"I wanted to call the album Shit or Bust, because that's how I felt about it." Stanley Road - Paul Weller

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Some consider Stanley Road to be the best album in Weller's solo career, with its strong collection of songs, and collaborations from several notable collaborators, including Noel Gallagher, who appears playing acoustic guitar on "I Walk on Gilded Splinters", and Steve Winwood (formerly of the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic), who performs on the songs "Woodcutter's Son" and "Pink on White Walls". Weller is also joined by long-time collaborators Steve Cradock (co-founder of Ocean Colour Scene) and Steve White (the Style Council).
The album's cover collage was created by the artist Peter Blake, co-designer of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's album artwork. It features a conceptual painting of a young Paul Weller holding an image of his adult self. 
In an interview with Lois Wilson from The Independent in 2005 he said of the album: "Initially I wanted to call the album Shit or Bust, because that's how I felt about it. I put everything into it, emotionally and physically. It was the culmination of my solo career to date. I knew it was special. We had a playback and I could sense the excitement among the people listening to it."
"We settled on the title Stanley Road because it seemed to suit the mood of the album best. I was looking back on my life, on my roots, where I'd come from, where I'd got to on the journey, and Stanley Road is the place where I grew up as a child."

"It was a funny time for me. My second solo album, 1993's Wild Wood, gained commercial and critical success, the first time since The Style Council's Our Favourite Shop. I was back in the press's good books. Blur and Oasis were citing me as an influence, which was great. Their younger fans were discovering my work, backtracking and hearing The Jam for the first time. I have a great friendship with Noel [Gallagher], and it was the first time that I felt an affinity with my contemporaries, something I hadn't with my so-called peers in the Eighties. I was aware, however, that I was a good 10 or 12 years older than most of them, so I was conscious of not being one of the old fellas trying to muck in with the kids."
"I didn’t really like being called the Modfather, or the Godfather of Britpop, as I was only 32. It felt very odd. It was nice being appreciated after being so vilified for a number of years by the British press."
Stanley Road was a massive success, it achieved multi-platinum sales, with over 1.2 million copies sold in the UK alone.

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