A gift for Paul Weller fans has an awkward question built into it: which Weller? This map answers it by taking the solo catalogue, twenty-one releases from the 1992 debut to 66 in 2024, and drawing it as one route. The Jam and the Style Council are not on it as albums.
They are on it as people, though, and that turned out to be the most interesting thing in the research.
The short version. My Paul Weller map plots 21 solo releases from Paul Weller (1992) to 66 (2024), a span of 32 years, 17 studio albums and 4 live albums. My research sheet holds more than a hundred credited contributors. Steve Cradock appears on 18 of the 21, more than anybody except Weller. Studio 150 is the widest station with over thirty names; Days of Speed has two. Bruce Foxton and Steve Brookes of The Jam both appear, as do Mick Talbot and Dee C. Lee of the Style Council. Available as a Giclée art print in A2 and A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
This Gift for Paul Weller Fans Starts in 1992, and The Jam Still Turns Up on It
The Jam and the Style Council were different bands with their own line-ups and their own discographies, so putting all three on one print would mean drawing three separate maps and pretending they were one. This map is the solo route, beginning in 1992.
What I did not expect when I sat down with the credits was how often the earlier bands cross that boundary anyway. Four musicians from Weller's two previous groups appear in the solo years, one of them as recently as 2020 and one of them as recently as 2024.
So the line starts in 1992 and the history keeps walking onto it. If you are buying for somebody who came in through In the City rather than Stanley Rd, that is the thing to point at.
Paul Weller Discography Map
Twenty-one solo releases across 32 years and more than a hundred musicians, drawn as one transit network.
Explore This Art PrintSteve Cradock Is on Eighteen of the Twenty-One
Steve Cradock of Ocean Colour Scene arrives on Wild Wood in 1993 and is still there on 66 in 2024. Eighteen stations out of twenty-one, and the three he misses are the 1992 debut and two live albums.
That makes his the second longest line on the print, and it is longer than most people's mental model of this catalogue allows for. Thirty-one years is a long time to be the other guitarist.
Steve White's line is the other one worth tracing. He drums on ten releases, from the debut through to 22 Dreams in 2008, and then stops. Where his line ends is where the map gets interesting.
Wake Up the Nation Is the Album Where Everything Changes
Wake Up the Nation in 2010 carries twenty-two credits and it is the hinge of the whole route. Steve White is gone. Andy Crofts and Steve Pilgrim arrive, and both are still on the map fourteen years later.
With no regular drummer on the record, Weller brought in two of the most experienced in the country instead. Bev Bevan, who drummed for the Move and ELO, and Clem Cattini, a session drummer credited on dozens of British number ones. Two men with about eighty years of drumming between them, on one album, on one station.
Then there is Bruce Foxton. The Jam's bass player appears exactly once in this entire catalogue and it is here, on this album, twenty-eight years after The Jam split up. One station, no line running into it and none running out.
The same album also brings in Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, the string section credited as the Wired Strings, and the Woking Gay Community Choir. Weller was born in Woking. A choir from his home town turns up thirty-three years into his recording career, on the album where his band changes over.
Steve Brookes Founded The Jam, Left Before the First Single, and Comes Back in 2015
Steve Brookes started The Jam with Weller as schoolboys and left in 1976, before the band had released anything. He is not on a single Jam record.
He is on three Paul Weller albums: Saturns Pattern in 2015, True Meanings in 2018 and On Sunset in 2020, playing lead, electric and slide guitar. Nearly forty years after walking away from the band he co-founded, he has more stations on my map than Bruce Foxton does.
I like that this is a thing you can see rather than a thing you have to be told. Two men from the same teenage band, both on the print, and the one who left first has the longer line.
Mick Talbot Bridges Twenty-Seven Years in Three Stations
Mick Talbot played keyboards in the Style Council for the band's entire run. On this map he appears on Wild Wood in 1993, Stanley Rd in 1995, and then not again until On Sunset in 2020, on Hammond organ across three tracks.
Twenty-five years between his second station and his third, and it is the sort of gap that a chronological list flattens into nothing. Dee C. Lee, the Style Council's other voice, appears on the 1992 debut and on Wild Wood, and then not at all.
Between them, Talbot, Lee, Foxton and Brookes are the whole reason I stopped worrying that a solo-only map would lose the earlier chapters. It does not lose them. It shows you exactly where they resurface.
Six Musicians Were Nearly Drawn as Twelve Lines
Here is the part of this job nobody sees. Sleeve credits are not consistent, and the same person can be spelled differently on two albums fifteen years apart. Read those as two entries and you have drawn two half-length lines instead of one long one, which is worse than leaving them out.
Weller's catalogue had six of these. Steve White is also credited as Steve "Supe" White. Marco Nelson appears twice as Mark Nelson. Steve Brookes is credited once as Steve Brooks. Tom Van Heel is sometimes Tom Heel, and Lorre Trytten is sometimes Lorre Lynn Trytten.
