Pauline Black, singer

I was probably the first rude girl. At our debut gig, in Worcester, I’d worn pink spandex, and the whole band looked appalling, so we were hauled off to Oxfam by the wife of founder member Neol Davies – and kitted out in rude-boy gear. I was a bit of a feminist and we sang songs about sexism and racism, so I’d just wear the same gear as the boys: Sta-Prest trousers, pork-pie hat, mismatched jacket. But I feminised it all with a bit of makeup.

We were a part-black, part-mixed race, seven-piece band with one white kid and a female singer. Neol had done something extraordinary for the times: he’d gone to hang out with black kids and been accepted. For a while, though, I was juggling being a radiographer and doing gigs. When we knew we were going to be reviewed, I decided to change my name from Pauline Vickers so the radiography department wouldn’t know I was moonlighting. I remember our drummer saying: “Oh, Pauline’s black.” I thought: “Pauline Black! That’ll work.” It was also a response to being brought up by a white family in Essex, who’d refused to call me black. I was always “coloured”.

When we supported the Specials, everyone started jumping around, and there was this feeling we could be massive. On My Radio was in our set from the beginning. Neol had written it some years before, in another Coventry band called The Transposed Men, but it had never been performed so it arrived fully formed. Two Tone Records gave us £1,000 to make it a single, and Roger Lomas, the producer, suggested I sing falsetto, a counter-intuitive move that worked. The song’s in a weird 7/4 time – most hits are 4/4 – because we just didn’t know the rules. The chorus (“It’s just the same old show”) is a criticism of radio, but that didn’t stop DJs playing it. They didn’t bother listening to the lyrics.

People still love the song when we play it live, and it recently turned up in an advert for Virgin Money. Neol’s no longer in the band, but I’m delighted he’ll get another payday. The advert features a pigeon even though, strangely, the song’s “I bought my baby” melody is actually similar to the tune a blackbird sings. If they’d asked, I’d have told them to use the correct bird – but at least it was sung by a black bird from Essex.

Roger Lomas, producer

I had a four-track studio in my back garden and, in 1977, Neol turned up with a song he wanted to record called The Selecter. It was different: ska with a bit of rock. John Bradbury, who later joined the Specials, played drums ,and a fellow called Barry Jones was on trombone. I’d only heard trombones in the Salvation Army, so I put the same effects on it I’d use on a guitar.

It sounded great, but I couldn’t get any labels interested. The same thing was happening to the Specials. They had one song, Gangsters, but record companies didn’t want to know. So their frontman Jerry Dammers decided: “They’re all wrong. We’ll start a label.” That’s how Two Tone began. The Specials asked if they could make The Selecter the B-side to Gangsters. When it became a smash hit, Neol quickly formed The Selecter and asked me to record their first single. I heard them supporting the Ruts and one track stood out a mile: On My Radio.

But when we got in the studio, I asked them to run through their songs to get warmed up – and there was no sign of it. I said: “Where’s that great song you did the other night?” They told me they didn’t want it as a single because it sounded “like a Eurovision entry”. There was a standoff. Eventually, I persuaded them to record three songs and let the record company decide on the single. They instantly picked On My Radio.

Pauline had never been in a studio before, but got the vocal right on the first take. I asked her to do it again anyway and she sang it identically so I used one vocal in the right channel and the other in the left, which gave it a really unusual sound.

As Two Tone stormed the nation, I was asked to produce all these other ska bands: Bad Manners, the Bodysnatchers, and so on. I was always having to go along to Top of the Pops with them. I must have gone about 30 times. But I was a pop and rock man, really. I never much liked ska. On My Radio went on to sell over 240,000 copies. From the moment I heard it, I knew it was a hit.

• The Selecter’s new album Subculture is out on DMF on 15 June.

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