FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Specials - Ghost Town
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NOT many of my Grooveline features…
have a timely quality. I just like to select songs that have an interesting history that warrant fonder investigation. As The Specials’ Ghost Town is forty and there has been a new release this week, I thought I had to include the classic here. Released on 12th June, 1981, the song spent three weeks at number-one and ten weeks in total in the top 40 of the U.K. singles chart. It is a striking song that documents themes of urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities. Before bringing in a few articles that look at the song and why it is so significant, I would encourage people to buy the fortieth anniversary edition of Ghost Town:
“The Specials are one of the defining bands of the late 70’s / early 80’s along with Jerry Dammers iconic label Two Tone Records. They combined Jamaican ska and Rocksteady mixed with the energy of punk and launched a whole Ska Revival which paved the way for fellow likeminded bands Madness, The Beat and The Selecter to release their first singles.
Having had seven top 10 singles and two Gold albums over the course of two years, the band released Jerry Dammers’ Ghost Town in June 1981, backed by Lynval Goldings’ Why? and the Terry Hall penned Friday Night Saturday Morning. The beginnings of the song were written around the closure of the Larcano dancehall in Coventry, but also reflecting what was happening in other towns and cities with urban decay, unemployment and ongoing racial tensions of the period. Themes which are still relevant today.
The single, which was recently voted the second greatest UK single of all time by Alexis Petridis in the Guardian, reached Number One in the UK singles charts and stayed there for a further 3 weeks, becoming one of the biggest selling singles of 1981 and has remained one of the classic UK singles of all.
This 40th Anniversary Edition has been mastered and cut at half-speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios using the original production tapes for optimum audio quality”.
Many people might only know Ghost Town as a song from The Specials that is definitely catchy and superb. Some may not be aware of the significance and history of Ghost Town. Not only is it one of my favourite songs. I feel like it is a history lesson. A chance to look back at the late-1970s and early-1980s and the urban decay and unrest that was prevalent in areas like Coventry. The first article I want to source is from the BBC. They marked the thirtieth anniversary of Ghost Town:
“If the band's ability to articulate the mood of the era can be traced anywhere, it is surely in Coventry, where they were based. The city's car industry had brought prosperity and attracted incomers from across the UK and the Commonwealth, meaning the future Specials grew up in the 1960s listening to a mixture of British and American pop and Jamaican ska.
But by 1981, industrial decline had left the city suffering badly. Unemployment was among the highest in the UK.
"When I think about Ghost Town I think about Coventry," says Specials drummer John Bradbury, who grew up in the city.
"I saw it develop from a boom town, my family doing very well, through to the collapse of the industry and the bottom falling out of family life. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that's what Ghost Town is about."
With a mix of black and white members, The Specials, too, encapsulated Britain's burgeoning multiculturalism. The band's 2 Tone record label gave its name to a genre which fused ska, reggae and new wave and, in turn, inspired a crisply attired youth movement.
But, as a consequence, Specials gigs began to attract the hostile presence of groups like the National Front and the British Movement. When vocalist Neville Staple sighed wearily on Ghost Town that there was "too much fighting on the dance floor", he sang from personal experience”.
I love to look at the context of an iconic song and delve deeper. Certainly, when it comes to The Specials’ Ghost Town, there was so much happening in the band’s ranks. The Guardian did a run-down of the best number-one singles last year. They ranked Ghost Town at two:
“In early 1981, the Specials were both at the top of their game and in their death throes. They had enjoyed a dizzying, agenda-setting rise to fame. Seven top 10 singles and two gold albums in two years; an entire youth subculture formed in their wake; a record label, 2 Tone, that seemed to guarantee success for anyone who signed to it: Madness, the Selecter, the Beat, the Bodysnatchers.
But the Specials were falling apart. They were overworked and riven with internal disagreements about the jazz and easy-listening-influenced direction leader Jerry Dammers was taking them in. They were a band born out of political and racial tension. They had changed their name from the Coventry Automatics and started playing a punky take on ska, with lyrics pleading for racial tolerance and unity, after a 1978 gig supporting the Clash was disrupted by the National Front. But now political and racial tension was threatening to engulf them. Guitarist Lynval Golding was seriously injured in a racist attack in south London. Gigs on their late 1980 tour were marred by audience violence: in Cambridge, Dammers and vocalist Terry Hall were arrested and charged with incitement to riot after trying to stop the fighting. The band announced they would quit touring.
