Weller says he didn’t want US scuccess enough… yeah, repeat no.
Weller said to Spin Magazine:
“I’ve been waiting 30 years (to have a U.S. hit). When I first went in 1977 the record company said, ‘You won’t make it in America unless you tour there for a year.’ But there was no way I could leave my home for that long. You get from America what you put into it and I didn’t want it badly enough.”
Well, maybe the record company was wrong…
Weller is fooling himself if he doesn’t know the Jam were the Kinks of the Brit Invasion. They were too English to break through.
Always popular in Anglophiliac NYC, how did they really think an album, liet the classic All Mod Cons, was gonna be reacted to by an audience in Alabama? Let me tell you now: they are not gonna get “I’ve got some money and a takeaway curry” at all…
And though the early Jam owed so much to mod and therefore owed a debt of gratitude to 60s Norther soul, they were never the reggae flecked crowd one world crod pleasers the Clash.
The STyle Council went their own way though again they were, for all their pan Europeanisms, heavily influenced by the sounds Weller was raised on.
By the time of his ongoing solo career, Weller was a UK type hard rocker and without getting lucky, it was too late. He had become the Cliff Richard of punk.