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.
SPEAK LIKE A CHILD BY THE STYLE COUNCIL MOD
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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