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The Ska'dfather Dave Wakeling of the English Beat STAND UP BARACK, STAND UP PLEASE Never let it be said Dave Wakeling’s lost his passion to right a world skewed wrong. Never you done that, no, never you done that. It’s been nearly 30 years since the Beat broke the music scene with heavy social commentaries about dethroning then-PM Margaret Thatcher (Stand Down Margaret) and seeing in oneself the same National Front violence being rallied against (Two Swords). It’s now 2008, and Dave’s still got a strong moral compass that yet infuses itself into his music and his concert performances. And, as it happens, this interview as well. As impressive as Dave’s musical career has charted, with top 40 hits on all sides of the Atlantic, it’s equally impressive just how intelligent and thoughtful the man is. It’s hard not to be impressed by a musician who has lent his time and talent to charitable causes since Day One. In fact, Dave is literally one to put his money where his mouth is. If you’ve taken in an English Beat gig in the last few years, you’ll know a current flame he’s championing is "The Smile Train," a charity seeking to give facially disfigured children in lesser developed nations a chance at a normal life for just $250 a smile. For all there is in the popstar public persona of Dave Wakeling, there is just as much to the humanistic "average man" side of Dave Wakeling. Adept at fingering a fretboard, Dave is just as proficient with his ever-present iPhone. The first few minutes of our conversation, resting on the surprisingly comfortable foam rubber-filled couches/beds of Dave’s tour bus stateroom, were spent admiring his "Electrogizmo Big Boy’s Toy." He was even messaging me from the iPhone while he was supposed to be in soundcheck, prior to the interview, the sign of a true technophile/technoslave. And if you’re a Myspace compadre of Dave’s, don’t ever think he’s playing you aside. Before we could start he had to check his profile mail and send off a few bulletins and blogs. Interview by Steve Bringe Thanks to Annette Ovanessian for her advice and review |
 Photo by Steve Bringe |
Concerning his iPhone:
Dave Wakeling : It’s nice, you don’t have a typewriter all the time just when you need it (yes, he said typewriter, as he shows me the graphic touchscreen keyboard on the display). It comes up...
Steve Bringe: How touchy is it, though?
DW: Once you get the hang of it, it’s great, but I got little fat thumbs, you know?
SB: Yeah, I was wondering how you reach all the frets.
DW: (Completely preoccupied with his iPhone). Yeah.
DW: I’m watching the politics religiously.
SB: You were around when Margaret Thatcher was around.
DW: Of course... (goes back to his iPhone, ignoring the TV - so much for watching religiously)
Concerning moving up and down the California Coast:
DW: So we ended up living in Malibu, but basically we were just sleeping in Malibu transporting the kids to and from play dates [and] sleepovers. We spent most of our time in Pacific Palisades and just crept back to Malibu to sleep. It was a year’s experiment and we didn’t like it so we moved out of there.
SB: The traffic’s horrible up there, too.
DW: Ah, yeah. The wife got it worse than I did.
SB: Were you there for the fires?
DW: Well, that’s what finally finished it. I was doing shows and came back at 7 am to find they’d been evacuated, and the flames came within 400 yards twice.
SB: Crap. Yeah, that’ll move you.
DW: So then, there’s an ambulance depot down at the bottom of the road, and you hear the sirens pretty often, and my daughter, every time she’d hear the sirens, she thought it was a fire, and she’d start running around trying to grab her… I’d tell her it’s not a fire.
Concerning his consummate professionalism, adhering to the adage "The Show Must Go On":
DW: I’m afraid I’m suffering from the "Tour Cold." Sucking Cold Eeze seems to work pretty good. And the Rapid Tabs.
SB: Yeah. Any good?
DW: Yes, they are. I only got them yesterday at the Walmart and I feel noticeably better. The smell, my nose was blocked. It’s the hardest thing to sing... (pinches nose and sings what I believe was Mirror in the Bathroom).
SB: I don’t know if you get allergies, but the juniper count is through the roof right now.
DW: Well, that’s often how it started, and it never really ever... I used to get allergies bad in England but not when I moved to California. And we’d go all through the weeks of shows, you know, Denver, Salt Lake, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and all the way over to Boston, New York. It was snowing like crazy, everyone staying healthy. Amazing. Got on the bus in Boston, woke up the next day in Chapel Hill, walked off the bus and it was springtime. I was sneezing so hard my stomach was hurting. That went on for about two days, at Chapel Hill and Charlotte. And then we headed down to Florida and by that time it had turned into a real cold. (He still did the gigs)
This interview was conducted under the guise of a project for Madness Central, centered on Dave’s association with Madness and the 2 Tone movement to which he and his songwriting was so integral. So quickly, through Dave’s disarming nature, it became an unfiltered white light illuminating the man and musician.
The Beginnings of 2 Tone and an Endorsement for a Better Tomorrow
Steve Bringe: This is Dave Wakeling…
Dave Wakeling: Welcome to Albuquerque!
SB: Right, welcome to Albuquerque.
DW: Thanks very much, it’s a pleasure to be here.
SB: Yeah, thank you. Alright, here we go. It’s 1978 in Birmingham. What was it like finding that other bands, like Madness, were championing the same musical stylings as the English Beat?
DW: To start with, it was a huge disappointment, I’ll be honest. We saw a double-page spread in the Melody Maker, the Specials, and the bass player, David (Steele), brought the paper in and threw it on the floor and said, "Fuck, it’s too late! Somebody else is doing it!"
But as it turned out, everybody had got a slightly different angle on it anyway. You know, we were trying to mix the energy of punk with the hypnotic vibe of reggae into the same three minute song. We wanted to get one sound going, which took us a long time.
And Madness had got, like, more of a mixing of ska with a pop kind of edge on it. Classic 60’s pop is always what I think of for them. And the Specials had some of the punk side and a reggae side that lent to each a bit of flavour, but the songs were quite different from each other.
We were trying to get the Velvet Underground meets Toots & the Maytals with the blues down. That was the aim.
