The Changingman

Album: Stanley Road (1995)
Charted: 7
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Songfacts®:

  • Paul Weller has admitted that he borrowed the descending guitar intro of ELO's "10538 Overture" for this song.
  • Despite being a high-profile supporter of Red Wedge, a collection of Labor-supporting Rock musicians who toured Britain in a bus during the 1983 and 1987 general elections, Paul Weller later became disillusioned with the party. In 1997 he refused to let Labor use this song as a theme alongside their 1997 electoral anthem, "Things Are Gonna Get Better."
  • The album title is named after the street in Woking where Weller lived in the 1960s with his parents and sister Nicky.
  • The album's cover is by Peter Blake, who also created The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album artwork. >>>
    Suggestion credit:
    Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above
  • This song reflects Weller's tendency to break things up if things are getting to comfortable. In 1994 he divorced his first wife, backing singer Dee C Lee, breaking up a seemingly happy marriage. She said later: "He sabotages his own happiness. He definitely did in our scenario."
    Weller admitted to Mojo magazine May 2010: "The time Dee is talking about, the mid-'90s, I did do that. There was a sense that things were going too well, we were too happy, too comfortable, everything seemed too nice. There was a sense that for me as a writer and an artist I might lose my edge. I had to break the shape up, re-arrange things. With Stanley Road the turmoil was definitely feeding into the lyrics. There's the line in The Changingman: 'Numbed by the effect, aware of the muse, too in touch with myself, I light the fuse.' That's about the process, of causing chaos around you."

Comments: 1

  • Andy Dunn67 from NottinghamshireHis comments on getting too settled make alot of sense, if he become too comfortable, then somebody like Paul 'having everything perfect' would run out of inspiration for song writing, imagine if that had happened before 1980, Going underground could've had lyrics like
    "Some people might say my life is really good
    Its why I might move into a treehouse in some wildwood
    Folks can like Lionel Richie & his song Hello
    As I shout 'rock & roll is king' to some band called ELO
    Somethings happening here today
    I had a dust up in Leeds
    And then the court dropped charges for affray
    And I'm so well clothed and also well fed
    You won't see me on any church roof stealing the lead
    And that Simon Cowell on X Factor
    On a top peoples health farm driving a tractor
    But I'm so cool and need no fridge
    I've got my solid gold gate with its own draw bridge
    But I cannot help being from the same place as Status Quo
    I'm going underground
    Going underground
    Not like a badger, coal miner or mole
    Going Ubderground
    Going underground
    I mean undermine & subvert maybe become a troll
see more comments

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