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The Rat Race Jon Read of the Specials: 31 July 1998 Fritz: How's the Warped Tour? Jon: To be honest with you, it's been going really well. It's organized anarchy. We arrive in the morning and we don't know what time of day we're on the stage. You could be on in two hours or seven hours. It's fun, it's interesting and it's very hot as well. F: You don't get a certain set time because you're the forefathers of the whole movement? J: Well, we generally get pretty good time slots, but we've been on at 1:30, we've been on last. F: How has the crowd response been? Pretty good, I'd assume. J: The crowd's been brilliant. Especially in this neck of the woods - up the East Coast. Brilliant response. F: Even for the new stuff? J: Well, the set we play is nine songs, three of which are old songs and the rest is all new stuff. "Message To You, Rudy" will always get a big cheer, because that's a Specials anthem now, and we play that, "Concrete Jungle" or "Gangsters" and "Rat Race." But "It's You," "Bonediggin'" and "All Gone Wrong" off the album all go really well. F: Has Rancid come out and played for "It's You?" J: Yeah, and Neville's gone out with them to do "Hooligan." ['Sir'] Horace ['Gentleman' Pinter], our bassist, is ill and couldn't come on this tour, so I've playing bass, but to keep my trumpet in I've been going on with Save Ferris and doing a couple numbers with them. We're having a good time on this tour. F: I'm curious about how the fans have been - I'm sure lots of people say the Specials are their favorite band, but this is like their first chance to see them. J: You can see the excitement - after the show, kids saying "Oh God, I've met the Specials" or "Wow, I've just seen the Specials." For me, it's different because I'm part of the new line-up. For me, when I joined, it was the same buzz, being in the Specials and playing songs that I'd grown up with, songs I'd listened to. I can relate to what they're thinking. In 1990, before I joined, the Specials weren't about anymore, and you never thought you'd get to see them, let alone play with them. F: You didn't play on the Today's Specials Record, right? J: No, I'm on Guilty 'Til Proved Innocent. Today's Specials was a cover album; it wasn't really a Specials album. F: But it had the Specials name on it ... J: Yeah, well, between you and me, when I first heard it, I was like, "ugh." They wanted to put that album out before they put the new stuff out. The new album's all original and it's back to what the Specials are about. F: Yeah, it has a much better overall feel and quality ... J: Well, there's no comparison, really. F: Has anyone ever said anything to you about not having Jerry and Terry involved? J: To be honest with you, the only people who ever ask us those questions are the press. If you ask most of the kids in the audience, they wouldn't be able to tell you who Jerry and Terry were. I'm not dissing them as people, because they did their part at the time and they were part of the original band, but the whole band wrote the new songs. Mark [Adams] the keyboard player wrote five of the songs on the album, which in my opinion are some of the best ones on the album. The spirit of the Specials is still there. And at the end of the day, the kids don't care who the keyboard player is or who wrote the songs. It's the whole show: the image onstage and the atmosphere. That's what's important. Some of the old school fans - the older generation - in the audience might say "Where's Jerry and Terry?" but the young kids don't know. For example, our guitar tech went out the other day and bought the first Specials album, put it on, and he hated it! It didn't have the live excitement - he's only ever seen us live, and he's heard the new album, but find "Message To You, Rudy" and all those old ones. But he didn't like the album; it was too laid back for him. I think a lot of the young kids are preferring the new stuff as well. Of course, they have respect for the old stuff. F: For someone like you - you said you grew up listening to the Specials - J: Yeah, I was like 14 when they first hit - F: What is it like to be up there playing with them? J: Well, the first few times, it was really weird. Imagine your favorite band, and then you're there playing with them - it was like a dream come true. That sounds a bit cliché, but we all wrote songs on the new album, so you feel part of the band. The Specials have had so many different incarnations anyway - this is just the latest. And this band's been together for four-and-a-half years, which is longer than any other incarnation of the Specials. We feel part of new. F: Do you ever wish you could get rid of the old stuff and just concentrate on the new album? I'm sure you get tired of talking about it. J: But that's part of the Specials' history. The Rolling Stones could never get away without playing "Satisfaction," do you know what I mean? Those old songs are part of the Specials' culture and heritage, so you have to play them. The original members of the band are sick of playing them, sometimes, but they're songs that I grew up with, so I love playing them. F: How about the charges that the Specials ended when Fun Boy Three split off (after "Ghost Town") and you guys are just cashing in on the ska revival? J: If we'd come out here using the Specials name and played big auditoriums, not done a new