Part one of our exclusive chat with The Specials!

Paul meets The Specials

On Monday 4th May 2009, legendary band THE SPECIALS were preparing for the second consecutive show at the Manchester Apollo on their 30th Anniversary Reunion Tour. Muso’s Guide’s very own Paul Wilson met up with guitarist Lynval Golding and drummer John Bradbury for an exclusive interview on everything from their chequered past to the bright outlook for a ‘Special’ future; read on to find out more.

Waiting in the foyer of the hotel, knowing that I’m about to interview two bona-fide icons of the music world, really does seem as if it’s going to go on forever. A thousand thoughts flood my brain. Are the questions I have prepared appropriate? Will they react well to me and will they be talkative? Practically all of this nausea and tension disappears within about 30 seconds of clasping my eyes upon Messrs Golding and Bradbury. Their warmth and hospitality shines throughout our meeting and the joy they are experiencing at the reformation of their band is plain to see. Hell, I even relax and enjoyed myself – so much so that I forget to record the first ten minutes of our interview. Nevertheless, we speak at length about all aspects of the original and reformed Specials experience. At this point I wish to express my deepest and unreserved thanks to Michelle Golding [daughter of Lynval], who has been unerringly pleasant and helpful throughout the process of forming the interview and is a true credit - not only to her father but the rest of the band - for her dogged devotion and enthusiasm. So Michelle, thank you.

Muso’s Guide: How does it make you feel to be playing these reunion shows to an audience that is incredibly mixed, from the people who had seen the band originally to their children who are experiencing The Specials for the first time?

Lynval Golding: For me, I was just happy to see the parents originally because they were our audience. For them to bring their kids and their kids are just as excited as they are – I just think ‘wow’. I’m right at the front of the stage and I can look out at 18 or 19 year old kids singing “you’ve done too much, much too young”, and I’m just blown away – these songs were written before these kids were even born, you know. It’s just amazing to think that 30 years later we have 20 year old kids singing the lyrics to our songs.

John Bradbury: The thing about it as well, what we’ve noticed within our own families, you know, Michelle and everybody else; I mean my son is 21 tomorrow and Terry’s boy is 21 in two days time and they’re our first line of communication with that generation. My son listens to the songs and he’s just like “fu*king what!?” and do you know how happy that makes me – it makes me the happiest I could ever be, a man at my age, putting a smile on my kid’s face. I can’t be any happier than that and that translates across the audience, seeing those kids happy – not to do it would have been a sin, it would have been a sin.

LG: I look at the kids and I see them doing the things that we used to do, like coming in at four o’clock in the morning. They’re getting drunk, you know. We’re all together and its one big family. It’s the other way around now, they make sure I get to bed early, tuck me away, and they go off and get pissed. That’s the beauty of where we are today. I’ve kind of adopted his [Brad’s] kids and Terry’s kids, and all they make sure we get to bed and they go out and rave – it’s brilliant! We don’t forget that we were kids once, they’re out and having a good time – wonderful.

MG: For me personally, too, I’m only 19 and was born 1989.

LG: God, you’re a little baby yes!

MG: So the band was finished eight years before I was even about! I think that is an example of the generational crossing. I and a lot of my friends were into bands like The Ordinary Boys and you hear people saying Wthat’s what The Specials used to doW and then we’d go into The Specials back catalogue and start our own experiences there.

JB: Oh yeah, it’s got to be done. I like to think of it as a kind of ‘Specials DNA’. We had that chemistry back in 1979, there was no one part that made The Specials it was all of us. With respect to everybody, The Specials did better as a unit than any individuals did – and that’s why we’re back together. You talk about The Ordinary Boys and they had their own aspect on it but you’ve got to be original.

MG: How did you take it when they took direct influences from you and covered ‘Little Bitch’ on their debut album? Do you think they did it justice?

JB: Not a problem, at all.

LG: Any artist that covers our songs is great because it means that we’ve done something worthy of covering, you know. They’re putting their stamp on it. The Prodigy did a cover of ‘Ghost Town’, they took it apart and made it become their song and I just think that’s really good.

JB: We’re also doing things a little different musically the same ourselves. Although we do ‘Little Bitch’ the same way, we don’t do ‘Ghost Town’ the same way. We’re trying to make it a bit more ‘urban’, if that’s the right word, a little more reggae style. It was stripped down to the absolute basics in the recording process but we’re trying to add a bit more to it now and it’s for the better, in my opinion. It works better live for us. I don’t think there’s any end to what you can do with the music.

LG: It’s like when Amy [Winehouse] did a cover of ‘Hey, Little Rich Girl’ and those two guys did Neville’s talking part but these guys went and put a kind of jazzy feel to it. It wasn’t written that way but they make it become their song. The same thing when I recorded with Lily Allen you know, it was just such a good laugh with her, to see a little girl getting into her music like that was fantastic because we’re touching different generations, you know. I think it’s healthy.

MG: During the rehearsals for this tour, were there any songs that the band found easier to get back into than others and were there any that you had real difficulty with?

