the ocean will have us all

"I suppose it depends a lot on your definition of the word but I am a musician," decides Weller. "I definitely take myself more seriously as a musician these days. That's probably because I've worked with Mick and Steve White who are both really good musicians. There's been much more of an incentive for me to come up to standard."

"Although you develop anyway," adds Talbot. "You may reach a peak as a musician but you develop and learn all the time if you stay in it. You can develop in ways that you don't even appreciate yourself."

So the term musician is no longer a dirty one?

"It's a fact that if you make money from making music then you are a musician," concludes Talbot. "That's what I understand by the term musician."

By this definition Paul Weller is a musician. His gifts as songwriter and guitar player would comply with the various creative criteria by which musicians are judged but he has certainly made money from making music. This wealth tempered ironically with Weller's socialist principles has produced a number of good things. Firstly he was able to shake the debris of The Jam from his shoes and inaugurate the Style Council. This not only served as an excellent outlet for contemporary British Soul but provided a showcase and a stepping stone for many young musicians — a sort of musical YTS that paid properly and got results. The other project which became a target for a lot of Weller wealth channeling was Solid Bond Studios. Formerly Polygram studios, Paul and father/manager John took over in September '83 and set about making it their own.

"This place came up for sale and because we'd done so much work in here they offered it to us first," Weller explains. "It was the chance of a lifetime blah blah blah. Technically we only had to make a few embellishments but the main thing we did was decorate it. The biggest change it will undergo in the future will be when we get a Solid State desk which should really get things moving.

"I've always really liked this place though. I've always really liked the atmosphere. When they put it up for sale I didn't really consider the equipment it had in it, I just liked the fact that the room was good and it was well located. The technical side of things you can always bring up to standard but you can't upgrade the atmosphere of a place. You can't buy that."

Breakfast in the studio canteen has been arranged to discuss the current state of the Style Council and Our Favourite Shop, the new LP recorded, naturally, at Solid Bond. The environment makes for good musician's talk. Paul Weller makes a decent cup of tea.

"It's very much a group sound on the LP," says Talbot. "It's more self-contained. I think the last LP could have given the impression that there were a lot of different ideas being thrown about but this one seems to have more of a direction. The breaks and the bridges are more intuitive and the interplay on those parts between guitar and keyboards and rhythm section is a lot more confident."

"It's more structured," adds Weller. "We spent a lot more time in preparation before we actually recorded it. Then we kept demoing and re-demoing until we whittled the songs down to exactly what we wanted sound wise and arrangement wise. Like a process of elimination until the tracks couldn't possibly, to our minds, be any better. With some tracks we didn't demo them, we just rehearsed them like it was live and then recorded them. Some of the stuff was just rehearsed with me, Mick and Steve with no bass or anything and then we worked the other instruments in as we went along. I think that contributed towards that tight combo sound.

"Mick normally sorts out the technical side because he's more au fait with music and that, notes and all that stuff. So he arranges the brass and the keyboards and that type of thing. I sit about and sing the odd tune to people and make the tea."

"After we've sorted a song out or demoed it," says Talbot, "we'll either give the band demos up front or work it out gradually in rehearsal. Rhythm section first, then the keyboards and then the brass."

The zest and enthusiasm projected by the Style Council as a complete unit leaves the tired session clique wallowing in their own cynicism. Some unsavoury run-ins with our seasoned brothers have reinforced the Council's youth policy.

"We had this really crappy experience with the session musicians we used on Shout to the Top," rants Weller, "and we got these session players in to do the strings who were meant to be the be all and end all of string playing and they were fucking awful. Their playing wasn't fantastic for a start, they weren't half as good as they thought they were and they were so arrogant. They'd do a take and it would be out of tune. I mean you don't need to be a mastermind to recognise something that's out of tune but the leader would come in and give us all this crap about how perfect it was. That attitude makes me sick, just 'cos they can play a couple of crappy fucking concertos they think they're the last say on strings."

"We got this bunch of young string players in now," reasons Mick, "and they're really enthusiastic and they listen to Pop music so you can make references. They even know our music!"

But youth isn't an automatic passport into the Style Council and, as with Weller and Talbot's playing, technical expertise never takes precedent over feel.

"If they can't get it right after a couple of days," says Talbot, "the best thing to say is 'ta-ta' and you get someone else, because it's very important to pick the right people. You don't want them to play everything you did — including the mistakes — note perfect. So you choose someone with the right feel who can interpret the songs the right way. There's no point in getting carbon copies of yourself."

"We were trying to get a bass player," recalls Weller, "and you'd get all these people who could play that very Funky style but when it came to the bass line for Speak Like A Child they just couldn't do it and it's a very simple bass line. A lot of them just couldn't get the swing of it. It's very hard to get people who don't play all over the place. We're very conscious of space in the music and we're always very aware when we do too much. A good example of a band who use space well was the MGs. Forget about the music but their sense of space and the way they arranged their rhythm tracks was brilliant. It's all those little gaps that give the track life. It's like that old saying, 'it's what you don't play that matters.'"

The Solid Bond control room is littered with Weller's excellent guitar collection. Surprising, considering that two years ago he was seldom seen with anything but a Rickenbacker in his hands. But with the assistance of his charmingly neanderthal guitar roadie, Dave, he has accumulated a fine assemblage including a beautiful matching Epiphone bass and six string guitar, a dead tasteful Yamaha semi and a shapely Aria acoustic. Has he discovered a bent for guitars?

"Some of them have got bent necks, yeah," he laughs. "I think the lay-off I had really helped. In the first year of the Style Council's existence I didn't play too much at all, even on the first three singles there wasn't much guitar. I purposely steered away from it but I'm much more interested in it now as a result of that. I've improved. If I see light at the end of a tunnel it always gives me hope and spurs me on. The sounds that I wanted, you just couldn't get out of a Rickenbacker or a Telecaster and this situation demands a broader variation of sounds. Having said that I have been using a Rickenbacker 12 string on the LP not for rhythm but for lead — it sounds like a bloody bouzouki actually — and I'm thinking of having a Rickenbacker converted to natural gas for use in the Style Council. Actually I had to use a Rickenbacker when we played live last year because I had one guitar nicked and I'd smashed an Aria so the Rickenbacker was all I had at the time.

"Some of the acoustics I've got at the moment are on approval," he adds donning guitar reviewer's hat. "I've got that Takamin classical with the pickups in the top frets. It's a good idea but it plays like a pile of shit. It really falls between two stools. It doesn't cut it as a classical guitar and it doesn't cut it as an electric acoustic. The width of the neck is just ridiculous, you can't get your hand round it. I need a classical for one track but I think I'll have to get a decent one. One with a smaller neck. The Aria acoustic is really good, it's got a good tone and it feels good to play and it sounds alright as well."

Are the aesthetics still important?

"The looks are still important but the sound has become a major consideration," he says. "I don't think I'd play a crappy looking guitar still. I've got the Epiphone Casino which looks great and it's good for the harder sounding stuff. For the sort of round sounding things I use the Yamaha Jazz guitar and that's beautiful, really rich."

Do you listen to many guitarists?