Sunday 25 May 2014

With ‘Ska Crazy!’, Neville Staple Shows He’s Still Pretty Special


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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