The best one is Dr. Robert of the Blow Monkeys, who appears on the 1992 debut as Dr. Robert, on Wild Wood in 1993 under his own name Robert Howard, back to Dr. Robert on Stanley Rd in 1995, and then returns on 66 in 2024. That is a twenty-nine year gap and two different names, and it would have been very easy to draw as two unrelated people.
Studio 150 Is Named After the Room, and the Room Came With an Orchestra
Studio 150 in 2004 is Weller's covers album, named after the Amsterdam studio where he cut it, and it is comfortably the widest station on the print with more than thirty names on it.
Most of those names are Dutch, because the studio came with its own players: Aimee Versloot, Bastiaan Van Der Werf, Jan Van Duikeren, Louk Boudesteijn, Mieke Honingh, Herman Van Haaren and a dozen more, plus the saxophonist Benjamin Herman. Six of them come back for As Is Now the following year.
Alongside them are two names from a completely different world: Danny Thompson, the double bassist from Pentangle, and the folk fiddler Eliza Carthy. An album of other people's songs, recorded in another country, turns out to be the busiest point on a map of a Woking songwriter.
The Guest List Runs From Traffic to My Bloody Valentine
The solo years pull in a wider spread of musicians than either of Weller's bands ever did. Noel Gallagher alone has five stations, from Stanley Rd in 1995 to True Meanings in 2018, where he is credited on harmonium and something the sleeve calls a Space Hammond.
| Musician | Album | Better known for |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Winwood | Stanley Rd (1995) | Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group |
| Jools Holland | Heavy Soul (1997) | Squeeze |
| Robert Kirby | Heliocentric (2000) | Arranging the strings on Nick Drake's records |
| Kelly Jones | Illumination (2002) | Stereophonics |
| Gem Archer | Illumination (2002), 22 Dreams (2008) | Oasis |
| Graham Coxon | 22 Dreams (2008), Sonik Kicks (2012) | Blur |
| Robert Wyatt | 22 Dreams (2008), A Kind Revolution (2017) | Soft Machine, and here on vocals and trumpet |
| Kevin Shields | Wake Up the Nation (2010) | My Bloody Valentine |
| Bev Bevan | Wake Up the Nation (2010) | The Move and ELO |
| Danny Thompson | Studio 150 (2004), True Meanings (2018) | Pentangle, on double bass both times |
The shortest lines on the map belong to his family. Hannah, Leah and Mac Weller all sing on Sonik Kicks in 2012, and Leah comes back for Fat Pop in 2021 and 66 in 2024.
What You Gain by Going Up to A1
The A2 at 420 x 594mm (18 x 24 in) handles twenty-one stations comfortably and reads the long Cradock line, the White handover and the swell at Studio 150 from a few feet back. It starts at £42.00.
The A1 at 594 x 841mm (24 x 36 in) is the one for a fan who will stand in front of it. More than thirty names converge on Studio 150, and at that size you can pick out Benjamin Herman and Mieke Honingh instead of a solid block, and follow Dr. Robert's twenty-nine year gap without losing it.
Both come unframed if they would rather choose a frame themselves, or framed and ready to hang. Every print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium fine art paper, textured matte, archival and acid-free, with the full detail on the print and frame specification page.
Answers to the Jam Question and Four Others
Does the map cover The Jam and the Style Council?
Not as albums. This is the solo catalogue, twenty-one releases from 1992 to 2024. Both earlier bands are present through their musicians, with Bruce Foxton and Steve Brookes from The Jam and Mick Talbot and Dee C. Lee from the Style Council all appearing in the solo years.
Are the live albums on it, or only the studio records?
Both. Seventeen studio albums and four live albums, plotted as one route in release order.
Who has the longest line after Weller himself?
Steve Cradock, on eighteen of the twenty-one, from 1993 through to 2024. Steve White has ten and Andy Crofts has eight.
Is Noel Gallagher really on five of them?
He is. Stanley Rd, Illumination, 22 Dreams, Sonik Kicks and True Meanings, on guitars, bass and keyboards depending on the record.
Does it show who played what on each track?
No. Each line tells you which releases that musician appears on. Track-level roles appear only on my Rolling Stones Goats Head Soup album map.
The Connections Run Both Ways Here
The pairings come off the credits rather than the genre shelf. Noel Gallagher has five stations here, more than any other guest, which makes the Noel Gallagher map the obvious next one. Jools Holland's credit on Heavy Soul connects it to the Squeeze map.
The link I like best runs the other way. Weller sang and played acoustic guitar on "So Sad About Us" on The Who's Royal Albert Hall album, so he has a station on somebody else's map too, which puts the Who map alongside this one from both directions.
Other one-name careers sit in the solo artist collection, and the full range is in the music art print collection. If you came here for the gift rather than the research, the Paul Weller discography map is the print itself, in A2 or A1, unframed or framed, from £42.00.
