The book’s meticulous depiction of a smart-suited West London mod opened his mind to the roots and possibilities of the subculture he’d sworn allegiance to back when he was a schoolboy scribbling pictures of scooters in his exercise books. The seeds of The Style Council had been sown when Weller read Colin MacInness’ 1959 novel Absolute Beginners on holiday in Sorrento, towards the end of The Jam. It was the polar opposite of being in The Jam.” Have the core of me and Mick and then bring in different people and try to make every record sound different. “I wanted to have the freedom to use different musicians. However much I enjoyed The Jam, towards the end I just felt the constraints of being in a big band.
Seven of the thirteen tracks on their 1984 debut, Café Bleu, didn’t even feature Paul Weller singing. Though the core line up soon included teenage drummer Steve White and singer Dee C Lee, they opened up the floor to guest vocalists, rappers and, on 1985’s 'The Stand Up Comic’s Instructions', Lenny Henry doing a turn as a racist club compere. In its inception the group was more of a modernist pop art experiment, with Weller and his new foil acting as musical directors in a loose collaborative project that could encompass contemporary pop, jazz, blue-eyed soul, hip-hop and Chicago house. In many respects, The Style Council weren’t even a band in the traditional sense. Stuff you’d never get away with doing now.” We just fucking had it and did our own thing. We made so much music – good, bad and whatever – but we tried loads of different things and we didn’t listen to anyone. “I had such a laugh and we had so much fun. Those first three years were so fucking wonderful,” Weller says. It's also the subject of a new documentary on Sky Arts, Long Hot Summers, which offer a colourful rummage through the story of The Style Council: playful, political, sometimes baffling and frequently hilarious. And while there’s probably a fair few of those weepy, parka-clad kids who still haven’t forgiven him, what Weller did next made for an even more unexpected chapter.
Paul Weller’s decision to break apart one of the most popular bands since The Beatles, at their commercial peak, remains an act of career hari-kari unparalleled in British pop. “God knows, it’s over 40 years since Ronnie Wood split up The Faces, but I’m still getting over it.” “They were banging on the window shouting at me: ‘You tore them apart!’," recalls Talbot, who still empathises with the kids he says he saw crying on the other side of the glass.
As the path to the stage narrowed, the van was set upon by a mob of angry young fans. It had been barely five months since Weller called time on The Jam, to howls of consternation from suburban bedrooms across the country. On a muddy May afternoon in 1983, Paul Weller and Mick Talbot were sat in the back of a minivan slowly making its way through London’s Brockwell Park, where the pair were due to perform at a CND benefit concert.
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