JB: ‘Stereotype’, we changed that around a bit.

LG: We literally rewrote ‘Stereotype’ musically, which is brilliant now. It was a studio version before but I think we’ve made the live version better now than what it was. We attempted to play it before but we’ve never got it together really until now.

JB: We had the album version and we had the version that we did for BBC Sessions, the Sessions was a more up-tempo version and we adopted that. It’s got more of a section in it for Neville. The rest of them we basically fell back into. I think muscle memory kicked in, I was playing and I’d get to the bridge and you start to think ‘right, what comes next?’ but my arms would be off, straight away. It was muscle memory or like riding a bike. I think that would be a good medical research program that because after 28 years having not played most of it, although I had played some with The Special Beat, it was just weird – it must stick in the subconscious. All I know is that pleasure of doing it was extremely great, it was just fantastic.

MG: In the gap between the demise of the first spell of The Specials and now, did you ever think on any days – ‘I might play some of the old songs now’ – just to keep it fresh in your mind?

LG: I never listened to any of the stuff for years and years, just never listened to it. I mean how often do you go home and play your own records? I don’t do that. I’m always buying new stuff and experimenting with new records, you know.

JB: Now I’m back playing with the others, it’s been great. I consider myself now to be more of a jazz player, and the reggae we’re playing fits in, I’ve always thought reggae was the most rhythmic form of jazz. I could see us doing something with it.

LG: I had the craziest thought this morning, when I woke up. You know you wake up sometimes and you get these wacky thoughts. This morning, I thought – you know we’ve all done solo stuff, Terry’s done lots of things, but we’ve never done it with the band. I wonder what it’d be like if we actually go, as a band, and do ‘The Lunatics Have Taken The Asylum’ and kick into it now with us all back together and the way we feel as musicians now. I’d like to ask Terry what the favourite song he’s done with Dave Stewart or whoever, and for us to just let loose and for him to say ‘here you go guys, you just go with it’. It’s crazy. I want to hear everyone’s interpretation of those songs, you know.

JB: Whatever we decide to do in the future, we now have the option of doing it with The Specials outfit – which nobody does with a solo effort. As good as anybody’s ideas can be, they will never be as good and will never have been performed by The Specials. That’s great. It’s something that would work.

LG: It’d be interesting to see how you and Horace would adapt to it and what you could bring to it. Look at ‘A Message To You’, we took that and we made it become a Specials song. So I think it’d be really interesting to see how we’d interpret some of those songs.

JB: I’d like to do ‘Alphabet Army’ [JB’s Allstars number].

LG: Exactly, exactly. I never got the chance to do that the first time around. I didn’t play on that track.

JB: Yeah, I’d like to re-do the music to it. These are all things we can talk about Lynval, we’ve got plenty of time now.

MG: On that, what would you say the probability of a new Specials record is? Or, if you don’t know, is this going to be a farewell tour or will there be more live performances in the future?

LG: 30 years from now, we might not be here! [Laughs]. I’m just joking. We’re just gelling as a bunch of musicians now, just grooving and playing music. I cannot see myself going and wanting to perform with anyone else expect these guys now. That’s just how I feel.

JB: A farewell tour just makes no sense to me. This is a tour that people wanted to come to see and hear, this is the beginning for a lot of people – so I don’t think ‘farewell’ is the correct expression. I think we’ll let you know. Terry will let you know when it’s farewell from him and I’ll let you know when it’s farewell from me. Quite honestly at the moment, I think this is the beginning of another session of The Specials. It could go on, and I hope it does go on, for quite a few years.

LG: One thing with us, we stopped at ‘Ghost Town’ [No. 1 single in 1981]. We stopped for good reason; we needed to recharge our batteries. We’re slow; it takes a lot of energy to recharge us but here we are, you’ve got to expect some new music and some new ideas coming out. It will happen.

MG: That’s great news.

LG: This 30th Anniversary Tour is about playing the songs for the fans that grew up with our songs and for kids who have heard our records and want the band to perform those songs. It’s entirely up to the fans, we’ll ask the fans when they want a new record.

MG: They might be a bit demanding, they could say ‘next month’!

JB: Not a problem. Laughs].

LG: Without them, we’re nothing. Let them tell us when they will need a new record. I believe that.

JB: I think when you’ve got lyricists like Terry, Roddy and Lynval together again; it’s just a matter of somebody trying to keep that wealth of ability in focus. So, the fans keep us in focus and I can’t see why we can’t have one or two more records. Again, ultimate respect to you guys, but, Roddy, what a songwriter – the kid is just unbelievable. ‘Concrete Jungle’, ‘Hey, Little Rich Girl’, ‘Rat Race’ – these are all numbers which are some of the best we do. Lynval’s ‘Why?’ and ‘Do Nothing’, Terry’s ‘Friday Night, Saturday Morning’ – which I think is one of the strongest numbers in the set now, they’re all brilliant songs. We’re not found wanting anywhere in terms of song writing.

