New material on The Specials in Neville Staple biography

The paperback of Original Rude Boy is out in May and Neville Staple is promising a whole load of new material on the Specials tour - with photos never seen before from the UK, Japan and Australia.  Some behind the scenes gossip.  And a new intro from Amy Winehouse.

Paperback of Original Rude Boy out soon

The paperback of Original Rude Boy will be published in the spring of 2010.  My mole tells me that there will be plenty of tales from the recent Specials tour while Jerry Dammers will be faded out earlier in the story. 

When the hardback came out in March 2009, it seemed that Dammers' row with the band might overshadow the tour.  The air was thick with talk of legal action and so on.  But with the huge success of the tour, it seems we can all now move on from that episode.

The front cover of the paperback will be white in contrast to the black cover of the hardback.  And rumour has it....Amy Winehouse will be writing a new intro. 

Notting Hill Waterstone's - books run out at signing

Neville signed so many books at the Notting Hill Waterstone's - they ran out.  I was there to see shop staff phoning the Piccadilly store to see if they could get some more copies sent over.  In the end, Neville got in a cab, went down to Piccadilly and signed some more copies there.  There was a huge turnout for a Nottingham signing with fans queueing round the block.  The original rude boy has never been so popular!

Little bit of trouble at Luton gig...

Neville Staple, Pauline Black and The Beat were playing in Luton last Saturday at an open air gig which was very well attended.  But things got a big out of hand when security guards started throwing members of the audience around like they were rag dolls.  Staple stood with the audience and using his mike urged the security guards to calm down.  It did look for a while like a good old fashioned ruck - 80s style - was about to break out.  But the whole thing calmed down.  Still, there's a lot of youth unrest out there at the moment - is this a sign of things to come?  Our mole tells us that Coventry boxer Errol Christie was in the audience - he's about to bring out his biography hot on the heels of Neville's "Original Rude Boy".  Let's how that reads.  There may be some overlap as the guys hung around in some of the same places though Christie is a decade younger. 

Oh dear, somebody doesn't like Original Rude Boy

There's a review of Neville Staple's biography on the 2Tone website (written by somebody who obviously loved Horace Panter's drier tome on The Specials) which makes the most bizarre critique you can imagine of Nev.

Nothing to do with his music, voice or role in 2Tone. No - there's a long moan about the fact that Nev admits that when he was five years old, he used to torture animals. Now - I'm not condoning that. But he was five. This was the late 1950s in Jamaica. And he's making a point about his rough upbringing. But this guy decides that on the basis of that and later in his teens working in a slaughterhouse (well, there were three million unemployed at the time and you took what jobs you could get), Nev is a very bad man and his book is not to be read lest you become an animal torturer yourself!

Then we have a moan about Neville admitting that he was a burglar. And he did time in borstal. But because he says burglaries were "exhilarating" - that drives our reviewer on 2Tone nuts. Again, Neville was a rude boy - what do you expect? He says Nev is glorifying burglary. That's like saying - don't watch the Godfather in case you end up supporting the mafia.

Original Rude Boy finally shows the black British influence on 2Tone and some white folk don't like it. They don't take the sound system scene that Nev came from seriously because sound system DJs didn't pluck guitars. But I for one am glad Mr Staple has finally put pen to paper and upset the right people.