Once you know someone’s got knowledge of a certain genre of films, like French New Wave, you can reference things more easily and it was really helpful.” It gave us a kind of shorthand when we were talking about graphics or artwork or the approach to a video. We compared notes and we had a lot of the same books, so it was quite an eye-opener. I’m not trying to say we were like Melvyn Bragg, but we had a broad appreciation of a lot of different art. “When we had a long meeting, right at the end of ’82, to set up the Style Council, we got into talking about books and plays and all sorts of things on the fringes of music, all things in the arts. It was instantly clear the pair had the same historical reference points. I thought, he’s got so many ideas, even if we do half of them, it’s going to be amazing – and it proved to be.” We wouldn’t have the pressure of having to go out on the road in the first year, but we’d just concentrate on almost casting songs like a film and getting the right people into the right parts. “He had an idea of having a band that was just me and him to start with. When Weller confided in him about the Jam’s imminent demise and floated the idea of working together on a new project, Talbot was hooked. Talbot played on the Jam’s cover of 1960s Motown hit Heat Wave and later sat in on a few of their London gigs. It was during sessions for the album that Weller and Talbot first met. Their career and that of the Jam are currently being celebrated in a big month-long exhibition in Mod’s spiritual home, close to the pebbles ofīrighton beach, which featured on the rear cover of the Jam’s Setting Sons in 1979.
In came a continental approach to clothes, artwork and music, drawing inspiration from La Nouvelle Vague, modern jazz and composers like RavelĪnd Debussy as well as American gospel and soul.įorming the Style Council with keyboardist Mick Talbot, the pair bonded over a love of Michel Legrand soundtracks, French fashion and Rive Gauche cafe culture, far from the suburban streets of Woking and south London where the pair had grown up. Guitar-driven songs influenced by the Beatles, Kinks and Small Faces. Nearly four decades on, we can see how radical a change it was – and how Weller astutely turned his focus from strife-torn, divided Britain to a new
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