Sixty Minute Men
Alf Martin hits the land of cheese, clogs, windmills and dope dealers to track down some very Special boys.
One hour. Sixty minutes. 3600 seconds.
Anyone and everyone connected with a working band lives and breathes for that one solitary hour in the day when the lights, PA and adrenalin are turned on.
The Specials are no exception, only seeing them before any gig in their normal clothes, you'd never think they'd get it together.
Amsterdam on a cold day. Canals frozen solid. Feet and hands turning blue. Enter the hotel. Various members of the band pounce when told we have all of that week's music papers. Starved of any stimulation that day they devour the contents, passing round interesting stories.
Out of a corridor appears Jerry Dammers, leader and keyboards player of the Specials. Now. I've seen some unlikely looking rock stars in my time but he beats the lot. For a start there's the famous Dammers teeth. or lack of them. Just a huge gap at the front where they should be. When he talks he tends to splatter you with saliva. Lucky he doesn't talk that much.
He's wearing an old and shabby suede coat, and hanging from the arms of the coat are a pair of gloves,
attached to a piece of elastic that runs up one arm, across his back and down the other. Perhaps he loses a lot of pairs of gloves or he's just a kid at heart. All this is topped off with a scarf, wrapped around his neck and a black and white peaked cap on his head. Other members of the band are just as suitably attired .
Suddenly we're surrounded by people and trying to fathom out who's in the band and who isn't gets pretty difficult. Including the horns men, there're nine people in the band.
This is a story starring Jerry Dammers, keyboards; Roddy 'Radiation' Byers, lead guitar; Lynval Golding, rhythm guitar; Neville Staples and Terry Hall, vocals; Horace Panter, bass and John Bradbury drums. Plus supporting cast and bit - part actors.
First on the agenda is a trip to the town centre to catch Monty Python's 'Life Of Brian'. Because we're late we're pushed into front row seats, meaning that you have to lie almost vertically, to watch the film.
I'm not sure if this was some Monty Python joke but when the show ended, all the lights in the house
went out and the doors stayed locked.
Onto the Milkweg Club, a hangover from the sixties with dope, space cake, films, theatre, music and general "stoned - ness" . . . in that order. It causes great amusement to all those present, but you soon get bored .
Then another club but the party is depleted. 'Rapper's Delight' by Sugarhill Gang comes over the
speakers and Jerry Dammers is bopping away to It. He tells me that the Specials appeared on a TV
programme with them and he was amazed how professional those guys were. "Word Perfect." he
splutters at me.
By 5 O'Clock a few decide to go. Drummer John Bradbury has been hoarse all night. His throat is gradually packing up. As we walk out with manager Rick Rogers, John says he knows the way to go. One
hour later we are still walking, totally lost. Hugh, the record company's PR vainly tries to stop a car ...
only to end up being driven down the road on top of the bonnet.
I ask Rick Rogers how he gets the Specials going in the morning. He gives the obvious answer: "I tell
them to be ready two hours before we're leaving and we usually end up at the right time."
Jerry Dammers was the last to go to bed and, in the morning’ the last to get on the coach. We're travelling to the South of Holland, Sitvaard and 80 miles down the road I join the coach. Jerry's back in Slumberland.
Bass guitarist Horace Panter is huddled in a corner with his coat and hat on. The heater doesn't work. "We were told this would be a luxury coach," he moans "But look at it." He seems the quiet and sensible member of the group. As he looks the studious type I ask him if he has any hobbies part from the group.
"I was thinking of taking up a hobby but that has to be something you like and music is the thing I like. I'm in a job I enjoy doing, I can travel and I get paid – probably about as much as your average teacher - for it."
Horace takes pride in telling you about his stereo system as though it's his pride and joy. "It isn't
expensive but it's beautiful." he says with a glint in his eyes. He doesn't want anything else but: "One dav I'd like to buy a house and maybe alittle car."
Being the quiet one in the group I asked how he got on with the others. "Well, there's enough of us to form different groups at different times. If you want to be on your own you can and if you want to party you can.
"Robert Fripp once said you need three things to make a group – a love of music, to like one another
and to like money. If you have all those or at least two. it should work."
One thing that strikes you about the Specials is they may not look like regular rock stars, or act like
shrewd businessmen, but when you talk to them about 2-Tone, their own record cop3any, there's no flies on these boys.
"I'm not sure if it's too early for some of the groups." says Horace. " Sometimes I get a bit worried . Like if we sign the Bodysnatchers, what are we letting them in for?
At the moment we're sticking to the people we've got. Later we might expand. "
Enter Sitvaard. Hotel, and soundcheck. The gig is next door to the hotel.
The gig. This is what it's all about. That one hour in the day which the band and anyone connected with
them has been waiting for. The transformation of tired, bored, sleepy - eyed scruffs into a pulsating rhythm machine. The clothes, the hair and the vitality are all geared for this moment.
Dressed in their best outfits - flashy glasses, ties and shiny shoes - they are greeted with shouts of
"Rude Bwoys". They open with 'Dawning Of A New Era' and continue into 'Do The Dog'.
How can anyone play that much good music while concentrating on superb dancing as well? Neville
Staples' muscular body gets into action and never stops. He toasts (although it sounds like singing to
me) along with Terry Hall and sweats bucketfuls. Throughout the set he climbs over the amps, hangs
from the balcony and falls all oyer the stage.
He even cuts a chunk out of his face when he drops his monitor onto himself. "It happens all the time," he says later.
The gig was one of the hottest, tightest, energy - packed sets I've ever seen. Praise should definitely go to drummer John Bradbury for pushing and holding the whole thing together; not forgetting horn me Rico and Dick for adding the extra oomph.
With the Specials you don't just listen to their very catchy songs, you want to dance with them as well. Especially when vocalists Neville Staples and Terry Hall try to out-dance one another on 'Night Club'. One line in the song says: "I wouldn't dance in a club like this." Well, no one’s listening because the mass is definitely moving.
Their hits, other hits, and five encores ending with 'Madness', make it a superb night. Jerry Dammers even jumps headlong into the audience to finish it off. Then the change takes place again.
Back to being tired and scruffy. .. off-duty Specials.
At the hotel three British guys who are in the RAF have travelled from Germany to see them. A
drinking session starts and the small hotel is going crazy with about 30 orders all coming up at once. Perry. chief fan from Britain supplies sweets and someone shouts the news that Coventry have beaten
Liverpool 1-0.
"Oh well." says Rick Rogers. "That's the last time John Peel plays any of our records."
It’s getting like Barnum and Baileys circus now with people milling about all over the place. Terry Hall is about to do an interview over the phone with American radio. He's kept his moody. straight faced look for the whole of the time I've been there but when he comes back and says the name of the girl that interviewed him a smile cracks his face. Jane Hamburger. The smile soon goes as he sits down on his chair, topples over and falls flat on his back.
I turn to Neville, who has had problems with the law in the past, and ask if music had kept him out of
prison. "Well, it was music that got me in there in the first place. I had my own sound system and wanted to build my own speakers. I nicked some wood from a yard and got .caught!"
Jerry Dammers wants to know more about America. Is it possible to get around there by travelling in
the truck instead of flying? "I'm scared," he says, "I even used to get nervous in cars ." But he knows that on some of the gigs he's got to fly, so there's nothing he can do about it.
The drinking' continues. The eyes get blurry. No wonder they look tired the rest of the time. Apparently
John Bradbury and Jerry Dammers stay up all night.
They're off to America now, and I'm sure, in the daytime, they'll be just as tired. But I bet the Specials, and everyone else involved with them will still have every ounce of stamina for that one hour that matters.
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