Paul Weller - The Changing Man

The definitive Weller book, written by the man who knows him best

Powerful and even emotional ... probably one of the best books about what it's like to be a Famous Person's Friend. And it's almost certainly the definitive Weller biography.

Fascinating... Hewitt pries into the dark corners of a personality that has long been kept under lock and key.

A one-off... an intimate picture of a seemingly arrogant man

Paolo Hewitt grew up in care in Woking in the 1960s and 70s, an experience he chronicled in his acclaimed memoir, The Looked After Kid. He moved to London in 1980 to become a music journalist and worked for Melody Maker and NME. In the early 1990s Paolo gave up full-time journalism to write his first novel, Heaven's Promise. He has since written biographies of The Jam, The Small Faces, Oasis and Steve Marriott. He lives in London.

Paolo Hewitt has known Paul Weller since they were both teenagers in the depths of Woking, through his ascent to fame with The Jam, the halcyon years of The Style Council and for all of his critically acclaimed solo career. Hewitt has even been the inspiration for some of Weller's songs - and he has extraordinary in-depth knowledge of the inspiration behind the rest. 
 
Once, when Hewitt interviewed Weller for a music magazine, he complained - 'I don't know why people ask me all these questions. All the answers are in my songs.' Largely unnoticed, Weller has used thirty-years of lyrics to explore his personal history and beliefs. Taking as his starting point these lyrics, alongside a lifetime's friendship, Paolo Hewitt shows us the real Paul Weller, the man inside the music.

The Robin Friday Story

The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw

The story of lost soccer great Robin Friday, subject of the forthcoming movie Friday

A story of shattered dreams, hedonism and a short life lived very much to the full . . . this is one of the essential modern football books

It has a magical atmosphere and is easily the most compulsive soccer biography you'll ever read

Paul 'Guigsy' McGuigan is the former bassist in Oasis. While on tour with the band in America, Guigsy came across a magazine article about Robin Friday and was inspired to find out more about the genius maverick player. This book is the result of his investigations. 
 
 Paolo Hewitt is the author of several bestselling books, including The Looked After Kid, Heaven's Promise, The Fashion of Football, and biographies on Oasis, Paul Weller and The Jam. He is also features editor at Watch magazine.

Robin Friday was an exceptional footballer who should have played for England. He never did. Robin Friday was a brilliant player who could have played in the top flight. He never did. 
 
 Why? Because Robin Friday was a man who would not bow down to anyone, who refused to take life seriously and who lived every moment as if it were his last. For anyone lucky enough to have seen him play, Robin Friday was up there with the greats. Take it from one who knows: 'There is no doubt in my mind that if someone had taken a chance on him he would have set the top division alight,' says the legendary Stan Bowles. 'He could have gone right to the top, but he just went off the rails a bit.' Loved and admired by everyone who saw him, Friday also had a dark side: troubled, strong-minded, reckless, he would end up destroying himself. Tragically, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, he died at the age of 38 without ever having fulfilled his potential. 
 
 The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw provides the first full appreciation of a man too long forgotten by the world of football, and, along with a forthcoming film based on Friday's life, with a screenplay by co-author Paolo Hewitt, this book will surely give him the cult status he deserves.

Paolo Hewitt

It's a great book that retraces the history of mod culture from post-war Britain right up to skinheads. It's probably too engaging for bedtime, but it's got lots of interesting details about music and fashion and social history

Six Decades of Modernism - From Mods to Casuals

The Soul Stylists is about six decades of Modernism and a highly influential world of clothes and music, but one deliberately hidden away for years from the mainstream media. This book explores the enduring relationship that exists between American black music and British working-class style, tracing a Mod tradition that began in Soho just after the Second World War and continues to this day. 
 
 From Mod to Casual, from Skinhead to Northern Souler, the soul stylists are an amazing family joined together by a tradition of secrecy, exclusivity and absolute indifference towards the outside world. They pass unnoticed because soul stylists always shun the spotlight. To them, attention to detail is far more important than attention seeking. And here in this book, for the very first time, are some of their stories.

Paolo Hewitt

Praise for The Soul Stylists

It's a great book that retraces the history of mod culture from post-war Britain right up to skinheads. It's probably too engaging for bedtime, but it's got lots of interesting details about music and fashion and so ...

Books by Paolo Hewitt

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