David “Blockhead” Wright keyboard player for The (English) Beat and composer of “I Confess”
And as the story goes
“Dave Blockhead, the piano player, had been our lighting guy. And one evening Saxa was unwell—he’d had a bit too much to drink the night before probably, but we used to call it ‘unwell’—and said he couldn’t play that night, and was adamant about it. He’d said that a few times before, but he really didn’t look that well, and didn’t look like he could play, so we were stuck. And Blockhead popped up and said, ‘Well, I know all of Saxa’s horn lines on the piano, and I could play them on an organ, if you could get one.’ He was a classically trained pianist, and lived in Barbados for about eight years as a geography teacher and while he was there he taught himself how to play Calypso on the piano as a hobby. This is a 6-foot-3-inch skinhead. [Laughs.] So he jumped onboard and played Saxa’s solos on the keyboard that night, and it worked.”
