Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com.
On this day in 1982 and Paul Weller announced to the press that his influential new wave band The Jam were no more.
Almost 30 years later, we know Weller as an uncompromising artist for whom integrity weights far more than commercial success. But in 1982, the world was shocked when Weller, just 24 and with The Jam one of the most significant bands on rock and roll, packed it all in.
“I’d hate us to end up old and embarrassing like so many other groups,” he said in his official statement.
Looking back recently, Weller told BBC 6Music: “It was the right thing to do. It was an artistic decision, without sounding poncey. I didn’t want to be in the same set up for the rest of my life. I like to change and move on.”
But for his two Jam mates, it was a disturbing time. Bass player Bruce Foxton told The Guardian: “We tried to talk him round, ‘Take as long as you need off,’ but he’d made up his mind. We had no idea what direction he was going to go in but when he came out with The Style Council, it made more sense to me. I thought, ‘OK, maybe you made the right decision,’ because at that point I wouldn’t have gone in that direction. Possibly he knew that.”
Weller’s leaving The Jam seemed to give him the impetus to embark on an incredible musical journey, first with a new band, The Style Council. With a more soulful sound already in evidence on The Gift, The Jam’s last album, Weller teamed up with keyboardist Mick Talbot and female singer Dee C. Lee as The Style Council and made a clean break, sound-wise, with “Speak Like a Child, their first single. By their second album, Café Bleu, Weller introduced instrumentals and only sang on a handful of cuts.
With The Jam fading into history, Weller slowly eased into a solo career and re-visited the kind of music that had influenced The Jam, before inadvertently becoming Modfather to the new wave of British bands in the mid-’90s. He now takes a place alongside Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend and Elvis Costello as one of the most respected figures in British rock and roll history