Like many great visions, 2 Tone – the movement and record label founded by Jerry Dammers of the Specials in 1979 – began with an epiphany.
“What if an English group created a new beat from the influence of Jamaican music?” wondered Dammers, who was born in India, the son of a Coventry vicar. He suddenly envisioned a British version of ska – mixing it up with punk and putting the band’s own lives and lyrics into the music. It was a political statement in itself.
As Daniel Rachel recounts in his wonderful new book, Too Much Too Young, Specials’ Jamaican-born guitarist Lynval Golding “was horrified: ‘Ska’s old man music!’ He hollered in patois, ‘Music must forward!’” Barbadian drummer Silverton Hutchison was equally aghast and for him playing ska proved “too much. In a fit of anger, he called Jerry ‘a w***er’ and walked out on the band.”
Although he was now without a drummer, Dammers had a plan: the Specials would record an independent single, establish a label and become pop stars. Dammers dreamed of creating an English Motown – and that vision became 2 Tone.
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Recorded on a borrowed budget of £700, the label’s first single was Gangsters by the Specials, backed by The Selecter, an instrumental track by another Coventry band, who had yet to exist. It was an instant Top 10 hit, as were the four singles that followed: Madness’s The Prince, the Selecter’s On My Radio, the Specials’ A Message To You Rudi and the Beat’s Tears Of A Clown. All five singles propelled 2 Tone onto Top of the Pops, uniting black and white teenagers on the dance floor and across the nation.
Daniel Rachel is a Birmingham-born musician turned author and oral historian, whose previous books have mixed pop and politics on subjects such as Rock Against Racism and Cool Britannia. Indeed his award-winning Walls Come Tumbling Down featured many 2 Tone voices who reappear in this expanded cast – Jerry Dammers, Rhoda Dakar, Rick Rogers, Juliet de Valero Wills and the late Ranking Roger and Frank Murray (the future manager of The Pogues, a band who would do for Irish folk music what the Specials did for ska).
“2 Tone taught me about black and white unity,” Rachel says. “It gave a voice to the pointlessness of street violence and it provided an understanding and awareness of the horror of rape and apartheid. That you could dance, look good and be educated by a record was incredible.”
Talking about his own time as a musician, Rachel has likened rock’n’roll years to leap years – one year is the equivalent of four and the 2 Tone story illustrates his point. The first part of the book covers the golden era of the label from 1979 to 1981 – it captures the joy and camaraderie that initially existed between the bands, on fire with creative energy as they spread the 2 Tone message across the land and it makes for a rollercoaster of a read.
The Bodysnatchers burnt bright and fast. Inspired by the Slits and the Specials’ live shows, Nicky Summers knew that she had to form an all-girl ska band and placed a series of adverts in the music press in the summer of 1979. “All I got was three months of dirty phone calls,” she recollects.
Undeterred, Summers put together a seven-piece band, fronted by Rhoda Dakar. But just 11 months, and 200 gigs later, they fell apart. “Rhoda sums up the experience with blunt analysis: ‘I’d played with the Specials. Then you come back to the Bodysnatchers and you think, “They’re so shit.” It was a relief.’”
Infighting was a big part of the 2 Tone story and the pressures of running a label weighed heavily on Dammers, who increasingly struggled to communicate his vision.
By the time the Specials recorded Ghost Town – which took its title from a song by Shane MacGowan’s band the Nips – there was so much animosity that the engineer threatened to terminate the session. “‘No! No!’ Jerry pleaded. ‘This is the greatest record that’s ever been made in the history of anything! You can’t stop now!’”
Despite the acrimonious split that followed, Dammers built 2 Tone back up again and gave it a triumphant finale in (Free) Nelson Mandela. “Mandela came face to face with its composer,” writes Rachel of a moment at Wembley Stadium in 1990. “‘Ah yes,’ Mandela said, looking Jerry in the eye, ‘very good.’”
Through a remarkable range of voices, anecdotes and diary entries, Daniel Rachel has captured the melody of 2 Tone and painted an exceptional portrait of the UK at a crucial time.
