Ku Klux Klan
FIFTEEN years ago, David Hinds visited the house in Handsworth, Birmingham his parents had owned and where, in the basement, his band Steel Pulse had once practised. “I was hoping that one day I’d buy the house back and use it as a museum of some kind,” he says. “But the cellar doesn’t exist any more. They’ve completely blocked it off.”
It was in that space that the group developed their reggae sound, inspired by Jamaican heroes, jazz musicians and Jimi Hendrix.
“We listened to the Pointer Sisters too,” says Hinds. “That improved our harmonies a lot! We were oblivious to all the variables that make a song a hit; we just did it because it felt right. We were as green as it comes. But we had substance, energy and something to say.”
Their first and most striking success came with their debut single for Island Records – a protest song against fascism and racism. Alongside its provocative cover – and the band’s onstage Klan outfits – “Ku Klux Klan” caused an immediate reaction. Steel Pulse were swiftly embraced by punks and the Rock Against Racism movement – you can see footage of them in White Riot, a new documentary about Rock Against Racism that opens this month.
“A whole bunch of things happened from mid-’77 to mid-’78,” says keyboardist Selwyn Brown. “We did so much: we opened for Burning Spear, we got signed to Island, we recorded ‘Ku Klux Klan’, we recorded ourand we opened for Bob Marley.”
