Paul Weller To Headline MINI United 2009

An oddity caught my eye while working on yesterday’s BMW M post. The face seemed familiar, and I just caught the name: Paul Weller. “Wait – Paul Weller on a BMW press release? That can’t be THE Paul Weller. Paul Weller from The Jam? What the hell does he have to do with BMW? Wait, the MINI?”

And indeed it IS Paul Weller, and, of course, he has something to do with the MINI.

Paul Weller isn’t very well known in America, but in England, and especially England in the 1980s, Paul Weller was about as big a musical phenomena as the country could produce. He was the founder and lead singer/guitarist in The Jam, a power trio that single-handedly caused a full-blown revival of The Mod scene throughout Britain. After their first album debuted and skyrocketed to number one on the Brit charts, every single album the released DEBUTED at number one. Every single album. By the end of the 80s, New Musical Express magazine ran a poll, and The Jam was voted not only band of the decade, but Weller himself was voted “Person of the Millennium” by a 40% margin. They were THAT big.

What does this have to do with the MINI you ask? Well, if you’re asking that, you don’t know much about Mods. Mods were a 1960’s British phenomena. A youth movement centered around sleek fashions, copious consumption of barbiturates, a love of modern music as personified by The Who and with a preferred ride of Vespa scooters or, if one had the means, a Mini.

When The Jam sparked the Mod revival, it also brought along a revival in all things 60s, and hence, interest in, and demand for the Mini, the quintessential Mod car from the 1960s.

Hence, with MINI (now in all caps, now owned, designed and built by BMW) having its 50th birthday bash, who better to headline the party than Paul Weller.

A strange world indeed.

Here’s BMW’s odd press release:

Paul Weller to headline MINI United 2009