Horace Panter / Interview (Idol Worship) 1980

Horace Panter - Interview by Devorah & Joey (01/05/1980)



It Was 1980! The Specials Were Doing Their First US Tour & We Were Publishing The First Issue Of Idol Worship: An Interview With Sir Horace Gentleman.

http://devorahostrov.blogspot.ie/2017/04/it-was-1980-specials-were-doing-their.html

The Specials / Interview (12/08/1981)

THE POP LIFE

By ROBERT PALMER
August 12, 1981, Wednesday

DURING the worst weeks of the inner-city rioting that flared up in Britain last month, that country's number one single was ''Ghost Town,'' an eerily prophetic song by the Specials. ''Why must the youth fight against themselves?'' the Specials asked, and they provided an answer: ''Government leaving the youth on the shelf. No job to be found in this country / Can't go on no more, people getting angry / This town is coming like a ghost town.'' (Plangent Visions Music, Ascap). Tonight, the Specials are playing at the Dr Pepper Festival on Pier 84, 12th Avenue and 46th Street. They flew into town earlier this week to finish planning a brief American tour that will take them across the country to Los Angeles and back again for a second New York performance at the Ritz on Tuesday, Aug. 25. On Monday, the three of them (there are seven in all) sat down to talk. ''When we recorded 'Ghost Town,' we were talking about last year's riots in Bristol and Brixton,'' said Terry Hall, one of the group's lead vocalists. ''The fact that it became popular when it did was just a weird coincidence.''

Nevertheless, the Specials, a multiracial band that has played numerous benefit concerts for antiracist and antinuclear organizations and recently performed in Britain to aid the Right to Work march protesting unemployment, have always been a cause-oriented group. ''Because we are multiracial, we want to see people live together the same way we work on our music,'' said Lynval Golding, the group's black rhythm guitarist and vocalist. ''Issues like racism and unemployment can't be pushed aside. One reason we aided the Right to Work march was that one in ten people in Britain are unemployed now, which is a lot of people, if you think about it. Most of the Specials are from working-class backgrounds. I know if I didn't have this job to do, I'd probably have been out there doing what those kids were doing during the rioting. You can't blame them for rebelling against the system, because it's the system that has caused the unemployment.'' 'They Aren't Helping Anybody'

''Our government leaders aren't interested in knowing the way people feel,'' Mr. Hall added. ''If they were, they'd just resign, because they aren't helping anybody. The kids can't go to the Prime Minister and say, look, 'We are unemployed, what are you going to do to help us?' There's no way they can approach people like that. So they express themselves by smashing things up.''

Neville Staples, the Specials' black lead vocalist and most manic stage performer, joined the conversation. ''Can you imagine leaving school and just going on the dole,'' he asked, ''with no hope of getting a job? Knowing that for the next 40 or 50 years you probably aren't going to be working? That's really depressing. It's very depressing in England now, and everyone is saying there's more of this to come and worse. I'm just wondering what my kids are going to do.''

The Specials have had a stormy history. They were the first British band to popularize a new kind of rock that was heavily influenced by ska, the Jamaican pop music of the 60's. Two Tone, the record label they started as a home base for bands with similar ska-related styles and similar commitments to racial harmony, eventually lent its name to an entire movement, encompassing popular bands like The Selecter, the English Beat, and Madness. After the Specials burst on the British recording scene at the end of 1979, Two Tone music became extremely popular there, but performances by Two Tone bands sometimes drew crowds that included opposing or hostile elements - blacks and Asians on the one hand, a few neo-Fascists on the other. Several Specials concerts were interrupted by shouts of ''Sieg Heil'' and Nazi salutes, and on more than one occasion, members of the band waded into the crowd to eject hecklers from the premises. A Second U.S. Tour

After more than a year of almost nonstop touring, including a swing through the United States in early 1980 that resulted in remarkably vivid and energizing performances at new-wave clubs like New York's now-defunct Hurrah, the Specials decided to take a vacation. They returned to action recently with their single ''Ghost Town,'' which included an antiracist song by Lynval Golding and a bittersweet partying tune by Terry Hall on its flip side. They also played some benefits before beginning their long-delayed second United States tour, which comes almost a year after the release here by Chrysalis records of their second album, ''More Specials.''

