Get the latest gossip

UK reggae pioneers Steel Pulse: ‘We told punk fans – you can pogo, but please don’t spit at us’

They won a Grammy, risked being shot in the US and were adored by Bob Marley. As they go on tour, the band look back on half a century of being a voice for the voiceless

He penned the words to his band’s most controversial song in response to reading that Klan grand wizard David Duke was about to visit the UK to advise the National Front, but also drawing on his own experiences of being chased by older white men. “It was overwhelming.” The Labour politician Peter Hain – an RAR organiser then – has since said that the scale of that show was “decisive in running the NF out of town and helping to create a climate in which being racist was not acceptable”. Today, only the singer and Brown remain from the Handsworth Revolution era, but they’ve navigated the ship through decades of personal, musical and political upheaval and still record and tour around the world.

Get the Android app