Paul Weller Links Elvis Costello to Beatles Lesson in 70-year Interview
elvis costello is not the subject here, but Paul Weller made the Beatles the point of the conversation when he said, "The Beatles taught me everything: musically, but also about the power of imagination." In a Mojo Magazine interview tied to a month-long Paul McCartney celebration, Weller used the space to lay out the records, songs, and memories that shaped him.
November 1963 and She Loves You
November 1963 is the moment Weller traced back to first seeing the Beatles on television during the Royal Command performance. He said his mother had bought the singles, and that She Loves You was definitely one of them. The detail is small, but it gives the interview its sharpest edge: this was not distant admiration, but a household introduction to a band that changed the rules for a young listener before he had any music industry language to describe it.
"Look outside your little village or city walls, to see that there’s something outside, beyond," Weller said in Mojo Magazine. "And question everything: you don’t have to just accept what you’re supposed to accept." Those lines place the Beatles influence beyond melody; Weller framed them as a permission slip for curiosity, which helps explain why he kept returning to their writing and the way they controlled their own material.
Tomorrow Never Knows and Ram
Tomorrow Never Knows was one of Weller’s favorite basslines, and he called it a precursor to trance music. He also named For No One as one of his favorite Beatles songs. The choices point to a listener who hears arrangement as architecture, not nostalgia. Weller was not just revisiting classics; he was identifying the parts that still sound ahead of their time.
"Forget about Elvis. The Beatles wrote their own songs, they were self-contained, they led the way," Weller said. That line matters because it gets to the practical lesson he took from them: authorship, control, and identity were part of the product, not an afterthought. He also said he loved McCartney for its lo-fi vibe and funky drumming, and called Ram a fantastic album, naming Dear Boy as one of its best songs.
The Smokin’ Mojo Filters in 1995
1995 gave Weller a first-hand test of that admiration when he and McCartney played together as The Smokin’ Mojo Filters on The Help Album. Weller said, "When he did Come Together with us [as The Smokin’ Mojo Filters on The Help Album, 1995, pictured above] we were shitting ourselves, so we record". The bluntness is useful: even after years of influence, the collaboration still carried pressure when McCartney stepped in.
2012 added another layer, with Weller saying he played on stage with McCartney at the Royal Albert Hall. Put beside the Beatles memories, the interview reads like a full circle rather than a tribute reel: early television, records at home, a 1995 collaboration, and a later live appearance all sit inside the same story of influence. For readers, the takeaway is simple — Weller is not describing the Beatles as museum pieces, but as the working blueprint he still measures music against.