album and purely played the old stuff, then I'd agree with that. But this is a brand new album. And the whole thing about the Specials wasn't just who was in the band, it was about the political statements the band makes, and what the band stands for. I've heard that argument a few times, but we've played the clubs. We're worked up from the bottom, same as everyone else. We haven't just come in and done an auditorium tour and cashed in on the name. We've worked up again. F: I know you weren't in the band during the Two-Tone era, but I always thought one of the best things about the Specials was how they were about racial harmony, black and white getting together. Looking at the crowd here, and at other big ska shows, it's almost exclusively white. Does that bother you at all? J: As a band, that's one thing you wish you could change. In England, it's a hangover from when most of the audience was skinheads, and, you know, why should a black person come to a show and put themselves in a position where they might be attacked? You could understand that a little bit. But here, it's a shame. I don't know what the answer might be. Another thing is that the black population of America are not West Indian - they're Americans, and England's population grew up with ska. I find it amazing here that a black person doesn't know what ska is. In England, that's unheard of. Most black people in England are from Jamaica or Trinidad, and so they know what ska is. Here, a white person has to explain to a black person what ska is. I suppose it's just a different musical heritage in a lot of ways. But you're right - it would be much nicer if a lot more black kids could come in and enjoy themselves. Because that's what the band is about, if nothing else, at the end of it. We were just talking about this the other day. If we could leave some sort of unity message, that's the most important thing. I'm married to a black woman, so my whole life is mixed up to that interracial thing - that's what we're about. It's not a pose. It's genuine. That's what we believe. I'm not dissing the USA, but as soon as we crossed the border into Canada, the audience was completely different. You saw kids hanging out - black kids, white kids and asian kids, mixing together. You don't see that in America. It's nice to see a few other bands doing that - Save Ferris is a mixed band, so's Hepcat. They just need to get it across to their audience as well. F: Do you feel any sort of responsibility to the scene because so many of the other bands look up to you? J: You mean the original Specials? It's hard for me to answer this one. But it's weird, because all the kids look as the Specials as the guys who started it, but the Specials themselves say, "Hang on a second, it's the Skatalites and Prince Buster and Laurel Aitken. That's who we grew up with." They started it, and the Specials just added their own thing to it. I think that's one thing Americans missed. We're the link between today's ska and Skatalites. They were the band for us. They were the men. To us, they should be selling five million albums, but they don't. F: When you guys were writing songs for the new albums, did you think about the classic Specials sound at all? J: Well, I'd say that sound comes naturally. Today's Specials was just a little sojourn off somewhere else. When we sit and jam, it'll sound like the Specials. Obviously those of us who came in knew what the band sounded like; we'd grown up with it. It's not like "We need to sound like the Specials used to sound." If you picked Roddy with his guitar playing and the drumming and the bass, you're going to get that sound anyway. That's what the band's about. F: Well, for example, "Fantasize" sounds more like "Fade Away" or "Ghost Town" than some of the other new stuff, which has a much rougher, more modern edge to it. J: But if you listen to every Specials album, though, they're not just one pace or one beat all the way through. They vary. Look at "Ghost Town." It's a classic song, but it's not a ska song; it's a rootsy-reggae type song. I think they've always been fairly varied in their styles. F: So what are you listening to on the tour bus for inspiration or whatever? J: We've had everything on our tour bus. Lynval, of all people, has been blasting the Deftones. This morning we had Bob Marley. We were all pissed off, so we put on Bob Marley to liven us up and get the spirits going. Anything you can imagine, we've had on the bus. That's the thing about the Specials - we're not narrow minded enough to think that sort of music's right or wrong, you get your influences from everywhere. I admire what the Deftones do, and I respect them musically, but they're not my scene. We've had the Reverend Horton Heat on our bus as well. That's the great thing about this tour: all the bands have got on really well. It doesn't matter what sort of music you play, there's no sort of hierarchy. It's all mixed up and we've sat on each other's tour buses and chatted. No one's fallen out yet, that I'm aware of. F: Last question: If you were describing the Specials to someone who'd never heard the Specials before, how would you do it? J: We're a live dance band that you come to dance to and have a good time. High energy, which is what we've always been. We discourage the crowd-surfing, though. If you want to see us, come and dance and have a good time. Let everything go and just rock out. |