Pauline Black hardly needs any introduction. If you are reading this, you will already know that she is the iconic singer in 2-Tone stars the Selecter, along with Arthur ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson, verbally passing the ball between them both on stage and on record right up until Gaps passed away in June 2024. As a strong and outspoken front person, she was a huge role model for female performers everywhere. You may also know of her career as an actor and solo musician, as well as her numerous collaborations with a wide range of musicians and her work helping promote Coventry as the City of Culture 2021, for which she received an OBE. You may have read her hugely personal memoir, ‘Black by Design’ where she lays bare the racism of her upbringing in a white foster family in Romford, and the misogyny she experienced throughout her professional career. Finally, you may have seen her film based on that book, ‘Pauline Black – A 2-Tone Story’. If you haven’t, you can read the review of it here and catch one of the upcoming screenings across the country. It would be good if it also got an airing on BBC iPlayer, Sky Arts or another streaming channel. That feels quite likely to me to happen at some point.
To tie in with the film’s release, we were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to sit down (virtually) with Pauline at her Coventry home and talk about the film, and also a ton of other stuff, until we ran out of time. We started with the film…
Outsideleft: The new film is out and that seems to be going really well. Actually, I thought it was a great film. It's very powerful, and quite painful to watch at some points. I was wondering, how does that feel for you? You're sitting often in a room full of people you don't know, watching yourself on the big screen saying things are quite painful and very personal. In some cases, you're almost on the verge of tears. Is this the first time that you're getting them out, externalising them?
Pauline Black: Well, I wrote a book in 2011 that was called ‘Black by Design’. There isn't anything in the film,really that isn't in the book. That was a writing experience. I actually wrote it myself, which most people in my position don't do. They find some ghost writer to do it for them, but I was quite adamant that I was going to do it myself, because I just felt that there were things that if they were said in my voice would come across in a way that some people, most people, would understand. So, I guess I've been through that process back then. Of course, when you're sharing things like that to your computer, that's a very, very different thing, isn't it? It gets read by people, but somehow, they're faceless people. When you're actually sitting in a cinema with people watching something that you have done, it's different. It's like it is as a musician where you can have a piece of music that you really, really love. Then you play it to somebody else, and suddenly you hear it through their ears, and then you don't like it anymore. Usually that happens with demos of one's own material, but that tends to be what happens sometimes. All of these things become terribly subjective, but I guess that I've sat and watched it enough times now, and obviously I was involved in the editing process quite heavily, and the writing process of it too, working with Jane Mingay, who's just a brilliant, brilliant director. I feel that if I hadn't been doing this with those two women, Jane Mingay and the Producer, Nikki Parrott, I might have been a bit more circumspect, not feeling that it was quite such a safe space to divulge certain things.
OL: That is the nature of modern media and communications, to be very open and to share quite a lot, opening yourself up to everybody, the whole world really, and they are always quite personal experiences. People are looking to you and to and other people like you as a role model, in that they are trying to follow your lead, which is the role of a role model I guess! Does that that bring with it a level of responsibility? Do you ever feel that maybe they shouldn't just be looking to follow you and should do their own thing?
PB: Well, I guess I've had that responsibility for 45 years now, so that's not exactly something new, and I've had it in a relatively small way. I mean, you know, there is a following that the band has. There is a following that 2-Tone has worldwide has as an ideal for living, which is basically multiculturalism. We were just a few years ahead of our time in seeking something that ought to be valued within society. So I don't feel a role model in that way. I mean, I think the difference here is, are you doing something to fluff one's own ego as a lot of these kind of celebrity or mini celebrity kind of things are, or did you have maybe a bigger idea in mind? Always my bigger idea was that when I grew up, I rarely saw people who came from the circumstances I did, having mixed parentage, and what it was like living within a white family, being adopted in that way, and the course that I then decided to take in life. Jane and I have done quite a lot of Q and A's and after many of these screenings what I've been surprised about more than anything, is that there is one person in the audience who is exactly like that. They thought, a bit like I did years ago, that they were the only person like that. A lot of them are very tearful and speak out and say that they didn't realise there were other people like me. In these days of social media, I think we tend to think that everybody is connected to everyone in the world. That's actually not true. We're probably now global eavesdroppers on other people's lives, but not necessarily sharing our own. You do see a lot of people out there, people who aren't in the business, or are in the entertainment business, who share things, and suddenly, the wrath of God comes down on them as the Twitterati come to bear upon them in some hideous way and it's just been misconstrued what they've said. I know that in some cases it is absolutely true and they haven't been misconstrued, that is actually what they think, but you get my gist. For a person who isn't involved at all in that kind of thing, that can be quite frightening. So, I understand why people don't put themselves out there. When I wrote the book, I just felt, well, if it makes one more person like me feel a bit better about themselves, then cool. You know, job done!
