BBC's 2 Tone The Sound of Coventry documentary

[Music] [Applause] each other the whole thing was full on rock and roll from the beginning he just came out of nowhere basically it's just world domination Coventry in two-tone are one of the same in a way two-tone couldn't have happened anywhere else because there's only one jury for a starter Jerry was a genius it was his ideas it was his vision it's like mixing up the chemicals and then the lamb and then you get an explosion I've jumped off this before you know I bet you are it was so traumatic I've probably forgotten it [Music] on stage we're not just a dancer we had things to say as well it was an incredible use of the platform pop music to bring Global attention to apartheid that was the culmination of two-tone really [Music] [Applause] education but I mean this is their first record and I think it's an absolute gem I really do special AKA it's on two-tone record [Music] [Music] said that you've been friends [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I guess I wanted to be an event from I don't know about the age of 10 I was you know it's a great era for music the The Beatles and the stones and The Kinks the who were my favorite band we used to follow all the bands and discuss the haircuts and how the drummer held the sticks and all that you know I used to study it on top of the pops [Applause] you know I'd grown up from the 60s and rebellion and music were just always linked together and that was always part of the songs I wrote I guess I always grooved along with the sort of left-wing kind of ideas I played in all sorts of bands when I was at the art college in Coventry but I'd always wanted to play reggae I was into Punk but they always used to play reggae uh Punk gigs between the bands and that's really what made it bearable for me so I thought you know why not do a punk reggae band but but with kind of real reggae musicians eyes [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] technical musicians but you know together we could make a racket that that was better than any of us could make individually [Music] great the specials and that's gangsters one of those records which really changes your life I mean it actually does you wake up the next day and nothing's ever really quite the same again is that too smooth is that too much to say that I actually believe that jump here was great you know you really got behind the band he gave us sessions on there and uh yeah there's no one quite like him and I've got a couple of requests in fact I should play the other side of it right now because the other side's about he did not send a little time on my hands I'll pay you that in just a second when we'd record the gangsters we didn't have any more money to do a B-side of course to make a record you have to have two tracks and that's where um someone came up with the idea of using the track I'd already recorded I played in a band with Neil Davis a long time before that and Neil had recorded the track this was a year before called Kingston affair and it was kind of like a disco-e-dobby kind of track but you know I liked it so I said to know well if you stick a scarby on top of that then we can have it on the other side of gangsters we turn that into the selector by the selector and then he came up with a band after he made the track the selector [Music] really exciting to hear the track coming out the radio because it's so fantastic to hear your music on the radio still whenever I it just still it's just the biggest thrill you can have well one of them it's not the best but it's one of them [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is where the two-tone Revolution began Coventry in the industrial East Midlands it's a car making city which has seen better days Coventry has a whole history of you know peace reconciliation reaching out you know sort of talking to others with different perspectives and it's never really sure to that responsibility it has always done that the idea of mixing black and white and everybody Unite to me that's it's coventory because I never used to see it happening anywhere else [Music] in a magnet for a long time for people to come here from other parts of the world knowing that they're gonna get a skill job and good wages [Music] we were just used to having people come into the city to work whether they be from Asia or whether they've been from Jamaica or the West Indies or from Poland we were just an immigration City a lot of people who came here heard come because of the car industry their kids came over and maybe were like 12 13 14 and they had bought music with them so these kids had something to share with white kids that white kids didn't have any moment there's going to be a first outbreak of Scott from Jamaica don't call me Scarface my name is [Music] oh energy compound and of course what that did to the record shops particularly in Hill fields which was a well-known area in Coventry the Record Shop there started to to import from the West Indies West Indian records matumbe had a song called whatever happened to Blue Beat and scar and I thought yeah whatever did happen to it why not revive it you know foreign because there's only one jury for a starter [Music] one of the delightful surprises