"Next thing I know the lion’s gone for me": Paul Weller reveals that he was once set upon by a lion on the way to a gig

Paul Weller next to a lion
(Image credit: Getty Images)

It sounds like the start of a joke. ‘So... Paul Weller was in a van driving to a gig one day with a lion in the passenger seat’. But no, it is true: according to a new interview in this month’s Uncut magazine, the young Weller was attacked by a lion when he was on way to an early Jam show.

Weller was discussing his upcoming covers album Find El Dorado when conversation drifted back to the early days of his first band when his dad’s friend Ronnie would drive the group to gigs in his Transit van. Ronnie, it seems, was a bit of a character, who happened to own... a lion.

“I mean it wasn’t fully grown at that point,” Weller pointed out. “Ronnie would drive the van and the lion would sit in the passenger seat. You couldn’t get too comfortable though. Because one time we were sitting in the back and I leant on the passenger seat. Next thing I know the fucking lion’s gone for me. I nearly shat myself, man. Attacked by a lion!”

It conjures up images of the teenage Jam playing the gig while Ronnie and lion wait patiently in the van for the band to finish. Not so, it seems. “Ronnie just dropped us off and came back later. With the lion, yeah. He kept it for a few years and then I think he had to give it up because it was getting too big, you know, once the neighbours started disappearing…”

Boom boom. Anyway, the Uncut interview is also significant in that Weller talks about Rick Buckler for the first time since his ex-bandmate’s death earlier this year. “It was a real shock,” he says of the Jam drummer’s passing. “A real fucking perspective-changing moment.”

“It made me realise how ridiculous it is not to speak to someone, right?” he continued. “Just before Rick’s passing, I thought, ‘Maybe I think I’d really like to go and see him’ even though we hadn’t seen each other or spoke for 40 years. But then I was like ‘Maybe it’d be awkward, maybe he doesn’t want to see me’. Later, I heard from a mutual friend that he’d had the same conversation with Rick, saying, ‘Should I tell Paul? Do you want Paul to come and see you?’ Rick was like ‘Oh I dunno, could be awkward’.

“So we were both saying the same fucking thing, man. I regret that, because I should have... I wish I’d have done that, just to see him one time.”

There endeth the lesson. Don’t leave it too late, kids.

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Will Simpson
News and features writer

Will Simpson is a freelance music expert whose work has appeared in Classic Rock, Classic Pop, Guitarist and Total Guitar magazine. He is the author of 'Freedom Through Football: Inside Britain's Most Intrepid Sports Club' and his second book 'An American Cricket Odyssey' is due out in 2025

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