The New Cue #306 July 31: Lynval Golding
"I told my wife, 'When I die, bury me in those shoes.'"
Good morning,
Are you ready for some Start The Week action? You are, we know you are, that’s why you’re here. Today we’ve got a chat with the very lovely fella that is Lynval Golding, still grieving the death of close friend and bandmate Terry Hall but in the mood to look back and celebrate their work with The Specials and Fun Boy Three. It’s warm and emotional, just how you like it. Let’s get to it.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Lynval Golding
On Friday, there’s an epic box set titled The Complete Fun Boy Three coming out, collecting both studio albums, singles, B-sides, outtakes and live recordings of the band that Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple formed after leaving The Specials in 1981. The collection was well under way when Hall sadly passed away last year and now feels like a poignant tribute to one of British music’s most iconic frontmen.
The Specials were at the top of the charts with Ghost Town when the trio departed but it didn’t take them long to start having success in their new guise, scoring Top 10 hits with the Bananarama-featuring It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It) and Really Saying Something and releasing two excellent albums, the second of which was produced by Talking Heads’ David Byrne. They were only together for two years but they packed a lot in. Last week, Niall spoke to guitarist Lynval over the phone about revisiting Fun Boy Three, Terry Hall’s legacy and not being able to keep up with Bananarama’s drinking…
Hello Lynval, how are you?
Oh, it is very strange and weird to be back in England. This is my first time back since Terry died. I thought it was gonna be harder emotionally but I think spiritually Terry is here with me all the time. I feel his presence. And so I'm not too bad.
Ah, I can imagine. Were you dreading coming here?
I didn't want to. I was back here for the funeral in January and then I left and I went straight to Jamaica. I didn't go home because - well, home is Jamaica as well for me – but I didn't go back to Seattle because I didn't want to. When I got back to Seattle, it’s got memorabilia of The Specials and Fun Boy Three, I just thought, 'I don't want to be here either'. I'd rather be somewhere where it was isolated and that was in Jamaica. It was very, very difficult. I was running on an empty tank, It was just fumes, there was no petrol in my tank. I'm getting a bit more back in it now since I've been back here.
I’m sorry for your loss. It must be a lot to get your head round, you two had been close for a long time.
I've been asked all these questions like, ‘Well, what are you going to do now, are you going to get a singer?’. No, that's not going to happen with me. You will not see me going out and saying ‘Lynval Golding from The Specials' - you're not going to see that. That will not happen, you won't see me going out doing The Specials and the Fun Boy Three songs on my own. No way. I'll pay my tribute to Terry, one tribute I'm going to pay is in Los Angeles. His last appearance in Los Angeles, I couldn't be there with him because I was having surgery, it’s for the Musack charity so in October I'm going to go down to LA and I'll pay tribute to him and do three songs.
In a weird way, has it been nice going through the Fun Boy Three stuff for the box set and celebrating him?
It's been nice to listen back and revisit the man's lyrics. Oh my god, what a lyricist. When you listen to Tunnel Of Love and see the way the man writes those lyrics and the way he delivered those lyrics so clearly, you understand every word he's saying. You look at The Lunatics and the songs he picked that we covered, like It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It), what a genius.
I went back and I listened back to Well Fancy That for the first time. I was the only one he told of his experience as a 12-year-old going to France [the song is about Terry Hall being sexually abused by a school teacher when he was 12] and I only knew about that during Fun Boy Three, not The Specials. We were exchanging ideas and talking about things, that's how it comes out that he was molested when he went to France for the first time, and I go 'Jesus Christ man, whoa'. I've been with him for 40 odd years and seen how it affected him, he never got over it.
Did it affect your relationship with the song when you knew what it was about?
I couldn't listen to the song after that. I appreciate the song more now musically and when I listen how Terry delivered those lyrics, oh my god. There's this guy, a French guy, who wanted to cover the song and I said no. I couldn't give the go ahead because it's too personal. How can you cover a song like that with those lyrics?
Yeah, it’s only fit for one person to sing. Let’s go back to the start of Fun Boy Three. You, Terry and Neville Staple had left The Specials. Was there any trepidation about starting over?
Nope. We’d just had our biggest record, how can we be nervous when we'd had a massive record number one like Ghost Town? We were like, ‘it's time to have a break’. If you listen, the natural follow-up to Ghost Town was The Lunatics. Why wasn't it released as The Specials? Because we had a problem, and we just thought this is a very important song, the public must hear this. People must hear this, it's talking about the world issues, people must hear the song, so we went as Fun Boy Three and dropped that song.