OL: I've done a few interviews recently where people say one person came up to me after a gig or after a performance, or a Q&A, and said that it changed them, and that it was worth doing it just for that one person. Because even if you only ever change that one person, you've changed the world for the better by one person.
PB: And they feel free then to talk about it themselves to others. It's like paying it back.
OL: Also, I think today (20th January) is probably quite a pivotal day, because it's Trump's inauguration. Thinking of 2-Tone and the social environment at the time I was living in Coventry, which was at the same time you were there, it feels like we have almost come full circle. We probably need another movement like 2-Tone, to try and push back against some of the things that are happening both in America and also in Europe and locally in the UK as well. With the rise of the right wing, the rise of intolerance and the rise of discrimination and bigotry, there's a lot to push back against. Did we fail, as we didn't manage to get rid of it last time and it's come back again? The media environments changed now. There's no Top of the Pops. There's no national music press or media in the same way. Could a movement like 2-Tone succeed now, or has that moment passed?
PB: I really don't know. I feel as though there could be a push back against the politics of the time, absolutely. That may come in musical form. It can come in all kinds of forms. I'm a great believer in the fact that people don't change until they're pushed. I don't think enough has happened yet, certainly in the Western world anyway, for people to feel as though they've been pushed, but who knows what might come in the next few years? Last year we went out to America, played three shows out there, two festivals and a club show as well, and the overwhelming majorityof people that I met were thinking the same as I was, certainly in California. The last time I went out, I was actually in Fort Monroe, and the first thing I did I was go out walking. It was a Sunday, and I saw this cemetery, and it was so pristine and so clean. I thought, wow, that's amazing, because I live near a really run down one, all Victorian gravestones and everything. I went in and the first thing I saw was a memorial to 'Our Confederate Dead'. I knew then I wasn't in any kind of forgiving place, but the people who turned up there to the festival absolutely were in a forgiving place. They knew exactly what we were talking about, and couldn't have supported Kamala Harris more. But you know, that's where we are at the moment. I do feel as though there was a complete dereliction of duty there [in the US] by some people. I think we're just living through times when people think their salvation rests in a strong leader, a strong male leader. All I can actually think is, what's going through people's minds?
I'm a great believer in the fact that people don't change until they're pushed. I don't think enough has happened yet, certainly in the Western world anyway, for people to feel as though they've been pushed, but who knows what might come in the next few years?
OL: Over the next few years, it may well be that some creatives and musicians might feel a bit more nervous about playing in certain places in America, depending on how it goes.
PB: Well, I don't know that we're ever going to go and play there again. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to go and play last year. I thought this might be the last chance we actually get to go there and see people in America who aren't afraid. I went there, spoke my mind, and obviously nobody listened, but there you go. You try, don't you? You have got to try at least, and I thought Kamala Harris was worthy of the position. Anyone was worthy of the position rather than the orange one.
OL: A lot of the gigs and festivals that you play are nostalgia-based events. Do you sometimes feel that people view the band and 2-Tone as almost like a museum exhibit, and people want you to demonstrate things that you did in the past, rather than people taking it as relevant to now. 2-Tone has had a lot written about it, but always in a historical context. Lots of films, loads of books, all sorts of things like that. Is there a risk that places it in the past, and it loses its relevance because it just becomes historical rather than a living thing?
