For a young Paul Weller, though, there was one shining light in the rough. Weller, along with an entire generation of would-be music fans growing up in the mid-1970s, there was depressingly little to get excited about. Punk rock tore down all of those conventions, of course, providing Weller and The Jam with their gateway into the rock mainstream in the process, but punk didn’t arrive entirely from the ether. Although it isn’t often given its due credit, pub rock was the vitally important precursor to punk, and Dr Feelgood was the defining group of that fleeting scene. Paul Weller was among those devoted fans, and the young songwriter worshipped Dr Feelgood’s enigmatic guitarist, Wilko Johnson, like a god.