It’s difficult to believe, but three decades have passed since The English Beat burst onto the music scene. The band formed in Birmingham, England in the late ‘70s. As the original wave of British punk rock began to burn out, those who had been part of it went in several different musical directions, ranging from rockabilly to electropop. Another direction was “two-tone,” a musical hybrid based on a mix of pop, punk and, perhaps most significantly, reggae. Along with The Specials, Madness and The Selecter, The English Beat were one of the first, biggest and best purveyors of the two-tone movement. Known simply as The Beat in the UK, they had to change their name to The English Beat here in America to avoid being confused with an L.A. power pop band already known as The Beat.

The original English Beat was a sextet that featured singer-guitarist Dave Wakeling, toaster Ranking Roger, lead guitarist Andy Cox, bassist David Steele, drummer Everett Morton and saxophonist Saxa. In addition to being an interracial band (three black members and three white), The Beat was also a diverse group in terms of age. While most of the members were in their 20’s, Saxa was in his early 50’s. Originally from Jamaica and a veteran of Prince Buster’s band among others, Saxa lended an element of authenticity to the band as well as being old enough to offer them fatherly advice.

The English Beat literally played their first gig 30 years ago, in March of 1979.  The following year, they released their debut album, I Just Can’t Stop It. The disc was a commercial and critical hit, and it’s not hard to see why. I Just Can’t Stop It was that rare album that was catchy and danceable yet socially conscious. It paid homage to the past while being completely modern. And it integrated an assortment of different musical styles into something truly fresh. Highlights of the album ranged from the fast, punkish “Click Click” (only a minute and a half in length) to a reggae-tinged reworking of the Andy Williams ballad “Can’t Get Used to Losing You” to the bright, buoyant “Best Friend.”

The band released two more studio efforts. 1981’s Wha’ppen? was a bit more downbeat, both musically and moodwise, “Drowning” being the centerpiece. The following year’s Special Beat Service, meanwhile, was somewhat more polished. As such, it was the Beat’s most successful album in America, containing the radio hits “I Confess” and “Save it for Later.”  Sadly, Special Beat Service proved to be the band’s swan song, as they broke up in 1983.

After their demise, the members of the Beat headed in various directions. Cox and Steele hooked up with singer Roland Gift and the trio eventually scored massive success as The Fine Young Cannibals. Interestingly, the band’s two vocalists – Wakeling and Roger – had some chart success as  General Public, but nothing to rival that of the Cannibals. That said, the duo’s 1984 debut did respectably and produced a delightful hit in the form of “Tenderness.” Wakeling and Roger released one more General Public album, 1986’s Hand to Mouth, before calling it a day.

In the two decades and change since then, Wakeling has recorded only sporadically, which is a bit surprising since he was the voice of the English Beat in various respects. He unveiled his solo debut, No Warning, in 1991. In addition to the title track, No Warning featured the catchy opener “I Want More” and “She’s Having a Baby,” a song Wakeling wrote for the John Hughes movie of the same name. Several years later, he regrouped with Ranking Roger for the General Public reunion disc, Rub it Better.

Since that time, Wakeling has not released any new music, but he has certainly stayed busy. Now based in Los Angeles – a world away from his Northern English roots – he has been an extremely passionate advocate of environmental causes, even working full-time for Greenpace for five years. On the musical front. Wakeling is currently on tour with a revamped lineup of The English Beat in celebration of the band’s 30th anniversary.  He says, “At such an exciting time musically and politically, The English Beat are proud as punch to be spreading their message of connectivity, tolerance and good will.”

Indeed, Dave Wakeling must be given credit for putting together an optimistic but politically conscious, interracial band at a time when this wasn’t standard fare in England. Wakeling’s personal life also bears this out; his wife is black and they have two children. While this may not be a shock in 2009, it bears mentioning that when the Wakelings first married, in the mid Eighties, interracial unions were not very common. As such, I was interested to get his thoughts not only on the music but also on race issues – a particularly pertinent issue considering that America has just elected its first black President. I recently caught up with Wakeling on The English Beat’s tour bus before their gig at New York’s Irving Plaza. Not only is he a talented musician, he’s also an intelligent, engaging and humorous conversationalist.

Take me back to the beginning… I read a book recently by Jon Savage that I found fascinating called England’s Dreaming. Now obviously I wasn’t in England in the late ‘70s but it seems like it was a fascinating place and time.

It was exactly the same as it is now here. So it’s going to be just as fascinating right here, right now. Recession turning into depression. A sense of social discomfort starting up between sides, you know, [it’s] starting to become a bit more polarized. A sense of impending doom. You know, is there a nuclear threat, is somebody gonna push a button? Massive unemployment.

