The 2 Tone Story: A Checkered Past (Part 1)
The 2 Tone Story: A Checkered Past (Part 1)
Part 1 of 3
The Selecter’s Pauline Black perhaps put it best: “2 Tone was basically about black and white people playing together.” Label chief and Specials keyboard player Jerry Dammers could almost equally be succinct: “I just wanted 2 Tone to be like a little club. And if you liked the music you became part of it.”
Very few record companies can challenge flesh-and-blood pop stars as myths in their own right. Those that do inevitably embody a specific cultural moment: Sun’s rockabilly in the 50s, Motown’s glossy soul and Stax’s funkier version in the 60s, Stiff’s new-wave bravado in the 70s. the British 2 Tone label also deserves legendary status, even if its fame never quite made it across the Atlantic.
Like its fabled predecessors, 2 Tone became synonymous with a particular style – in this case ska, the energetic precursor to reggae. That this late 50s/early 60s Jamaican music flourished in the late 70s England is a tribute to the United Kingdom’s melting pot. A post-war labor shortage and unrestricted entry among Commonwealth countries encouraged West Indian immigration to Great Britain through the 1950s. By 1962, when legislation put the lid on, England had experienced its first race riots; there was no stopping the more peaceful dispersion of the new Briton’s musical tastes.
Jerry Dammers himself was an immigrant, albeit from India; his clergyman father relocated the family to England when Jerry was two years old. He grew up in Coventry, attended Lanchester Polytechnic as an art student, and immersed himself in the local music scene. In 1977, the British punk-rock movement was breeding bands like lice (many of them comparable artistic merit as well). Dammers, guitarist Lynval Golding and bassist Horace Panter were in The Automatics. “We started playing punk-rock and heavy reggae,” Panter recalled two years later.
Mixing the two disparate styles isn’t as odd as it might seem. Reggae’s cultural outlaws were heroes to the disaffected British youth who rallied to punk’s tocsin. The highly visible Clash, for example, saw no dichotomy in interspersing reggae tunes among revved-up guitar thrashers.
Alas, the blend didn’t work for The Automatics, according to Panter. Backing up chronologically, the band chose ska instead; “it’s easier to play,” Dammers commented.
A year after forming, they had added guitarist Roddy Radiation and singers Terry Hall and Neville Staples; they had also changed their name to The Special A.K.A., to avoid confusion with another Automatics who had landed a record deal. Their biggest break to date came when The Clash tapped them as opening act on a British tour. Clash manager Bernard Rhodes proffered his services to the fledgling band, but the strong-willed Dammers was not a compatible match.
The 2 Tone Story begins in early 1979, when Dammers – taking Motown and Stax as role models – decided The Special A.K.A. should record on its own label. The band borrowed enough money for one track, “Gangsters”: “I never understood the lyrics although I wrote them,” Dammers admitted, “but I knew it was about sharks and wide boys that try and make money by pretending to run the music business.” (The screeching brakes sound effect was “sampled” from from Prince Buster’s “Al Capone”).
They had no money left to record a flipside, so Golding contacted guitarist friend Neol Davies, who had taped a moody instrumental at home a year earlier. Overdubbing ska rhythm guitar turned it into “The Selecter.” Dammers put his art background to use designing the 2 Tone logo. With 5,000 copies pressed and independent distribution lined up, 2 Tone was on its way.
A year after forming, they had added guitarist Roddy Radiation and singers Terry Hall and Neville Staples; they had also changed their name to The Special A.K.A., to avoid confusion with another Automatics who had landed a record deal. Their biggest break to date came when The Clash tapped them as opening act on a British tour. Clash manager Bernard Rhodes proffered his services to the fledgling band, but the strong-willed Dammers was not a compatible match.
They had no money left to record a flipside, so Golding contacted guitarist friend Neol Davies, who had taped a moody instrumental at home a year earlier. Overdubbing ska rhythm guitar turned it into “The Selecter.” Dammers put his art background to use designing the 2 Tone logo. With 5,000 copies pressed and independent distribution lined up, 2 Tone was on its way.
Note: This story about the 2 Tone music movement was reproduced from the Liner Notes (written by Scott Isler) that was included in the 2 disc compilation released in 1993 by Chrysalis Records, The 2 Tone Collection: A Checkered Past. In our opinion, this is the best written history of the 2 Tone scene in existence.