in the rock and roll business this summer has been the sudden emergence of a new and forceful Independent Record company called two-tone well basically we want artistic control and there are a few bands and we all needed an identity I mean the music and the clothes but I mean with the label it's it's the stronger thing it's it's a whole movement how records were made was a complete mystery you know that the record companies kept it secret I think but when uh rough trade started and punk started this do-it-yourself kind of ethos and I thought wow we can actually make our own record so the obvious thing to do is to put out a record on our own label which was a two-tone label [Music] I finally tracked the specials down to two-tone HQ home of the hits next to the Poodle Parlor note said at last a chance to meet the Border directors are the fastest growing independent record label in the country apparently this is the birthplace of tuto second floor so there Jerry's Old flat that's where everybody used to go there used to be a lot happening in there yeah when you walked up you could hear the noise everybody I wouldn't call it a party it was just like having fun mixing Milling Lin what's actually been somewhere to talk to people didn't you in those days yes the central point you know Jerry had all the information that we all needed so we'd come visit him and hang out get things done right shall we have a dance [Music] to be honest with you we used to hang around up here about eight nine sometimes ten people in that one little room it was just like being at the home at your own house and we used a lot of joke mess around Dancing Yeah we enjoyed ourselves enormously very much so yeah we have the chat books I think this is our burning roads come scratch [Applause] the genius that Jerry had was he put a very eclectic of people together very eclectic The Specialist is mixed up you had me the rude boy then you're ready to rockabilly man Courage the teacher I hated I just couldn't see the point in it at all Horus was the first I think then I persuaded Terry to leave this punk band called squad on to Terry now and we were one of the first punk bands in Coventry they were pretty much punked by numbers you know no disrespect but you know they weren't really going anywhere and Brad well I actually shared a flap with Brad so I knew he could play reggae but you know I did go out of my way to make it a multi-racial band you know it wasn't it didn't just happen there was a buzz around particularly in our record shop so everybody was talking about this little band so I went and saw them the crowd just went nuts and I hadn't seen that sort of stereo I've seen some Beatles so you go kaching I can get these guys a deal because to me that it was that good we discovered Pete Waterman in fact and we thought oh he might make a good manager and I should point out that we were actually famous before him well technically I guess I was their manager you know I got asked by Jerry to to manage them I I use the term loosely I don't think you can manage Jerry's but that's beside the point my role really was to try and get them a recording contract and get them in the studio we did two or three takes in Berwick Street Studios in Berwick Market on a Sunday so I've got the cassette here so I'm gonna put it on I haven't heard this for 44 years yeah this is [Music] [Music] Jerry was a genius of course he taught me a big lesson I'm not being unkind to Terry but he ate the great singer in the world but what he has got is a voice that's very distinctive but two o'clock [Music] and what that taught me was it's not about singing it's about character and Jerry had put those characters together almost like a cartoon strip in a funny sort of way and it made this this believable entity I do genuinely like people to me now he did genuinely help us and but the only trouble is he um he then tried to teach Terry to dance I just thought we have to keep this within the Realms of the possible Pete you know we but also you know if you're going to teach someone to do to those you know it's good to learn how to dance yourself first you know and if you've ever seen Pete Waterman then sing I mean he's a DJ that's DJ said DJs because I can't dance and they need something to do with their hands in the Disco you know and it's amazing how different they are from what they finally went on to record so when I recorded them they were still a sort of reggae band when you hear what they became which was like a scar band that came from live gigging Jerry worked it out take the crowd this is what the crowd want give them what they want [Music] it really old scarf from the 60s had a much faster Tempo so I realized that would blend much more easily with this Up Tempo high energy punk music [Music] like mixing up the chemicals in the lab you know and and then you get an explosion that's what we got an explosion [Music] when Caribbean music kind of hit England a lot of the the public just sort of thought it was some kind of novelty you know that it was kind of fun happy music but a lot of Caribbean music was very political actually you know when we took up scar then we took up the cause if you like of the uh some of the lyrics you know things that were happening at the time