I caught the hastily added third and final show on January 29, where he was preceded on stage by The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows. But this is a man who not only turns 60 today, but an artist whose albums routinely land in the Top Five, who is considered nearly as big an influence by Britpop stalwarts as the ‘60s artists who inspired him, and who has always preferred to maintain a distinct Englishness rather than chasing an international audience.Įven though he has only managed to figure on the Billboard Hot 100 for one solitary week (1984’s paean to bipolarity, My Ever Changing Moods), Weller did manage to sell out a hat-trick of concerts at Australia’s iconic Sydney Opera House at the start of the year. Given Paul Weller’s slightly low-key profile outside of the UK since his 1980s heyday, the reverence with which he is regarded at home may come as a surprise to some casual observers. A key figure not just in music but also in youth culture, his influence on people in their teens and early twenties during the decade extended beyond their record-buying habits and on to their politics and appreciation of the arts in general. There has been so much written about Paul Weller that to attempt to tell his story in a short blog format seems futile.