Why life’s still special for the wild Fun Boy
Neville Staple, who swapped crime for the charts, has now turned lockdown into a record, says Garry Bushell
WHEN THE lockdown stopped Neville Staple from performing, he did the next best thing – he wrote a song about it. Lockdown, the single, is edgy and claustrophobic, with an addictive pinch of paranoia.
“My wife Christine and I came up with the idea and the band recorded it remotely,” the former star of The Specials and the Fun Boy Three tells me.
His group, now called From The Specials, are all full-time musicians. “We’re in the same boat as most working bands; there’s no government support for artists,” says Nev. “It’s been tough.we’ve had 68 shows cancelled including a European tour.where we’ve had flights booked, the airlines haven’t paid us back but the foreign promoters want their deposits returned.we’re reimbursing them from our savings...”
The Lockdown video gives us a glimpse into the Staples’ home in Coventry.the couple married in Jamaica in 2014. Not only did singer Christine, known as “Sugary”, tame the self-confessed former womaniser, she kept him alive.
“If it wasn’t for Sugary I wouldn’t be here,” Nev, 65, tells me with conviction. “She’s saved my life twice, first when I suffered a severe kidney infection and then by taking me to the right doctors who diagnosed and treated me for epilepsy and post-stroke symptoms after my car crash.”
That life has been quite a journey. He’s gone from being a feral teen on course for a life of crime to receiving an honorary doctorate from Arden University. “I’m
Doctor Rude Boy now,” he grins.
Neville Eugenton Staple was born in the mountain village of Sawmill in Jamaica, in 1955, and returned there for his wedding, to the church where his parents are buried.
“The memories flooded back. My old house was just a shack.that’s how Jamaica was.we didn’t have bricks – we had bamboo walls and a straw roof.we were poor but happy. I walked miles to school each day as a toddler and had to fetch water from a standpipe. I used to go down to a cave to bathe.”
Sawmill was scarred by slavery. “There had been a plantation there, worked by slaves. Locals believed you could hear their cries and the clanking of chains at night.”
At five Neville was sent to England to live with his father, who had a very strict approach to parenthood. Relocating to Coventry from Rugby, teenage Nev went off the rails. His shoplifting and burglary sprees led to detention centres, and three months at the borstal wing of Wormwood Scrubs. He fathered his first child at 16.
Music saved him. Nev became involved with the sound system scene, and also became a regular fixture at the Locarno ballroom where DJ Petewaterman ran dance contests.then he heard a band called the Automatics rehearsing and was hooked by their blend of ska with punk attitude.
That band became the Specials, with Nev as toaster and co-singer, notching up seven hits including number one singles Ghost Town and Too Much Too Young on the band’s own 2 Tone label. He had four more Top Ten hits with the Fun Boy Three and then gigged constantly with different bands before living in the USA for nine years.
“I worked with bands like No Doubt – I was good friends with Gwen Stefani – and Rancid. I even did a feature film called Vampire Anonymous,” he says.
Homesick, Nev returned to Coventry in the early noughties and launched the Neville Staple Band, rejoining The Specials for their sell-out reunion shows in 2009.
IN 2011, he was involved in a near-fatal car crash in Coventry just hours after returning from his brother Jimmy’s funeral in
Jamaica. “I needed some company and drove over to see my daughter Melanie,”
Nev recalls. “The next thing I remember was being lifted from my totally mangled Merc, with a policeman and a paramedic looking at me in total shock.they said they couldn’t believe I’d survived.”
Neville feels the police put his life in danger.
“Instead of taking me straight to hospital they locked me up. I suffered multiple fits in the police cell.
“They thought my sluggish speech was the result of drink or drugs, even though I’d come up negative on the breathalyser.
“The doctors said I’d suffered two strokes, one at the wheel of the car.”
Nev left the Specials in
2013 after he had a fit on stage.then a huge tax bill added to his misery. “It turned out my taxes weren’t being managed as I’d requested. I was about to lose everything, including the house lived in, and had no one to turn to.”
Right on cue, Hackney-born Christine re-entered his life.they’d first met in 2009 and had a 10-month relationship. “I was her pin-up,” Nev chuckles. “She had me on her wall. She was wonderful but I began to be my old self and after a massive row she’d walked out on me.”
But when a mutual friend told Christine how sick Neville was she got back in touch. “I’d had a near fatal seizure when Christine showed up at my house. She called an ambulance, gave me mouth to mouth, and stayed by my hospital bedside for 48 hours.
“She nursed me, took care of me and even sorted out my finances with letters and phone calls. She was unselfish and totally giving. Now she manages me, writes music with me, performs with me and keeps me on my toes.”
Almost literally. Years of jumping off PA systems have nobbled Nev’s knees – he walks with a cane “just for balance”. But the years drain away when he performs.
TRAGEDY struck again in 2018 when Neville’s grandson Fidel was stabbed to death in Coventry aged 21.The Staples responded by launching a huge campaign against knife crime.
Says Nev: “I used to talk to bullies at school. I’d tell them don’t pick on kids who can’t hit back, come and bully me. But I wouldn’t say anything to young kids now because the knives come out.that’s what’s changed.
“Sugary [Christine] talks on stage about knife crime. I end up crying. We go to prisons, speak to young offenders; try to help. I got out of that mess, they can too.” He’s concerned about today’s riots. “I was in trouble growing up and we had Stop and Search to deal with. But the message of the Specials was unity, about black and white getting together.we don’t want a ‘them and us’ situation.”
Christine, 52, agrees. “The point’s been made, there’s been a lot of symbolic action but now it’s time to look for unified solutions. Otherwise you just divide people. We’re all human.that’s the 2Tone message.”
● Lockdown by From The Specials is out now (fromthespecials.com)