SB: It came out okay. You sold a few records.
DW: Sold a few records. Not too bad.
SB: Okay, here’s another one. With the passing of legends like Desmond Dekker, it kind of hits home that the first generation of ska is passing from the contemporary to the historic. Any thoughts?
DW: It makes us the next ones on the conveyor belt, doesn’t it? I suppose now we can walk around and call ourselves "The Kings of Ska," or the "Ska’dfather" as I personally prefer.
It’s always sad when you hear of an artist that you really loved has died. Then again there’s something of them that remains there forever. The records, the memories and stuff, and so, in a way, being a recording artist kind of makes you immortal. Like having a Desmond Dekker record on, he’s right in the room with me, even though he’s not on the earth anymore. So I hope people feel the same way about us one day.
SB: Let’s not talk about that just yet. You’ve got quite a few years yet.
DW: I’m probably immortal anyway. I’m still not convinced I’m going to die.
SB: Is that the Buddhist in you, or…?
DW: I don’t know. It’s a sense of denial, I think.
SB: Alright. Geez. I wrote a paragraph here. So let’s see. Now there’s been a third wave of ska, with so many of these bands that cite you as a major influence in their sound; Save Ferris, Reel Big Fish, No Doubt, and even non-ska bands like the Killers give you props. Seeing as you were in the US and privy to what was mainly a California-based ska revival, what did you think of the up-and-comers? How did they compare to what you accomplished in the 70’s and 80’s?
DW: Well, now there’s a fourth wave of ska as well, isn’t there, that goes back more to the first wave, the original roots, things like the Aggrolites, Westbound Train, or in England the Dualers, or something like that… Pressure Cooker out of Boston, and they remind me more of like Hepcat, where they’ve got a real feel of the original first wave, almost… you know, somewhere between Trojan dirty reggae and that slightly jazz-style of the session guys who used to play on the ska records.
So now, there’s a fourth wave ska, and each one of the waves is almost identical in as much as the ones who got the songs that really connect… last in people’s hearts for a long time… and the ones that have just adopted the stance of ska. I mean, there was quite a lot in Orange County (California) during that third wave period that were bands that had been a heavy metal band three weeks before and now seen No Doubt flying and suddenly become ska bands. It’s down to the songs. If you have a song that connects, that resonates with somebody’s heart, then things will go well. If it’s just ska for ska’s sake, pickit-a pickit-a pickit-a, and nothing else about it, then it tends to just come and go with the passing fashion wave or the clothing.
There were differences. I didn’t find third wave ska to be as overtly political as second wave ska. You know, the Specials and the Beat had big mouths and a lot to say politically, but that might have been the times. It’s a little harder sometimes, I think, to be political and be an artist in America because you might lose your career opportunities.
SB: Look at the Dixie Chicks.
DW: Yeah, people can get real riled up about it, can’t they? For me at the time, it seemed, how could you live in England in the late 70’s and bring out 12 songs and not have politics in them? Seeing that was what everybody was talking about at each bus stop, everybody was talking about in each bar. And so to get on stage and sing a load of songs that didn’t reflect the society you lived in seemed to me more a political act than just calmly mentioning what was going on in your own backyard.
Now I’m not as overtly political but I still sing about social politics, perhaps. Up until recently I’ve kept myself out of party politics in America, but I have to say that I’m so impressed with Barack Obama that I’ve lent my voice a couple of times to that. Only in as much as… it’s interesting going back to England, depending on whom the president is in America, and either America is very cool, which it was in the last decade, or America is like the Great Satan, which unfortunately it seems to have become in English minds.
So I go back home now, and people say… go back home. I go to England. California’s home… I go back to England and people say, "But how can you live amongst them, Dave?" And I’m like, "No, they’re not like that, honestly." I think it’s incredibly sad that, having traveled every state more times than most Americans in the last 30 years, I’ve always been touched by the kindness and the tolerance in American people. Like they live with all sorts of mixtures in their own communities and cultures, and yeah, we have our violent moments, but in the main part everybody coexists, everybody gets on pretty well. And it’s a shame that we end up getting such a terrible reputation internationally, and I don’t think it reflects the kindness of the American people, really.
So I got the feeling that with Barack Obama as the president, America would start to be respected for the good things that it had done, and we’d be able to be a light, not a hammer. You get a reputation to be the inspiration of the world, and not just the bogeyman. Should be ashamed, you know. I was thinking about it last week, and it’s like, most of the world looks up to America, so it’s a shame that we keep spitting in their eye. We’re better than that. I think Barack Obama would give us a better face internationally. He could show that we’d crossed a line in our own evolution, that people would feel much more secure with us around, the rest of the world.
SB: He’s got heart.
DW: He certainly does, and I mean, he’s got heart and he was the editor of the Harvard Review which meant he was the best lawyer at Harvard that year, so he’s pretty smart, too. It’s a nice combination.
SUGAR AND STRESS, FLIP EVERY PENNY AT LEAST TWICE
Going on the second 40 minutes of chatting with Dave Wakeling, a brief interlude interjected itself into the proceedings as a bikini-and-cape-clad buxom lass jetted across the football pitch (soccer field for the Yanks) during a US Soccer Team match on the muted TV.
Dave Wakeling: Oh, now that’s better. They usually have naked guys running across the soccer field, but that’s a lot better.
Steve Bringe: That’s a vision.
DW: Now he’s going to tackle her.
SB: I think that guy just found a date, didn’t he?
DW: Yeah. So he’s looking, he starts looking... no, I’m not looking. That’s so great. Good girl. Now who won, though?
SB: Who cares?
DW: Oh, come on, it’s America and a football. What kind of patriot are you?
SB: I’m looking at the girl, man.
DW: Oh, yeah. Right. Who are these guys running around?