What made you want to revisit The Lunatics for The Specials album Encore in 2019
We felt it was the right time to do that. Terry wrote these lyrics that still made sense today, because you look at the history of politics in this country, they must be all lunatics then. That's what it said to us. It was my idea to revisit it because it's what was happening politically. I said, “The lunatics are taking over, Terry,” so we decided to re-record it.
What was the point at which you realized Fun Boy Three was going to be a success?
When we were with Bananarama and we thought, 'Oh!'. That was Terry again. Terry saw these three girls, loved the way they dressed, I don't think he knew they could even sing, he just loved the way they dressed and the way they looked, that was it.
I read somewhere that you said Bananarama could drink you under the table…
There were good drinkers, we went to Amsterdam and them girls were brilliant drinkers, they really know how to put the pints away! Wonderful. Great time with them. Love to those three girls.
Was it exciting when It Ain’t What You Do… became a hit?
Well, I went through an unfortunate experience of being stabbed in Coventry when that record came out. I got stabbed in my neck, I ended up in hospital and I remember at three in the morning, the nurses saying, 'we can't stop the bleeding', I was under a lot of medication but I could hear everything they were saying but I couldn't talk. It came about because we took the 12-inch of that record to a club in Coventry to hear what it sounded like in the club on a big system and I ended up going to hospital from being stabbed in that club.
That must have been traumatic.
It was. When it comes to young kids or anyone who goes out and takes a knife with them, please don't do that because even if the person doesn't die - fortunately I didn't die - but the stress and what I went through for 18 months was terrible. I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to go into a pub anymore, really life changing. The trauma followed me for quite a few years.
Did it affect you creatively?
I think I got more creative. The first time I got beaten up in a race attack during The Specials, I wrote Why? – “Why do you try to hurt me, tell me why, do you really want to kill me, tell me why.” Give me a sensible answer to that.
On Waiting, Fun Boy Three’s second record, you worked with David Byrne. That’s a lot of genius working together…
Exactly. You use the word genius and you used it in the right context. David Byrne is a genius. Me and Terry went to New York and met up with David Byrne. Such a very nice, quietly spoken man, never raised his voice, I'd be like 'excuse me? I didn't hear what you just said...'. So nice. You listen to that record and hear the work he's done, fantastic as a producer. A really creative man. I'm so blessed to be able to say I've worked with these amazing people, especially Terry. I know people who go and buy their lotto tickets and hope to win the big prize and I won the big prize. Working with Terry was the big prize. I couldn't ever win a bigger prize than that.
And over such a long period. How did your relationship change over time, if at all?We just grew, we knew each other, him and me never fell out, we never had an argument. There was one time I was going to fall out with him, he said something that wasn't quite right, we had a disagreement and you know what he did? He went out and bought these Nike shoes and he says, "I've got a present for you Lyn" and he gave me these shoes. I said, "Thank you Terry, what made you do that?" and he said, "I just wanted to buy you something." I've only worn those shoes once and that was at Terry's funeral. The shoes are back in their box now and I told my wife, “When I die, bury me in those shoes.”
What’s your favourite ever memory of you and Terry?
Oh my God… One of my favourite memories of Terry is we were in Spain at this festival. When Terry goes, he goes, and he wouldn’t put his wristband on, he just would not put it on. The security came over and said something and Terry went mad at him and when Terry is like that, you don’t touch him. I said, “Terry, just follow me for a minute, I want to talk to you”. We went on the tour bus and sat down and he says, “Lyn, what happened?”. I said, “I’ll talk to you later about it, but not now.” He had no idea how he was behaving. And that’s one of my memories, that’s how we clicked, it’s how I knew, this man, the history that he’s got, how to deal with him. He only knew about it when we were doing an interview and I told that story and he said, ‘Did you?’. I said, ‘Yes, Terry, you followed me on the bus and you sat down and said, ‘Lyn what happened?’, ‘We’ll talk about it later but not now’. We never talked about it.
Ah. Thanks for your time Lynval.
Before you go, this is from Mr Hall, this is what he says all the time, when he’s on form and he’s had a good night, the three last words he said to the audience – love, love, love. That’s from Mr Hall.
ND