Mojo - The Music Magazine

How being in the Specials drives you mad, and how Terry nearly wrote a musical about Queen Victoria...

Read Part 1

How important was you playing Glastonbury - with Lily Allen and also with Damon Albarn on his Africa Express bill - in 2007?
TH: Both of those things helped me a lot. It's historical really. Linval, Neville and myself were unsure why we split the Funboy Three up and after that we turned against each other. We didn't know why. We still don't know why. We now know it's not a big deal, but it was important for me and Lynval to sort it out. A gap grew between the three of us. Now that's been healed, and now I can't fucking get rid of him. He drives me mad! [laughs]

JB: I had a dust-up with Lynval in Special Beat, and I *do know why. Because he was too fucking happy!

TH: His happiness grinds you down after a while...

JB: A stupid beef. Now we get on better than we ever did. Now we agree almost all the time. We can both vouch for each other.

What was the plan with Fun Boy Three?
TH: There was no plan. John knows how bad it was at the end of the Specials. It just had to stop. And somebody had to stop it. I remember the shit. Some people are choosing not to.

JB: I stayed for In The Studio and it got no better. In fact it got worse. The studio environment became punishing for certain people. Stan the vocalist lost a lot of his self-esteem.

TH: He got very ill didn't he?

JB: He couldn't cope with the environment. [Campbell later experienced mental health problems and was convicted for kidnapping and sexual assault. He currently resides at Her Majesty's pleasure]

More Specials had already broken the band...
TH: Making a second great album is very difficult. And we were taking too many things into consideration, like what people would think. Why should we care what people might think?

JB: I don't think we were using our specialisms. The first record, we toured that material for 18 months and recorded it in two weeks. On the second record, the microscope came out... If we record anything now, I think it will be more true to our original form. If we do anything. If.

TH: The More Specials experience totally informed the first Fun Boy Three album. All we did was go into a studio with a load of instruments. We hadn't a clue what we were doing, but that wasn't the point. The point was just to do it. That's what I missed from the early Specials, that instinctive thing.

Shortly before you left The Specials, did you really ask Jerry to divvy up his royalties? [Dammers told MOJO's Lois Wilson in MOJO 174: "At Top Of The Pops, Terry, Neville and Lynval said 'If you don't share out all your songwriting royalties, every penny equally among the whole band, then we're leaving.'"]
TH: No. I never said that.

JB: [cross] I don't know where you got that from. Right from the fucking start of this band - and I'll tell you this for a fact, right - we talked about the lion's share going to the writer...

TH: I never questioned that with Jerry at all. But after The Specials I made it a golden rule that any song I write with anybody is a straight split. That way no argument occurs. But nobody ever said that to Jerry. No way. No way.

JH: And now in terms of this operation - operation! Ha! - as far as this band is concerned, it's on parity in terms of contribution and everything else. And that needn't have been the case. Certain people could have come from a different angle on that. No. It's complete parity. It's part of why where we're getting on so well, and the reason why I can see something developing from this.

The intensity and the madness in your history - is this part of why the Specials legend burns so bright, even now?
JB: Are you saying that all the grief and everything else gave it a spark? Well I don't agree with that to be honest. It was all about the combination of elements, the chemistry... None of that sparked any greater effort or intensity on my part. This is what I was born to do. No-one can wind me up to do it any better.

TH: The band it reminds me of in a funny way is The Blockheads, where there's so many different things going on. The differences are even more exaggerated now because we're all grown-ups. We're more extreme. The dressing room is as entertaining as the gig.

In the '80s, as a consumer of your post-Specials records, I had no idea where you were going next...
TH: Me neither, at any point. It was about how I was feeling emotionally at the time, and trying to find the right music to tack that onto. After the Fun Boy Three I felt very quiet, so I started listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Bobby Goldsboro, for no other reason than that I could listen to them quietly. Then I discovered the acoustic guitar...

I really liked your Terry Hall & Mushtaq record [The Hour Of Two Lights, Honest Jons, 2003 ]...
TH: I've always been fascinated by my roots, I've tried to research it. My dad was from a travelling family, my mum was Jewish. How does that fit together? And Mushtaq's a muslim kid who's grown up in this country. It was about dealing with politics but in a personal way. Sometimes the best way of working something out is by writing a song, because you've "outed" it then. Academically, I was never great, so I wouldn't know how to write a book about it - I wouldn't know where to start or where to end - but I can write a song. I know how to do that.

