Neville Staple headlines Thorp Perrow festival
FORMER member of The Specials Neville Staple heads for the Great Northern Festival at Thorp Perrow on Sunday with the reputation for changing the face of pop music not once but twice.
From the early days with The Coventry Automatics, The Specials and FunBoy3 in the late 1970s and 1980s, to The Special Beat and various other collaborations during his solo career from the 1990s up to the present day, Neville has enjoyed a 35-year career which he covered in his autobiography, The Original Rude Boy, published by Aurum Press in May 2009.
Staple talks about interest in music back in the early 1960s and his relationship with Pete Waterman, having met him at a club in Coventry, and his rise out of hell into stardom.
Today he continues to be a forerunner of the ska movement. Last year saw Staple headlining The Avalon Stage, at Glastonbury. He produced a new album called Ska Crazy with his band, which was released in May 2014, which included old Ska classic covers and new material. His wife Christine and long-time friend Daddy Woody, a Jamaican DJ/Artist, also provide vocals on the album.
Staple has also worked on various collaborations with The Mutants (Rhythm and Punk Review) including co-writing four tracks on the album – one of them co-written with his wife. Many more collaborations are underway.
* Sunday, August 28, Great Northern Festival, Thorp Perrow, DL8 2PR. Box Office: info@wescantickets.com
Viv Hardwick
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