SNAP!
PAUL WELLER reflects on his remarkable life in music in a new book, Magic: A Journal Of Song. In this exclusive extract, Weller revisits the inspiring early days of his ascent to mod magnificence with The Jam: “Folk music in its truest sense...”
PAUL WELLER
IANDICKSON/REDFERNS
TOP RANK, READING
JUNE 13, 1977
I WAS always waiting for this signal, waiting for someone to fire a flare to say it was our time now, because up until then the ’70s had been pretty drab. We needed a scene. A couple of months later we went to the two-day punk festival at the 100 Club and saw the Pistols again. I also saw The Clash for the first time there, when they still had Keith Levene, and it was Siouxsie’s first gig, with Sid Vicious on drums.
I remember walking down the steps into the 100 Club and they were playing an old Troggs record from the ’60s and I thought to myself, ‘I am home.’ Just to see all the people and the way they were dressed was amazing. Everyone had their individual look; some people had made their own clothes. There was a smattering of soul boys with plastic sandals and the wedges and the rest of it. A fe w people looked a bit ’60s, and I was into the mod thing by that time. I just thought that this was it, the start of the revolution.