What’s the point of all that? The dichotomy, my friend. Dave Wakeling is a serious man, and Dave Wakeling is a naughty, filthy schoolboy. Using one of his favorite metaphors, it’s two sides of the same penny. As the conversation with Dave drove on, it became increasingly apparent that he operated on many universal echelons simultaneously, that he could switch from talking on the beauty of musical inspiration to the innate ugliness of a divisive world culture just as quickly as you could flip said penny, not knowing which face would land upwards in his somehow racing but cohesive mind.
Let’s start off this segment with a tale of Madness.
We’ll Start at Victoria Gardens and End with a Rendez View
SB: Okay, next one here. I just need to put this one in here somewhere…
DW: Sure.
SB: 1983, there’s this song called "Victoria Gardens" (on the Madness album Keep Moving)…
DW: Oh yeah.
SB: …and you guys came in there and lent your vocals. How did that come about?
DW: It was one of those nice accidents, that [Madness] happened to be recording in London at the same time as we were. And so, it was like, oh, we got this song, and somebody said, "Oh, it would sound great with those boys from the Beat on it, wouldn’t it? Would you like to come down?" And so we did. It didn’t take very long. I wish it’d took longer, as it was great fun.
I’d known Clive Langer before I was in a group, and before he’d started producing Madness. He was involved with a group from Liverpool, whose name bloody escapes me. But now if you’re a Madness historian, you’ll…
SB: Maybe the Boxes? Was that it? Or was that afterwards?
DW: No, it was a rock band out of Liverpool that he was connected to. And a friend of mine in Birmingham, Paul, used to work for him, so I’d met him. And so it was nice to see [Clive], and it was an honor, really, to be on a Madness song, because they really had the three minute pop single down, didn’t they?
SB: Sure.
DW: Sometimes, coming from Birmingham, we didn’t really understand what they were on about ’cause they’re from London, so it all seemed like rhyming slang. It’s like, "What’s he on about? What’s he on about? Well, it probably means something in London."
SB: Oh, that’s just Lee Thompson. He’s got bizarre lyrics.
DW: Yeah.
SB: Alright, thanks. Let’s see. Your current tour has you trekking from North Carolina, to Florida, to Texas, to New Mexico, and back to California. How does this compare to when you started out with 2 Tone? How does the touring compare to that now?
DW: Well, most of the time I’m sober enough to remember it nowadays. I don’t remember much of the other one. So that would be a direct comparison there.
It doesn’t have the furore of like when you have an album in the charts. But then, you got a lot of people at concert in those days that were there because their school friends were there. You buy the albums because the other kids in the class are buying the album.
Now, we play to people who have either been listening to the music for 25 years, and say the sweetest things before and after the shows about how much it means to them, how you’ve been a part of the soundtrack of their lives. Which is very touching, because there’s a lot of exciting things about the pop trade, you know, there’s a lot of benefits and bonuses: The fame, the money, the women, the fast cars, all of the usual clichéd things. But to have somebody say, "Your music has helped me through my life for the last 25 years," is priceless, really. A bit like that Visa card advert, it’s priceless, you can’t buy that.
And so because of that it actually means more than all the rest of it put together, really. Yeah, it’s kind of an honor, you realize then, to be invited into somebody’s life. They’ve used your lyrics and your songs to help them in certain situations. Were they depressed in college and thinking of killing themselves? Were they getting married and a little scared? Were they getting through a divorce and getting even more scared? Were they having a baby? All these things and the different songs they’ve used, and the lyrics they’ve told me that have helped them along the way. How fantastic is that?
SB: Yeah, I won’t bother you with mine.
DW: Yeah, it’s okay, go ahead…
SB: Yeah, you’re part of the soundtrack.
DW: Well, it’s my honor and my pleasure.
SB: It’s my honor and pleasure to actually have had your music around all those years.
DW: Great.
SB: Your Teardrop Vox, it’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now.
DW: How spooky is that? It’s a bit like not doing your homework and still acing the quiz, you know. Because I’m not a shredder, I’ve never done a guitar solo in my life. But it was really a thrill to be asked. It was hard to give it up because I’d played that particular guitar every gig for 27 years straight. Maybe I’d missed one when it was being repaired or something, but whilst it was available and in action I used it every gig. And so it was a tearful parting that morning, and I played it for the last time and had a little cry. I polished the guitar with the tears, put it in the box and took it to the Hall of Fame.
Now it’s sitting in between Kurt Cobain’s guitar and Sterling Morrison’s from the Velvet Underground, and the guy that runs the Hall of Fame did an interview with me in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 80’s where I’d told him what a big Velvet Underground fan I was, and so he put my guitar next to my hero from the Velvet Underground.
SB: How cool is that?
DW: Very cool.
SB: You miss her now, huh? You miss her.
DW: I went back to see her three weeks ago, in Cleveland we played, and I looked, and then I walked away. And then I had to go have another look. And then I found myself saying goodbye a couple times. And then I found myself tearing up a little bit. And then I found myself with one of the people who run the place looking at me like I was about to do something weird, so I had to get out of there quick.
SB: Years I saw you playing that thing.
DW: I’ve got some copies of it now. A fellow called Jack Charles who used to be the guitarist in Quarterflash bought the rights to those Teardrop guitars and makes the most perfect… I wouldn’t say copies, because they’re as good as, and in fact in some ways they’re better, better finished… so I’ve got a direct rendition of the Brian Jones version of it, and a slightly more rocking version with a whammy bar and three pickups, and I might get a semi-acoustic one soon. But he makes great guitars, you should check him out. Phantom Guitars.
The only thing I would say about those guitars is they’re bloody useless for playing on your knee sitting down. It just falls off your knee all the time. If I’d have known.
SB: Your songwriting often harkens back to recurring themes like isolation and greed. Infidelity is another such theme with early hits like "I Confess" to your solo work of "One + One + One." What is it about cheating lovers that has you lyrically revisiting the topic, and do certain aspects of humanity interest you more than others?
DW: I suppose so. You try to think with your head, it just depends which one sometimes.
