Mojo - The Music Magazine

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You don't have a lot of time for window-dressing, do you? We had a conversation at the MOJO Honours in June, and you turned to me and said, 'No offence or anything, but this is a load of shit isn't it?' You were very polite about it, but you made it clear - the whole backslapping thing isn't for Roddy...
I think that goes for most of us. We tried hard not to do the rock star thing - the limos and whatnot. I talk to my daughters about it, and they're like, 'That's what pop stars do.' But we weren't like that. We were sort of socialist. My youngest daughter goes, 'What's a socialist then dad?' 'They believe that everyone should be treated equally. There shouldn't be poor people and the hospitals should be better.' 'Does that mean I'd have to pay more taxes?' 'Yeah.' 'Well I don't want that' [laugh].

That's how things have changed.
Yeah. We fought the good fight, but what's our reward? Most of us don't have private pensions. We're all getting on a bit. Do we deserve to make a bit of money and have a bit in the bank rather than living it rough later? It's a weird one.

No-one begrudges you you payday, surely?
There are some on The Specials forum occasionally who have a dig at us and say we're just doing it for the money.

How does that feel?
It's annoying, but all the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if you lose your sanity, if things are as horrible as they were at the end of The Specials.

When you had that reunion summit at the King's Cross Holiday Inn with Jerry in October 2007, did you ever imagine that all seven of the original members could be accommodated?
If Jerry had compromised a bit, and we mucked in together and did it... But then he had a go at me about my Jett Rink persona. I used to go online and take the micky a bit. I must have touched a few nerves. [Byers' posts on the Specials2.com forums, under the name "Jett Rink", have included a number of digs at Dammers: eg. "Dammers can sit on his money and the rest can quietly die on the N.H.S." In a statement released last December, Dammers characterised these as part of a "campaign of verbal abuse".]

Did Jerry want to play the old songs?
He said to us he wanted to change them. And we thought, We can't change the old songs. The old fans want to hear what it was like on the record.

You referred to being back on the dole after The Specials, Mk 1. Was that a difficult transition?
I think by that time, I'd thought, 'That's it, I've had my 15 minutes of glory.' You're in the dole office and you've got lads shouting across the room: 'What's it like going from being a pop star to back on the dole, Roddy?' And everyone turns round. You kinda just shrug it off. Went back to my old trade, painting and decorating, and playing in bands at the weekends. A lot of people who would come and see me, playing in blues bands or rock'n'roll bands didn't know I'd been in The Specials.

Did your desire to play music ever waver?
I always played. I started when I was 13. My dad played in a band, my granddad played in a band. It's what I did. My dad said to me, 'Roddy, you're never gonna go to university; you may as well learn to play an instrument' [laughs].

Between the fall and rise The Specials, what have you been most proud of?
There were a couple of songs I did in the Mark 2 band, like Bonediggin', I thought were alright. But we started off on the wrong foot with that - with a covers album. Didn't get taken seriously after that. But we were together twice as long as the original Specials and got burnt out. The money wasn't very good, either. So we ended up being broke on this never ending tour, and the new members of the band were losing their mortgages. All of a sudden we thought, 'What are we doing this for?" Horace had already bailed out.

So at that stage it was you, Lynval and Neville?
Yes.

Have you three always been tight?
I'd say Lynval was the one I got on best with. Though he can be annoying sometimes [laugh].

How can you be annoyed with someone who's so happy?
Well that's what used to annoy me! [laugh]. He's had a tough life, nearly got killed in that knife thing in Coventry, but he's always optimistic. We're like different sides of the same coin. I'm more on the depressive side...

What a crazy, mixed-up bunch you are...
We'll you've got Horace with his more studious approach to music. Neville with his, not gangster, but off-the-street kind of thing. Lynval is just a really nice chap. Then you got Brad, who's like the old mod who plays really hard drums. We're all very different but when our backs were against the wall we all pulled together.

You needed to fight someone on the outside...
It needed something like that for us to stick together.

Does the Specials feel like that again, a battle against the odds?
Well, we haven't had any trouble at gigs. It's all quite the opposite, all a bit tearful on the first gig of the tour in Newcastle. You don't realise how you've touched some of these people. And then you try to talk to them and they're amazed we're just ordinary people. And there's some of them just don't get it, who think we were real mods or skinheads. But the look was adopted. That was Jerry saying we needed a corporate identity [laugh]. Do I look like I ride a Lambretta? [laugh]

I suppose you had a bit of a head start on the material, having done the Mark 2 thing.
Well yes - we've been playing this stuff for a long time. When we did rehearsals with Jerry he'd forgotten it all. We'd been playing it live for years, on and off. Even with my own band I played songs I wrote for The Specials. But Jerry's asking, 'What are the chords to Ghost Town?' It's like, Hold on, didn't you *write this?

What was that rehearsal like?
We did almost a full band except Neville was gigging somewhere else. Then we did one with just me, Horace and Jerry. I thought the first time was alright. I couldn't really hear Jerry from where I was. The difference was Brad on drums. Brad's sound *is The Specials sound. Brad adds the hard-hitting rock thing.

Is that what made the difference?
It did, sound-wise. You hear that rhythm section and can't fault it. Brad, Lynval and Horace are one of the best rhythm sections around.

You see bands reforming later in life and they just don't have the power in their rhythm sections. But Brad and Horace and Lynval really do still have it.
Brad had a break for a while but he'd been doing the reformed Selecter thing and he had his own stuff for a while. Kept his hand in. I think musically we're probably better than in the old days. I listen to some of the early live tapes and it's all played far too fast, you can't hear the words. It's just a bloody row. It's more about the excitement. Now we play it so you can dance to it.

What does it mean to you to be doing it again now?
I don't like to think about it too much.

You don't want to get too attached?
I don't want to open up that can of worms, let the skeletons out the closet. I just want to play and not think about it too deeply, in terms of what it means to me, or other people, or how it's going to progress or what's happening next year. Just take it as it comes.

For the likes of us, it's a big deal that The Specials are back together. But in a way, for the band, it's just something else you've got to manage in your lives.
From my point of view it's like a higher profile again. Hopefully it will help my band [The Skabilly Rebels]. Whether it will or not I don't know, because it's slightly different to The Specials and Specials fans might not be into it.

Is a Specials studio record conceivable?
I've got a few songs, Lynval's got a few, I think we could probably put one together, but who's to say which songs are suitable and which aren't? Once The Specials start playing it becomes a Specials song. But the lyrics can't be bog standard rock'n'roll. They've got to be a bit more interesting.

Interview by Danny Eccleston

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