Paul Weller on growing content with age and working class politics

In the latest issue of Hot Press, Paul Weller speaks to Stuart Clark about the happiness he's found forty years into his career.

"I wouldn't swap my life for anything. I don't say it with any false modesty bullshit but I've been a very lucky man. I've finally found the woman I'm supposed to be with; I've seven kids, who ensure I don't get a moment's peace, but are fantastic and musically too I'm in a really good place. My last three records – 22 Dreams, Wake Up the Nation and Sonik Kicks – have been a different kind of experience in terms of writing and how they come together in the studio. The older I get, the more open-minded I am which is the opposite of most people who get past 40 and stick to what they know. I haven't got any set ideas or agendas. I'm working with different people and often just making things up on the spot. it's come late in life but I've learnt the art of spontaneity."

Still, despite this improvement of his life's outlook, Weller takes a moment to thrash Britain's political climate, hitting the more mainstream parties with the same vitirol reserved for Ukip.

"I don't know, mate. i don't even follow it. Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, Ukip, I couldn't care less about any of them. They all go to the same colleges, the same schools. They all have Mummies and Daddies who live in the country. Who do they reflect? Not the working-class or poor people. They come from a totally different fucking background. They can all fuck off. I'm more interested in the mood of the people. I think, genuinely speaking, English people are all right. They've really come on in the last 20 years or more. Everyone's angry in their teens I know , but Britain in the '70s really was fucking grim. Strikes, blackouts, the National Front marching round the place and all the rest of it."

Read all of this and more in the latest issue of Hot Press.