Interestingly, "I Confess" and "One + One + One" are from different sides of the same penny. So one would be the cheater and the other one would be cheated on. I actually think that human beings are polyamorous. I don’t necessarily believe that monogamy is a natural state, and I think often people get caught between being faithful to an idea or another person, or being faithful to their own heart. And I think that can get you into troubled waters sometimes. Turbulent waters at least.
Luckily, I’m not so driven by it nowadays. I have a chance to take a deep breath and remember that sadly it’s easier to get into a woman than it is than to get out of one.
SB: Like Madness, you’ve dedicated your time and talent in support of organizations like Greenpeace and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. What do you think is the greatest concern to our planet?
DW: I would say global warming is because it’s going to have a lot of repercussions with everything else. You can wonder about population and overpopulation and resources and that, but with a good dose of the effects of climate change coming out of global warming, then whatever resources we do have are going to be stretched even further. And we may end up having to spend so much money on emergency fixes for the effects of global warming that we may not ever get ahead of the game enough to build an infrastructure that could perhaps curtail some of the gases we’re pumping out and have some sort of remedial effect.
So I would say that that’s probably the worst of it. Mind you, you never know when someone’s going to loose off a nuclear bomb, really. That’s always in the back of my mind. I’m just glad now, as I’m sure most Americans are, that we gave Pakistan a nuclear bomb. Good one! Nice move!
SB: Yeah, right.
DW: That taught those Indians a lesson, eh?
SB: We’ll see how long Kashmir lasts, huh?
DW: I know. That is a shame, isn’t it? I don’t know, that’s why I think somebody like dear Obama could help out. I think he says more clearly than a lot of other politicians that we’re all in the same boat here, and that we have to learn to compromise and get on with each other. This divided America and divided world is not responsible for our children. It’s not good enough. It’s not good enough to be squabbling and then leaving them with the pile rubbish to sort out. I think we have a greater responsibility, we’ve got to get this straight. We can’t keep acting like it’s the 19th or the 20th century. It clearly is the 21st century.
And those divisions between all sorts of religious extremists. You could say anything fundamentalist tends to be fundamentality cruel in the end. Whether it’s Muslim, Zionists, Christians, it’s the same bloody God. It’s well meant to be. Poor old God would be rolling in His grave if He was dead.
SB: Well, there’s the quote I’m putting up. There’s the quote I’m taking.
DW: Yeah, that’s right.
SB: Speaking of your social awareness, you continue to include props for The Smile Train. What attracted you to this organization? (During the playing of "Tenderness" at English Beat concerts, Dave invites the audience to throw paper money on the stage in support of The Smile Train).
DW: I saw it by accident, really, just cruising on the internet. And I thought it was a nice name, "Smile Train." You can ask the blokes in Madness, because "the happy train" in England means that somebody’s gone a bit crazy. Ah, he’s on the happy train.
So I thought it was something to do with that and then I looked and it’s this charity that fixes kids with cleft palates around the world, using local surgeons, training people, at 250 bucks. And I just thought that was revolutionary, at a time when the world seems ever more divided and arguing along political and religious lines, I thought, "Well, I bet there isn’t anybody in the world who wouldn’t think it was worth 250 bucks to fix a kid’s face forever."
You know, some of these kids are really looked down upon in their societies. Can’t come out of their house, they’re bad luck, and all of this. So at 250 bucks, give a kid a chance to speak, eat, drink, go to school, lead a normal life. And from a music business perspective, I mean, 250 bucks is a sushi lunch for a few record company guys, and you don’t even eat the wiggly bits.
So, I thought, "What a great thing that would be to be involved in." It seems to me that I’d done a lot of work with Greenpeace, Heal The Bay, nuclear disarmament issues, but the world seems so tight and fractured and divided now that as soon as you mention that you just get into an argument.
And so, seeing Smile Train, I thought, "Wow!" This could be something where I could get involved, it’s a human-based charity, and people would be able to contribute. And after they’ve done it, they’d realize a number of things; one, we can all make quite a profound difference if we all move at the same time, in the same direction. Most nights, during the song "Tenderness", at least one and sometimes up to six kids get a new face in five minutes. And the audience remembers that after the show. "Wow! Well, we did make a big difference." And they remember, "Oh, so what, you mean we’re all one?" It’s like, Ha! Gotcha!
SB: That actually leads into the next question, with another Madness tie-in. You guys helped out on the "Starvation" single (in 1985, Dave and members of UB40, the Pioneers, and the Specials, amongst others, performed on this charity single for African famine relief, a collaboration organized by Madness and released on Madness’ Zarjazz label). From famine to facial disfigurement, do you think the industrialized world, well, actually kind of ignores the developing world at times?
DW: Yes, we either ignore them or abuse them, don’t we? Now we’re sending them the worst of the factory jobs and having their kids do it for us. You know, so, it’s never been too kind.
I think it’s becoming more and more obvious, now that all the kids are on the internet, all the grown-ups now have flown a few places around the world, the world isn’t such a huge place any more, and I think knowledge is becoming more easily shared. I think slowly but surely we’re all starting to realize we’re in the same boat, but whether we’ll do it in time, I don’t know. There’s that balance of fear. You know, fear is a very powerful thing, and it can make people do more or less anything.
SB: So is hope.
DW: Yes, they’re two sides of the same penny, really. And although I understand Barack [Obama]’s vision of hope... I’ve been in touch with their campaign since May of last year and went to visit them in Chicago and offered my support and that… but I also have some fairly harsh things to say about hope. And [Obama’s] actually sort of addressed it in his speeches, that it’s not just pie-in-the-sky or in the future.
But in Buddhist terms fear and hope are more or less the same thing. It just puts you into the future, so that you’re either excited with fear or excited with hope. But unfortunately the only thing that happens when you move into the future is it takes you out of the moment, and the moment is the only place you can ever make complete change. So, hope and fear, it’s just like regret and sweet memories, it’s either the future or the past, but change only ever happens in the moment.