in UK meant that there was a lot of frustration and anger politically the emergency the queen has asked me to form a new Administration and I have accepted Thatcher had just come to power and there's a lot of racial issues throughout the country what we've seen is Coventry one of the greatest symbols of Hope of post-war Britain reduced to a battlefield of hatred to me it's the most tragic indictment of our nation the 70s were a very brutal time to grow up in Britain certainly for someone like me as a young Indian girl because you have the national front you have this sense of like hatred and rage on the streets I grew up in a shop I never knew who was going to come through the door and attack my mum and dad or me you know you were kind of literally on the front line vicious street fighting ever seen on Mainland Britain then this weekend racial fighting looking like a war zone 150 skinheads vicious fighting slurred out between young white skin tension is so tight right you can cut it with a scissor violence has often been part of the growth of the national front organization violence against individual black citizens and violence in the streets I thought well you know this skinhead Revival is happening so maybe we need to try and get through to these people it might have been naive or idealistic or whatever but I thought if we played music that um they could relate to and dressed in that way you know then maybe we could get our anti-racist message across and turn it into something more positive but it was a bit nerve-wracking at two times that music was both joyful was exuberant and you could also talk about social issues things that were concerning you know both black kids and white kids from working class backgrounds at the time and so young people who were black and white and made a big deal about being black and white and in a band together to challenge racism to stunt racism out that was like you know the light went off for me and I was like yes here's the first sign I've seen in Britain of a possibility where life doesn't have to be you know so uh scary so having two-tone was like okay it was like a family black and white having a great time people probably wouldn't talk to each other normally they found themselves dancing together to the same band in the same space it was this your Vance it's Madness the prince [Music] foreign anchor and they were playing a bit of Scar so they and they were wearing similar sort of two-tone suits and stuff so I think they came up with a similar idea you know independently [Music] joined up with two-tone after Madness were the uh beat [Music] when there's no one around the body snatches [Music] with the rather wonderful road to Dakar in it and the selector Neil Davis had written the instrumental the selector but the band got together to be able to move that on [Music] then that was how I first met Neil and also the other members of the what would go on to be the selector [Music] yeah the binley oak yeah a rare rehearsal room foreign we're about to go inside and that's going to be the first time I've actually been in there for over 40 years oh so so cold in here we're used to rehearse in overcoach it's just so funny that it's now repurposed as a very very warm fireplace sales barbing over there band in the middle of the room here we have um the old scar Rhythm and we have reggae we have blues and there's a bit of funk and of course we have Janelle playing this rock this was the place where Pauline met the band and the band met Pauline the first time she sang with us I come to Coventry to go to the university here and I'd ended up being a radiographer and I was working at the local hospital and also playing my own songs in a folk Club of all places I think it was one of those things sort of the naivety of Youth and and and just the energy of Youth I just thought wow these guys are really onto something yeah let's get in here it was a force of nature really her voice suited everything we were doing so well I was yeah that's a no-brainer and uh bullying coming into the lineup finish the lineup off and we got the nod from Jerry dammers would you like to record a single with two-tone and that single would be on my radio [Music] there was no blueprint for these things the people who are looking at the selector see a black man and a black woman up the front of a band telling them how they think things are starting that conversation that's quite rare that's quite rare particularly back then and also just the sort of weird androgyny that was going on too and I thought well hey you can make men like you and you can make women like you what's not to like [Music] and suddenly I'm watching chocolate pops that was Paul in Black this mixed race woman in a very male dominated kind of world at the time and my sister went oh my God there's you on TV it was really that you know that prominent to me because I had very short hair I was wearing the Arrington and there was Pauline black looking like that and I thought wow that's that's me I want to be like that you know brilliant loved it these are people that you don't normally see as British pop stars you know these very mixed culturally mixed bands because I'd watched it so many times I was able to sort of prejudge what the camera