The old laws of England—they
Whose reverend heads with age are grey,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo—Liberty! (331-335)

Unlike many of their British counterparts, Weller and the Jam were not primarily interested in courting American audiences (although one guesses they might've taken the money that goes with the market share if it was handed to them). Rather, they drew upon a British lyrical tradition that began with Shelley and the other Romantics and extended through pop bands of the 60s like the Kinks (as opposed to the Stones or Beatles, who were always quasi-American) and winding up firmly in the Jam's hands.

Shelley was certainly an activist and embraced his Englishness (and the need to reinvent aspects of this) as Weller would later. Weller is and was also very concerned with the poet/singer's relationship to his audience, what is invested, how it is played out—the role of the poet, if you will. On Sound Affects, there are several songs that allude to this (audience), but perhaps the most obvious is "Start." This song borrows a bass lick from the Beatles "Taxman" and the lyrical focus, while sparse, is reminiscent of Shelley. By incorporating both these touchstones while infusing the track with the energy of 1980s pop-punk British New Wave, Weller's succinctly plays one element off the other.

It's not important for you to know my name—nor I to know yours
If we communicate for two minutes only—It will be enough!
For knowing that someone in this world
Feels as desperate as me—
And what you give is what you get.

It doesn't matter if we never meet again
What we have said will always remain,
If we get through for two minutes only,
It will be a start!

For knowing that someone in this life,
Loves with a passion called hate
And what you give is what you get
If I never see you. (Weller, "Start")

The words are soaked with the kind of Romantic idealism Shelley espoused. It is worth noting, also, that Weller stands in contrast to the nihilistic punk peers of his day. In any event, I remember the song and the record making a huge impression on me at the time, so much so that I urged the band I was playing in (the first I'd ever been a part of), to start opening our sets with this song. And, I would sing it. And I can see myself at this point looking back and capturing that moment, in the smallest way, with my little band, in a little town not far from Chicago, where I was desperately trying to be a hard-boiled hero or a renegade romantic. We wore our black boots and thin-legged trousers with sleeveless t-shirts. We played vintage guitars. It wasn't the past that we wanted, but we couldn't see where we might find this notion in the present and I was grasping for that lineage Paul Weller grabbed from the Beatles and Shelley and was passing on to me. And, to this day, I look at the lineage as part of the Reason for Being—a poet, artist, or madman. And I could go back, and trace moments connected one to the other, to arrive at that destination, not unlike the course of events that threw Shelley from school into the world of the arts—through Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci to the end, a small boat, Italy, and death by drowning.

My family lived in an unassuming brick ranch house on a culdesac, close to a small river that was really more of a stream, except when heavy rains came, or in wintertime, when it froze deep and we could ice skate across, up and down. It was a suburb much like any other suburb, except it was the furthest one west of Chicago, and as a result, had the chance to grow from a small farming town to a sprawling upper-middle class assortment of bric-a-brac shops full of things that most people couldn't afford. The traffic got worse and the smiles faded from so many faces because the folks who live there now come and go so fast, there's no percentage in being nice. What difference does it make if you're in and out in a year and a half? Time to invest in the stock market, but no time to invest in life, and those were my thoughts at the time, I must admit. Certainly Shelley spoke harshly of our materialism and utility and acquisition and in relation to life, what was it he said? Oh, yes, that "the shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter and its fatal consequences in morals, their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things . . . this materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk and dispenses them from thinking" ("On Life" 476) And some of my friends back in high school used to think I had a propensity to get on the soapbox! I wish they could have met my friend Percy.

But of course—I digress (or we digress, as Shelley himself so famously said in the midst of Defence of Poetry) This is how it was and how it is, and while I grew up there, it was mostly how it was. A small, closed community, 99 percent white, middle-class, Protestant, with a bit of a Catholic fringe. It was about as close to the middle of the bell curve as you could get. In fact, years later, I would wind up in Sussex, Shelley's old stomping grounds, to work on some recording sessions in Horsham. As I got off the train, and my hosts drove me through town, I was struck at how weirdly reminiscent it was of my suburban stomping grounds.

My parents were first generation Americans, striving hard to fit in within the parameters of this sort of place. They did a good job of it and did well by my brother and me and I didn't perceive any discomfort with their place in the community until much later. When we were adults and could talk about these sorts of things. My upbringing is not that unique, especially for a creative sort, in that I felt out of place a bit, always, although I could never figure out why. When I got a bit older and turned onto the Beatles, Dylan, Springsteen, soul music, reggae, the Jam, Dashiell Hammett, Bukowski, I started to put it all in some sort of perspective. The scepters of Art and Freethinking and Possibility, a triangle of survival, turned my head around and made me understand why the community fit me like a thrift-store jacket—okay, but never quite right. In defense of myself, I thought—again, not knowing a thing about Shelley.