And [Obama’s] kind of addressed that now, that it’s not just pie-in-the-sky hope, but it’s hope plus action… we hope.
SB: You might want to forget about this, but a few years ago… Greg Proops… Rendez View… (Rendez View was an American TV dating show hosted by comedian Greg Proops and featuring guest "judges." Dave sat in on the panel during one episode)
DW: Oh, god… good god…
SB: Yeah. What was that about?
DW: Well, I had a manager at the time who felt that I was of… that I could do my celebrity a world of good by sitting in on various TV shows and getting my face about that way, because I’d always got plenty to say. So I did Rendez View and I did another talk show as well about relationships, based on those men are from Mars, women are from Venus… [some] famous actress that was the star of the show. So I did a few actually, I did a few of them.
I don’t think Rendez View ended up as bad as it could have done, really. There’s something about that kind of reality-style TV that’s a bit vicarious, isn’t it? Laughing at other people for doing exactly the same as you’d do, so it’s a bit superior sometimes. But they also said how fantastic I was and would phone me back and they never did, so that was the end of my job as a TV pundit.
SB: I got that on tape somewhere.
DW: Do you? Thanks a lot.
SB: It’ll find its way up on Youtube one of these days.
DW: Yeah, I bless you for that.
HERE WE GO BATHING IN THE RED LIGHT
In the wrong hands, charm is a frightful thing. Broadcasting a Chicklet-tooth grin into blue-haired checkbooks every Sunday morning, the successful televangelist exploits charm like a dingo exploits a doggy-door to the maternity ward. Strip away the Aquanet helmet, immaculate threads, and Nutrasweet persona, and so often all you have left is a putrid excuse for a stump not even worth lifting an untied boot to rest upon.
I’ve met my fair share of popstars, quite often folks I’ve gone through the rigors of adolescent hero worship with, and it’s utterly heartbreaking when you see the singer doing lines of blow backstage in front of his then-teenage son or the bass player asking a roadie if there is any way he could get a quick fake I.D. for the nubile underage vixen he’s lured back to the tour bus. In the wrong hands, charm is not only frightful, it’s downright disgusting.
It might be cynical, but it’s so much easier living by the adage, "With no expectations there are no disappointments." It’s with this mindset that I go into interviews and reviews, and more often than not the musician turns out entirely personable. With Dave Wakeling, though, your first impression is just how charming he is. Uh oh. Better watch this guy closely.
Any trepidation you might have with Dave would be entirely misplaced. The charm is used for good, not evil. Engaging and charismatic, comfortable and caring, this is Dave Wakeling. The secondary impression is immediate: This guy is genuine. This guy is just plain likable. You are put so much at ease by his effortless banter that by the time you check your watch, a good hour and a half has evaporated and you suddenly feel like you’ve imposed far too long… which he dispels quickly enough by treating you to yet another anecdote and observation.
My son, Scott, was sitting in on the interview with us. Scott’s usual stance with rock stars is a quiet distancing, taking on a third person approach to the entire escapade. You should have seen him this past week mustering up the courage to talk with Sam Endicott of The Bravery. With Dave, though, he was so comfortable he chimed in and asked if he could throw a question in the lot. Coach Dave was in attendance (read on for this bit), and Scott was completely at ease when he asked his question of Dave.
Scott Bringe: You play in front of big crowds, right? Did you ever, like, forget some lyrics or something?
Dave Wakeling: Yes. It’s terrifying. It’s about the most terrifying thing that can ever happen to you on stage. Sometimes you just draw a complete blank. Especially if something really great’s happening in the song, then you forget, like, "Are we on the second verse or the third verse?" And the moment that indecision starts, then you can’t remember any of it anyway.
So usually then I run to the bass player and say, "Wayne! What’s the first line?" Sometimes he can remember, but sometimes me just interrupting with that question, now he’s in the same state of panic and he can’t… "I don’t know! I don’t know! Oh my god!" So I make the saxophone player keep playing and I’m like, "Come on, come on, come on, come on…" If it won’t come then I’ll just sing one of the verses that I can remember.
Or then sometimes, if I’m feeling very brave, I’m like, "You know it’s in there. Just go for it." And you get to the mike and I don’t know, "bah nah nah…" And it comes out of your mouth, and wow! It was there!
It’s the scariest thing, that is. Because all of a sudden all the sound disappears. It goes silent, you start sweating behind your ears, and you swear that everybody in the crowd is looking just at you going, "I think he’s forgotten the lyrics. Yes, I bet he’s forgotten the lyrics." Uh! I can’t breathe! I can’t think about it!
Steve Bringe: You should have heard Suggs a [short] while back. He totally botched some lyrics [in concert]…
DW: Really? Well, they got a lot of words in them songs and a lot of different people writing them. In the main part, I’m lucky because at least those lyrics came out of the mud of my subconscious. So I only have to go sifting through and they’ll be there, apart from the cover versions.
You’d like Dave. Honestly. My kid did, and he’s a tough sell. Anyhow, back to the grown-up talk, and quite grown-up it got, speaking on lyrics and lyrically speaking. There’s no need to save it for later. Or shave it. Whatever and what have you.
The Finishing Touch; He’ll Wrap It Up and Give It All to You
Steve Bringe: It’s coming up on the 30th anniversary of when you guys all started out (the 2 Tone movement), and it seems that the English Beat’s music has taken on a sense of timelessness, considering your gigs attract fans across the age gamut. Case in point, my kid is aching to hear "Mirror in the Bathroom", and I started listening to your music when I was his age. How do feel having your music and concerts be able to bridge the generational gaps so seamlessly?
Dave Wakeling: I think it’s one of the sweetest feelings there is. Lynval Golding from the Specials did some shows with us two years ago. We were playing a show in his hometown in Seattle. He danced across the stage and said, "Dave!" He looked into the crowd and said, "We started this music trying to bring the races together and we brought the ages together, too!" And it was great. Some old guy, my age, and loads of teenagers all dancing in step, singing along with all the words. It’s an absolute honor to think that your music’s timeless.