work would probably do with the chorus and I thought they're going to cut from Pauline singing on my radio so the backing vocals going it's just the same old show what I thought would be a really cool look for us would be for me and Charlie to be on that camera shot the white guy and the locks guy standing next to each other I wanted that to come out of people's screens as a really really positive image you know I was there in the audience at top of the pops uh on that amazing momentous day when Madness specials and selector were all on the same bill and that was like the Holy Grail of course at that time [Music] it was a camaraderie nobody was like oh I'm bigger than you I'm bigger than you Specialists did message to you Rudy on that I remember that being very excited oh I was a massive specialist fan and two-tone in general I just absolutely loved it and I adored Neville it was rough around the edges my sister was nuts on Terry Hall we shared a room so her side was all Terry and her idols and mine was all Neville on football but yeah so it was my pin-up and it was oh God over 30 years later maybe 35 years later that we actually met and a few years later we got married Church where I used to go as a kid and that was absolutely stunning in the mountains of Jamaica Sawmill amazing to marry your idol I love rude boys but I'm not that kind of rude hey this should have been our next single but they wouldn't play it on the radio it's called too much too young [Music] foreign [Music] kids when I was young young perfect commerciality Jerry would be frightened to death though I thought his lyrics were commercial but they were because that his lyrics absolutely magnify the time that we lived in they show you the time we lived in that period they were perfect I mean I just remember hearing too much too young for the first time and I thought what a great lyric you know they've done too much much you know they're not sort of poetic and lyrical so like Leonard Cohen's early work you know they're they're it's very British and Rule and that's what makes it still so relevant I think for young people today you could be talking about the the worst issues going on but when you do it with that dancing beat you know and those lyrics that you know people want to sing along to I mean how cool is that it's a great way of putting those messages out there [Music] yeah the thing is Jerry picked up on everything it was almost like Charles Dickens you know like Dickens wrote about all the evils of society and he wrapped it up in a popular story and that's what Jerry was doing with these these songs they were wrapped up in popular Melodies that you walk away from the ballroom whistling they've passed the old gray whistle test I don't know I just wrote about what happened to me in my life and things that happened and just kind of blend it all together but I guess looking for kind of universal themes in it all that could uh applied I mean what I like most about you is your girlfriend was like that's not political at all but it's still a universal thing that a lot of people could relate to I guess [Music] Concrete Jungle was written by Roddy because he used to walk through town and get hassled a lot [Music] it's about living in a rough part of town so enough nice there's that sort of stem from personal experience yeah you write songs about things to feel yourself or you've you've been through [Music] you know Coventry was quite a violent place to grow up you know and when you went out on a Saturday night you know there was always fights and so it was about Coventry but it was also about everywhere and people obviously could relate to it all over the country so the one thing about Jerry is he's not just creative with words of music but he's creative with images to me the visual side of it was always really important you know it was a total concept oh yeah and this is the Wardrobe all secondhand gear very nice too nice piece of Mohan I've always been a style icon but um because it looked a real mess at the beginning I actually did some drawings about what what I hope they might wear to make it all look a bit more together he's got a fantastic eye he's an artist so I guess when he saw that whole rude boy thing he thought this works as my painting because you know you've got all that that's that's Jerry's eye for for detail I think it's a newspaper I can't remember but they asked me to Define what a rude boy a two-tone rude boy so I I literally got a bag packet and jotted down all these ideas but it was just a mishmash of styles from the 60s I guess the image I grew up with it from I was young saying my dad wearing all the nice suits the Trilby it was my Sunday Best they needed that Jamaican thing in their specials and they got it ha ha it was an easy look to put together with what there was and people they'd gone out and sourced which you could at that time in upstand shops and all of those kinds of things the clothes that were worn in the 60s you know you just needed a pair of trousers that looked as though they'd had a row with your shoes and hats cheap things you know pork pie hat is a cheap thing to be able to get fortunately I look all right in a hat [Music] shake it up so we have the the more girly Rude Girls and we had the