The punks’ notion of ‘no future’ seemed kind of certain. But the punks’ reaction to it – of just getting blitzed and burning yourself out – didn’t see much way after three or four years. It’s like any great drug movement. It doesn’t matter what you start on, you all end up junkies at the end. The punks had gone from speed to heroin… into ’78, it started to become a bit decadent and nihilistic. And people were still looking for a way to protest… but people didn’t want to be angry and miserable. That bought into the paradigm that the opposition was supplying you with. And even if life wasn’t gonna go on for much longer – and people genuinely thought we might not have long – Britain thought of itself as a nuclear aircraft carrier for America, basically, Margaret Thatcher as Ronald Reagan’s lapdog – you wanted a way to find two [things]. You wanted to be able to enjoy yourself and you wanted to be able to have music that carried some element of social commentary or protest in it.

So we tried to mix up punk and reggae. Both punks and rastas were outcasts, banned from the same pubs. And so they became friends because of that. Both types of music had a social commentary and a music of oppression, if you will. So we wanted to do that but with an upbeat vibe to it, by combining punk and reggae – the “Punky Reggage Party” that Bob Marley sang of. Ska, frankly, was a bit of an accident that we ran into once we realized that if you sped reggae up with a punk beat, it sounded very similar to the skinhead reggae we’d been listening to in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. We were trying to find out own hybrid beat, which was really Toots and the Maytals meets the Velvet Underground with the pop sensibility of The Buzzcocks and Dusty Springfield and a little bit of heartfelt Van Morrison and Tim Buckley. But with a little bit of a swagger – Bryan Ferry, David Bowie.

You really did have a lot of disparate elements in the music.

And the people who were in the group – everybody had very different musical selections. Roger, ‘cause he was black, everybody thought he was the reggae guy, but he was pure punk at the time. Me and [lead guitarist] Andy [Cox] were more of the reggae-heads.

And you had Saxa, who was much older than the rest of you, right?

He was my age now…yes, he was the old, wise [man]. He taught us a lot about music – not the notes so much but the reason why you bothered to play in the first place, what your role as a troubadour was. To help [the audience get through the] miseries that we all have. And how lucky we were to even be in a group, you know, ‘cause you can get to be a prima donna. “I can’t do another fucking show, I just can’t!”  He would say, well, people stood in the rain at the bus stop, waited for the bus, got off the bus, walked in the rain to this club, stood outside in the rain to buy a ticket and are here now to hear you sing and hear us play… and if they can do it, you can. It burst the bubble! “Well, yes, I suppose, if you put it that way. I was trying to have an art attack, Saxa!” So he was a great leveller for that.

He’d been pulled out of school at eight years old, to help his Dad as a barracuda fisherman. His job was to hold a knife between his teeth and dive down and stab a barracuda and then wait a few minutes and go down and try to get it after it had thrashed its life out.

A little different than your background, I’m guessing.

I didn’t do a lot of barracuda stabbing, no. (laughter) So he said as he left school for the last time, God apologized to him personally [for the fact] that he didn’t have the book-learning education that he might have, but that if he built himself a bamboo saxophone, anytime he played that, he would be speaking directly to God – and God would answer him directly. And he thought that  every time he played the saxophone, he was playing for the audience’s enjoyment but they were actually witnessing him having a conversation with his God.

So that put a different spin on it! (laughs)

And he was from where, Jamaica?

Jamaica, yes.

Is he still alive?

He is indeed. I’m gonna go and see him in a couple of weeks time in Birmingham [England]. He’s in his mid-80s, and not as hale and hearty as he was. So I’m very keen to go and see him.

We’ve just elected the first black President… What’s your feeling about where America stands right now?

Well, it’s definitely evolution, isn’t it? No doubt about it. And to those that say evolution doesn’t exist, I say they’re absolutely correct – but only for them (laughs). And it’s made perhaps a partial truth now of that awful cliché about [how] an American kid could grow up to be President. Now, there’s a chance that that’s actually true for the first time. It means a girl could be President too, I think. So [Obama’s] broken a lot of glass ceilings and if he does nothing else, I think that’s an absoutely fantastic thing. I think that means that America isn’t going into its empire decline – which is what I thought for these last few years.

Having started an interracial band 30 years ago, being married to a black woman… you know, I walked around in Connecticut back in the ‘80s with my black girlfriend and definitely encountered, if not overt hostility, than definitely some weird looks.

It’s very different now than it was. We’ve been married 22-odd years – not the years that were odd, 22 approximate is what I mean!  Not in Los Angeles so much, but I remember holding hands in a shopping mall in Seattle and we nearly gave an old lady a heart attack. And then in Scottsdale, Arizona the same thing. Now this woman, I don’t know, she looked totally affronted by it. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, have you never seen a white man before?’

