Paul Weller

Born on 25 May 1958 in Woking, Surrey, Paul Weller is one of the most influential British musicians of the past fifty years — a songwriter, guitarist and singer whose restless creative ambition has driven him through three distinct and celebrated chapters without once standing still. The Daily Telegraph described him as someone whose career has been “as varied, long-lasting and determinedly forward-looking” as any British solo artist in history.

He achieved his first cultural breakthrough as the architect of The Jam — the Woking punk-mod band who became the most important British group of the late 1970s and early 1980s, scoring eighteen consecutive top forty singles and a string of albums that captured a generation. At the height of their success, he dissolved the band and started again. The Style Council, formed with Mick Talbot in 1982, was a wilfully different proposition — jazz, soul, Continental sophistication and political conscience, replacing guitar rock with something more exploratory and harder to categorise. It earned him a new audience and produced some of the most elegant British pop of the decade.

His solo career, begun in 1991, produced a third reinvention that surprised everyone. Wild Wood (1993) and Stanley Road (1995) restored him to the centre of British music at precisely the moment Britpop was looking for its spiritual father, and the decades since have seen him release some of his most adventurous and critically admired work — including Fat Pop (2021) and 66 (2023), the latter entering the UK album chart at number one. He has won four Brit Awards, including Best British Male twice and the Outstanding Contribution to Music award in 2006.

Paul’s connection to Monks Road Records runs through decades of friendship and musical kinship with Dr Robert and the wider circle of artists the label calls its own. He contributed vocals and writing to the Monks Road Social album Rise Up Singing! (2022), appearing on the lead single — a spiritual call to arms written with Dr Robert and Miles Copeland that Dr Robert described as Paul “instantly getting the vibe.” His presence on that record is not a cameo. It is the Modfather among friends, doing what he has always done: making music that matters.