The British music press has been spreading rumors of a Specials breakup recently, but Terry Hall put these rumors in perspective. ''We've all been writing songs that might go on a third Specials album,'' he said, ''but right now we're thinking about Wednesday night's concert, which we've been looking forward to for a long time. When we get back to England, we'll decide what to do next. We learned long ago that planning things far in advance doesn't work for us; we have to plan things from day to day.'' That might help explain how the band managed, apparently without trying, to make a hit single that perfectly mirrored the perilous tenor of its times. Black and British

The Specials have helped create a brand of pop music that appeals to both blacks and whites in Britain. For the most part, British pop since the advent of their Two Tone fusion has either been variations on Two Tone, white rock and popular music, or Jamaican-derived black reggae. But recently, a few of Britain's black musicians have begun to create pop that is both overtly black and overtly British, rather than black and second-generation Jamaican or some species of blackwhite fusion.

The Specials / Honor Late Drummer John "Brad" Bradbury on Current Tour

The Specials Honor Late Drummer John "Brad" Bradbury on Current Tour.

By Jon Solomon

27/09/2016

The Specials, the renowned ska band that formed in Coventry, England, nearly four decades ago, finally got together again to record demos last November, after years of gathering material and ideas. According to founding member and guitarist Lynval Golding, it was drummer John “Brad” Bradbury’s idea to do a new tour with new material. But the following month, in December 2015, Bradbury passed away at the age of 62.

Golding says he’s still got the first demos of those songs, some of which were written by Bradbury, that they’d been working on — but he and Bradbury were very close, and the situation is still so emotional that he can't even listen to those songs.

“We did everything together,” Golding says. “He was like my right arm, and I was like his right arm.”

Bradbury, who replaced Silverton Hutchinson early on in the band’s career, first recording on the song "Gangsters," helped create the Specials' sound. “Brad came in, and he changed everything,” Golding says. “He created that rhythm, that beat. If you listen to the way he played, nobody has played like Brad. That’s why we made sure that when we get anyone to stand in we don’t want anyone to copy Brad. It’s impossible.”

Golding says they want Gary Powell, drummer of the Libertines, to be himself while on the current tour through the U.S. and U.K. The lineup also includes original members Terry Hall and Horace Panter, as well as keyboardist Nikolaj Trop Larsen, lead guitarist Steve Cradock (who’s also in Ocean Colour Scene) and a horn section. The lineup has undergone changes over the decades, beginning with co-founding keyboardist Jerry Dammers, who founded 2 Tone Records in 1979 and hasn't worked with the band in nearly two decades. Original lead guitarist Roddy Byers left the Specials in 2014 to concentrate on his band the Skabilly Rebels, and singer Neville Staples left to focus on his solo career.

“This tour is all about Brad,” Golding said before starting the U.S. tour. “We’re going to give 100 percent every night. After the tour finishes, we’ll see where we go from there. The only thing I got in my mind is to play these songs for Brad.”

But before Golding, who’s been living near Seattle in recent years, committed to the tour, he actually considered quitting the band. Then he remembered that Bradbury had wanted the band to do this tour.

“We were going to make new music and do this tour,” Golding says. “We were going to give you new music. I thought, ‘I can’t do it.’ But I waited and I talked to Terry. Terry is wonderful. Horace is a wonderful partner. Those two guys…. Me, Terry, Horace and Brad run this band — the four that did everything. The three of us talked. I said, ‘I don’t know if I can carry on.’ But this is what Brad wanted. He wanted this tour. Let’s do this tour for Brad. Just do it for him. I thought, ‘All right, yes. I will.’”

Although the Specials, whose last record of original material was 1998’s Guilty 'til Proved Innocent, had been working on new songs, actually releasing a new album under the Specials' name is another issue.

“We’re going through a situation where, legally, we’re going through a problem because we can’t release any music under our name, the Specials, without clearing certain issues that we’ve got right now,” Golding said. “I don’t want to go into it. So that is the reason why we have not released any new music. We’re still writing. We’ve still got material that we’re putting together, but we can’t officially release anything as the Specials until all legal issues [are resolved]. And you know what it’s like. This could go on for years. It’s been going on for the last seven years.”

While it might be a while before a new Specials album is released, Golding is releasing his very first solo recording with the Austin-based reggae group Contra Coup on September 28, the same day the Specials perform at the Ogden Theatre. Golding injects a reggae vibe into two different mixes of the Clash’s “Know Your Rights,” a song he says is as important today as when it was originally released on Combat Rock in 1982, and it's a very appropriate song for what's happening these days politically in the United States and England. The record was also a way to pay tribute to Clash frontman Joe Strummer.

“If it wasn’t for Joe Strummer, I probably wouldn’t be here talking to you today,” Golding says. “Joe Strummer was the one who gave the Specials the break.”