more tomboy root girls I've always been more of a tomboy so my dress sense would be the arrington's monkey boots or Doc Martens and then you had your jeans or you had stay pressed trousers the more girly rude girls they tended to go for like a checkered dress mini skirts but they would have sort of probably a bow in their hair with a a two-tone ribbon as opposed to a hat we were wearing stuff like they were wearing and and and and they were they absolutely adored that kids obviously were coming along maybe as punks or you know in their 70s kind of pharaoh knits and things like that and flares to the first show and by the time you went back everything had changed we play in a place in every single person in the whole building was dressed in black and white not nothing else absolutely from head to toe in black and white to say that I embraced the whole two-tone movement in terms of my lifestyle would be an understatement and I felt proud wearing my clothes that was my sort of uniform you identified by wearing those clothes you were saying this is who I am I'm here for Unity I'm here because we want to come together unified One Voice from all of us [Music] it doesn't you've got to hate it why it doesn't make it all right [Music] we're at the canal Basin in Coventry where we took the iconic photo that's on the first album there weren't no water there good thing because I couldn't swim oh the first album cover you know I had the idea of it being like The Who's My Generation cover where we all looked up the chalky Davis was the photographer and he went up into the old building there and we're looking down but yeah it was kind of homage to the who because there were a big influence on a bad influence on me yeah but uh no a big influence on the specials chalky used to take a lot of good picture of the band so you know when he was doing it you just said okay Chuck he knows what he's doing so he just you know just let him get on with it there's some reason the the canal had dried up completely and you know some poor boy bought his holiday Cruiser and it was be calmed in this dry Canal that was rotting away so it we took a picture on that it's a chalkyama that is good it's Friday night the beautiful Spa town of Malvern awaits an invasion by thousands of short-haired parker-clad mods they've traveled miles through the groups who are playing tonight yeah we're meeting the two-tone tour it was amazing staying in hotels away from home it was it was a lot of fun on the two-tone tour right we'll share the wine boss there were three bands us Madness and the specials on the kind of bus that you go to you know swimming lessons in when you're in school the boss the loud thing you know so there we were three buns crammed into this this coach we didn't know what was coming [Music] foreign [Music] thing you reach in a completely bigger audience [Music] [Applause] [Music] with Scar music you've got to commit to it you've got to commit to it you've got to go in there I mean there'd be sweat dripping off the walls I mean everybody in the audience was just going mad as soon as any of us came on stage and started there was just something about the actual rhythm of Scar that just got to people [Music] whole downstairs you could see them shaking those steam Rising off the crowd it really was incredible energy that we'd sort of somehow tapped into it was kind of the energy of punk but luckily without the gobbing you know [Music] feeding off them yeah man running around jumping around but that was just me that's just natural it was just natural Jerry it was Lively as well we used to play off for each other but I was the uh the mother one I remember in South End the floorboards in this they also started giving away and kids were dropping through into the cellar you know I was mad [Music] [Applause] the knife [Music] here we go you're a girl this used to be the big glass tower of the stairs yeah it's massive yeah let's get him for the majority of youngsters There is almost nowhere to go except this one huge Dems Hall it was a special place because it was just Central to the whole nightlife of Coventry wasn't it was the biggest the biggest place [Music] wow a completely different environment it isn't used to be stage over there yeah just audience all up here in the balcony and a sea of 2 000 people jumping on down there's a place to be at the time wasn't it on any night really because it was open till two in the morning yeah it was about 10 pounds to get in yeah so we used to stand outside the main door ask people for money yeah we've got ten pence I was with DJ at the Lucano and it was with the only place really of big entertainment so on a Monday night we would have between 1200 and 1800 kids under 18. and then on the weekend we'd have 1800 people over 18. and when I used to come here with Pete Waterman that's where I used to do the dance and Neville and the boys for being watermen he used to give it some movement yeah yeah no that is supposed to give it that man under the shuffling with the shuffle split everything like that show me the splits what do you think I am now come on [Applause] oh never oozed Christmas I mean he was just a character and you know the great thing about him they all loved him everybody knew it was never