AS lead singer of The Specials, Terry Hall was known for his cool, deadpan demeanour.
He was sharply dressed, sported a trim “rude boy” haircut, employed an unnerving 1,000-yard stare...and helped lead a pop revolution.
His voice, by turns mournful, menacing and magnificent, was the perfect instrument for downturn Britain in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
As a member of The Specials, a bunch of black and white soulmates from Coventry, Hall dealt in joyous tunes primed for the dance floor.
Drawing on lilting Jamaican ska and the uncontrolled energy of punk, he and his pals combined infectious pop hooks with fierce social commentary.
Specials songs such as A Message To You Rudy, Too Much Too Young, Gangsters, Nite Klub, Rat Race, Man At C&A and the huge hit Ghost Town tapped into the pulse of a nation down on its luck.
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Along with bands like The Beat and The Selecter, they broke down racial divides while soaring to the top of the charts.
Hall’s death at 63, announced yesterday after a short illness, came “much too young” as The Specials were enjoying a wildly successful revival.
I was fortunate to meet him twice in recent years to mark the band’s comeback albums, Encore, which went straight to No.1 on its release in 2019, and Protest Songs 1924-2012, which peaked at No.2 last year.
And I quickly discovered that beneath the famously inscrutable exterior, there lurked a sweet, thoughtful family man who was finally coming to terms with his demons.
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On the first occasion, the father of three sons, Leo, Felix and Orson, from two marriages was sitting opposite me in a cheerful greasy spoon on City Road, not far from his London home.
We were joined by the other original Specials who were also part of the revival, Lynval Golding (guitar, vocals) and Horace Panter (bass).
When Encore’s penultimate track, the spoken word The Life & Times (Of A Man Called Depression), came up in conversation, it gave Hall a chance to open up.
The song addressed his lifelong battle with mental illness, which he could trace back to a traumatic childhood.
He said he wanted to bring the subject into the open and hoped his song might bring comfort to fellow sufferers.
“I was only given a proper bipolar diagnosis relatively recently,” he admitted. “And I still suffer every day.
“From the age of 12, I knew something was not quite right and people around me recognised that too.”
With remarkable candour, he added: “There was a series of incidents, breakdowns over the next 30 odd years.
“But the last one was very serious and demanded that I seek medical attention.”
Hall believed his problems went back to the horrific moment he was kidnapped as a child by a paedophile ring, transported to France and abused.
“I had such a bad experience that I was taken to the local Coventry GP in 1972,” Hall said. “I was prescribed Valium and became hooked on it.
“I didn’t go to school for a year and just sat in my room on Valium.
“After that, I was so against medication and that led me to being an alcoholic. Gin was my medication.”
Things came to a head in the early 2000s when, after a crisis, Hall knew he needed to get professional help .
“I really didn’t have much choice,” he affirmed. “But since then, I’ve been able to come to terms with my illness. There’s no cure but I take something that alleviates the symptoms and allows me to function.”
Ever on the lookout for people who have actually fallen through the cracks, Hall, has, in recent years, been on food runs for homeless people with his sons.
“People don’t start out wanting to be homeless,” he told me.
“Homelessness is caused by a series of events and a lot of it is to do with mental health problems.”
Just five years before our first chat, Hall had “quite a bad breakdown” while touring Japan with The Specials.
“Lynval (Golding) said to me, ‘I know it's coming because I see you’re blinking a lot’.”
Golding, who clearly always looked out for his old mucker, said: “I’m very close to Terry. I can look at his expression and know he’s not having a great day.”
Hall was born in Coventry on March 19th, 1959, and remained proud of the Midlands city which spawned The Specials.
Only last year, he was invited to become an ambassador during its City Of Culture celebrations.
He described a recent show in the ruins of the old, bombed out cathedral there as a “homecoming”.
“I grew up in that area and used to run around in those ruins as a child,” he reported.
After leaving school at 15, Hall harboured dreams of a pop career but first came a series of odd jobs… bricklayer, hairdresser and surveyor among them.
He joined a punk band called Squad and then became lead singer in The Automatics, soon to be renamed The Specials.
They soon became known for rabble-rousing live shows and were aided by endorsements from Joe Strummer of The Clash and the late, great DJ John Peel. National airwaves and shows such as Top Of The Pops beckoned.
But by 1981, not long after Ghost Town captured everyone’s imagination for its damning portrayal of inner-city decay, unemployment and violence, The Specials went their separate ways.
Hall, Golding and Neville Staple formed The Fun Boy Three, scoring hits with The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum) and Our Lips Are Sealed as well as, with girl band Bananarama, It Ain’t What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It) and Really Saying Something.
From the mid-Eighties onwards, Hall was involved in various solo and band projects but, in 2008, he, Golding, Panter and the late founder drummer John Bradbury brought their first love back… The Specials.
