“An album that sits at the intersection of fandom and artistry, using the enthusiasm of the former to fuel the latter.” On Paul Weller’s Wild Wood.
In the spring of 1993, the circumstances that saw Paul Weller entering The Manor Studios in Oxford were significantly different to those of his previous album. Fresh off the road with his core touring band — Steve White on drums and bassist Marco Nelson (from Young Disciples) — Weller knew what he was here to do. This wasn’t the embattled survivor we can see on the sleeve of 1992’s solo debut Paul Weller — an album recorded for a label run by Japanese fans, for which the personnel were less a band, more an ad hoc adoptive family of musician pals keen to show their faith an in artist whose self-belief had plummeted. The reasons for that, of course, are legion. Dropped by Polydor, forced to sell his Solid Bond studios, worried that parenthood might have extinguished his creativity altogether, it took Weller’s father and manager John to virtually frog-march his son into a tour bus and tell him to sing for his supper. It might, to this day, be the most inspired instruction anyone has ever given Paul Weller.
And if you really want to see the difference a year can make, you could do a lot worse than hold up the sleeve of 1992’s Paul Weller album next to that of its successor. On the former, Weller looks pale and uncertain, as if awaiting a verdict he’s unsure he wants to hear. It’s the gaze of someone who thinks he’s made a great record, but is unsure of whether: (a) the wider world will concur; and (b) if there’s a significant part for him to play in the unfolding story of this decade. Now hold up the sleeve of Wild Wood. The first thing to notice is that Weller is silhouetted in sunlight through an open door. In this photo, he’s playing his guitar and he appears unaware of the camera. It’s tempting to surmise that he’s lost in music, but if you remove the album from its sleeve and drop the needle onto the opening track, that’s not true. This is the sound of a man who is found in music, music that right now seems to be pouring through him at such velocity, he can barely marshall it.
Released ahead of the album, it’s hard not to take Sunflower as a repudiation, not just of those who doubted him, but of his own insecurity. “I write this now while I’m in control,” he sings on the first verse, “I’ll choose the words and how the melody goes.” When Weller appeared on Later… With Jools Holland to play the song, this resurgent rage of vindication turned his face a different colour, while behind him Steve White delivered the performance of his life, oscillating between a thunderous propulsive funk on the verses and an occasional holding pattern of psychedelic backwards drums.
But it’s not just on Sunflower that we find Weller variously questioning and restating his commitment to the values that made him pick up a guitar in the first place. Offering a marginally mellower echo of his his younger self’s contention that “…bullshit is just bullshit/It just goes by different names” (Beat Surrender), Has My Fire Really Gone Out? sees Weller declare “Something real is what I’m seeking/One clear voice in the wilderness.” Right across Wild Wood, the invocation of nature as something immutable in a world of shallow distractions underscores the sense that what you’re privy to is an existential reset. It’s there on the sparse acoustic reverie of Country — “Into the light/Out of the dark,” sings Weller, echoing the sentiments of a title track which, almost as soon as it came out, seemed to gain the status of an honorary folk song. Again, what strikes you on the Wild Wood single is the interweaving of nature with spiritual succour. When Weller took the song out onto the road, he knew he’d achieved his objective: “When I play this live I can tell it means a lot to people,” he said, “they sometimes take the words from me and raise the roof.”
Weller’s realisation that his music still had the power to affect people this way might have subconsciously informed the opening words of The Weaver: “Can you put a smile back on/All these different faces/Of all the people/From such different places.” Here and elsewhere, what fizzes around each performance is the instinctive ease which the core musicians — Weller, Steve White and Marco Nelson — interact with each other. This is a band audibly bonded by the road, abetted in this case by Jacko Peake’s flute interjections, which variously nod to albums by Traffic (Traffic) and Terry Callier (Dancing Girl), and producer Brendan Lynch whose ability to prioritise feel, flow and warmth over everything else is central to the success of Wild Wood as a listening experience.
And, perhaps more than any other Paul Weller album, it’s worth dwelling on the importance of the supporting cast that helped make Wild Wood one of the defining albums of its era. In the 28 years since its release, it’s a record that’s been co-opted into the story of Britpop. And yet the surrogate family that helped restore Weller’s mojo were more closely connected with London’s grass roots network of soul, jazz and funk enthusiasts: predominantly the scenes around labels like Acid Jazz and Talkin’ Loud.
All these years later, this is the context that sets Wild Wood apart from the movement with which he would be later associated. It’s an album that sits at the intersection of fandom and artistry, using the enthusiasm of the former to fuel the latter. And perhaps that’s why it holds a special place in the affections of fans. “Do you still feel the same way about it/Like you always said you would?” he asks on Shadow Of The Sun, a blazing seven-minute reaffirmation of the passions that prompted him to pick up a guitar in the first place. The answer is soaked into very bones of Wild Wood.