Nev's going to do his bit now I've jumped off this before you know I bet you have it was so traumatic I've probably forgotten it yeah [Music] [Applause] obviously the best night was when two-tone tour came here oh yeah we've got a lot of people [Music] it just was wild the crowd was so forensic and you look down there you see a people [Music] I think it was the 25th of November 1979 the excitement was ridiculous there were crowds outside trying to get in it was rampacked in here it was heaving your hometown crowd applauding so much and I loved what we were doing so much so exciting to hear a whole crowd of 2 000 plus people chanting the band name you know from obviously for us it was slapped up selector selector [Music] the guys [Music] [Applause] here all right thank you good night [Music] [Music] you know we did have some people that followed us from Coventry in the early days when it came to the uncle they got on stage with us I mean I don't know whether they felt safe or on the stage or what then that just became a tradition [Music] I've seen him when I dance and I could tell they wanted to be part of it so he said yeah come on up call it you want them to be not just fans out there enjoying it you want to be with you that's why you get the energy from and the more energy I was giving out it was given about the same way then I was giving it more I was going crazy up and down here you go away [Music] it was utter anything goes exuberance there was usually as many people on stages there were in the front part of the audience it started happening earlier and earlier in the set and it got a bit out of hand but you you couldn't stop it you know you really couldn't stop it you've got about three skinheads draped all over you and everyone's just having this wonderful time pick up I mean it would be health and safety nightmare these days you did go wrong a few times a stage collapsed um I guess it was too many people so yeah stage cap so we had to stop the show a few times it was definitely a coventry contingent that started that [Music] but all the time [Music] a lot of people in Coventry all of a sudden they had two hugely successful bands that come from their Hometown and the whole world was taking notice of us I think the biggest is when we went to America because the Midwest was in a different Century almost one place that we played we went on after a wet t-shirt competition men in 10 gallon hats kind of skipping around as though it's Christmas um so that took some bottle as and they were wondering what are all these black people doing here because in those days when we walked into a truck stop place we could stop the place dead from talking so that didn't make it particularly great for going on stage at some of these shows because you just felt as though you wanted to rip everybody's head off everybody had a lot to cope with probably why we argued a lot but the argument turned into a powerful musical set it's a bit intense was [Music] um you know the the good reason for doing it all the other 23 hours were a little more problematic [Music] I wanna foreign [Music] Spirit very much still alive in Coventry I feel it a lot of people here feel it this is my new project and this is the lineup we've got an age range of 22 23 up to Aussie Holt who's 82. and uh Bella belladini it was the most wonderful voice come around I haven't seen you for a long time if you were born and bred in Coventry you're most likely will be into two-tone I think it makes up the spirit of the city to be honest with a lot of people that I know it's um it's a representation that music can bring anyone from any background together and that's what we're aiming to do with this trap Unity just get in there and do your thing [Music] it's wonderful to be doing something that's inspired and related to so here still in Coventry yes it's where it all started [Music] [Music] it just means a lot to me because a lot of people from all around the world can come and see what's happening here scar Pacino it's from my friends they're on sale their own as me but they're very loyal okay we've got silver this we've got gold disc oh I have okay yeah brilliant there's tough video that I didn't know was in here like ultra rare packets of Japanese cigarettes gangsters oh I keep looking at this I remember jumping off an early dominating I used to stand on this Dancing Away on there jungle oh yeah brings back a lot of memories it's a great feeling because at this time you never thought you'd have something like this and to have it now it touches me it touches me [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I mean I think if there's one song that Margaret Thatcher wishes never got released it's probably Ghost Town the first time I ever heard it I know it was number one I remember hearing it in the car and thought my God that's number one foreign [Music] ghost town on the uh the home organ just on my own when I first wrote it I think I wrote the music first I was working on that for ages and the lyrics you know I wrote on tour of just seeing what was going down around the country foreign oh my goodness talk about Zeitgeist that one song suddenly captured so much in commentary and all over England it painted the same picture this town it's coming like