How I Broke My Feet

The Jamaican reggae singer and record producer Rupie Edwards died last Thursday. His biggest hit ‘Ire Feelings (Skanga)’ entered the UK singles chart on 23 November 1975, the day after my fifteenth birthday. Less than a month later, I watched the coolest kid at our school, a sixth former – I think his name was Tony – dance to ‘Ire Feelings’ at the school Christmas disco. Watching Tony shuffle around on the outsides of his feet, as though they were broken, or like he had dogshit on the soles of his shoes and didn’t want to get any of it on the recently polished, parquet school dinner hall floor. It was like watching Fred Astaire in a roomful of Donald Trumps. I’ve tried copying Tony’s moves ever since. Whenever I was brave enough or drunk enough, I would try to dance to reggae like Tony.

David Steele and Andy Cox, the bass player and the guitarist with The Beat and Fine Young Cannibals, did great broken-footed dances. On Top of the Pops, they looked like they were both spring-loaded, wound up and let go in the BBC studio.

Elvis Costello’s feet were broken too, but it didn’t prevent him from looking incredibly cool. I copied Elvis too.

I’ve been thinking about musicians who had or have their own unique way of moving. Richard Jobson’s leg swing, for instance.

He’s kind of out of time with the rest of the Skids, but it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s brilliant.

And I must have watched this clip of Jean Jacques Burnel in Battersea Park in 1977 about a hundred times.

Then there’s Iain Curtis and David Byrne, Bowie, of course, James Brown, Hayley Williams. Mick Jagger is always a joy to watch. The older he gets, the more miraculous it all seems. It’s down to ballet classes, apparently. I’ll join one tomorrow.

I don’t think I’m thought of as a great dancer. Not in my professional life, at least. At a wedding or a birthday party, if I’ve drunk enough and am brave enough, I’m Gene Kelly.

I’m glad I didn’t establish any kind of signature move for myself when I was a younger performer, because I’d feel obliged to repeat it now, at an age when I should probably be sitting on a chair wearing a cardigan. But I’d feel like I was cheating the audience somehow by not throwing the same shapes I was famous for. If you went to see the Skids today and Richard Jobson didn’t swing his legs at least once, you might leave at the end of the show slightly disappointed. All those people who made jumping a big part of their performance have no choice but to retire or keep on jumping, less often and not as high, but still jumping nevertheless. That’s why bands take their own remnants of stage carpet on tour with them. To avoid popping a knee or doing an actual broken-footed dance. The older they get, the deeper the pile.

That 1975 school Christmas disco where I’d watched Tony dance to Rupie Edwards on the sides of his feet might have been the same school disco where I made my stage debut as a singer. I sang Buddy Holly’s ‘Rave On’, backed by two friends and our music teacher on guitar. The story I’ve always believed, and have always told, is that after I sang ‘Rave On’ and one of my friends sang ‘All Shook Up’, the audience of fourth and fifth years were so blown away by our performance that the teachers wouldn’t let us perform our planned encore of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ for fear the audience might riot. Almost exactly the same thing happened when Carter headlined Glastonbury.

When I walk on stage in Islington in December –tickets still available – I will have been performing live for fifty-one years, possibly exactly to the day, which, if nothing else, is numerically extraordinary.

Anyway, clear a space, move some furniture if you have to, put on some comfortable shoes, here’s Rupie.

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