Now, my brother was much older than I, and as a result, had already moved out of the house when I was in my teens. He lived in an apartment in Chicago, not far from Wrigley Field. Every once in awhile he'd invite me in to spend the weekend and hang out with him, and this was always a magical time. Everything was different in the city. The sounds and the way they bounced off our skin, the feel of street beneath our shoes, the energy of the place always made a huge impression on me. We'd go out to eat at some grimy all-night diner straight out of a Hopper painting or we'd sit in the left field bleachers for a Cubs game or we'd take in a second-run movie at the Parkway on Clark or we'd make the rounds of all the best used record stores. It didn't matter—it was all cool. At night, after he went to sleep, I'd lay on the couch and listen to the sounds that were all around me—sirens in the distance, cars barreling down the street, loud voices shouting across the way, quiet voices whispering in a vestibule, and, occasionally a distant gunshot or firecracker. It was hard to tell one from the other. Lights would flash in the window as the headlights from a passing car shot through the shade and cast shadows across the room. The streetlamp outside burned all night. Everything was so different from the suburbs, where the quiet stillness of night was stifling and a bit upsetting—the tension in a suspense movie, the quiet before the inevitable, the false reality that would one day be exposed. To this day, I'm more comfortable hearing the sounds of a city while I sleep. Friends might have difficulty with the Manhattan night, the horns honking and shouts caroming down the block, but bring it on, give me those jackhammers, I say.

These trips to my brother's are also forever connected to the music of Van Morrison—I didn't get into Van seriously until later, but my brother had a bunch of his albums. Astral Weeks. Moondance. Wavelength. Something about Van fit perfectly with the city and especially, the night. It wasn't like the suburbs. People in the suburbs listened to half-and-half dairy creamers like Thin Lizzy. All respect to the late Mr. Lynott—people in the city listened to Van. And, Van was real. That's no lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, as he might've sung. Did he ever sing that? Like Ro-ro-ro-ro-rosy? Well, if he didn't, he should have. Maybe he will some day.

Was Van also whispering thoughts of Shelley, unbeknownst to me? Yes and no. There was certainly an activist and nationalist—in the better sense of the word—aspect to his music. Not militant, but aware of a certain lineage, as well, and in his case, it's Yeats. He even penned a song called "Crazy Jane on God," based on the Yeats poem of the same name, which the Yeats estate would not allow released! So, instead Van shouted "Rave On, John Donne . . . rave on, Walt Whitman . . . rave on Mr. Yeats," and asked his listeners if they had heard "about Wordsworth and Coleridge . . . they were smokin' up in Kendal by the lakeside . . . " (Morrison, "Summertime in England")

Rave on, Van, rave on for my digressions.

I remember one particular trip to the city when my brother and I went to see a band that was pretty popular around Chicago at the time. I forget their name—it was something like the Heartbeats—but eventually, they became known in local legend lore as Nathan Coates. It was the dead of winter, there was leftover snow and slush on every corner and on the curbs, little mountains zig-zagging around the parking meters, snow as dirty and grey as the sky. The bar was a corner bar, like so many in northern cities like Chicago and Milwaukee and Detroit. I was only 15 at the time and didn't even get carded. I had this nasty mustache that looked like something you'd normally find on a football coach, not a 15-year-old aspiring musician. It was tribute to my hormones, but certainly not to my style or good taste. I wanted to look older, which I did. Not handsome, just older. Anyway, I got in with a cinch, and that was exciting. The whole atmosphere in the club was magical, especially to this kid from the suburbs who had found a certain triangle of an aspiring rocker who'd recently discovered songwriting and his own certain (triangle) of survival.

The club was standard, as I'd later learn—a long, dark, narrow corner dive. To the right sat the band's equipment and speakers or "mains," large black boxes crammed into a small dark space. Mirrored signs advertising brands of beer lined the wall. Opposite the stage were a few round tables, formica tops, and those metal and vinyl barstools you find everywhere. There must be some plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, that makes those stools and ships 'em all over the universe. I wouldn't be surprised if I switched on the news someday and saw pictures of astronauts in a space station cafe sitting on those very same stools. Anyway, beyond the tables and the equipment, deeper into the room, stood a jukebox and a pinball machine, and to the right of that, directly behind the "stage," a small bar lined with stools. The T.V. was hanging above the bar, at the opposite end, and the bartender moved slowly, with blank face, wiping the counter. Two or three old grizzled regulars sat at the bar, watching a game show on T.V. They looked Polish or Ukranian, or Greek. Chicago is that kind of city—these men are everywhere and no matter how many generations pass, they hold down the fort, in parks and on buses, and in corner bars. Craggly faces, overcoats, big callused hands. It's hard to imagine them as babies, but you know they were, once.

