They were one of the most successful bands Britain has produced and they were becoming as good as the Beatles and had so many hits, creating classic songs

So why did Paul Weller leave the band when they were at their peak

And could they have been as big as The Beatles were

I assume Weller felt they'd run their course and wanted to explore his soul-boy thing by forming The Style Council. He's fallen out with a lot of people over the years and may have fallen out with his band mates too?

I thought they were fantastic ut to compare to the Beatles is daft. The Jam were a unique Brit band, their record sales beyond these shores were desperately poor

No

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifesty...ing-up-2035698

People always associate the early 80s with Synthpop but the most popular bands at the time were The Jam and The Police.

The Jam remain my favourite band ever. They played such an important part in my nascent as a teen. It is true Weller wanted to try flavours and the Style Council was the port of call. I didn't care for Curtis Mayfield covers or the songs all round and never took to Paul's solo career much. But with songs like Previous at the fag end if the singles catalogue you can hear the new breed coming in. I recommend a documentary called About The Young Idea to watch, it tells the story of The Jam very well.

No matter how big a fan of Weller you are, if you are entirely honest with yourself you have to admit he's never replicated the superb The Jam output in any of his subsequent work, whether it be with The Style Council (wtf was he thinking here??) or his long solo career. To be fair to the bloke he's clearly not in it for the money because a The Jam re-union could net him many millions.

I went to see From The Jamm (Butler and Foxton) a few years ago with a group of mates and it was probably like watching From The Arctic Monkeeesss sans Turner circa 2030! Not the best experience I have ever had.

i think the point is he didn't want to replicate what he did with the jam, he wanted to move on to do different things. that's why he split the jam as they had reached what he considered the peak, and he wanted to do something else instead

at the time it may have appeared incredibly unusual to end a band like the jam at it's peak and then go on to do something completely different like the style council, going from a who/punk tinged rock band to being a rnb/jazz/soul tinged commercial pop act and dressing up in the latest fashion victim trends, but looking back things appear a bit different. the style council did some great work, and did some great covers too. weller was showing some of his inspirations and influences and mayfield was one, and a great artist he is too, both musically and lyrically, embedding protest lyrics in funky tunes. the style council then moved on to embrace house music which resulted in the final album not getting an official release until many years later in a box set, and listening to the album when it did get it's release you can see how ahead of it's time the album was. i would compare it a bit to the first s-express album which had it's catchy pop tune which stood out from the rest, which weren't particularly appreciated at the time, but play the other stuff from that album now and you can hear how ahead of it's time it was

then of course he moved on from the style council and made some really great solo albums, with wild wood in particular giving him huge critical and commercial accalim

so whilst he didn't replicate the jam work, i don't think he wanted to, but he made music as good as, if not better than some of the jam's best work, during both the style council period and later solo period

Weller has always moved on and embraced different styles of music. I think he likes to keep it interesting for himself.

I know plenty of fans that really loved his 90's stuff but hate the last 3-4 albums because of the experimental nature Weller has moved on to.

Reasonably I love all the stuff from the Jam to present day but for different things.

Wasn't the soul stuff already creeping in on the last Jam album?

yeah. and town called malice and walls come tumbling down are quite similar