Strummer had seen the Specials, who were known as Special AKA at the time, and invited the band on the Clash on Parole Tour in the U.K. in 1978, helping expose the Specials to a wider fan base. And taking the Specials on tour with the Clash made sense, as the Specials were infusing their brand of ska and rocksteady with punk energy. It also brought different cultures together.

“When the band got together, I was the first member of the band with Jerry,” Golding says. “Obviously, there’s a black guy and there’s a white guy who come from totally different backgrounds. I was born in Jamaica and raised in Coventry. Multi-racial — so the two of us put that together. Because if you look at the musical background, where does the influence of the music come from? I was the one who brought that reggae sound into the band. It’s literally like putting two different cultures together.

“Working in a multi-racial band, at times we had to fight through racism," he continues. "Fight through the National Front. Fight through the British movement. It was pretty hard, because there was a divide in England. And we as a band tried to pull people together, and music is a very powerful thing. It did pull people together.”

While the Specials have endured a number of lineup changes and splits over the past four decades, the band is still pulling people together with its music, delving into hits like “Ghost Town,” “Gangsters” and their version of Dandy Livingstone’s “A Message to You, Rudy,” and deeper cuts while honoring Bradbury's life.

“We’re always going to be emotional on the stage when we don’t see Brad there,” Golding says. “I just hope that I’m strong enough. But he’s giving me strength. His memory. I look at him every day. I got his photograph, and every day I look at him. And I see him and think, ‘Why did he have to go?’ ...Very painful. Everything has got to be absolutely right, because we’re celebrating Brad’s creation, what he created for this band. An amazing drummer, he was.”

http://www.westword.com/music/the-specials-honor-late-drummer-john-brad-bradbury-on-current-tour-8340471

The Specials / Horace Panter & John Bradbury (Video Interview)

Good interview with Horace and Brad recorded for STV Glasgow 06/11/2014

Photos from the Glasgow gig are available below



Video:

http://clips.stv.tv/g/v/V1l1ORmCkxU

Photos:

http://entertainment.stv.tv/galleries/entertainment-music-specials/235928/

For The First Time / Terry Hall (BBC 6 Music)

Matt Everitt speaks to Terry Hall about the musical moments that have shaped his life and career.



As frontman of The Specials, Terry Hall represented a detached, dry kind of cool, totally at odds with other pop stars of the time. After leaving the band at the height of their fame in 1981 Terry went on to form Fun Boy Three and The Colourfield – before embarking on a multifarious career that's seen him work with Damon Albarn, Lily Allen, Sinead O'Connor and leap from style to style in a way few artists can, while maintaining his deadpan sense of humour and own unique vocal style.

Rarely doing interviews, in this show Terry talks about his early musical loves growing up in Coventry, the early days and huge success of The Specials and the infighting and pressures that led him to quit the band. He also talks about his passions for Patti Smith, Easy Listening, working with Albarn as a member of Gorillaz and his experience suffering a breakdown ("I refused to take my duffel coats off for 18 months").

Plus, he discusses his reasons behind getting The Specials back together for their triumphant gigs in 2008 and exclusively reveals his plans to start writing songs again. :)

Sunday 20 October 2013

12.00-1.00pm

BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC

Songs Played

01 The Specials - Rat Race
02 The Specials - International Jet Set
03 Édith Piaf - La Vie En Rose (I liked Grace Jones version)
04 The Move - Fire Brigade (Always liked this one)
05 David Bowie - Kooks (Interesting)
06 Pink Floyd - Echoes (Terry's first Gig)
07 Richard Hell & Voidoids - Blank Generation (The backing vocals remind me of Fun Boy Three)
08 The Specials - Gangsters
09 The Specials - Ghost Town
10 The Specials - Blank Expression
11 The Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)
12 Terry Jacks - Seasons In The Sun (Why I Like The Colourfield)
13 Terry Hall & Mushtaq - A Gathering Storm
14 The Specials - Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)
15 Jeff Buckley - Grace (Reminds me of Terry's Home album, released the same year (1994)

Listen Again

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f0lvc

Rico Rodriguez / Interview Feb 2012 (The Specials)

Rico Rodriguez : Interview




By Silvia Demetilla

Horace Panter / Interview Garorock Festival 2012

Jerry Dammers / interview (Future FM)

Jerry Dammers – founder of The Specials and 2Tone brings his SPATIAL AKA ORCHESTRA to Norwich on 26th May 2012 for the first time as part of the NNFestival. Future Radio’s Kate Roma caught up with Jerry earlier in the week to find out more :) Date: 24/05/12 Length: 11:37 minutes http://www.futureradio.co.uk/podcast/2012/may/kate-roma-interviews-jerry-dammers

