The song goes through a lot of movements, from rock to sort of trippy sections, with lots of overdubs. The producer, Simon Dine, read it and said I should set it to music. I wrote this whole piece of prose about it. And some of them seemed like trees, just getting ready to be re-planted. It went, ‘Once I was a lover with beautiful long, brown hair.’ Some of the folks seemed so old, man, they were, like, fossilized. One day, I started writing some lines about one of the women. Trying to imagine them as young, what their lives were like.

“When my dad was in the last stages, I went to visit him in a respite house. And has its, uh, roots in something real: the death last year of Weller’s beloved dad (and manager) John.

The unsettling “Trees” is singularly fine. From the rampaging opener “Moonshine,” which features Weller on piano (“kinda like Jerry Lee Lewis”), to the specter of Spector on “No Tears To Cry” (try imagining “Spanish Harlem” as house music), to the spooky skater’s waltz, “In Amsterdam,” the songwriter seems determined to shake listeners from their carefully cautious ways. If today’s playlists were studded with the gems from Wake Up, adventurous listeners would have no complaints. These are the kind of songs I’d like to hear on the radio.” The album is a sort of reaction to radio. “I didn’t go into the studio this time with preconceived musical ideas, so much as a general feeling about the state of things. Recently, the no-nonsense but unquestionably affable Weller discussed his latest musical offering. It’s tuneful as can be, but also sports traces of psychedelia, roots-rock and electronica. His new record, Wake Up the Nation, is another strong collection. From his days leading New Wave giants The Jam, to the funk-soul brothers The Style Council, through his solo career, the kid from Woking has produced a body of work that’s remarkable as much for its diversity as for its consistency. Johnny Rotten rouses himself for an occasional Sex Pistols tour, Billy Idol does the oldies circuit, and only Joe Strummer has a decent excuse for not coming up with new material. sunspel.Of all the rock stars from Britain’s Class of ‘77, Paul Weller alone has retained his incandescence. The Paul Weller for Sunspel collection is out on 16 February. And they’re nice people, you know? They’re nice to work with and there was no fuss and no problems. I hope they do, because there’s other things I'd like to do with them.

Well, it depends if they sell this one, I suppose. Will there be another Sunspel collection? Will you do more? However, I don’t see too many dresses or shirts in a German flag or the Czech Republic colours. Red, white and blue are great colours together, but whether we should be using it as fashion, I don’t know. I do know there was too much use of the Union Jack. I mean, it’s a great looking flag because the colours are great, and it’s great as a kind of piece of pop art. I don’t know if I gave those sorts of thing consideration or not, to be honest. How did you feel during the whole Britpop period in the 1990s, when every young band seemed to want to dress like you? Was it flattering? Or annoying or funny? From there it grew into the whole skinhead thing, which was a massive influence then and still is now. For me it was that period in the late 1960s, when I was around ten or eleven, that I properly got into it. Whatever kind of music you were into reflected in the way you dressed. All those things, they were all cultural touchstones, so it’s just sort of ingrained in me really. It was how you looked and what music you listened to and probably, at the time, what football team you supported. Everything went hand in hand with me, music and style. I think it’s just something that’s kind of been drilled into me from a very young age, you know, growing up when I did, being too young to be part of the 1960s, as such, but still being old enough to be affected by it and influenced by it. There’s only one thing we had to outsource and everything else they made in the factory. Also, I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything they felt they couldn’t handle. I just wanted something a little bit different with the collar, so I kind of based it on a Brooks Brothers polo shirt I bought a couple years ago. Well, I know they’ve done polo shirts in the past. Was it important to have a polo shirt in the collection?

Paul weller young