LG: That’s what it’s like when I’m going down the set and we’re near the end and I’m thinking ‘God, can’t we just do another ten songs?’ It goes by so quickly every night. This is the first time I can say that I can go on stage and all of the songs are set in my mind, sometimes you can get a little block in your head when you’re trying to think of chords and arrangements but now I have a picture in my head – there it is, my fingers just go to the right place every time.

JB: The whole thing about time on stage we were talking about at breakfast. 80 to 90 minutes, depending on how much of a gap there is between tracks, is the same as watching a football match – to be thoroughly entertained for that long, it really is a long time, you know. Then you get on stage with this outfit and it feels like you’ve been on for fifteen minutes and it’s done, it just shows how much happens when you enjoy yourself to that extent. It’s just incredible.

MG: It really must be strange going off before the encore and thinking, ‘we’ve only been on ten minutes?!’.

JB: It’s like I said about watching a football match, although it goes on for 90 minutes – it still goes quick if you’re enjoying it.

MG: I suppose it depends who you support in terms of how quickly the match goes. I support Middlesbrough so 90 minutes is a very, very long time for me right now.

JB + LG: Oh god. [Moans and groans].

MG: Moving on – I’d like to know how you felt after announcing these shows in early December 2008 and becoming aware of the full extent of the demand for tickets, selling out the venues on consecutive nights, what was that experience like?

LG: I left here on the Tuesday because I live in Seattle, Washington. It was a nine hour flight and by the time I got back to Seattle, I heard that tickets had sold out. I said”‘don’t be so stupid, I’ve only just and left and they’ve just went on sale?!” I couldn’t believe it – it was like “whoa!” Oh my god, the feeling was scary. Frightening.

JB: We decided to do dancehalls, like the Academy circuit. We’ve proved it, they’re perfect.

LG: Dancehalls – yeah, we’re a band that plays dance music for people to dance to. We have to be in those environments.

JB: We’ve done festivals and that was a strange thing, they went down well but dancehalls, man, that’s where we have to be. So they were selling out like crazy. I think it was ten minutes until the first Brixton gig sold out or something like that, half an hour later the second one, by the middle of the next day the third, then they had added the fourth which was gone by the end of the next day and the fifth had gone two days later. They were asking us to do a sixth but we said no – that’s enough. We have to consider the guy’s voices and everything else. It was just unreal.

LG: Someone told me Birmingham sold out in four minutes!

JB: Incredible. You see, Horace said to me just before we went on stage at Bestival [The Specials’ first performance as a reformed band – Summer 2008] – ‘I don’t think we realise how popular we are.’

LG: I didn’t realise it, at all.

JB: I had no idea because I was the longest time away from it, actually playing with any of the other guys. So when we struck up, we knew. When we started selling tickets, we knew. We found out pretty damn quick that we were proudly owned by a lot of people.

MG: Out of the shows you’ve played so far, could you pinpoint any as being the best yet?

[Long silence].

JB: Newcastle was good though.

LG: Newcastle it would have to be, because we’d waited so many years to hear the roar of the crowd and obviously Newcastle wasn’t like Bestival where people go as music lovers – Newcastle was for lovers of The Specials. To hear that crowd, it was just amazing. Even when we did Later… With Jools Holland it meant nothing to me because I was geared up for the first night at Newcastle.

JB: It wasn’t a bad stepping stone though, because it brought us together into a band environment. Like a small production rehearsal. I think we did quite well considering the sterile area of the studio but the gigs were amazing. Personally I can’t pick one particularly good gig, they’ve all been…I wake up in the morning early at about 3AM as you do when you get older and I’m just about to roll back over and then “BANG!”, I remember the gig, you know, and that’s it. For the next few hours and I’m crawling around thinking “please, let me get back to sleep!” It’s just the excitement is back there again. They’re all so special. At the moment, we stand Specials 7 and Critics 0. That’s barring one wobble from a reviewer that we don’t even think was at the gig or people say he wasn’t, we’re not so sure. I’m marking this and I’d love to get a clean sheet by the end of the tour.

MG: I was there yesterday and I think you’ll do it.

Michelle Golding: And how did you find yesterday, then?

MG: Oh, it was brilliant. Epic. It really was good.

JB: Where were you then?

MG: In the standing area, in the centre, a few rows back – where it was all going on, it was all non-stop movement.

JB: Yeah, I’ve noticed that, I just get a smile on my face when I look out there. I’d love to be out there one night.

MG: We’ll swap! You watch and I’ll play drums, it wouldn’t be as good though.

JB: You’ve only got 24 to learn and they’re all the same, don’t worry about it. [Laughs].

MG: I definitely agree though with what you were saying about time going by so quickly. I’d seen the setlist online beforehand and even I couldn’t believe by the time the last song came around.

JB: It’s weird, it’s this preoccupation with time that we’ve got – yet when you’re on the stage, it goes even faster! I think you’ve got to equate time with enjoyment and I think the faster it goes, the more enjoyable it is.

Click here to read part two…