Confessions of a Pop Group was a disaster in the eyes and ears of the critics and the record-buying public. 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. 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. The album peaked at #2 on the UK charts, but one could sense that Weller had lost his way, if not his confidence. Weller’s co-vocalist (and later wife) Dee C. 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. 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.
The third Style Council LP, however, is where things started to sour. Politics were further embraced guitars were further shunned. Follow-up album Our Favourite Shop added bossa nova and Philly soul to the mix, but otherwise neatly bookends the debut. Undeterred – the band were continuing to sell records, after all – Weller continued to go further afield on subsequent releases. Weller doesn’t even appear on “ The Paris Match,” sung by Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn. 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. 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.
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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.Īll that changed when the debut long-player hit the shops. Much of The Jam’s audience remained with Weller for the first few Style Council excursions, and it is easy to see why. Weller from Woking was now a bona-fide European Son. Politics were embraced, as were French lyrics and polka-dot scarves.
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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. 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. On March 1, 1983, Weller gave this new project a name: The Style Council. 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. While the move was a shock to The Jam’s massive fan base, the writing had been on the wall.
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.
But – at the tender age of 24 – Weller decided that The Jam’s three-piece format was too limiting for his musical ambitions. When Paul Weller made the decision to break up The Jam in 1982, they were arguably the biggest band in Britain.
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