We were lucky that Bob Sargeant, the producer, wouldn’t let us use any of the new modern whiz-bangs on the records. We were desperately wanting to, some of us. There’s this new synthesizer that sounds like a trombone! And he just would not let us. So, if it was an organ, it had to be a Hammond. If it was a piano, it had to be a Steinway. If it was a guitar, it was a valve amp with a beautiful condenser mike. He was just a classicist in terms of recording.
And we thought it sounded a bit old-fashioned at the time. Thirty years later it sounds timeless, whereas a lot of the groups that we were jealous of at the time that played all the modern stuff, you hear it now and it sounds really dated, like nailed in the 80’s because of the sounds they used.
SB: Most of the General Public stuff does.
DW: Well, it does indeed I’m afraid. We couldn’t control Roger (Ranking Roger, né Roger Charlery, who formed General Public with Dave after the dissolution of the English Beat) with the keyboards then. That was the one thing he wanted to get on. So we’d have Micky Billingham playing the keyboard, which was pretty good, and then we’d have Roger with 15 one-finger over-dubs with the latest sound he’d heard that day. And it sort of just kept up getting buried in it.
SB: Still good music, but it sounds 80’s.
DW: That’s right, it does. Yep, it does indeed.
SB: Talking about teens, how do your kids feel about having a rockstar dad?
DW: They like it. They think it’s pretty cool. And thank heavens, the English Beat is kind of cool amongst their peer group now, you know, so that’s good.
I was Coach Dave on one of my son’s soccer teams, and the one kid was really useless… he wasn’t useless… he could play, but he never wanted to do anything in the training, he’d be always "Nuh nuh nuh sulking sulking sulking." "Come on!" And he wouldn’t ever. And, "Where were you?" "Nuh nuh nuh nuh." Just one of those. So what are you doing here anyway, with boots on, why are you wasting time if you don’t want to do it? He was kind of letting everyone down.
Then he ran by me at the one practice and he was like, "Is that right you’re in a band?"
I was like, "Yeah, why?"
He said, "You in the English Beat?"
And I was like, "Yeah. So?"
"Cool!"
Seemed that ever since that point he was fantastic! Model student. First down to do the push-ups. Let me do some more sit-ups, Coach! So I was like, well, whatever it takes, I suppose.
But, yeah, it’s quite cool. It cost me a fortune in merchandise because if any of my kids wear the t-shirts to school they come back orders for 30. But nobody pays. I end up outfitting whole classrooms of kids, which is kind of good, I suppose, with their Beat shirts, Jam shirts and Clash shirts… seem to be the thing.
SB: Oh gosh, Joe Strummer going, that was quite a thing.
DW: Yeah, I mean, that was more of a stunner than Desmond Dekker. Desmond Dekker, in English terms, "had a good innings." But when one of your peer group dies, it’s like, oh… oh, right then. Better take my vitamins. I’ll do some exercise tomorrow, I think. Yes, I really will.
SB: Going back to touring for a second, you’ve been on the road for, what, pretty much non-stop for years now. For many artists, this gets in the way of writing new songs. Is this case with you? Can we expect any new Dave Wakeling tunes?
DW: Yep, I’ve got a ton of new songs. I got at least 12, perhaps 15. And some of them, I think, are some of the best songs I’ve ever written.
SB: "Never Die"?
DW: "Never Die" is in there. And one that we play regularly in the show called "The Love You Give Lasts Forever." Fantastic number, whole crowd clapping along. That’s got heat written all over it.
There’s a few really great songs I’m very proud of. We’ll take a break in April and record a bit more, and we might start bringing them out as a series of eps or something like that. That’s our idea. We’ll see. I had a few record companies say they’d like to make an album, but I don’t know if makes much sense to get a tiny advance, just enough to make a record, and then somebody else ends up owning the record. It seems like there’s better ways to do it now. So I think we’ll try to forge ahead and record an ep of three or four songs or something and bring that out and see what happens from there.
SB: "Never Die." Make sure that one’s on there. I like that one.
DW: Yeah, I think I would. Do you? Thank you. I do, too. It’s the only song I got… "End of the Party" sometimes has got a couple of people going… but out of all the songs I’ve ever done, "Never Die" is the only one where I’ve got like four people crying along the frontline, and I went and talked to them all afterwards, and they were all crying for a different reason. Which I thought was perfect. It encapsulated that sense of grief and catharsis.
Because at the end it gets happy, it’s meant to be the transubstantiation of souls. Da-da-la, da-da-la, da-da-la-la! It gets all optimistic at the end. "Said we would never die, let’s pray that it’s true." So it’s meant to be kind of hopeful at the end.
It was written over a long, long time, many years, put down and picked up again, and changed around a bit with various experiences. It encapsulates he death of both parents, being invited to too many A.I.D.S. funerals for people who were too young to die, really, and the sadness that surrounds that. I wanted to write something that could either be somebody’s actual physical death or could be about the death of relationship.
The one woman was crying because she just had to go to the vet’s to have her cat euthanized before she came to the concert. That’s it, perfect. So I write something from a very, very personal point of view and then try to express that emotion in as wide and universal view as you can. I think that’s the way to be respectful to people if they want to bother to listen to you in the first place, and sing it in a way that might connect.
SB: I’ve got one anorak question for you. Just one.
DW: Go on.
SB: There was a song, "So Excited", [Ranking] Roger did it...
DW: Ha!
SB: Okay, you are listed as a songwriter on it.
DW: I was indeed.
SB: Was there a General Public album in the works at the time, before you and Roger decided to go your separate ways?
DW: There was talk of one, and that was one of the songs we’d been working on, and in my opinion at the time Roger had gone kind of Napoleonic. He wanted to be in control of everything.
He’d end up giving me demos with all the vocals done, and backing vocals, and percussion, and he’d say, "Have a listen and tell me what you could do with this." So I’d have a listen and tell him what I thought we could do.
