The Specials’ bassist on his journey to the Dirt Road Band: “I knew that there was a new world somewhere”

JIMI HENDRIX, A BIG STAR CD, GILLIAN WELCH, FONTAINES D.C. AND MORE – ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE NEW UNCUT HERE!

THE BYRDS

“5D (Fifth Dimension)”

CBS, 1966

I joined The Searchers’ fanclub when I was 11, but the first single I ever bought was “5D (Fifth Dimension)” by The Byrds. I didn’t have the faintest idea what it was on about, and you couldn’t dance to it because it was in waltz time, but it was fantastic. By buying it, I became a music fan – you could tell, because I owned a single by The Byrds! It was the first step. I was living in Kettering, a little out-of-the-way East Midlands market town, and all of a sudden there was psychedelia, which I thought had to do with long hair and colours. I didn’t know about drugs or anything like that, but I knew that there was a new world somewhere and perhaps I could be part of it.

CREAM

Wheels Of Fire

POLYDOR, 1968

“Crossroads” was really the only song I would listen to on Wheels Of Fire, it was just fantastic. How three human beings could make that amount of noise, and go off in totally different directions but still sound amazing, was incredible to me. So I started going to concerts. Me and my mate went down to London in 1969 for the Pop Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. We saw Blodwyn Pig, The Liverpool Scene and Led Zeppelin – it was totemic, amazing! I was 15 years old and I’d never heard anything so loud in my life. It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life up to that point, being in this place with so many people, listening to this ferocious noise.

THE ROLLING STONES

Exile On Main St

ROLLING STONES RECORDS, 1972

In 1972, I moved away from home and went to Coventry Art School. I’d see concerts at Lanchester Polytechnic: I saw Man, I saw Ace… I saw Captain Beefheart, which was incredible. I joined the college band, and also I heard Exile On Main St for the first time. I think it’s the greatest album ever made. I’m one of those guys, I’m afraid – although Bill Wyman only plays on half the album. I’m a bass player, so I know these things. The bass is either played by Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, or some guy called Bill Plummer, who I’ve never heard of, but he plays on my favourite song, which is “All Down The Line”. Yeah, that music makes me drive my car faster. It’s great, I love it.

TERRY REID

River

ATLANTIC, 1973

Another album that I really loved was River, which is Conrad Isidore on drums, Lee Miles on bass, David Lindley on guitar, and of course Terry Reid with his amazing voice. The first side of River, that’s right up there. For me, it’s the sound of his voice, and the rhythm section is so funky without being heavy – it’s amazing music. It’s one of those things where I remember where I was when I first heard it. I was in Southampton with the drummer in the college band. We were at a friend of his, and he played it. I was open-mouthed – I thought, ‘Wow!’ Then I went out and bought it the next week.

LITTLE FEAT

Feats Don’t Fail Me Now

WARNER BROS, 1974

At college, I learned to dance – or I felt more comfortable dancing than when I was when I was a teenager. Why was it that I danced to Motown and Stax and Atlantic and not Pickettywitch or Love Affair? It was because I started listening to bass guitar, so I got really into all that music. I saw Average White Band at Coventry Technical College and they did an encore of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”, which was transcendent. But one of the most amazing concerts I’ve ever seen in my life is Little Feat at Birmingham Odeon in 1976. They were incredible. How all those people could make such amazing music was absolutely beyond me.​​ Feats Don’t Fail Me Now is the one that I keep going back to, it’s so good.

BURNING SPEAR

Garvey’s Ghost

ISLAND, 1976

I started listening to reggae via Jerry Dammers and the guys that eventually became The Specials. I didn’t really understand it first off, but then someone stood me in the corner at a blues dance next to this huge speaker system and it was like, ‘Oh yeah, I get it.’ Lynval Golding and his friend Desmond Brown [The Selecter], they used to come round my flat with reggae singles and say, ‘OK, listen – this is how the bass goes.’ [Rico Rodriguez’s] Man From Wareika was the album that united a lot of the white guys in The Specials. But I think my favourite is Garvey’s Ghost, which is the dub version of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey. It’s really interesting to see how they interpret the songs.

THE FABULOUS THUNDERBIRDS

The Fabulous Thunderbirds (Girls Go Wild)

CHRYSALIS

After The Specials, I went back to blues. I spent probably two years listening to the first two Fabulous Thunderbirds albums. I thought they were the greatest band ever, because they were like a bar band – they just set up, played and everybody had a good time. It was the equivalent of what I experienced with the pub rock thing in London in the ’70s. I ran a little four-piece blues combo in Coventry for the past 20 years, we just played locally. We once went as far south as Cheltenham, but we didn’t like it! And that was lovely, playing in pubs for 150 quid. So that’s always been a part of me, and the Dirt Road Band is just an extension of that.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

Decoration Day

NEW WEST, 2003

The only album that’s really wiped me out recently is Decoration Day by Drive-By Truckers. I read an article about them and they sounded really interesting. This is gonna sound really posey, but I was in Amoeba Records in Hollywood and there it was: I bought a secondhand copy, and I was stunned. It sounds like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, that ragged guitar kind of thing, but the songs are fantastic. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley both write great stuff – and on Decoration Day, Jason Isbell was in the band as well. I’ve been buying other albums of theirs, but I think Decoration Day is probably the one.

Dirt Road Band’s Righteous is out now on DRB Records