Paul Weller has been called many things. "Spokesman for a generation", pounding out, with The Jam, punk classics like Town Called Malice; "Style Council-er" as he sang, with the band of the same name, hit singles such as Walls Come Tumbling Down; and "godfather of Britpop" as a result of his influence on the likes of Noel Gallagher, who jammed on Weller's solo album, Stanley Road.
Within the music industry, Weller is also probably seen as somewhat difficult and irascible. That perception may result from the fact that he disbanded The Jam at the peak of its popularity in 1982 and more recently, challenged a rock critic to a fist fight following a luke-warm review of his album Heavy Soul.
Heavy? You bet. Indeed, prior to entering Weller's eggshell city, journalists don't need to be told: "If he doesn't warm to your line of questioning, Paul may walk out after five minutes." That's understood. He has been known to check out the "credentials" of a music critic before doing one of his increasingly rare interviews. How rare? Well, Weller agreed to do just one for Ireland to promote his forthcoming appearance at the Witnness Festival.
So what is Weller's problem with the press?
"I'm just selective," he jokes, sitting in his own recording studio outside London. Incidentally, Weller's handshake is rocksolid and his manner warm and welcoming. "I don't want to be plastered over every front page and I don't want to have to speak to everyone, from Melody Maker to Gardener's Weekly. And the point is that I've done loads of press in the past. The Jam did. The Style Council did even more. And when you do too many, you just end up repeating yourself. So it's better to do just one or two interviews every time. As for checking out the journalists, it's not as though I get their personal files or anything like that. I just want to see what they've written. Or if they are good writers."
Weller also, apparently, still gets annoyed when critics say he shouldn't change his musical persona so often. Namely, evolve from The Jam through The Style Council to being a born-again solo act during the 1990s. "But it gets to me less and less these days," he concedes. "Yet it really did, up to a couple of years ago, the time of Stanley Road. Then again, some people also like the underdog. So in the early 1990s, when I was clawing myself back up again, there were positive noises from the press. But once I got there, with Wild Wood, which did really well, the knives were drawn again. There's always that element in the English press."
Come on Weller, surely you didn't help matters by challenging that NME critic to a brawl? "Probably I shouldn't have done that" he says, explaining that the writer "intimated" that Heavy Soul was a "contractual" album.
"Music means too much to me to make it just to fulfil a contract," he adds. "That's what rankled me more than anything else. The suggestion that it was manufactured music, made to get me off a hook, contractually. That's something I'd never do." Weller's love of music goes back to growing up in a house "filled with music," specifically his mother's collection of early Beatles records.
His interest in the craft of "the well-structured pop song" also goes back to those days, "as a result of listening to Lennon and McCartney, Ray Davies, Smokey Robinson". Tellingly enough, when Weller jokes about how he and The Jam used to "do cover versions of those songs, getting the chords wrong or over-simplifying them, reducing them to three or four chords," he touches, tangentially, on what broke up the band. As in, what he sees as their musical limitations and his desire to move beyond punk, back to his pop and R 'n' B roots. He also rejects the revisionist claim that The Jam were a "classic three-piece" and that Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton influenced the band's music as much as he did.
"Everyone brought their influence to bear on the band but we didn't take them all on board," he says. "Rick, the drummer, when we met, was a big Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath fan and we didn't take that on board. And I was the captain of the ship. "I don't even know if it's always good to delegate. As in, let other members of a band have equal power and influence. I think if you've got one, sole writer in a band, that person decides on the direction you should go. Musically. "I know that all depends on who you are working with and what influences the others bring to the table. If they're all really good influences, then maybe democracy is good in a band. But I can't think of any example. I was going to say the Beatles, but Lennon and McCartney were at the helm there, right?"
Quite. Either way, the ending for The Jam, a band still described as one of the best of its time, was "acrimonious", Weller admits, adding that he "doesn't know" if the situation will ever be resolved, partly because Buckler and Foxton took him to court at one point.
"I never saw us as being big buddies at the time. We come from a small town and therefore you've only got a small choice of musicians. So you're stuck with what you can get. It wouldn't have been that I would have gone and socialised with these guys anyway."
A town called Malice? Maybe. In other words, Jam fans, don't hold your breath waiting for that big reunion. But then Paul Weller's clearly merciless commitment to music also cost him his wife, D.C. Lee and, to whatever degree, his son and daughter from that marriage. Weller has since had two other children, one with his current companion, Sami Stock.
"Sometimes, I really do wish music wasn't so central to my life," he muses. "But the point is that when I haven't given 110 per cent, it actually shows in the music. At least three tracks on Heavy Soul are real turkeys, as far as I'm concerned. Driving Nowhere is one. It took me two years to finish that and I kept thinking `there is something here' but, in the end, there wasn't. Yet I still had that sense, for those two years, `I must commit to this'.
"And, looking back, a real peak for me was around Wild Wood. Professionally and creatively. But I lost a lot in my personal life. My marriage did split up. And now I do see that to give that kind of commitment to music means something else must miss out. There always was that question `how much do I put into this? I love these two things - my family and music - how can I split myself up?' It's hard to do that tightrope walk. But at least things have gotten better in recent years, in relation to the kids from my marriage. So I have got a balance at that level."
Not so, it seems, in terms of D.C. Lee, the subject of Time and Temperance, from Heliocentric. "That is me, in ways, singing to my ex-wife," says Weller, who reveals "no, she hasn't responded" though the song is "a message about moving on, making amends, clearing something out of the way, saying `let's start afresh'." But then, when pushed, Weller also admits that his former wife is one of the people who suffered "even more so" because of his tendency to "allow love to go over the edge" so he could explore those shadows as a songwriter.
"I've done close to that in the past but it's not a place I want to go back to. There must be other ways to make music without going through that bullshit," he reflects. "Or, more importantly, putting that bullshit on other people. It does become a savage cycle and I'm not entirely convinced of that whole process. To put yourself and others through that, just to get a good song."
Indeed, Heliocentric, as its title suggests, is Weller's attempt to "celebrate a world of joy, not misery. Colour and light. Make music that delivers to the world something that gives you a joyful feeling, in contrast with the darkness of Heavy Soul." The new album certainly celebrates the joy of finding new love. But what about the sensitive issue of drink and drugs? Isn't it true Weller went "a little crazy" in terms of both after the break-up of his marriage? "Yeah," he mumbles, growing slightly uneasy.
But at this point has he managed to get a balance in that potentially perilous area of his life? "At this stage?" says Weller, before pausing. "Yes I have, doctor!"
Paul Weller is Joe Jackson's guest on Under The Influence today at noon on RTE Radio 1. Weller performs at the Guinness Witness Festival at 6.45 p.m. on Sunday, August 6th