JERRY DAMMERS IN SPECIALS/ SELECTER MASH-UP, LIVE IN WESTON-SUPER-MARE?
WATCHERS OF the ongoing Specials rupture know the Hall-Golding-Panter line-up are on tour and in the charts, minus hypeman Neville Staple, guitarist Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers and Specials prime mover Jerry Dammers. But at a Neville Staple Band show at the Weston-super-Mare Winter Gardens on June 22, fans got a welcome shock when Jerry sat in on organ for A Message To You Rudy, alongside Selecter guitarist and fellow 2-Tone original Neol Davies. Both men are no longer members of the bands they founded.
“It was absolutely fantastic, a surprise for the crowd and a big coup,” says Neville. “Jerry was great, and, how can I put it? Too much has gone on. Same thing with Neol. So to get them together was such a highlight, and quite emotional. You can tell Jerry loves it, that he can see the energy. So did Neol.”
Neville cites his wife, manager and bandmate Sugary with making the team-up possible. “They know we’re genuine and we love the music,” says Neville. “The band, we’re all equal – there’s no arguments or bigheads.”
This year, the 40th anniversary of the 2-Tone boom is being celebrated in many ways. The Coventry Music Museum has a 2-Tone Village café and shop run by unpaid volunteers, boasting a reconstruction of Dammers’ late-’70s HQ/office at 51 Albany Road, complete with the Yamaha organ he wrote The Specials’ 1981 Ghost Town on. Also on-site is the Vauxhall Cresta car, in which the group rode around in
London for the latter song’s
video. “We’ve only got the front half,” says Coventry music historian and Music Museum founder Pete Chambers. “A guy called Steve Kearns found it in a scrapyard in north Wales, and restored it. People love sitting in it – the Museum’s number one on the things to do in Coventry [on Tripadvisor].”
“Jerry, Roddy, myself, we’ve all been in the car,” says Neville, who got an honorary doctorate from Arden University on July 10 for his work with homelessness and antiknife crime initiatives. “The rest of The Specials only go to Coventry to promote themselves, which I do not like, ’cos Coventry and 2-Tone made us what we are. I owe a lot to The Specials. But good luck to them, I’ll never run them down.”
He confirms attempts were made to get the surviving members of the group together to mark 2-Tone’s fourth decade. “I’d love to do a proper reunion, for the fans – we could have done London, Birmingham, Manchester, Coventry, Glasgow, a big show in each. But they’re doing their own thing… there’s too much bad feeling. But we’ll be working with Neol again. And we’re always trying to get Roddy. Jerry, I can’t say – it would be great.”
When Dammers DJ’d at the 2-Tone Village, Chambers asked him if he has new activity pending. “I said to the crowd, the last time he played, ‘Wouldn’t we love to hear something new from Jerry?!” he says. “But he wouldn’t tell me.”
Ian Harrison
“I’d love to do a proper reunion with everyone.” NEVILLE STAPLE