Sheffield took about an hour, maybe a little more, although it felt like approximately nine and a half billion years because that’s what it feels like when you’re trying desperately hard not to look at the person sitting next to you when that’s all that you want to do.

  The play was too shocking by far. Disability’s a rum bedfellow, but this production was unbelievably excruciating at the best of times – and there weren’t any of those throughout the entire, terrible ninety minutes. I watched most of the production through the cracks in my fingers – the rest of the time I was watching the beautiful girl wrapped up in yellow plastic.

  As the curtain came down and the UB40 track, ‘One In Ten’ came up I mustered up the courage to say something to her. I turned and looked at her and she looked at me and suddenly my tongue hadn’t got room to move inside my mouth because my heart took up most of the space. Despite that, I tried to sound articulate. ‘I think, on the whole, that the sentiment’s right. It’s the execution which lets it down, though. The final scene with the epileptic fit was agricultural to say the least and we’re not left with a sense of anyone caring about each other. It was all rather embarrassing, wouldn’t you say? By the way, I’m David, David Lines. Pleased to meet you …’ And I held out my hand to shake hers. This didn’t sound like me. It sounded like me trying to sound like the way I thought older people talked to each other. I wasn’t ready for this – shut up, you idiot.

  She looked at me blankly and ignored my quivering hand. ‘I thought it was beautiful.’ And then she got up and quietly walked away.

  On the return journey she sat up front in the passenger seat next to Sapherson and I spent the next hour drinking in the back of her head. It was the loveliest back of a head I’d ever seen. I could have stared at it till daybreak. When we pulled up into the car park she got out and said a cheery goodnight to Marshall who said goodnight back to her. I heard him say her name. It was the most beautiful name, it was Katherine.

  The next morning I called for Rik on the way to school. His parents had just taken delivery of their brand new Mini Metro which was parked in front of their double garage. Inside, Selina Scott was on the box, sitting next to Frank Bough who was wearing a stripy jumper which made the telly go all wonky like what was left of his hair. He could have done with some conditioner on that lot. Frank looked like he’d had a hard night. ‘How was your night at the theatre?’

  ‘OK, thanks. What did you do?’

  ‘I was working on my new Jam shoes. But I can’t show you them yet – they’re a surprise.’

  ‘New Jam shoes? Really? What are they like?’

  ‘I can’t say any more. Let’s just say … they’re a bit special.’

  This was the first I’d heard of new special secret Jam shoes. Honestly, Rik gave me the right hump sometimes. ‘Do you want to come round tonight and make a new tape? I’ve got a new stereo coming today and guess what?’

  I had a quick think but couldn’t come up with anything. ‘What?’

  Rik’s face lit up. ‘It’s only got tape-to-tape!’

  ‘Skill! That means we can make two tapes, one each, in double-quick time.’

  ‘I know. It’s also got Dolby, a tape counter and all sorts of cool stuff we can play around with.’

  Me? Jealous? Surely not. ‘What about CD?’

  ‘What about what?’

  ‘CD. Don’t tell me it hasn’t got CD?’

  ‘What’s CD, Dave?’

  Imaginary trumpets played a fanfare in my head. ‘Oh, do try and keep up, Richard …’

  I was eager to get to school and try and find out more about Katherine. On the way, I stopped and posted my poem about her to Paul. I didn’t need to read it again to check for spelling mistakes or any other howlers because it was in my brain and I knew it off by heart and it was perfect, just like her. ‘What’s that you’re posting?’

  ‘This? Nothing, mate …’ And oh, so much did I hate myself for feeling so petty. Why couldn’t I just be honest with my best friend? It was only a poem, after all. Why should I have been so embarrassed about my feelings with my friend? Surely I wasn’t that insecure.

  There was something about the theatre, something which bit me that night. Despite the play turning out to be such a disaster, I felt the anticipation of the curtain coming up, I felt the electricity crackling behind it, I drank in the atmosphere coming from the stage and I knew then that this was for me.

  The next morning I could feel it, deep inside me like a fresh spirit. It moved within me … and it was a blessing, cancelling out my envy over something as silly as a stereo and replacing those feelings with a sense that somehow I’d found something. The day just washed over me like a warm breeze and I didn’t know if it was the theatre, or Katherine or maybe a bit of both. I didn’t really care what it was that made me feel that way, I was just enjoying being happy.

  After tea I biked round to Rik’s. The Mini Metro gleamed in the driveway and I parked my BSA ten-speed next to it and rang the bell. Rik lived in a bungalow, and it was absolutely massive. There were so many corridors it must have been like living in a hospital. In fact, it was so gigantic I’d only just got used to where all the rooms were and which ones were which. It was easier finding my way round school for the first week. When I first needed to use the loo at Rik’s place I actually got lost on my way to, and from, one of their many bogs. I still don’t know how many there were and I’m not sure that they do either. The next time I had wanted to go, I’d prepared myself for not looking like a total idiot again.

  I took off all of my Jam button badges and left a trail of them for me to follow all the way back from the loo to the lounge. It made me laugh both at, and to myself. ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Bowerman. Just me …�
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  I’d taken round that week’s Smash Hits to show Rik the Jam poster that was inside. It’d also got the lyrics to ‘A Town Called Malice’ on it. Paul had started to wear sweatshirts and t-shirts made by Lonsdale and he was going for a boxing-coach look which, at the time, was dead cool. I’d already bought a whistle which I wore around my neck on a piece of string. The other thing that I’d noticed, was that he’d started wearing a button badge with a picture of Dennis the Menace on it. It became a top priority that I secured one as well. I didn’t know exactly what the hidden meaning behind the Dennis the Menace badge was but, knowing Paul, it was bound to be something overwhelmingly profound, full to brimming with hidden depths and all sorts of ironic comments about social injustice, class inequality and nuclear disarmament. Or maybe his girlfriend just gave it to him.

  Rik opened the front door and we went inside to the kitchen – I’m pretty certain there was only one of them – and his mum made me a cup of coffee. ‘Did your music centre arrive?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s so skill. I’ll show you in a bit when Dad’s finished setting it up for me. Won’t be too long. Do you fancy a couple of frames of snooks whilst he finishes off with the wiring?’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’