“Don’t be a c**t”: How The Style Council changed Paul Weller’s songwriting forever
Every day is a school day within the ever-evolving realm of the music industry, and it was during the soul-fueled days of The Style Council that veteran songwriter Paul Weller learned his most essential lessons, breaking free from the shadow of The Jam.
Before his 20th birthday, Weller had already established himself as a distinctive voice of the punk generation, with ‘In The City’ blending that furious indignation with the suave style of 1960s modernism. Inevitably, amassing that much success so early on in his life changed the songwriter’s psyche somewhat, and you couldn’t have blamed him for keeping that mod revivalist boat afloat for as long as humanly possible.
Even at that age, though, Paul Weller had the ambition to carry on evolving. From the release of their debut in 1977 to their final appearance in 1982, Weller rarely lifted his foot from the accelerator – or, more fittingly, his hand from the throttle of his Lambretta. With The Jam’s soulful farewell in ‘Beat Surrender’, he exemplified just how much his songwriting sensibilities had changed during their tenure.
A certain sense of arrogance would have been understandable at that time; given his domination of the pop charts and the cult audience he had amassed with The Jam, Weller might have assumed he knew everything about the ins and outs of the music industry. Yet, on the contrary, when The Style Council emerged from the ashes of The Jam, the ‘Modfather’ still had a lot to learn.
Sonically, that newly established outfit carried forward the torch of ‘Beat Surrender’, expanding upon Weller’s evolving interest in styles like northern soul, funk, and Brazilian tropicalia. There was no doubting that he had changed tenfold from his spotty young days at The Roxy Club. It was also during this era, in the mid-1980s, that Weller became a bona fide pop star, and a regular fixture of Top of the Pops – he even rubbed shoulders with the likes of George Michael and Boy George on Band Aid in 1984.
Rather than get lost in that world, though, The Style Council seemed to keep the songwriter grounded. “The Style Council taught me to stick to what you think is right at the time, even if it turns out to be wrong years down the line,” Weller told Esquire in 2020.
That practice included the band’s support of countless grassroots, left-wing causes, like the protests of Greenham Common. In short, as Weller put it, “Don’t be a cock. That’s what it taught me. Don’t be a cunt.”
“When I look back now, I’d just become a prick by the end. It took me a while to learn some humility after that. Instead of alienating people, you’ve got to bring them along and be inclusive.”
Paul Weller
In both a personal and artistic sense, then, The Style Council had changed Paul Weller almost beyond all recognition. Saved from the clutches of self-aggrandising pop stardom, and with a musical repertoire that was constantly expanding, that period in the mid-1980s is arguably among Weller’s most essential.
Those lessons learned during the soulful tenure of the Council were, after all, carried forward into Paul Weller’s subsequent solo career, which has spanned the spectrum from the soul of his earlier years to the acoustic folk which had denoted his more recent recordings.
Throughout it all, the mantra of “don’t be a cunt” has accompanied the songwriter, dissuading him from falling back into old patterns.
