He derives no pleasure from making videos, or indeed any form of self-promotion, but the reassuringly familiar presence of his old chum, director Pedro Romahanyi, makes the day relatively painless. Installed in a grotto-like doorway under the cameraman's light-bouncing canopy, Weller strums an acoustic guitar and mimes to this gloomy yet oddly addictive bucolic lament. Clambering over stiles and wading through long grass, we make our way to a ruined Jacobean manor house whose roofless and crumbling walls have been reclaimed by the trees of old England. It is here he recorded his September-released second solo album, Wild Wood, and he's back to shoot the promotional video for the title song. We are at the Manor, the residential recording studio formerly owned by Richard Branson and now an EMI asset, an oasis of rural repose in deepest Oxfordshire that Paul Weller has almost come to feel is his second home. The tan, he jests, healthily confirms the popular belief that here is a white guy who wishes he were black. The desert boots are of a hue so subtle that they must have cost a fortune, while his sawn-off Small Faces haircut betrays the golden highlights of recent Spanish weekend break. He is tall, reed-slim and sheathed in navy cords and skinny-ribbed T-shirt. Reading on mobile? Click here to view Wild Wood videoĬalculated by mathematicians to be no less than 35 years old, Paul Weller in person appears to defy this fact by looking exactly as he did when he broke up the Jam over 10 years ago.
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