And he’d say, "Oh, no. Well, I like that bit." I think this is your chorus here and this is your catchiest bit, and you should stick... "No, I like it the way it is."
So he’d give me some new demos and say the same: "Have a listen, tell me what you think you could do."
And eventually I said, "Well I know what I can do."
And he’s like, "What?"
And I’m like, "Well, I can bloody well listen to them, give you them back and tell you they’re great, ’cause you don’t want me to do nothing anyway."
But I said, "Why don’t you give me a go with an instrumental?" And there was one tune. I said, "Give me that instrumental, just let me have a go with that, see if I can come up with something, and then you add around it," which is how we’d written "Never You Done That." And so he gave me the instrumental and I wrote "So Excited", and it was about condoms. (Singing) "You got me so excited, you got me, I’m going to wrap it up and give it all to you, Ha-ah!"
It was meant to become humorous and light and stuff. And then he sort of ran off with the song, and I think he thought it was really good anyway… and so he ran off with it for his solo record, and poetic justice, the record company picked it as the single. Ha ha! So his record’s called "Radical Departure" and the first he had to do is sing a set of my lyrics just the same as he always had done.
SB: Well, you know, talking about a little off-color here, I could swear you’re singing, "Save it fellator." Fellator…
DW: We are.
SB: Are you?
DW: Yeah.
SB: Because I heard a rumor of this at one point…
DW: It even has it on the album artwork, the very last time it’s written, it says save it, comma, fellator. I also sing it "shave it, fellator" now sometimes. It’s just getting worse and worse and worse. Yeah, there’s always got to be word games. There’s got to be many different levels of it. It was just a dirty schoolboy joke, how funny is that: Save it, fellator.
There’s all sorts of things in the songs like that. I love running words together so it sounds like something else. Words are like magic, really. The position you put them in, you got the thing the words actually mean, and then got images that those words can conjure up in somebody’s mind if you present them in the right way. So they’re hearing one thing, imagining another thing, and now you got ’em! The magic of words, I think that is. The way words sound affect… I’ve always been fascinated by the alchemy of words.
SB: You’re actually pretty adept with them. Not every lyricist can do what you do.
DW: I enjoy doing it. It’s always been a passion. Since before I was in group, I was a schoolboy poet. I found a book full of them, they’re dreadful, but I meant it with all my heart.
SB: Let’s talk about movies for a little bit. Your music has a way of showing up all over in pop cinema "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off"…
DW: Yep.
SB: "She’s Having a Baby"…
DW: Yep.
SB: "Grosse Pointe Blank"…
DW: Yep.
SB: "50 First Dates"…
DW: Yep.
SB: …just to name a few. Do you have a secret desire to be up on the screen?
DW: What? In films?
SB: Yeah.
DW: No. No, not at all. It’s hard enough pretending to be yourself then wanting to pretend to be someone else.
I don’t think singers have ever really made very good actors, David Bowie being the exception, but he was an actor before he was a singer. But in the main part, you have to build up this ego and this persona on stage to project it, and in my experience and watching, very few singers have been able to put themselves away and take on the role of the character.
To compare with, say, Derek Jacobi, or any really great actor, I get that engrossed in the film I forget it’s him until it rolls up at the end. Oh, that’s right! It was John Hurt, wasn’t it? But they can so sublimate themselves into the character, become convincing with it.
Mick Jagger, and Sting, Madonna, they just look like Mick Jagger, Sting, and Madonna doing the film, don’t they? They don’t look like… you can’t remember the name of any of the characters they play. It’s just Sting in a film.
Not that they couldn’t be great actors, but I think there’s something about being a singer that works in an opposing way to that, unless you were to go through a lot of training. Just because you can hold a crowd doesn’t mean you know how to act. It’s quite a skill. They’re different skill sets. I don’t think they necessarily help each other.
SB: Speaking of "50 First Dates", I’ve got the soundtrack and "Hands Off She’s Mine" is nowhere on that soundtrack.
DW: They do that a lot. They tend to stick in all the songs in the films and then it usually takes a bit longer for them to negotiate the rights for the soundtrack album, by which time there’s usually always a deadline for mastering the record, because the record’s got to come out in time for building up the excitement for the film.
There’s been a number of times where we’ve been in films and haven’t been on the soundtrack. It’s not really down to us at that point. They’re licensing from the record company that owns the rights, or has licensed the rights for that song for a period. And so the record company, whatever money they get from the film company, they split it with the band 50-50. So sometimes [the record companies] ask for a fortune and the film company says no. And then the artist ends up with nothing instead.
SB: Great.
DW: Perfect.
SB: This kind of has to do with movies. Harvey Danger…
DW: Yeah.
SB: …doing "Save It For Later" (for the movie "200 Cigarettes").
DW: He called me up as well. The singer phoned me up and asked my permission, which I thought was very sweet.
SB: Then you got not just him covering your tunes, you’ve got Pete Townshend covering your music now, too. What does that mean to you as a songwriter?
DW: Well, that’s a perfect accolade. Pete Townsend covered "Save It For Later." Eddie Vedder’s covered "Save It For Later", he sings it in the second half of "Better Man." And Elvis Costello covered "Stand Down Margaret" on tour in England during the 80’s. That’s about as good as it could get for me.
Pete Townshend phoned me up, and I didn’t believe it was Pete Townshend, I thought someone was playing a joke, so I was a kind of funny about it. And then it turned out it was him. And he said, "I’m sitting here with Dave Gilmore, and we’re trying to play your song ’Save It For Later’ but we can’t work out the tuning.’" ’Cause I’ve got this weird tuning going on. So how spooky is that? The guy who played "Pinball Wizard", the guy who played "Careful With That Axe", and One-Finger-Wonder Wakeling was teaching them the tuning. It’s brilliant.
