Jerry Dammers

Jeremy David Hounsell Dammers GCOT (born 22 May 1955) is a British musician who was a founder, keyboard player and primary songwriter of the Coventry-based ska band the Specials (also known as the Special A.K.A.) and later the Spatial AKA Orchestra.

Through his foundation of the record label Two Tone, his work blending political lyrics and punk with Jamaican music, and his incorporation of 1960s retro clothing, Dammers is a pivotal figure of the ska revival.

He has also been acknowledged in his work for racial unity.

Dammers was a young mod in the 1960s while at school then became a hippie, before becoming a skinhead.

Dammers decided at the age of 10 he was going to have a band, and spent his teenage years learning music and writing songs.

He played in a range of bands, from reggae punk, to country and western.

Dammers had been a member of the Cissy Stone Soul Band, however he could not get them to play any of his work.

He studied art at Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University), where he met Horace Panter.

Frustrated at only doing covers, Dammers was asked to leave the Cissy Stone Soul band, and then played keyboards with Hard Top 22, a reggae band that had many members who would later become the Selecter.

While at a gig in his teens, someone threw a pint glass at his face, knocking out his two front teeth, which he never had replaced.

Dammers was one of the founding members of ska revivalist band the Specials.

Prior to the Specials, Dammers had played with Neol Davies and other reggae musicians who would later form the Selecter.

He had written songs in his teens, and his idea in forming the Specials was that it would combine reggae and punk.

He founded 2 Tone Records, as a ska version of the Motown label, the main label that kick started the ska revival of the late 1970s/1980s.

Dammers got graphic artists to produce specific art for the label, including the iconic man in the suit graphic, which was based on a photo of reggae musician Peter Tosh.

The label was a sub-label of Chrysalis Records, but still independent.

The era saw a lot of racism, and 2 Tone Records was a bulwark against that, celebrating racial unity and combating the rise of the National Front.

The whole two-tone scene took off, and the label released early singles that would end up becoming major hits for bands including Madness, the Beat and the Selecter.

Dammers was born in Ootacamund, Tamil Nadu, South India, the son of Horace Dammers who was later Dean of Bristol Cathedral from 1973 to 1987.

Jerry Dammers attended King Henry VIII School, Coventry.

He left India at the age of 2, first living in Sheffield, then moving to Coventry at the age of 10.

His initial music influences were '60s bands like the Who, the Small Faces and the Kinks, which made him want to be in a band, and he was also influenced by soul music.

He formed the band, initially called the Coventry Automatics, with vocalist Tim Strickland, guitarist/vocalist Lynval Golding, drummer Silverton Hutchinson, and bassist Horace Panter in 1977.

He then asked Terry Hall to join.

Hall was performing vocals with Squad and Roddy Radiation, both of whom were part of the local Coventry punk scene.

Dammers has said that anti-racism was a key element of the band, and the Rock Against Racism movement was formed at the same time.

He also saw the Specials as an opportunity to integrate white and black people through the same music, and he picked members to make the band multi-racial.

Until this time, white British people mainly played rock, blues and jazz, while black British people played reggae, jazz, and soul.

The Specials was an opportunity to have black and white people in the same band, something not common at the time, through playing ska.

GQ editor Dylan Jones noted that the Specials differed from other ska bands at the time because of Dammers’ political messages in the Specials' lyrics.

After talking their way onto a tour with the Clash, then a better-known group, Dammers pushed the Specials to adopt the mod/rude boy fashion sub-culture, and this look was copied by fans of the band.

They released their eponymous first album, The Specials, which was successful, and then their second album, More Specials, which was less so.

After some issues with Roddy Radiation not being able to play, Neville Staple, Terry Hall and Lynval Golding at this point left the band to form Fun Boy Three.

The band changed its lineup and rebadged as the Special AKA, releasing another album and the single "Free Nelson Mandela".

Dammers then dissolved the band.

"Free Nelson Mandela" had a role in the downfall of apartheid, as it raised awareness of the issue, and became an anthem of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

The Guardian referred to it as "one of the most effective protest songs in history."

The Selecter left the label, and Dammers strayed from the ska influence to bring jazz influences, most particularly on the album More Specials However, by 1984 the Special AKA were the main artist on the label, and Dammers was the only original member left.

Dammers almost destroyed the label through the cost of the release of the Special AKA album, but was saved when the single "Free Nelson Mandela" became huge internationally, while also bringing enough light onto apartheid that it was a factor in the end of the regime.

Dammers at times attempted to rejoin the re-formed Specials, but in 2008 he stated that things had not worked out, and his attempts were not welcome.