Compost?
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Paul Weller: The Changing Man
If all require from a biography about Paul Weller is a cobbled together collection of interviews, reviews & hearsays about him, then this is perfect for you.
I would love to say I couldn't put it down, but I truthfully couldn't wait to put it down. So much so I only managed to get to page 112 before growing tired of Paolo Hewitts he said, she said style of writing.
Non swimmers will also love this book, it's so shallow you'll barely get your feet wet. If Mr Hewitt were to write a Weller style song, it would surely be called "Skimming Stones".
So, in answer to my heading Compost? this book is definitly being added to the garden compost.
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what BOLLOCKS !!!!
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get your kleenex tissues out for mr hewitt, he has had a rift with paul weller and he wants us all to shed a few tears. what BOLLOCKS.
sorry i bought this bloody shambles of a book.
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The Bitterest Pill
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This book is as much a bitter and twisted account of the demise of Paolo Hewitt's friendship with Paul Weller as it is about the songs he alleges he's discussing. Paul Weller gave Hewitt a year's salary so he could freelance. He took Hewitt to his child's christening when Hewitt wasn't going to go. The Weller family has been kind to the author. Yet on every page he stabs him in the back. In the end you end up sympathetic to Paul Weller. There is not enough about the songs. There are mistakes throughout. A discography would have been useful. It should have been called Sour Grapes or the Bitterest Pill.
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Have you made up your mind?
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It's taken me ages to decide what I think about this book; and to be honest, I still haven't really worked out whether it's any good or not. Being an avid Weller fan, I got it hot off the press and zapped through it with gusto!
But while it's very readable, I'd agree with some of the other reviewers who were disappointed that it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about the man. I suppose my problem is that I don't know what Paolo Hewitt was trying to achieve with this book. Unlike his excellent biography of Steve Marriott "all too beautiful", this work struggles for a clarity of purpose, and by the end of it, I could only surmise that it was almost an apology at having fallen out with a long-term and much-missed friend.
We all have friends with temparement like Weller. People who, whilst they lack Weller's lyrical and musical talents, share many of the same behaviour traits. We learn to manage them if we value them, and benefit from the parts we value, and tolerate the parts we don't. But we don't all write books about them. It would make for fairly shallow reading, which I'm afraid, this book is.
So buy it if you like - I did! Laugh at the bits you know are coming; cringe at some of the others. I suspect Weller is no different from many of us "ordinary folk"; a complex mix of individual parts; inconsistent and flawed. Why should he be the perfect human being just because his music inspired so much of our teenage (and beyond) years?
You know, I suspect Paolo Hewitt still likes Paul Weller. And though I've only ever been lucky enough to say "hello" to him a few times, I still like him, too.
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Bitter and Twisted
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Paolo starts the book by stating that his 26 year friendship with Paul Weller is over. At the end of the book he tells us that songwriters are a different breed to the rest of us; intense, etc.
Inbetween Paolo Hewitt takes every opportunity to paint Paul Weller in a bad light - he's moody, he's nasty, he's selfish, he's tight-fisted, he's prone to violent outbursts, he's pinched most of his material from other artists...you get the picture.
Well, after reading this book, my opinion of the man has changed...not Weller! I thought Paolo was alright, how wrong I was.
Although I've been a massive Jam/TSC/Weller fan for three decades now, I'm not blinkered or stupid...I know that all of us have our faults and our frailties, Paul is no different, he's human.
His faults make him no less of a brilliant musician and songwriter. His faults do not make his songs worth less. His legacy is still there and always will be, reagardless of whether or not he throws the odd tantrum.
A message for Paul. Don't bother reading this mate, it's rubbish.
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