Pete Townsend came to play in Los Angeles at the Wiltern Theater and invited me down. I got to sit and talk with him for about half an hour, and he gave me tickets and I ended up with ticket 1A. I was sitting right at the front, it was kind a bit scary. The band came on, crowd went crazy, and he said, "I want to start with this song, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time, and dedicate it to my friend Dave Wakeling." And he played "Save It For Later." Oh, it wasn’t that I was crying, it was just tears were rolling down my face, they just rolled effortlessly.
It was an amazing band. [Simon] Philips on the drums, Pino Pallidino on the bass, Mac and Katie Kissoon backing vocals, and this really fantastic band that he’d got. And the Wiltern Theater is a very beautiful place. They played the song wonderfully.
SB: Johnny Marr thinks that’s his favorite song, too.
DW: Yes, he does. And I got in touch with him and we’re going to write some songs together also, because of that. In fact, I sent him a couple of demos and chord charts and we’re meant to get together in the springtime and work on them a bit more.
SB: Ah, that’ll be great.
DW: Yeah, I’m absolutely thrilled.
SB: That guy’s a legend himself.
DW: Yeah, he is. My favorite guitarist, really. Him and Mick Jones. In the 80’s, those are the two guitarists I enjoyed the most.
SB: I’m about to get out your hair here. We’re down the last one. You started out with the Beat. Then came General Public…
DW: Yep.
SB: Then came the Free Radicals…
DW: Yep.
SB: Then came Dave Wakeling solo…
DW: Yeah.
SB: Then came Bang!
DW: Bang!
SB: …and now you’re back to the Beat.
DW: Yep.
SB: To some it would appear you journey in discovering your musical identity might mirror your own personal quest for identity. What have the past 30 years of music taught you about the world, and about yourself?
DW: Wow!
SB: Yeah, we’ll save the hard, spiritual one for last.
DW: We sort of ended up being the English Beat again by default. I’d been doing these shows as Bang! and I would get there and the place was sold out, and it would say, "Tonight! The English Beat! General Public! Dave Wakeling! And Bang!" I’d be like, "No! It’s meant to say Bang!" Maybe "Dave Wakeling" if you need to. You can’t say… I had it in the contracts and everything. But a promoter’s going to say whatever it takes to sell tickets.
And so I thought, I’m playing English Beat songs, I’m playing General Public songs, perhaps I don’t have the right to demand what the band’s called at this point. Might be public possession, kind of. So I eventually just gave in. I was like, fine! English Beat. Seems that that’s what I’m called every time I show up anyway. And I sometimes, occasionally, do shows as General Public if it’s a kind of "80’s Fest."
I don’t know quite what you learn, really. You just get stuff reinforced. I don’t think you learn anything you didn’t know in the first place. You just keep going to the same brick wall, hitting your head against it, until you realize that you don’t like the sight of bricks.
I think sometimes you have to get yourself into a predicament or a pickle a good few times. You don’t learn it the first time it becomes obvious, whether it’s in life or music, or how much should you trust other people, how distrusting should you be. All those balances on how to live your life.
For me, you have to screw up five or six times before it becomes, "Oh, that really is the case then, isn’t it?" Now we’ve brought ourselves back to our knees over the same predicament, whether it’s music, money, women, whatever. Sometimes it just takes a lot of times, and you have to go back there again, and you find yourself, oh, I’ve been here before, haven’t I? Yes you have, Dave. Well, do you remember you saying that you learned your lesson last time? Well, yes I do, but…
I think that probably what we’ve got is a series of inherent weaknesses each, that when enough pressure’s applied, it will force you back into those escape routes. And, of course, there isn’t any escape. That, if I’ve learned anything, is what I’ve learned, with a bit of help from the Buddhism, is that you can’t escape circumstances, and you definitely can never escape yourself. And there comes a certain point where the only freedom you’ll find is to sit there in your own pain. It doesn’t even necessarily make the pain go away. But you get used to it, and then you carry on forward with that.
Finishing now with pain, it’s somehow unsettlingly mirror-like of 30 years ago when it started with pain. Be it the literal pain of skinheads bashing each other senseless at the early 2 Tone gigs, or the emotional pain of living in a strained, uncertain, and politically-charged England at the turn of the decade, Dave Wakeling’s feelings and thoughts are so well-encapsulated in his poetic lyrics that so often called out for change, a sentiment he’s carried through to the immediate present with his charitable work and political leanings, that it seems almost lyrically poetic to finish off with an anecdote of graphically rallying for change in the microcosm of the late-70’s British club scene.
DW: There were so many fights at the early 2 Tone concerts that we were a bit dismayed in the Beat. We could stay home and watch the boxing. We didn’t have to come out for this.
So I had this idea that it was because the 2 Tone Man was dancing alone, and that all that [the skins] had to do is impress each other, and the way drunk skinheads impress each other is to try to hit each other on the bridge of their nose with their forehead… getting nutty… the Nutty Sound.
So, I said, "I bet if [Walt Jabsco, "The 2 Tone Man"] had a girl to dance with, skinheads would be, like, putting on a little extra aftershave." They’d put that energy into showing off for the girls rather than showing off to each other, you know, and it’d stop the fighting.
So we got the Beat Girl up there and loads of girls started coming to the concerts, dressed kind of like the Beat Girl, and the skinheads were around them like a honey pot… and the fighting stopped. There were hardly any fights at Beat shows compared [to other 2 Tone bands’ shows].
And the guys in Madness and Specials and Selecter got jealous. "How come you don’t have any scraps at yours?! It’s like a bloodbath at our gigs!" I was like, "Thank the Beat Girl."
There’s no need to paraphrase, only to quote: Sooner or later, your legs give way you hit the ground. All evidence is for Dave’s legs being just as sturdy as when he started his musical journey is the impression you’ll get, and with all the charities and artists and fans that he’s touched through his songs, thoughts, actions, and ultimately humanistic feelings, there’re more than enough thanks left over for the steadfast Dave Wakeling as well.
The English Beat: The English Beat on MySpace
Dave Wakeling: Dave Wakeling on MySpace
6 April 2008
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