Songfacts®:

• Paul Weller has admitted that he borrowed the descending guitar intro of ELO's "10538 Overture" for this song.
• Despite being a high-profile supporter of Red Wedge, a collection of Labor-supporting Rock musicians who toured Britain in a bus during the 1983 and 1987 general elections, Paul Weller later became disillusioned with the party. In 1997 he refused to let Labor use this song as a theme alongside their 1997 electoral anthem, "Things Are Gonna Get Better."
• The album title is named after the street in Woking where Weller lived in the 1960s with his parents and sister Nicky.
• The album's cover is by Peter Blake, who also created The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album artwork. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above
• This song reflects Weller's tendency to break things up if things are getting to comfortable. In 1994 he divorced his first wife, backing singer Dee C Lee, breaking up a seemingly happy marriage. She said later: "He sabotages his own happiness. He definitely did in our scenario."
  Weller admitted to Mojo magazine May 2010: "The time Dee is talking about, the mid-'90s, I did do that. There was a sense that things were going too well, we were too happy, too comfortable, everything seemed too nice. There was a sense that for me as a writer and an artist I might lose my edge. I had to break the shape up, re-arrange things. With Stanley Road the turmoil was definitely feeding into the lyrics. There's the line in The Changingman: 'Numbed by the effect, aware of the muse, too in touch with myself, I light the fuse.' That's about the process, of causing chaos around you."