The Skabilly Rebels / Roddy Byers Interview 07/03/12

Between heavy accents, we understood each other. Roddy Radiation of the legendary “The Specials”, was the coolest and most sincere guest here at Piñata Hour. I am not kissing ass, but many people expected a shy man. Not at all. We drank a bit as we talked about the glory days with The Clash, hanging out with Elvis Costello, and 2 Tone Records. Our studios was filled with a great vibe. I really wanna thank Roddy’s great team for making this interview so much fun.





http://www.skidrowstudios.com/pinata-hour/2012-03-11/4614/

Jerry Dammers / Loose Ends BBC Radio 4

The much too young Nikki Bedi will be talking to her very special guest Jerry Dammers about founding 2 Tone Records and ska revival band 'The Specials'. His latest musical venture 'Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra' is a mash-up of Sun Ra, Massive Attack, Specials and reggae, all filtered through Dammer's unique musical vision. They're performing at The Barbican as part of London's Jazz Festival on Friday 18th November.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0171yjw#synopsis

Jerry Dammers / The Spatial AKA Orchestra (BBC 6 Music)

30/10/11

Songwriter/keyboardist Jerry Dammers founded, and designed the logo for, 2 Tone Records, and formed The Specials writing Ghost Town and many of the Specials other hits. Dammers has been a working D.J. for over 15 years and formed the Spatial A.K.A. Orchestra in 2008.

He will be chatting to Cerys ahead of his show Cosmic Engineering: A tribute to Sun Ra and other mystic mavericks. Featuring some of the UK's finest jazz musicians and his 18-piece orchestra he pays tribute to the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane by mingling their sounds with those of dub innovator Coxsone Dodd, Exotica pioneer Martin Denny and many more.

Cerys and Jerry Dammers



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016k3dz

Jerry Dammers / BBC Radio 6 Music 30/10/11

Cerys On 6
Sunday 30 October
10.00am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC

Songwriter/keyboardist Jerry Dammers founded and designed the logo for 2 Tone Records and formed The Specials, writing Ghost Town and many of their other hits. Dammers has been a working DJ for more than 15 years and formed the Spatial AKA Orchestra in 2008.

He chats to Cerys Matthews ahead of his show, Cosmic Engineering: A Tribute To Sun Ra And Other Mystic Mavericks. Featuring some of the UK's finest jazz musicians and his 18-piece orchestra he pays tribute to the cosmic jazz of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane by mingling their sounds with those of dub innovator Coxsone Dodd, Exotica pioneer Martin Denny and many more.

Presenter/Cerys Matthews, Producer/Jax Coombes

BBC Radio 6 Music

Terry Hall / Specials Relationship 14/10/11

Terry Hall : It's a fragile reunion that is about to break.



UNCOMFORTABLE silences: we were anticipating a few when we planned a hook up with Terry Hall, legendary frontman with The Specials and Fun Boy Three.

On stage and off, Hall has something of an enigmatic reputation. As frontmen go, he's a quiet and solitary animal that skulks in the shadows. “I frustrate our lighting engineers endlessly,” he smiles. “He sets these lights up for me and I never stand in them, but that's part of the fun really.

“I never understood why I had to stand out at the front and be this horrible Bono type character. We're a collective on stage. I've never felt the need to be the show.”

So when we hit our first silence about five minutes in, a flurry of panic sets in. Fortunately, it's far from being an awkward moment; instead we find ourselves lost in collective imagination with Terry as he reflects on the band's fragile reunion.

“I held off for such a long time because I didn't really see any point. I think I was too niggly before and I was too cynical.

“But a number of things happened over a period of maybe six months to a year where we sort of got back together, and that was down to a lot of things, like some of us had had serious illnesses.

“We got in touch again and once we started playing music again together, we realised we still enjoyed that side of our friendship. When we're together for 10 minutes in the dressing room, we really like each other,” he pauses. “Well, some of us do.

“But it's quite a big band, six men, it's a pretty unnatural situation to put yourself in. To live with those people can wear a bit thin. We're not great at socialising together or going to the cinema together, but....”

Then the silence. “I just pictured us all sitting in the cinema together, on the front row.” He raises a wry smile. “That was horrible.”

It's a fragile reunion that is about to break. This latest sold out tour, based on the band's seminal albums Specials and More Specials, will be their last; this three year romp through The Specials' best bits has come to a natural conclusion.

