Interviews by Dave Simpson. Paul Weller / In 1981, I was going through a few changes. I was taking note of what was going on in our country. When you're touring, you're often in your own bubble, but we were going around the country seeing firsthand what was happening. It was the start of the hardline Margaret Thatcher years, and places – up north, especially – were being decimated. I was a young man taking it all in and thinking about it.
At the same time, I was getting into black American soul music. 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. We'd already moved on from punk very quickly, and by [fifth album] Sound Affects there were a lot of disparate influences. We'd been a three-piece for years, and there are only so many variations on the guitar/drums format. So, rightly or wrongly, I was getting into brass sections and female vocals and keyboards and trying to expand our sound.