According to a flyer on the door, the show was supposed to start at 10 and we got there about a quarter of and grabbed two of those stools directly across from the stage. My brother and I were the only people in the joint, apart from the band, a couple of band girlfriends, the regulars, and the bartender. The players were milling about the stage, tinkering with their equipment, laughing nervously over some private jokes, setting drinks on their amplifiers and doing what only musicians can do so well—hurry up and wait.

The show started about half an hour later, as the band kicked into a solid brand of Springsteenesque rock and pop that was decidedly Midwest in flavor and origins. A couple times removed from Van the Man and light years from Yeats, but the music sounded very much like the night, in a city where people are out and about no matter how cold it is, and something is happening and, being underage, I was given the key to this secret world. I paid close attention to what the band was doing with their songs, the rhythm of the lyrics, the bass guitar and the drum and the way they locked in, the way the rhythm guitarist supported the drums, yet left enough space to move melodically behind the lead. The vocals were straight-ahead; two part harmonies at times, to reinforce dynamics. I didn't know it at the time, but the performance, like so many others I would see throughout the years, added to the pool of musical experience that would spill into my own songs and my own life, and particularly, my own way of looking at things. That's why it's always good to avoid crappy music and literature—it poisons you. But, of course, I digress.

I'm sure we were the only people in the audience and I'm sure the band thought the performance would be quickly forgotten. I didn't, but it wasn't simply because I can look back as I write these words years later. There's no sense of posterity or boxed sets in a corner bar in Chicago, that time, that place, but why does something have to be photographed or recorded to be considered permanent anyway? Why did Shelley slave away in the years 1818-1819, having lost two children, a strained relationship with his wife, and no audience in sight? Why did he continue writing, why did the words flow, and for whom? For us, for the collective, for the ages, for the artistic ideal, and from these notions flowed his masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, and Julio and Maddoro, all completed in that tragic tumultuous 1819.

Well, I never forgot that the band played as hard as if they were at the Uptown Theatre, opening for the Boss himself. They played like they meant it, and that registered, that clicked. They played as hard as Shelley wrote. They didn't carry an attitude on the stage because they were somehow slighted by the Gods of success that particular night, no, they played hard and for me, it made that night that much more magical. About a year later, when they released their first and only independent album, I bought it. I dug it. I still have it. And, while not the caliber of a work like The Cenci, it holds up in its bar-band rock and roll way. It holds up because regardless of time—it was made for the ages: not the bank account—the ages.

But, back to the memory—I remember being, not envious, but respectful of those local legends playing in a dive for next to no one, because I was itching to get my own band together and carry on with the development of my own music. I wanted to be up on that stage and I didn't think about how many people might come out or what kind of money I'd be making, I just wanted to be doing it, because somehow, doing it meant be part of something, living for something extra. It was more than just watching the world go by, it was part of being the mechanism that makes it turn. And, to me that's what the Romantics were about, and Shelley in particular.

I've wound up writing many songs and stories since then, making records, and playing gigs and developing a "career" of sorts, and some of the highs and lows, worries or concerns that sometimes hang heavy on the definition of that italicized word. But, you know, I try to let that go. It's true that sometimes things don't click in the studio or a booking isn't happening or the crowd isn't as big as you'd hoped or you don't feel like you're in the best form. And, it's true that sometimes, if I don't watch it, little negative voices creep into my cerebellum and try to make themselves heard. But I'd rather listen to the car horns outside and the voices in the street and the sound coming from the speakers. I'd rather suck things up and think of that first night, that time in Chicago with my brother, when the lights were on up and down the street, cabbies darting in and out of traffic, Van Morrison on the stereo, and the band in the corner bar painting the perfect hazy neon backdrop for all of it, and pretty soon I can't help but smile a little; I think about the players onstage with me and the sounds blowing through the air, and the perfect crystallization of those notes as time does stand still and there's a magic, there's a stillness, that magic, and I realize I'm looking in at the moment and my good fortune, a beautiful life, doing something I love to do, a passion that gives and yet is given, and it's taken me a few years to realize it, but this is also privilege, a gift, to be allowed to carry the torch, in ways big or small, to travel the roads in the wake of souls that made things turn, inspirations that lifted me in ways that went far beyond the music, starting back in that suburban town where things weren't quite right and I didn't know why. Now I know exactly what Van the Man meant when he sang of his “Beautiful Obsession.” And that's what Shelley meant when he wrote. And, that's what Weller and others have understood. And, all we can do is acknowledge it and honor it, best we can. That's all I can do. And, that's no lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.