“One Step Beyond” by Madness

Madness pinched "One Step Beyond" from Prince Buster, who had tossed it off as the B-side of his 1964 single "Al Capone", and made it the title track of their 1979 debut album on Stiff Records. Buster's version was nearly all instrumental; Madness bolted on a spoken intro from Chas Smash, with lines borrowed from records by Prince Buster and Dave and Ansell Collins, plus a half-buried chant that never lets up. The rest is a stampede: Lee Thompson's baritone and tenor saxophones blare, Mike Barson's keyboards bounce, Chris Foreman's guitar and Mark Bedford's bass chug along, and Daniel Woodgate drives the whole nutty stomp from behind the kit.

Here's the funny part. According to Alan Winstanley, who produced it with Clive Langer, the record is a rough mix. They took the original instrumental, just over a minute long, played it twice and ran the second half through an Eventide Harmonizer so it wouldn't sound identical, planning a proper remix later, but the doubled-up rough version had already gone off for mastering.

The video went into heavy rotation on MTV, where the intro's opening line became a trademark of the channel's early promos, and the band still likes to kick off their live shows with it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.