But now, you don’t actually see two people of the same ethnicity [together in L.A.], which I prefer to use than race. You don’t see two people of the same ethnicity holding hands at all, ever! Not on the Third Street Promenade, it’s like there’s some rule about it now. Cross-breeding, go! Everybody jokes about it, you know, it doesn’t really matter how ugly they are, once [two interracial people have kids], the kids are beautiful. So I think actually, it might be a rejuvenation of the DNA. Perhaps it was getting a bit staid, a bit like the British Royal Family.

My 15-year-old son looks like Obama without the ears and plays left-handed basketball and is about the same height. Big, strapping chap. And he’s not really aware of any racism on the West side of Los Angeles, apart from when he was at school. He got quite a lot of grief at school. Sadly, teachers are of the opinion – and it’s true in a lot of cases – that the black kids in the local schools that are bussed in, their parents don’t often show up at the schools. So if a teacher is from a previous generation, when black people weren’t allowed to look white people in the eye or something like that, and if they’ve become slightly curmudegonly and like shouting at children anyway, they absolutely adore shouting at black kids. Which horrified me. I was like, ‘Are you sure? California in the 21st century?’ Is the racism built into the brickwork, is it that institutionalized that nobody sees it? The kids would be judged and punished quite differently from white kids. Then I’d have to show up at school. And they’d be shocked to see me! In my clipped English accent, which I put on like crazy. (exaggerated English accent) “Oh hello. Nice to meet you.”  (teacher, gasping) “Oh! Mr. Wakeling!” And I’d have to say, ‘Do you know what? I’m the whitest person that’s ever come into this school, I’ve been that white for 1,200 years, ever since our family came from Jutland. And on a good winter’s day, you can see our veins under our skin… So don’t tell me about white.” They hated me!

But anyway, I saved the kids and now they’re both home-schooled. We don’t allow our children to be subjected to that kind of petty cruelty. It wasn’t any good for them.

Can I ask you about a couple of [specific] Beat tunes?

You bet. You can indeed.

What about “I Confess?”

A mixture. I was obsessed with [comics] and I read them quite a lot, and in fact one of the comics ended up with a whole set of stories that they called “I Confess.” I used a story about a man and a woman [who] got married. And unbeknownst to the bride, the man was also shagging her sister – and they did it straight after the [wedding] ceremony! In one of the anti-rooms of the church. And the wife caught them. And of course, now he’s been caught, he’s all terrified, and said “Oh my God, I’ve ruined three lives.” And I laughed because I said, “Yeah but you didn’t fucking care til you found out one of them was yours! You didn’t care when you were ruining two lives!” I just thought it was funny.

So I mixed that in with some equally embarrassing personal experiences and wove it into this tale. It was good because it gave me a chance to kind of exaggerate and cartoonize my own feelings but push them to a limit to see if I could reach a conclusion – which I did by somewhere in the second chorus – that when we were young, we would have these lovers’ arguments and they were always based on who loved each other more than the other one did. When in fact the hardest thing to admit in that situation was that you didn’t actually care at all. So the punch of the song really was, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay indifferent.”

It’s a great song. The lyrics are so dark and yet the melody is buoyant.

Tell me a little about “Stand Down Margaret.”

That was fairly overtly political, although it wasn’t “stand down” as in “resign” – although that would have been a decent option – it was more “stand down” as in “get off your soapbox.” [Margaret Thatcher] was one of the most dangerous types of conservatives, that had grown up working class and developed airs and graces to pretend that she was of the middle class. So that makes them all the more cruel, you know? She was just a grocer’s daughter from Nottingham but suddenly acting as though she was Lady Thatcher – which, of course, she did become. Now, how wonderful, she’s got Alzheimer’s and doesn’t even remember she was Prime Minister. How convenient is that? But we’re still here and we remember.

One thing I read on your website is that you had told someone that you thought every great band had three great albums in them. And The Beat originally made three studio albums.

We did two great ones. So we’ve still got room for one more! I’ve got lots of songs and we’re ready to record, but I never really liked albums. At the time, I was a singles guy. Actually, I love EP’s. I don’t really care how good somebody is, I don’t wanna hear 12 songs whining on the same theme. I used to get bored. I like the sound of vinyl albums, but I never was much of an album person. I’d much rather put a pile of singles on a record player and just have ‘em drop, more like a jukebox.

But I did used to adore EP’s… And so that’s what I’m thinking of doing [with The Beat]. Of maybe making our own seven-track CD’s with two new songs, with a remix of each, a couple of live songs and a couple of acoustic songs.

To wrap up, any thoughts on 30 years on the Beat?

I can’t believe I survived!

-Dave Steineld