Paul Weller looks back on 14 years of sobriety: "Everything changed when I stopped drinking"
10 June 2024, 14:42
The Modfather has opened up about his decision to stop drinking and revealed how it changed his outlook.
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Paul Weller believes his life has completely changed once he quit drinking.
The Jam icon has opened up about his relationship with alcohol, revealing that he “definitely” classed himself as an alcoholic and quit after receiving an ultimatum from his wife Hannah Andrews.
"I stopped drinking 14 years ago – 1 Jul," he told Big Issue magazine. "Everything changed when I stopped drinking. It’s like night and day, it really is.
“First two years were hard. I didn’t have any relapses and I didn’t go to AA, though I would have done if I felt I needed to.”
The Changingman legend also revealed that he told himself he needed to stop drinking “many times” over the years, but it took a “bigger force” to quit booze for good.
He recalled: "It was something in my body that said, ‘You’ve got to stop now.’
“It was a bigger force than me just consciously saying, ‘I’ve got to stop’, which I’d said many times.
“It was a much stronger force than that."
Speaking about how sobriety has changed his life, he said: "t brings so much more clarity to your thinking and your actions, how you view the world. I’m glad I’ve got to this point in my life.
"When you’re younger, you’re just a funny p*******. Then you cross a line at a certain age and you’re just another old drunk.
“It’s a hard thing to admit but once you do, it gets easier.”
Weller has recently turned 66 years old and released an album with the same name to mark the milestone.
Despite being in the music business for almost 50 years, the That's Entertainment singer refuses to think of himself as a heritage or legacy artist.
On the final ever episode of Desperately Seeking Paul: The Paul Weller Fan Podcast, he said: "A few years ago there was a thing where they were talking about heritage acts.
"I am not going down that road, mate – I’m not a heritage act.
"I had to fight that term, my own little fight in a sense to get through all that stuff."
The former Style Council frontman also discussed the best thing about making music as you get older, telling Record Collector magazine last month: "I don't want to keep going on about my age but one thing that is very nice about getting older is that you can experiment
"The older I get, the more open-minded I get."
Watch Paul Waller talk to John Kennedy about his latest record:
Paul Weller - 66 Track by Track
