“I’m happy to say it went straight to number 1 in the album charts, but it remains the only album cover I ever shot. Paul and Mick dressed most of the set, but we were all involved, and I shot it on a Mamiya RB6x7 on a 90mm lens.” The set was built by my assistant, and great friend, Ross Kerridge with Peter Chatterton. Fran Crawley was the stylist and she supplied the counter, book-rack etc. Style Council - Greatest Hits 2, Money Go Round 3, Long Hot Summer 4, Solid Bond in Your Heart 5, My Ever Changing Moods 6, Youre the Best Thing. “Most of the stuff in the shop belonged to Paul and Mick, but the snooker cue and George Best coat hanger are mine. The other themes were Dallas, Arena and The Tube.” These were pictures of rooms based on a TV programme so we’d have Jewel In The Crown on the TV and all the props and food would be Indian. I was offered the job because Simon Halfon, the designer, had seen some photos I’d shot for the Observer Magazine Living Extra. I mostly shot magazine editorial in those days. “We shot the cover of Our Favourite Shop on a Sunday afternoon in London in April or May 1985, at Bow Street Studios in Covent Garden. This collection shows that while the Style Council made plenty of missteps, they also recorded a number of Paul Weller's very best songs.Speaking to Snap Galleries, Olly Ball’s recollections of the session are fascinating: What's most surprising is how many of these tracks don't seem rooted in the stereotypes of 1980s pop at all, but have a timeless quality. And while this collection unfortunately doesn't include any of the surprisingly large number of guitar-driven folk-pop songs Weller penned while with the Style Council, it also spares listeners from hearing any of the band's egregiously horrid rap numbers. The collection also illustrates how successful Weller was at pioneering the (admittedly odd) genre of "political protest/lounge revival" with such vitriolic but easy-on-the-ears tracks as "All Gone Away" and "Come to Milton Keynes." Toss in the retro-beatnik jazz instrumental "Café Bleu" and rocking 1960s-style pop numbers ("How She Threw It All Away" and "Walls Come Tumbling Down!") and you have a strong portrait of a band who succeeded at much more than they were given credit for. "Long Hot Summer" and "My Ever Changing Moods" remain two of the defining hits of the 1980s, while album tracks such as "Headstart for Happiness," "Here's One That Got Away," and the strikingly beautiful "Changing of the Guard" show that Weller's music during this period was full of a real joy for life and its attendant disappointments and sorrows. Such limp-wristed tracks as the whining "Angel" and the somnambulistic "Waiting" (their worst single) show that the negative press that the band received was sometimes merited while the rest of this retrospective shows that the majority of their tunes were full of enthusiasm, invention, and melody. Weller viewed the band as a platform to explore non-rock-based pop music and this collection shows off the Style Council's strengths and weaknesses. Paul Weller's 1980s group was known as a singles outfit, but many of their best songs were actually album tracks and B-sides. Polydor has released a number of Style Council retrospectives over the years, but this one is actually one of the most interesting, as it paints a relatively complete musical portrait of the band.
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