Top of the Pops, was a laugh. We got pretty merry (I was escorted from the BBC bar.) and we wondered what next!
The Two Tone tour - The Specials, The Selecter our label mates, and also a band from north London called Madness. Cheeky chappies who also loved Prince Buster and who's first release "The Prince" came out on Two Tone!
The hit's kept comin! We were having fun, getting along famously, gig's in Europe and then the USA.
America had been something we had all grown up with, rock'n'roll, Kojak - movies. Would they like or even understand British ska? Madness had already beaten us and had played New York, now it was our turn!
We did some dates supporting the Police and a few on our own. The East Coast ,New York, Boston etc and the West Coast ,Los Angeles, San Francisco loved us, but the midwest and not so hip places didn't quite get it! In fact the record company had real problems!
Even though punk rock had changed things a bit in the U.K., America was still hippie land! everybody seemed to be into coke, something we hadn't really come across. We were mainly weed and beer boy's, with a bit of mod whizz.
The huge distances certainly took their toll. The tour bus, as Horace put it, was like a mobile funeral home. Jerry said I'd come back looking like Marlon Brando ( circa "The Wild One" ), I could now get all the gear i wanted in American thrift shops - leather's - cowboy shirts - hats and motorbike boots - Brando-Dean. Most of the band didn't want to wear the same old suits, and this among other things caused disagreement.
I had also gotten into rock-a-billy in a big way, a music I'd always liked but now it became my religion. The music on the tour bus would usually be heavy reggae or jazz ,which after several weeks would fail to excite me. The short tours in Britain and Europe could no way prepare us for 5-6 weeks around the U.S. and Canada.
Jerry hated it! He told the Los Angeles times that he'd had more fun on a school trip to Russia. When the record company guys came to see us in L.A., where we had been doing two shows a night for a week or more, it was the straw that broke the camels back!
We were shattered, partly due to non stop partying but mainly exhaustion. The Chysalis USA guys came in wearing suits and ties, smoking cigars, and wanted us to have a photo taken with them. This was in between sets, towards the end of our residency! Jerry just told them to fuck off! and most of the band joined in... they stopped pushing the record! but i must say it felt good. Maybe today, if we had been good little English boys, I might have a little more money in the bank! But we considered ourselves revolutionaries with Jerry our leader.