The idea of doing more as The Specials without new material makes Terry wince. And the idea of actually making new material makes him scratch his head in wonder.

“I don't know how we'd do it,” he says. “You can only tour this material so much and I don't want to get bored with it. I don't think we want to schlep around again after this tour.

“I'm still enjoying getting together with everybody and there's a sense of ownership of it and that's really lovely. The people that come to see us seem to feel a real part of it, but nobody wants it to get boring.

“We could write new material, or we could go off and do our own thing again. We're working on a couple of new things, but whether we'll record or not, I don't know...” he pauses.

“It's just nice to be mates again – to rekindle that is enough for now. We're very loose about the future really. We're at that age in life where you're just grateful to wake up in the morning.”

The original reunion, back in 2008, came about to mark the 30th anniversary of their debut album. Three years later, it coincides with the 30th anniversary of when it all famously fell apart in a Top Of The Pops dressing room and Terry quit to form Fun Boy Three – the pop tonic to The Specials' intoxicating socio-political agenda.

Terry also released a number of critically acclaimed solo albums and collaborations. At 52, he's no more keen to become a solo artist again than he is to be the frontman of Fun Boy Three, although he has recently tried to talk his son, 21-year-old Theodore, into performing some European shows with him. “He's like, 'You're a bit old. You're an alright dad but I don't want to be in a group with you'.”

His life-long battle with mental health issues continues; writing songs, and performing with The Specials, have been 'his therapy'. And he's also discovered painting: “My doctors thought it would be a good idea as part of my recovery. For two years I could paint nothing but the Jackson 5; no idea why, just endless paintings.

“Now I want to move on to something else. Maybe the Osmonds. I've been talking to people about an exhibition next year.” He laughs: “I've got thousands of pictures of the Jackson 5 I can show.

“But being on stage is one of the few places where I feel most like myself,” he continues. “The inhibitions go and I don't care what I feel like or look like or sound like – it doesn't matter.

“If I want to walk round on my knees I can do that. I can't really do that in the street,” he laughs. “Well, I can. But you'd get a very different kind of attention.”

It is, though, timely that the the project has run its course again inside three years. This bookend tour has not (as rumours online would have it) been engineered to make way for a Fun Boy Three reunion. Despite offers, Terry says he remains uninterested: “That group was a reaction to this group – to get away,” he says, “We haven't got that fire any more.”

But it was the right time to pull the material back out. Their songs, from Nite Klub and Gangsters to their biggest hits Too Much Too Young and Ghost Town, spoke about a nation in economic and social turmoil: of an unemployed, disenfranchised, disenchanted youth living on the poverty line.

Today, the band are singing those songs again in similarly recessive times. “I had that initial weirdness on our first rehearsal of the material that a percentage of it still applied,” Terry says. “It is horrible that you can still do a song like Ghost Town with conviction – that's not right.

“It would be nice to drop it out of our set because it no longer applied, but if we did that with all our material we'd have about three songs left in our set. This year has been a mirror image of the year we released Ghost Town: there's been a Royal Wedding, disruption, unemployment, rioting.

“We didn't write those songs as a solution to it. It was just a running diary about how we lived. The anger is still there, but it's not as easy to be angry at this age,” he smiles.

“If we were still that angry at this age, we'd all get locked up. We're older and milder, and now we feel we've done what we needed to do, and that was to get each others' phone numbers.

“That's what I wanted anyway.” Another silence. “Whether I change my number or not is a different matter.”

UK Shows:

Tuesday 11-Oct Wolverhampton Civic
Wednesday 12-Oct Wolverhampton Civic
Friday 14-Oct Manchester Apollo
Saturday 15-Oct Manchester Apollo
Sunday 16-Oct Hull Arena
Tuesday 18-Oct Glasgow SECC
Friday 21-Oct Nottingham Arena
Sunday 23-Oct Plymouth Pavilion
Monday 24-Oct Cheltenham Racecourse
Tuesday 25-Oct Brighton Centre
Thursday 27-Oct Bournemouth International Centre
Friday 28-Oct Cardiff Arena
Saturday 29-Oct Coventry Ricoh Arena
Thursday 3-Nov London Alexandra Palace

http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/news/10019941_terry_s_specials_relationship

Roddy "Radiation" Byers / Interview 14/09/11

Here's a nice Interview with Roddy "Radiation" Byers Guitarist with The Specials and Skabilly Rebels Recorded in Amsterdam last month.

Enjoy



http://skabeatsandmore.blogspot.com/

http://www.roddyradiation.com/

http://www.thespecials.com/