“Mod keeps
reinventing itself: like The
Ordinary Boys” And you will know them by their Fred Perry shirts, Harrington jackets and smart line in social commentary: The Ordinary Boys meet their modernist mentor Paul Weller. Words: Pat Long NME May 22 2004 Page 36
oday the small Surrey village of Ripley looks like a scene from a slow episode of The Midsomer Murders. The country pub’s doing a roaring trade in lunchtime fish and chips, the cricket pitch is trimmed for the new season and the antique shop is – possibly – suffering a run on horse brasses and toby jugs. Even if a whistling vicar cycled past some morris dancers taking a quick beer break in the shade of a mighty oak this scene could not be more stereotypically English. Unless… oh look, it’s Paul Weller drinking lager and lime with The Ordinary Boys. “Wotcha,” grins Weller amicably. “Welcome to the village green preservation society.” Weller – as we are almost legally obliged to call him – feels at home in-this leafy corner of a vanishing world. Situated just down the road from his hometown of Woking, Ripley is where the Don Of Dadrock has a well-appointed private studio set up in an old barn with a handy space outside for his Italian Job model Mini Cooper. Because, unlike
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his contemporary Morrissey, the Modfather has never felt the need to leave his England behind for a suntan and a Norma Desmond fixation. This country’s been good to him. He still sells records, lots of them. But it’s been a long while since Paul Weller was cool. Still, a few weeks shy of his 46th birthday, his hair now peppery grey but still styled stubbornly in the same feather cut, Paul Weller is enjoying a reappraisal. Yes, he was responsible for Ocean Colour Scene. But, crucially, he was also in The Jam: the young, smart, angry and danceable mod-punk trio who made six albums combining leftist politics, kitchen sink drama and dole-queue rage in a way that anyone who has been young in Britain at any time in the last 30 years could relate to. They split when Weller was 24, but not before scoring four Number One singles and inspiring a generation to wear crap pork pie hats and bowling shoes. Now, with bands such as The Libertines unafraid to break open their Jam records for musical and sartorial inspiration, the world currently looks upon Paul Weller with kinder eyes. One of this new wave of Weller acolytes is Sam Preston, singer with Brighton’s The Ordinary Boys. Preston’s band may take their name from a Morrissey song, but a glance at their clothes labels – Lonsdale, Ben Sherman, Fred Perry, Clarks – marks them out as sons of the Modfather. Today Preston has come amply prepared with a journalist’s pad full of scribbled questions for the man he will look exactly like in 20 years’ time. But is he nervous about meeting Paul? “Course.” Paul, are you nervous about being interviewed by Preston? “Course.” Excellent. Another lager and lime, anyone?