Back In The Triumvirate…The English Beat’s Dave Wakeling (Interview)

Dave Wakeling is bringing his English Beat back to New Zealand for a series of shows beginning in Christchurch on May 28th. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Mr. Wakeling recently and found out that the band is cooking up some new music…the first in over 30 years. Wakeling also claims that the band has gotten even better since their last visit in 2012.

Click here to listen to the interview with The English Beat’s Dave Wakeling:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: You were here in Auckland in August of 2012, so how has the band gotten better since then?

DW: I’ve changed a couple of people, you know redefined it a little more and we’ve played 160 shows a year, well for the last 7 years. You know, you only change one musician and it makes an enormous change over a few months as everybody adapts around that new vibe and groove, and we’ve got a really particularly nice one on at the moment.

MD: Excellent, excellent.

DW: I wanted it to be a kind of soul, punk and the reggae, that’s what I wanted. I wanted an edge, but with a groove you know. So it’s got a sharp front, but it’s got a nice big round bottom.

MD: Right, now correct me if I’m wrong but I think I read somewhere recently that you’re considering recording a new album. Is that right?

DW: Not only that, we’re already doing it.

MD: Oh cool.

DW: We were that excited and we couldn’t wait. We got the drums done on 25 tunes. And with some help of some friends around America we’ve picked which ten we think we’re gonna start with and we start a pledge campaign for this in the beginning of June…with some terrific premiums, I must say, I would pay for the “Play guitar with Dave Wakeling internationally with your choice of songs and make a video”, you know. I would pay for that.

MD: Right, sure.

DW: And so we’re gonna start recording in the autumn and It would come out in the spring in America and in summer in Europe and Australia and we’ll come and tour it in August. And there would be a couple of extra tracks that nobody gets on the New Zealand and Australia version. Each time it gets brought out in a different area of the world there would be a couple of songs that nobody’s ever heard.

MD: Gotcha. So this would be quite a few years in between English Beat albums. Why have you decided to finally record one now?

DW: It’s all down to timing mate.

MD: Okay.

DW: Well I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, 5-6 years ago, there was some talk of making a record and I’d watch very carefully a lot of my 80s peer group…friends, cohorts, whatever…bringing out albums and they’ll be a lot of talk about the album leading up to it and then the album would come out and about 3 weeks later nobody was talking about it and you just had this awful feeling that there were boxes and boxes of CDs piled up in somebody’s garage.

MD: Yeah.

DW: And so I was, I didn’t want to do a vanity record. But I like touring, I really like playing live that’s the bit…I’ll make records if I have to you know…but I like singing live. And so I decided to go round America and see did anybody wanna hear any new songs from me anyway. And so I done that now for 5 years and we’ve ended up, we play 160 shows a year, we can fill a good sized room in every city in America now…and we’re starting to become the bee’s knees at bigger shows and festivals and opening up for stuff like Squeeze and Devo, Blondie…in some ways we’ve re-established and now these last 12 months, people at the merchandise counter are saying ‘hey have you got a new CD’ ‘when’s the new CD’ ‘are you doing a new CD’…which was my cue. ‘Yes I am doing a new CD, I’m glad you asked, I’ve been waiting’. So now there’s interest in me doing a CD. People have seen the band in America maybe 3 or 4 times over the last few years and really enjoyed it, say that I have a great voice. My sister said in February, when I went to England, she said that’s the best I’ve ever heard you sing those songs. So I’m glad, sometimes it takes 35 years to get the bloody hang of something. It seems that I’m getting close.

MD: Right. Excellent, so with the new album comes song writing I assume. Do you have tonnes of stuff in the stock pile around or are you suddenly having to scurry around and write up new tunes?

DW: Well I’m doing both of course. There’s a handful of new songs but they’re…. my songs are a bit like elephant babies, you know what I mean, the initial idea only takes a moment and then the gestation period is endless. So they’lll come out on my next record probably. But I write all the time, there’s always 3 or 4 songs going on. So if anybody looks and goes ‘what’s the matter with Dave, he doesn’t seem to pay attention nowadays’ it’s because I’m singing the chorus to a song that only I know.

MD: Right, gotcha.

DW: I use that as an excuse with the kids sometimes like that helps.

MD: Fair enough.

DW: Excuse me, I’m singing a chorus. And even if I’m not, they don’t know. I might have been thinking about football or ladies bottoms later.

MD: Exactly.

