Official T Shirt The Beat Ska Band Album I Just Can't Stop It

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But, amidst all of this upheaval and social change there was the music. Out of the devastation of the heart of the country came bands like Dexys, The Specials, The Selecter and The Beat. It was loud, proud and carried a message, so much so that at times these bands were derided for their stance. Taken as a political one they were shunned by the BBC (quite ironic really given current circumstances) and banished to the lower reaches of the charts. Yes, I’ve lots of projects going on. The first one is an album with my son this year. It’s solo from ‘The Beat’ and it’s going to be called ‘Return Of The Dread I’. We’ve some tunes already for it and we’ve some collaborations going on too. It won’t be a ska album, but it will definitely be reggae influenced, with some roots in there. We’re going to release that this year under new management.

I think the fact that people recognise that if bands like The Beat and The Specials and The Selecter – bands like that – if we weren’t about – and bands like The Clash and the Pistols and people like that – the racism in this country is getting out of hand – again, and it’s not necessarily out of hand yet – but we all know that there are more people in this country that are against racism, than there are for racism, and I think what those bands did, The Beat, The Specials, The Selecter and Madness, we united a generation of kids and taught them not to fight, to try and get on no matter who you are. I was hoping that would be reflected in their kids, but it still needs to get through to their kids and the younger ones too – they need to know that you mustn’t look at people’s colour, you must look at what they did and what they put out.

M: So were you listening to a lot of punk? Along with The Police, a lot of those punk bands had a reggae-influenced phase; The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, The Ruts, Costello… all had at least one reggae song. RR: Well, I had to re-learn them, it’d been years since I’d sung them but he already knew them all. Whether he liked it or not, it was drummed in, partially in the soul. It must be in his blood. It seems you spent a lot of time touring around 81-82 with artists including The Clash, The Specials and even Bowie. Which gigs stand out in your memory today? Having thought about it, maybe it’s the fact that I never got married. I should have been married. I’ve 3 kids and was with an Irish girl for 20 years, but we split up about 10 years ago. I regret that. We should have got married, but we didn’t. Maybe if we’d married we wouldn’t have split up later, I don’t know.

Yeah – not forgetting The Police and Talking Heads – and just to let people know that REM used to open up for The Beat. They had three or four tours with us before we made our record company sign them up. Obviously I’m glad that they became massive in the end. U2 opened up for us once – but you know – you meet people along the way and some of them are nice and some of them are horrible – the nice ones you end up working with again. If you’re a diva I don’t want to know, but if you’re grounded and down to earth like a lot of bands around then seemed to be – it still seems to be the way to be. RR: I did want to put something out as The Beat but me and my son, Ranking Junior, who sings on stage with me, want to launch another project called Return Of The Dread-I.

Interview – Ranking Roger of The Beat

So we took some time off after touring with The Pretenders and starting jamming again. Within it all we’d been reading our fan club letters and we got this one from a lady in America saying I’ve tried to use your music for my keep fit lessons and it’s too fast. It was a lovely written letter so we decided to tone it down a bit in the way that The Beat became what we call ‘one-drop’, where the rim shot and the snare hits at the same time and that’s the main emphasis. So we did Doors of your Heart and Monkey Murders and along with a few others and that was the kind of style for that album in the end.