What did embracing your roots give back to you?
TH. It starts when you're 14 - trying to work out what you are, what's your place in it all? It was a huge leap coming off the dole in Coventry to going and playing in front of 10,000 in New York. You can't get your head round that at 19, 20. It's impossible. I look at my kids, who are 21 and 19, and I think, God, I was that age in the Specials, man! You're so underdeveloped, so young. I think I'm on a constant search to find answers to my questions. I do it musically. That's the best voice for me.

You seem to have these enthusiasms that you dash after, like The Colourfield was your Bobby Goldsboro period...
TH: Definitely. That's a real highlight for me. And the thing I did with Dave Stewart [Vegas], which was a bit all over the place. But I got to meet Charles Aznavour, who meant so much to me... and to my mum. And meeting Charles Aznavour made me realise that you can carry on doing this until you drop.

Weren't you and Dave Stewart writing a musical about Queen Victoria?
TH: Yes, and that got really far down the line until I thought, Hang on, I really don't want to do this. It got terribly lovey, and we had production meetings in America, and I just thought, This was meant to be a joke. But you know, I grew up when punk was saying you weren't allowed to like certain things, but I never understood why. I feel much more of a connection with Janis Ian and Leonard Cohen than with any punk rock.

In the Fun Boy Three, did you really burn the Stars & Stripes on US television as a protest against the invasion of Grenada?
TH: Yeah, we did. It was on a pop programme called Switch. They closed the programme down after that because it set all the alarms off. Also, Neville insisted it wouldn't burn unless he soaked the thing in lighter fluid. Which is how he set his fire to his trousers as well. It was fucking *hilarious.

We were meant to go on tour in America, but the US embassy demanded an apology in return for work visas. But I didn't want to apologise. I thought that was a shit thing to do. We went, but I got so wound up by this, that at our first gig in San Francisco I got out a big American flag and said, "You can stick this up your fucking arse." We got bottled, it was dead funny. We split up soon after that.

But a stage is a brilliant platform to air a view and see who's with you and who's against you... I made the point at Glastonbury. We're back playing 30 years on and we're still invading countries we shouldn't invade, and the Prime Minister is still a cunt. Why aren't today's bands protesting against what's going on? Funnily enough, the only person at the summer festivals who was consistently making a point abut the BNP was Lily Allen. Least expected, do you know what I mean?

The Specials seem to be getting so much out of this. It's a shame Jerry can't enjoy it too...
TH: You've got to sacrifice a bit of yourself to be in a band. We all know Jerry can't do that. It's sad but it's his shit; it's not our shit. No-one's ever said to Jerry, You can't do this. But what we *have said that there's six-sevenths of the band wanting to do this, in this way, and we can't all be that wrong. It's a bit weird, and I think putting it down is an insult to our audience. It's like saying, "And you're all stupid as well..."

JB: I can't help thinking, How do people feel, being told that it's denigrating the name of the Specials? Having danced themselves stupid after 27 years of waiting, and not one bad review? Okay, one bad review - in Uncut.

I heard Jerry wanted to picket the Brixton show, with some pals from the Fireman's union...
TH: I wish he had've done. Jerry and a bunch of fireman, picketing our gig? Fucking brilliant! Bring it on! Fingers crossed for Hammersmith!

Are you fed up of talking about him?
TH: I understand why people ask about Jerry. I'm fascinated by Jerry and why he's not doing it, and I'm in the group! I can't get my head round it at all.

JB: Terry, you know how hard I tried to get him on board, which apparently he denies. He denies my phone calls. But I've been too busy enjoying this to even think about him lately. To think about the problem. What's good is still good. But I don't want to do any more interviews about Jerry. We've got enough on the old plate. We should just focus and get on with it.

When there's one guy left out in a band, people always imagine that it's the rest who are somehow ganging up on him. Like Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd...
JB: Perhaps eventually people will get around to thinking, Maybe the six of them have a point.

TH: I think our audience have already done that. They've made their decision whether they're gonna see this band or not.

JB: We can deal with it, and we are dealing with it. And the future is out there. The future is not written.

Interview by Danny Eccleston

BACK TO THE SPECIALS Q&A CONTENTS PAGE!