The Style Council

Wanting to escape the angry, post-punk energy he'd gone a long way to defining as front man of The Jam, Paul Weller set up the radically contrasting Style Council with keyboard player and Hammond organ specialist Mick Talbot (ex of Merton Parkas). Fashion-conscious and heavily reliant on mellow melodies built around Talbot's instrumental nous, they released a mini-album Introducing The Style Council in 1983 and had their first hit single the following year with My Ever-Changing Moods; featuring Steve White on drums and Weller's then wife Dee C. Lee on backing vocals. Yet, while creating a musically diverse style drawn in part from soul and Motown, Weller's lyrics were even more political than those he wrote for The Jam. Subsequent hits included attacks on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and middle England values with singles such as Walls Come Tumbling Down, The Lodgers and Come To Milton Keynes, and the successful album Our Favourite Shop (1985). Weller was also involved in the political project Red Wedge with Billy Bragg but, by the late 1980s, the band's popularity waned and they split in 1989 as Weller decided to concentrate on a solo career.