Another key member had been Jerry Dammers, keyboard player and principal songwriter in the early years.
His absence from the reformed line-up (amid rumours of a big fallout) was explained to me by Hall like this.
“There never really was a rift. Years of separation made it harder to connect,” he said.
“We reformed and rehearsed with all the original members but Jerry had just drifted away. Nothing was ever really that clear.”
Phenomenal success
Nevertheless, the revival proved a phenomenal success, their live shows brilliantly bottling up the old mayhem. Hall was at pains to point out: “No member is bigger than the band.
“And I follow Man United (who had just sacked Jose Mourinho). No player or manager is bigger than the team!”
The album Encore begins with a nod to one of The Specials’ chief inspirations.
It’s a cover of Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys by The Equals, a trailblazing multi-racial British pop act best known for their 1968 No1 Baby Come Back and their singer Eddy Grant (I Don’t Wanna Dance, Electric Avenue etc).
Hall said: “Doing a song by The Equals was really going back to our roots. They effortlessly showed how black and white performers could make good records together.
“The nice thing about a cover version like this is that you can remind people of what they did.”
One of their self-written new compositions, Vote For Me, contained some of the old fire.
It bemoaned politicians “drunk on money and power” and featured an atmospheric arrangement resulting in comparisons to Ghost Town.
“I never really thought about Ghost Town until after we recorded Vote For Me,” said Hall. “But then people started saying they sounded similar.”
They also chose to record another politically charged song, The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum), effectively The Specials covering The Fun Boy Three.
Hall explained: “Since we reformed, I’ve thought a lot about songs I’ve done over years, what it would feel like to do them now with band playing… and Lunatics is the one that stood out.”
Talking to Hall, I discovered interesting little things about him like his love of German music hall from the Weimar Republic era, notably Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera.
His song Breaking Point was flavoured by that sound but its message was informed by people “heads down, staring at their phones”.
“I don’t want to start saying hello to everyone — that would be weird — but they should at least acknowledge someone is walking towards them,” he said with a wry smile. “Technology has surpassed us to a horrible level.
“My kids have had internet burn-out. One of my boys has stopped playing electric guitars and now he builds lutes.”
When he considered last year’s album of protest song covers, Hall gave me a fascinating insight into his impression of The Specials. “I would say we are a sort of folk band, even the first album felt like folk music with a different rhythm,” he said.
“I don’t think we allowed ourselves to ever get caught up in that ska thing and we killed that off on the second album (More Specials) with songs like International Jet Set. What is that music?”
As one of our illuminating chats wound up, I asked Hall about his future with the band.
“Now that I’m over 60, I’d feel weird singing Little Bitch (an early song full of teenage angst and anger). I can’t do that anymore,” he replied.
But he continued in more cheerful vein: “I’ve never looked at this as a career or a job.
“It’s my life, so there’s no question for me of retirement.
I’ll only retire when I’m forced to, medically. This is what I do.”
Stars salute legend
ELVIS Costello, Terry Hall’s Specials bandmates and Boy George were among among those leading tributes to the singer yesterday.
Oliver’s Army singer Elvis, who produced The Specials’ self-titled album in 1979, said: “Terry’s voice was the perfect instrument for the true and necessary songs on The Specials.
"That honesty is heard in so many of his songs in joy and sorrow. My condolences to his family and friends.”
The Specials confirmed his death after a short illness and paid tribute to “our beautiful friend, brother and one of the most brilliant singers, songwriters and lyricists this country has ever produced.”
The band signed off with the singer’s own words – a phrase he uttered at the end of his “life-affirming shows”– “Love, love, love.”
Former bandmate Neville Staple revealed his shock and said they had been planning gigs in 2023.
“This has hit me hard,” he wrote on Twitter, before adding: “We knew Terry had been unwell but didn’t realise how serious until recently.
“I will hang on to the great memories of Terry and I, making history fronting The Specials and Fun Boy Three together. Rest easy, Terry Hall.”
Boy George called it a “sad day” and said he “absolutely loved him as an artist”, while Lightning Seeds frontman Ian Broudie tweeted a picture of himself with Hall and a broken heart emoji.
Former lover Jane Wiedlin, of The GoGos, co-wrote The GoGos 1981 single Our Lips Are Sealed – a hit for Hall’s band Fun Boy Three two years later – during a fling with the singer in 1980.
She tweeted: “Gutted to hear of the passing of #terryhall.
“He was a lovely, sensitive, talented and unique person.
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“Our extremely brief romance resulted in the song Our Lips Are Sealed, which will forever tie us together in music history. Terrible news to hear this.”
Massive Attack called The Specials: “The protest soundtrack to our youth & the blueprint of our band,” while Sleaford Mods paid tribute to the “King of the Suedeheads. A big man”.
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