Style Council

When Paul Weller made the decision to break up The Jam in 1982, they were arguably the biggest band in Britain. But – at the tender age of 24 – Weller decided that The Jam’s three-piece format was too limiting for his musical ambitions. So, following a triumphant farewell tour and a chart-topping final single (the horn-and-piano-driven “Beat Surrender”), he said goodbye to his Union Jack blazers and Rickenbackers and set sail for new musical horizons.

While the move was a shock to The Jam’s massive fan base, the writing had been on the wall. Listen to the last handful of Jam releases, and you can hear how an expanded musical palette (horns, strings, organ, etc.) and influences (Motown, Latin, and Curtis Mayfield, among others) had crept their way onto the grooves.

On March 1, 1983, Weller gave this new project a name: The Style Council. And over the next six years, Weller and his new musical foil, keyboard whiz Mick Talbot, would blaze trails that would alternately thrill and puzzle his huge following. They emerged with a strong and purposeful European image, shunning Weller’s working-class mod image and replacing it with Italian loafers and photo shoots at Paris sidewalk cafes sipping cappuccinos in full-length raincoats. Politics were embraced, as were French lyrics and polka-dot scarves. Weller from Woking was now a bona-fide European Son.

Much of The Jam’s audience remained with Weller for the first few Style Council excursions, and it is easy to see why. Early singles like “Speak Like a Child” and “A Solid Bond in Your Heart” were exactly the type of uptempo soul-pop the latter-day Jam specialized in; in fact, “Solid Bond” had been recorded by The Jam and was considered for the farewell single before being replaced by “Beat Surrender.” But those releases came alongside more wide-ranging material, such as the slap-bass driven funk of “Money-Go-Round” and the slow jam balladry of “Long Hot Summer.” Still, one could see it as a logical progression; The Jam were nothing if not an ’80s update of The Who’s original “Maximum R&B” formula, with the R&B in question of a considerably more recent vintage.

All that changed when the debut long-player hit the shops. Any hopes that Jam faithful might have had in Weller picking up his guitar and sliding the pick down the neck again were dashed by the end of side one of Café Bleu. Weller only sings on half of the album’s tracks (and only two on the first side), and his trademark slashing guitar sound is completely absent, replaced by big, jazzy chords and horns, rollicking piano-driven instrumentals, guest vocalists, and even an early (not particularly successful) stab at a rap number. Weller doesn’t even appear on “The Paris Match,” sung by Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn.

Undeterred – the band were continuing to sell records, after all – Weller continued to go further afield on subsequent releases. Follow-up album Our Favourite Shop added bossa nova and Philly soul to the mix, but otherwise neatly bookends the debut. Politics were further embraced; guitars were further shunned.

The third Style Council LP, however, is where things started to sour. Housed in a ridiculous all-orange sleeve and pressed on two 45 RPM records rather than a traditional LP, 1987’s The Cost of Loving found Weller and company embracing current trends in US R&B and soul more than ever before; there is far more Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis than Jam found therein, and the band even covered “Angel,” originally recorded by Anita Baker. Notably, the retro organ and electric piano sounds that Mick Talbot added to the early Council recordings was replaced by the slicker-sounding Fender Rhodes and synthesizers. Weller’s co-vocalist (and later wife) Dee C. Lee was prominently featured, as well.

The album peaked at #2 on the UK charts, but one could sense that Weller had lost his way, if not his confidence. Critics panned it, and the second single from the album – “Waiting,” a gauzy acoustic-driven ballad – was the first flop that Weller had ever suffered. There were more to come, as Weller continued to follow his gut, and stay true to the anti-rock stance that The Style Council had always maintained. Confessions of a Pop Group was a disaster in the eyes and ears of the critics and the record-buying public. The album was split into two distinct sides: one pursued the uptempo mix of modern pop and soul that the band had been perfecting for the prior few years (only minus the tunes), while the other featured a vintage pop/classical sound influenced by Debussy, Sinatra and The Swingle Singers (who actually appear on one cut, “The Story of Someone’s Shoe”).

Mostly misguided, Confessions still somehow manages to include two of Weller’s strongest compositions. “It’s a Very Deep Sea” opens the album with a dramatic bang, the diving metaphor giving capital-letter hints of where Weller’s head was at. “Perhaps I’ll come to the surface and come to my senses,” he sang. An elegant piano ballad buoyed by understated instrumentation, and well-placed vocal harmonies, “Sea” stands proudly next to Weller’s all-time best.

In contrast, “Changing of the Guard” is a punchy ’50s-style pop duet between Weller and Lee that may be the best vocal either of them ever recorded, and certainly the best one they recorded together. Weller’s vocal prowess had grown exponentially since the Jam days (or even the strained range of the early Style Council releases) into a mature tone that one would never have seen coming around the time of “The Eton Rifles.”

The Style Council’s final wave of musical schizophrenia actually never saw the light of day during the band’s tenure. Following his love for soul and R&B into the burgeoning sound of the US dance underground, Weller fell so hard for the sound of house and garage music that he recorded an entire album of it. To Weller, Modernism: A New Decade represented a soul music for the new millennium – a decade ahead of its time. Only three songs from the album were actually released at the time, including the band’s final single (excepting a remixed version of “Long Hot Summer” released in 1989), a cover of Joe Smooth’s “Promised Land.” (One of the remixers that Weller brought in was a young Detroit producer named “Magic” Juan Atkins.)

Despite Weller’s passion for the project, Polydor rejected the album. After a failed gig at the Royal Albert Hall wherein Weller learned in person that his audience simply wasn’t prepared to follow him further down the rabbit hole, The Style Council were no more by the end of 1989. Weller would disappear from the public eye for the better part of two years before emerging as a solo act, one that would eventually restore him to massive popularity... but only after he started playing guitar solos again.

Looking back at The Style Council’s output, it becomes apparent that Weller was basically acting out his personality crisis and struggling with stardom via the only way he know how: through music. In the end, the group still had Weller’s exceptional songwriting gifts driving the proceedings, and many of the songs stand the test of time regardless of any Jam baggage or dated production techniques they now bear. And while Weller’s muse may have been leading him to places he by all logic should have avoided, one has to admire him for following it, even in the face of waning popularity, declining record sales, and massive pressure from a multimillion-dollar corporation. Divorced of the controversy of the day, The Style Council catalog is littered with gems both big and small, ripe for discovery.

Images: Mike Prior / Redferns