With
ailing health and discouraged by inter-band strife, Neville Staple left the
Specials for the second time in the fall of 2012, as the reunited ska legends
had just completed a victory lap. While the band went on to stage a successful
subsequent tour without the toaster/vocalist, Staple has re-emerged with Ska
Crazy!, his latest solo effort that shows that he's still pretty special in his
own right, with or without the band that brought him his greatest success.
The
59-year-old Jamaican-born vocalist was in a serious car accident in 2011 and
subsequently suffered a few minor strokes. Still, he felt well enough to resume
touring with the Specials, but during a show in Copenhagen, he began to feel
strange while on stage.
"As
I reached the side to go off, I must have collapsed in a heap and I went into a
seizure with severe epileptic convulsions," he says. "This had never
happened to me before and I guess with the pressures of the strict regime, the
behind the scenes back-biting and the lack of band support for each other, that
was the moment I knew I had to get out."
The
following day, Staple became even more ill, suffering additional seizures.
"I was in a really terrible state and knew that if I stayed in the band, I
would probably end up dead," he says.
Instead
of becoming another rock 'n' roll casualty, Staple left the Specials, with the
band issuing a notice on of its website that said, "We are very sad
Neville cannot join us on the Specials U.K. tour in May 2013 or indeed on the
future projects we have planned. He has made a huge contribution to the
fantastic time and reception we have received since we started and reformed in
2009. However, he missed a number of key shows last year due to ill health, and
his health is obviously much more important. We wish him the very best for the
future."
Staple
isn't as diplomatic, revealing that his time with the band the second time
around was not always pleasant. "The behind the scenes squabbling,
back-biting, and certain members being two-faced was worse than ever," he
says. "There was no equality about amongst us all and it was no longer
about the music or the message."
Interestingly,
Staple dedicated Ska Crazy! to Specials' founder Jerry Dammers, who wasn't part
of the reunion. "Jerry first had the idea to get the band reunited and
unfortunately after sharing that idea with [guitarist/vocalist] Lynval
[Golding], it was taken out of his hands and he was never invited to be part of
it. Business politics, I’m afraid," he says.
It seems
that Staple also has some ill will towards Specials frontman Terry Hall, who
went public several years ago with the admission that he's been battling severe
depression. "I didn’t know about his depression as such but he has always
been very moody and unfriendly," he says. "I guess that’s just the
way he is, as I have friends who have severe depression but they are still nice
to be around."
The
first time the Specials split in 1981, Staple, Hall, and Golding formed the Fun
Boy Three, the combo who helped introduce the world to their female
counterparts Bananarama and recorded their own version of "Our Lips Are
Sealed," a song Hall co-wrote with the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin, which became
a top 10 hit in the U.K.
"After
the Specials split, it seemed like the right move at the time," Staple
says now of the Fun Boy Three. "But to be honest, it was just a bit of
fun." Given his animosity toward Hall and Golding, it isn't too surprising
that when asked if there's any chance of a Fun Boy Three reunion, Staple asks,
"Is that a joke?"
Yet on
Ska Crazy! he does tip his porkpie hat to the trio by serving up a new version
of the band's "The Farmyard Connection," first heard on the Fun Boy
Three's second and final album, 1983's Waiting. "I had always thought that
track could have been done better with a more reggae feel to it," Staple
says. "So working solo with my band gave me the chance to do it the way I
wanted."
The
grow-your-own saga also seems timely now, especially in the U.S., with some
states legalizing marijuana, something Staple is in favor of. "I believe
there are a lot of health benefits in marijuana and these seem to be proven a
lot more these days," he says. "I have never felt that the law should
be so strict on it and think the legalization is a good thing, if done
properly."
Elsewhere
on Ska Crazy!, Staple pays homage to some of his musical heroes by serving up
covers of Prince Buster's "Time Longer Than Rope," the Slickers'
"Johnny Too Bad" and Max Romeo's "Wet Dream" as well as his
own songs "Rude Boy Returns," "Girl" and
"Roadblock," the album's first single and video.
Thematically,
Ska Crazy! offers a mix of songs with topics ranging from sexual relations to
politics. "I like to mix it up because we have major issues regarding gang
crime, sex issues, and a lot of politics around the young people of
today," he says. "Things seem to be getting worse again like they
were during the Two-Tone years. The relationship songs were to put a lighter
air on the album amongst the more serious stuff."
Lending
a hand on those songs about relationships is Staple's wife, a singer he does
enjoy working with. "It was great," he says. "It was my turn to
be the bossy one and tell her what to do! But on a serious note, my wife
Christine is great to work with and helps me so much with my career in and out
of the studio. She’s my rock."
Musically,
rocksteady and ska remain Staple's go-to genres. It's a sound that has managed
to transcend being just a trend, time and time again. "I am not really
surprised because when you think about it that’s what we did with the Specials,
we used old-time ska and modernized it. This led to young people looking back
to where it came from. This has happened again and again with the different
waves of ska. I am hearing lots more young bands now also putting their own
spin on ska – some with dance music and some with a rock beat. It's all
good," he says. "The music just makes you want to dance. Even when singing
about tough times, every-day things or bad things, the beat and the rhythm
makes you want to move!"
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