PB: Well, look, if you're not 18 and you're not into the kind of music that all kids listen to these days, then you're historical anyway, whatever you do. There's nothing you can do about that. I can't change getting older. Nobody can change getting older. I think that 2-Tone was one of the few movements that said something pertinent to the time that wasn't just rebelling in the way that punk did, or was about having fun on the dole, which you could argue the New Romantics, people like Wham, and all those were. But you know, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. You're all going to end up doing a Rewind Festival at some point in your career. So, the best thing to do is not to get too sniffy about it. I suppose we are seen as a heritage act, but we've consistently put out albums through the years. The last one that we did, 'Human Algebra', was a couple of years ago. People are very pleased to receive those things. We put those songs in the set. That's what we do. We quietly get on with what the job of being a musician is, which is to reflect the times in so far as you see them, anyway, and say what you think about them. If people wish to think the same way as us, well, good. If they don't, well, I'm sure that they can go off and they can find a band that suits them much better.
OL: I think there is still a lot of enthusiasm for the message of 2-Tone, even now. New bands that come along, they still have that message and they identify with it. They might wear 2-Tone clothes and adopt that image, but the important thing, really, is the message, isn't it? The attitude and the multiculturalism, as we talked about, is very important, particularly now, when it might be sliding the other way.
PB: It is quite difficult sometimes. If you're at a festival, and there's a wealth of young people there, and they've all gone apeshit over somebody who was on X Factor or something like that, as you invariably get these days of mixed bills, sometimes that's like, well, okay, what are they going to think of us? But you go on stage and you do a truthful performance. All I can say is that we get away with it!
OL: When you have to look back retrospectively for books and films and things like that, is there a risk that you can be too selective, that that memory might focus in on more powerful events, and that gives an impression that things were not how they were, and we tend to reinterpret events with the benefit of distance and time, and also in a slightly academic way as well, as we see them as a a story that we are retelling, as opposed to the reality.
PB: Well, that's true, but you're given 90 minutes in a film. We'd have to sit there for 71 years to get every moment of my life. It's like if you meet a stranger and someone says, oh, what do you do? You pick out the most interesting things in your life. You don't tell them about picking fluff out of your navel at three o'clock in the morning because you've got insomnia or something like that. You find things about yourself that you think maybe they will have some kind of synergy with, or, you know, just plain old ego tripping, just to sort of fluff yourself up a bit. Why not? You know, we all do that.
OL: I was thinking of the editing process for the film. How much did you cut out?
PB: There wasn't a great deal that we actually edited out. That might sound a bit strange. There were various things that we edited out because you're trying to find the path of a story. You do a lot of filming of fans that are close to the band and relatives, maybe, that are close to the band and things like that. Yet somehow, you've got to find a path through it and use things that are not going to take lots of explanation for people to get if they're watching it. It’s a light tread through one's life to a certain extent, but I think we've got enough of what was going down at the time. Something that Jane and I talked about at the time, was that if we're going to do this, it's got to be juxtaposed against what was going on at the time. I may have had all kinds of feelings about Romford, Essex, but what was actually going on? So, we needed to go find some stuff about what was really going on. I was absolutely staggered to find that footage of people in blacked out faces and in grass skirts, lewdly dancing on the back of floats in Romford Carnival for God's sake. You have these fleeting impressions that go through your head about when you were younger, and how awful it was, but nothing actually came close to what the reality was.
OL: When you see those clips of the Black and White Minstrel show, you just think, my God, how on earth did they get away with it, even then, but they did!
PB: There is that wonderful stock phrase, "different times", but it was not exactly different times. Not different times because that's the underbelly, if you like, of Western society. Certainly, here and in America, and quite a lot of Europe these days, the underbelly we are being force fed is that all our problems are all down to immigrants that have come into the country and if only we could sort that out, everything would be hunky dory, and we'd be back in the 50s. Well, I was quite determined to show what the 50s was about. Not just the 50s, but the 60s and the 70s and on, which was the driving force, I suppose, for why I wanted to start making music in the first place.
OL: Absolutely. The 50s.60s,70s weren't that great for a lot of people, including normal working-class people either. They had a tough time as well.
PB: What's a normal working-class person?
OL: Anyone that has to fight to make a living rather than have it handed to them on a plate. That's an interesting point, actually, about attitudes that have changed, because I know you've worked with lots of people over the years. One of the projects you worked on was Three Men and Black, with Jake Burns from Stiff Little Fingers and Jean Jaques Burnel from The Stranglers.