a war Stone [Music] place [Music] bye fans won't play no more to watch fighting on the Dance Floor listen to lyrics I mean his lyrics were really perfect they were modern poetry we lived in a ghost town you know the factors were crumbling around our our ears we just had the miners strike and at the locarno I was having to have a generator outside and the records were at 45 were going up and down because the generators were steady foreign [Music] people on the Dole it's about the police harassment and unemployment it was like a Perfect Storm really and of course it was very prophetic because very soon after you know Britain exploded with the riots and that song in many ways became a theme tune [Music] remembering being in this car remember um with a great fun late at night horror event he was a safer driver than I was [Music] [Applause] it defines a whole generation defined Nation I think ghost town is definitely the song that the specials will be remembered by [Music] [Applause] and the last song last video I'll always remember this old boy yeah [Applause] three of us was the the front men in this in the specials um our ideas didn't come out in the specials really it was boiling up inside us and the time came to explode and uh from boy 3 came out it's quite funny really everybody takes us seriously we're just having a good laugh when the fun boy three left the specials I was determined to carry on the political side of the specials because I mean you know there are things that musicians can say that that politicians are scared to say because they're always concerned about how many votes they've got you know well Nelson Mandela was the leader of the African National Congress which was a resistance movement in South Africa dedicated to the overthrow of the white apartheid government and he's now been in prison in South Africa in terrible conditions for 21 years so that's what inspired me to write the song [Music] together [Music] nothing prepared me for when you hear the record the chorus everything about it was just so perfect in terms of getting over a simple clean message [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] it was an incredible uh use of the platform pop music you know to bring Global attention to apartheid the anti-apartheid movement had asked for a massive display of solidarity and they weren't disappointed the March through London stretched for Miles as far as the eye could see a stream of noisy but orderly protest and then it culminated in a huge Festival on Clapham common which had 40 million people it was the biggest anti-apartheid demonstration there'd ever been anywhere in the world at the time and I put that bill together this afternoon a massive crowd gathered in the sunshine a six-hour Freedom Festival a Pity mixture of politics and pop but I really went out of my way to make sure that it was a good mix of black artists and white artists who had Hugh Masekela um Gil Scott Harris sting charde poor Wella Elvis Costello that was definitely my proudest moment organizing that concert it was amazing every [Music] baby [Music] a billion people all over the world have been watching today's Nelson Mandela concert from Wembley [Music] and then there's another concert at Wembley after Mandela had been released which he actually came to [Applause] and he got a 30 minute Standing Ovation from the crowd at Wendy and I was in the crowd at that point that was an incredible moment as well I mean really uh mind-blowing moments but yeah it was great honor to meet him there's a huge queue of people someone introduced me and he said ah yes very good I absolutely believe that that song had a lot to do with uh you know bringing a rapid end to apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela so the big Mandela Global concerts which went to hundreds of millions of people apparently you know that was the culmination of of two-tone really [Music] I think Coventry was the perfect place for two-tone to begin conversations that we were having about sexism and racism are now relatively common parlance a whole new language got discovered I'm not even sure in 1979 that racism was a word that was actually banded around by people and was was up for serious discussion let low multiculturalism the conversation is ongoing we need to tackle these subjects [Music] the legacy is hopefully that some of the anti-racist messages got across and people had a good time and it contributed to you know a multi-racial Britain and it's hard to measure that stuff but you know hopefully it was part of that [Music] when you can have that powerful music and you can be saying something about the new condition as well it's positive it's joyous it sounds good it's got interesting lyrics it's got everything you need basically we're just saying stop you messing around stop your messing around barely think of your future [Music] it was you know a wild bad behavior and an insanity from day one so it all sounds very serious all this but uh you know it was also full-on rock and roll and we wanted to be posters you know [Music] [Applause] [Music] this must be nice [Music]

Channel: Matt

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Length: 58min 59sec (3539 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022