DW: And there were already 25 songs which I had finished and together with a team of folks and friends and some radio people and some old music business friends that I’ve known since the beginning who know my work inside out, they all got a copy of these 25 tunes and they all came back with their suggestions and there was a remarkable amount of unanimity on it so the first 10 to pick were pretty easy. So we’re gonna start with some of them and then once we got them cracking then we’ll start of some of the others that will be the extra tracks and bonus tracks. Some of them of course…soon as they pick the 10 everybody thought was the best, I’m ecstatic…and the next day all I am is feeling sorry for the other 15. Well I like that one, well I’m gonna do that one and I’m all recalcitrant about  it.  So there isn’t a bad one in the box I believe.

MD: Are any of them inspired by political events or are they topical at all or are they just… what are you writing about these days?

DW: Yes, but in a wider scale I think. So yes there is lots of that, there’s a song called If Killing Works, It Would Have Worked By Now.

MD: Right.

DW: And um, so it’s kinda rocky and it says “turn on your TV, see what they’ve done. They’ve made our culture look like a setting sun, but we’re better than that because we now have if killing works, it would have worked by now”.

MD: Yeah, well there you go.

DW: You know when I was a kid, I would watch the black and white TV news and I’d think ‘oh probably by the time I’ve grown up, they would have stopped killing each other’s children won’t they?’

MD: You’d like to think so but it seems to be getting worse.

DW: Yes that’s right, they seem to spend more time killing each other’s children than feeding their own sometimes. It’s bloody sad so…and it doesn’t work and it begs the question you know, what else would you do for 30 or 40 thousand years that didn’t work, and just keep doing it?

MD: Right.

DW: So I would like to have a one week campaign… ‘Try not to kill somebody else’s child week’.

MD: Alright.

DW: If any percentage of the world’s population could just have a bash at that for one week, I think we’d start to see miracles of human connections start to redevelop.

MD: Excellent. So are any of these songs in the set list yet or will we be able to hear any of them or are you holding off until the record comes out?

DW: They have been just to see how they would go. We beta tested them quietly but we do have them in sound checks sometimes for our street team, who’s a very important part of our organisation.  The street team have done a fantastic job in New Zealand, just helping spread the word gently and slowly to people that are interested rather than blanket markets and I hear that Christchurch has already been sold out so I expect that we’re gonna get some good turn outs in Auckland and Wellington too.

MD: I’m sure you will.

DW: Yeah and we played some of the new songs to them. They get to come to sound check and get a special T-shirt and they become part of the band really.

MD: Excellent.

DW: and they get to hear some of the new ones for helping us promote the shows.

MD: And you recently toured the UK earlier this year, which is from what I understand, the first time in many a year. What was that like for you?

DW: Donkey’s years, I believe.

MD: How many?

DW: Donkey’s years.

MD: Donkey’s years of course. I was trying to picture that number.

DW: I mean donkey’s years…that was the official…. that was in the press releases. It was interesting, it was fantastic but it was weird to get used to because of course everything’s the same and everything’s totally different. We had to reconfigure the set list from what we’re used to in America. We had to hit them a bit harder at the beginning and get them to stop folding their arms and rubbing their chin or looking like Romanian Olympic score carders you know.

MD: Right.

DW: I mean the Romanian judges give them an 8.7 there, 8.7 on the first go of song you know. Dave needs an 8.6 now to go in for the next round and he’s a bit too nice to talk to that’s got a difficulty of 2.8…judges looking by. It was a bit like that.

MD: Right.

DW: It’s like get outta here you know so we had to bang them with a couple and get their arms unfolded and then and it was a bit like St Vitus Dance from that point on.

MD: Yeah.

DW: I was back in the hot seats and I was the pied piper and it worked tremendously. We got an amazing review out of London, thequietus.com. Only in England probably, they have awards for reviewers and he’s won it every year or 10 years in a row you know. Not only did he like the show a great deal but he also put me back in the triumvirate…you know the fallen angle, reinstated, right up there, Strummer, Weller, Wakeling.

MD: That’s gotta feel good.

DW: Whoa. Oh man you know, I can’t stop talking about that one. You know and two of us are still alive….

MD: That’s right.

DW: I can never remember which two!

MD: Well you have to get together with Paul Weller at some time. Maybe get him to guest on the album. Would be a bad thing.

DW: Yeah I know, I reckon I should.

MD: Yeah. Alrighty.

DW: I would love to. We were good mates you know. We were good mates back in the day. We did the Red Wedge tour together against Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock’s misses played tambourine on Stand Down Margaret. One of the great moments inf rock ’n’ roll for me.

Click here to watch Dave Wakeling’s 2012 visit to The 13th Floor.

Click here for more details about the New Zealand tour.