PB: We wanted to take it to America with Dave Wakeling and Dave said “No, over there, they'll just see it as 'Three Men and A Black” - do you see what I mean? So, it's very important to get that name right. Obviously, it was a play on Jean Jacques whole thing about the Men in Black [aliens] and stuff like that. Occasionally audiences got that! In the original incarnation, I was mean to be on stage with Jake, who I've known for a long time, and Jean Jacques, who I've known on/off, but that was first time I'd actually really talked to him. He was quite an experience.
OL: I was a little surprised by that combination, as the early Stranglers are regarded by many as old school sexists, with songs like 'Peaches', songs about beating women to death, and bringing strippers out on stage. They even had a song called 'I Feel Like A Wog'.
PB: Yes, we discussed all that with him. There were some interesting conversations about what they used to do with the ladies they might have just 'found' in their bedrooms. It was all very illuminating, but he was quite free to talk about it, and we talked about it a lot. Jake certainly talked about it a lot! I think we all helped each other, some more than others.
OL: You still live in Coventry. Does that help to keep you grounded rather than being in London, or moving to the US as some have?
PB: I just like living in Coventry because it's the middle of England, so that means you're only 100 miles away from a lot of the places that we play. It's really, really handy. It’s much handier than living in the depths of Norfolk as you do. I've seen too many musicians doing all that schlepping about and stuff. I'm really not into that. I like to be able to get to places quickly. Most of the major motorways will converge just outside of Coventry, which is really helpful. So, I stay here. I met my husband (Terry) here. He worked at Rolls Royce and we've just kind of stayed here. I don't like London. I find London, particularly among musicians, full of a lot of pretentious people, and I never did like it. I did live down there for a couple of years after the band split. I was in Vauxhall, when I was doing acting and I didn't really have too much choice about it because that's where a lot of the bigger plays and things like that happened and I was into that, but I never really enjoyed it. I never felt part of it. I always felt like a visitor. You are always a tourist in London.
OL: You also got quite involved in the Coventry City of Culture when that happened back in 2021. How did that come about?
PB: Mainly because somebody rang me up and asked me, but yes, I opened it and it was very nice. It's nice to be asked, isn't it? The Coventry City of Culture was really hobbled completely by COVID because all the bigger events that we planned for and did all the work on had to be done under the shadow of COVID restrictions. So, something that should have been happening on the street with lots and lots and lots of people in the city centre watching, couldn't happen because of the restrictions. We were able to do certain things, but we couldn't do it to the crowds that we wanted to. People were supposed to watch it online, but didn't really know how to do that. A lot of people, they're not so okay with that, and also, it's not the same. The whole thing was planned to be a two-way experience for people.
OL: You received an OBE for your involvement in that.
PB: I did, and if you're going to ask me why I accepted it, then I'd say go and ask Damon Albarn, go and ask Elvis Costello, or any other figure. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me!
OL: That's true. It's just that the phrase 'Order of the British Empire', it's all very colonial, isn't it?
PB: It's colonial. Of course it's colonial. But there aren't really any colonies anymore, are there? I mean, it's just they just can't catch up, that's all. But if somebody wants to take notice of what you've done, I'll say yes, because there's an awful lot of black women out there who don't get anything at all during their whole bloody lives. Do you know what I mean? And I'm certainly not just going to send it back. There are a lot of black women in the arts so these things are, to a certain extent, coming our way these days. I see that as part of the sisterhood of some of the people that I particularly like, such as Kanya King [who founded the MOBO awards] and people like that. I see that as a levelling thing.
OL: It's bringing a balance, which is always going to be a good thing, to treat people more equally. This is all part of that. You are also a Deputy Lieutenant as well. I was a bit curious as to what that involves?
PB: You'll just have to go and look it up!
OL: Does it take up a lot of your time?
PB: Not really. It's one way of doing charitable events that are organised and other things that I find time to do. That's basically it.
OL: Do you get a uniform to wear? Or a special hat?
PB: [laughs] No, no hats or uniforms. This hat is all mine!
OL: You've done lots of interviews over the years, loads of them, and it must get a bit boring, actually, with the same questions coming at you all time, so I've been trying to think of some different questions...
PB: I think you've been quite good, actually.
OL: Thank you. I was wondering if there was something that no one has ever asked you, but which you really wish they had asked you about?
