Neville Staple playing Gangsters!

Neville Staple is still touring with The Neville Staple Band and I filmed this gig on my iPhone in Chelsea a while back. He puts on a great performance as you can see. Neville is not playing with The Specials anymore but treats you to all the classic songs. I worked with Mr Staple on his biography Original Rude Boy back in 2009.

That was the story of his struggle to make a name for himself through music. Neville always had a passion for ‘toasting’ and dancing that he took to the Locarno night club in Coventry throughout the 1970s. A place that was a magnet for the city’s youth. And a certain Pete Waterman was the DJ. The man who went on to mastermind a string of pop hits throughout the 1980s was a pioneering promoter of reggae and British black music in the 1970s.

Neville brought his street sensibility and Jamaican soul to The Specials. He also was a fizzing ball of energy during their gigs leaping off loudspeakers, the keyboards and even the Locarno’s balcony apparently!