The first shows Paul Weller ever played in the United States were at the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip when Weller was the teenage frontman of the Jam and few in the crowd knew what to make of all the new sounds coming out of his English homeland.
“I think there was people coming out curiosity because it was kind of ‘punk’ and ‘new wave’ and all that stuff,” Weller said after his sound check at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday. “And a few kindred spirits as well, I suppose. Kids looking for something different, as we all were.”
The kids and kindred spirits who grew up with Weller – first in the Jam, later in the Style Council, and today as a solo artist – filled much of the Fonda for the first of two shows there before he hits the Fox Theatre in Pomona on Friday.
They’re older, and many have a touch of the silver that colors Weller’s hair, but the energy in the crowd for the show he and his band delivered had the old teen spirit, never flagging over the course of 23 songs and two hours on stage.
His new album, “Saturns Pattern,” is a terrific collection of the kind of songs Weller’s often gravitated toward: Soulful rock with touches of R&B and a strong groove, though this record feels a lot heavier, a lot louder than most of his earlier solo outings. “I think the only kind of brief I gave the producer and the band was that I wanted big drums, beefy sort of drums, but outside of that I didn’t have a clue really,” he said before the show.
That big new sound was evident from the moment the band hit the stage, with bassist Andy Lewis and two drummers laying down the bottom end of the sound on the opening tunes, “I’m Where I Should Be,” an emotive rock song, and “Long Time,” which roared like a lost Stooges track. A little later in the show other new tracks such as “Pick It Up” featured a hard funk soul with riffs that stuck in your head all the way home a few hours later.
The trick, of course, when you’ve had three successful chapters in your career comes in blending in much-loved songs from the past with the new stuff that you’re into at the moment. “I want to play my stuff because that’s really where my head’s at,” Weller said. “And then we start putting stuff around that really, it’s difficult, man, because i think you’ve got to cut people a bit of slack, give ’em something they know, but I’m also limited in what old songs I can play because a lot of them I don’t connect with anymore.”
“Man In The Corner Shop” gave fans their first taste of the Jam on Wednesday and they responded with huge cheers, singing along to the “La la la la la” in a full-throated chorus. And that same reaction surfaced whenever one of the classics popped up such as when, mid-set, Weller and the band shifted into a lighter soul pop vibe for a pair of Style Council songs, “My Ever Changing Moods” and “Have You Ever Had It Blue.”
He’s 57 years old now, no longer the 19-year-old who couldn’t get served a drink in L.A. on that first visit here back in 1977, but the energy is still there in the performance of Weller and the band, who at times seemed almost furiously racing through the set, determined to get in as many songs as possible without wasting many words on between-song chit-chat.
The final stretch of the main set blazed with a particularly glorious fury with a quarter of vintage rockers that started, um, with skittering syncopated rhythms of the Jam song “Start!” then veered into the strut of an early solo track, “Peacock Suit,” before closing out the main set with another Jam classic, “In The Crowd” and another solo highlight, “The Changingman.”
The first encore featured a trio of songs including “Ghosts,” an early track from the Jam that delivers a wistful nostalgic punch in its music and words, as well the moody atmospherics of “These City Streets,” another strong tune from the current album. The final encore delivered just one more but what a one: “Town Called Malice,” one of the best-loved Jam songs, and a perfect rush of happy rock ’n’ roll with which to end the night.
The Irish band Villagers opened the night with a set of lovely indie folk songs, demonstrating why the band fronted by Conor O’Brien earned a Mercury Prize nomination a year or two ago. Songs featured O’Brien’s intricate finger-picked acoustic guitar, lovely three-part harmonies and something we’d never seen before: a drummer who played his kit with his left hand and feet while playing the flugelhorn with his right.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com