PB: I don't know, because it wouldn't come as a surprise then, would it? So surprise me!
OL: OK, let’s try this one on. At this point in time, you've got a lot that you can look back on, and a lot to look forward to, but right now, what is the one thing makes you feel really happy, and what is the one thing makes you feel really sad
PB: Well, the thing that makes me feel happy, certainly at this moment in time, is the reception that the film's got. I wasn't really expecting that. It was just one of those things that someone said, "Hey, let's make a film". And I said, "Yeah, let's make a film". You know, let's go and do this. But you think to yourself, well, some people will see it, we could talk about it for a bit or whatever, but to know how many people have seen it, which is a lot now, I was quite knocked out by that. To be at the London Film Festival, that was a really big thing for me. I thought, that's not bad, is it? The first film that you have a hand in making ends up at the London Film Festival, chosen by the London Film Festival. I thought that was pretty cool. So, I was very happy in that way. The thing that makes me sad is that I don't have Gaps Hendrickson, who, you know, was my compadre, for want of a better word, for the past 45 years. He died last year, and that was very sad. He died while we were making the film and he was in the film. I haven't really gotten over that yet. You know, it still upsets me. Time, I guess, is a great healer, and we are doing gigs this year and other stuff, but I'm still a work in progress, and I'm working through it. It still feels difficult stepping out on stage and seeing the space where he should be. I've gone out on tour before without him, but since 2010 we've been very decidedly together on stage. So that was a big thing for me, and obviously, the whole process that led up to that. He died while we were away in America the first time in June, and we weren't expecting that to happen. We thought he was coming with us so and we were only gone for three days, because I wanted to get back to him and and as we were landing, he was dying. It just felt really poignant.
The thing that makes me sad is that I don't have Gaps Hendrickson, who, you know, was my compadre, for want of a better word, for the past 45 years. He died last year, and that was very sad...I haven't really gotten over that yet.
OL: I was really sorry to hear about Gaps. These things can happen really quickly, can't they? And we are never, ever, really ready for them. I suppose the positive side to it, if I can even put it in those terms, is that his funeral in Coventry brought a lot of people back together again that hadn't been together for a long time.
PB: Yes, it did. That was quite surprising. I think that if Gaps had been alive, he would have been quite surprised at some of the people who turned up. Births, weddings and deaths. They always bring people back together!
OL: They really do. We are almost out of time now, but there was one thing that I am always curious about, which is the changing nature of live performance. It feels a lot more 'corporate' now. If you cast your mind back to playing at Coventry Tiffany's or somewhere like that, places like The Lanch and some of those smaller pub venues, everything was more basic, less organised in some ways, and the sound was probably worse as well. However, it feels very corporate and very managed now and therefore more 'safe' performance-wise. Is that a good thing? Or do you miss some of the rawness of those early live experiences?
PB: Well, look, we're not the ages that we were then. We were fuelled by all kinds of stuff then too. It doesn't matter whether you're corporate or you're not corporate, that's gonna definitely decide on what the tenor of the gig is going to be about! I don't particularly want to be playing on sticky old carpets anymore, in the back room of some pub and all the rest of it. All of that was very exciting when I was younger, and certainly when we were starting out, and I got to meet some fantastic people, but these are different times, different days. Bands like the UK Subs may still like that. I can actually say that after having talked to one of them a few years ago. I thought, oh well, alright mate, if you like that, you can have it! But I don't feel that our performances have changed. That's all I can say. Our performances haven't really changed in respect of what we say, what we do, and all those kinds of things. It's just, you know, people can't dance in the way that they used to! (laughs). We keep ourselves fit though.
OL: Pauline, we unfortunately have to wrap up there as we are out of time, but thank you so much for sparing the time to talk to Outsideleft today.
PB: Alan, it was my pleasure. It's been really great talking and thank you for all your questions as well.
Essential Information:
Outsideleft's review of the documentary Pauline Black – A 2-Tone Story is here
Upcoming screenings as part of the Doc 'n Roll Film Festival of ‘Pauline Black – A 2 Tone Story’ in Swansea, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Clevedon in February and March are available to book here. London, Manchester, and Clevedon screenings will also include a Q&A session.
More screenings to be added for March and beyond. Hopefully, it will get a wider streaming release at some point too.