Things came to a head in the studio while trying to record their next single, Ghost Town, a song Dammers had spent a year writing, horrified by what he had seen on the road: “In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad, she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.”
Ghost Town was powered by despair and anger, both at the state of a country in which unemployment had risen by nearly a million in 12 months, and by 82% among ethnic minorities – “government leaving the youth on the shelf, no jobs to be found in this country” – and the state of the Specials (“Bands won’t play no more / too much fighting on the dancefloor”). It was all set to deeply unsettling, doom-laden music: a loping reggae beat topped with eerie, jazz chords, stabbing horns influenced by soundtrack composer John Barry and, instead of a chorus, a harrowing wail. The band fought so much during its recording that the studio engineer threatened to throw them out. Ghost Town was eventually completed and released in late June, around the same time the Specials played a benefit show in their home town of Coventry, inspired by the racist murder of a local teenager, Satnam Gill. The NF marched through the city on the same day; rumours they were also planning to attack the gig meant one of the biggest bands in the country found themselves playing to a half-empty venue”.
I have already brought in story regarding Ghost Town. There is one more article that gives us even more detail about the track. Far Out Magazine took us inside Ghost Town last year:
“Jerry Dammers, the man behind the song’s lyrics, has since said that although the song accurately depicted a country on its knees it was actually written about something a little closer to home: “Ghost Town was about the breakup of The Specials. It just appeared hopeless. But I just didn’t want to write about my state of mind, so I tried to relate it to the country as a whole.” Yet Dammers does such a fine job of vividly drawing his audience a picture they had become all too familiar with and moving the song’s message out of his mind and into the mainstream.
The Specials forged their career with a little help from their city, Coventry. The former auto-motive city used to be brimming with the car industry but a swift turn in economics had left it, and its inhabitants, without so much as a pot to piss in. With horrendously low-employment and thusly low quality of life, the city proved to be the perfect breeding ground for racism. “When I think about ‘Ghost Town’ I think about Coventry,” says Specials drummer John Bradbury, who grew up in the city.
“I saw it develop from a boom town, my family doing very well, through to the collapse of the industry and the bottom falling out of family life. Your economy is destroyed and, to me, that’s what Ghost Town is about.” It was this downturn that had sent many youths into the ranks of the National Front and consequently seen the tension within the city grow even greater. With the band actively rallying against such groups, they soon found trouble at their shows.
Soon enough members of the NF as well as the British Movement, would arrive at the band’s reggae-infused ska gigs and find fistfuls of anti-racist rhetoric. It would naturally lead to fights breaking out across the shows and cause Neville Staples to sing “too much fighting on the dancefloor”. It goes further too, guitarist Lynval Golding was brutally hurt in a racist attack which would inspire the song ‘Why?’ and end up as the B-Side to ‘Ghost Town’.
It meant that when the song was released, with the Brixton riots still barely in the rear view mirror, it exploded on to the radio and arrested audiences with every listen. While, of course, the potent nature of the song will have garnered fans it was the song’s musical power that really hit home.
Beginning with police sirens and confrontation you are immediately put on edge. It’s a dystopian sound of menace and confusion, the kind of fear that only strikes you too late. The Specials manage to convey not only the sense of impending implosion but the fragility of facing it all alone.
Looking back in 2020, the song feels as poignant today as it did in 1981. There are only a handful of songs that can resonate in whatever time period you hear it in and ‘Ghost Town’ is certainly one of them. It remains the anthem for the oppressed and the reflection of the modern dystopia they’ve been charged with keeping order in”.
I shall leave things there. On its fortieth anniversary, I feel Ghost Town still holds weight and tells the story of Britain at a very tough time. It even has a relevance today and can be applied to modern life in many areas of Britain. Coventry is a City of Culture 2021. Back when The Specials released their hit, things were very different indeed! As I said, I feel like the song provides history and social commentary about the state of affairs under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (and James Callaghan between 1976-1979). Whilst Ghost Town resonated with people back in 1981, it is a classic that has touched and moved…
A whole new generation.