Paul Weller (Photo: Live4ever Media)
With The Stone Roses now firmly back on the saddle and planning a new album following their successful run of summer reunion dates, The Jam remain almost unchallenged as one of the most wished for reformations still to take place.
It is also one of the most unlikely, with the band’s former frontman Paul Weller a regular critic of the current trend for big-name comebacks.
And Weller has launched another attack on reunions today, telling The Mirror newspaper he finds the attention being paid to nostalgia at the present time ‘really disappointing’.
“It drives me potty to be honest and I am sick of seeing it,” he has said. “It is big business at the moment and I find it really disappointing and I think all the time that is spent on bands reforming and nostalgia. What about the new bands, or young bands, coming in which don’t get a look in?”
“I don’t know what the reason is. Why is it so prevalent? Is it because people stick to what they know or what they are comfortable or safe with? But I think I come from a time when all the artists I grew up with and I loved always used to try and push the boundaries and there doesn’t seem so much of that really. It is the same sort of thing, and I find it disappointing.”
Paul Weller walked away from The Jam with the band at the height of their powers in 1982. Aged just 24, he was already looking to indulge his broadening musical horizons, and quickly formed the more jazz, funk focused collective The Style Council.