The Specials

Founding and early years (1977–1978)

The group was formed in 1977 by songwriter and keyboardist Dammers, vocalist Tim Strickland, guitarist/vocalist Lynval Golding, drummer Silverton Hutchinson and bassist Horace Panter (Sir Horace Gentleman). Strickland was replaced by Terry Hall shortly after the band's formation. The band was first called the Automatics, then the Coventry Automatics. Guitarist Roddy Byers (usually known as Roddy Radiation) agreed to join the band in March 1978 ahead of a recording session of demos.

A Message to You Rudy

"A Message to You Rudy" is a 1967 rocksteady song by Dandy Livingstone. Originally titled "Rudy a Message to You", the song later achieved broader success when, in 1979, a cover version by the Specials reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart.

Composition and recording

Livingstone came up with the idea of the song in about 10 minutes and recorded it a day or two later in about 20 minutes at Maximum Sounds Studio on Old Kent Road with engineer Vic Keary. Livingstone has said that he "had a very bad cold" on the day of recording and so it was suggested that he record the song as a guide vocal and then go over the vocals another day. However, everybody liked what Livingstone had done, so he didn't bother going back to sing over it. Whilst recording the song, Livingstone decided he wanted a trombone to feature in the song, so about a week after the recording session, he got trombonist Rico Rodriguez to play the intro melody. At the same time, he got a tenor saxophonist called Pepsi to play the same intro...

In popular culture

The song was featured prominently in the 1997 action/comedy Grosse Pointe Blank, the 2014 comedy-drama film Chef, and the 2019 sci-fi film Vivarium.

Ghost Town

"Ghost Town" is a song by the British two-tone band the Specials, released on 12 June 1981. The song spent three weeks at number one and 11 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.

Background

The tour for the group's More Specials album in late 1980 had been a fraught experience: already tired from a long touring schedule and with several band members at odds with keyboardist and band leader Jerry Dammers over his decision to incorporate "muzak" keyboard sounds on the album, several of the gigs descended into audience violence. As they travelled, the band witnessed sights that reflected the depressed mood of a country gripped by recession. In 2002, Dammers told The Guardian: "You travelled from town to town and what was happening was terrible. In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down ... We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In...

Recording

In March 1981, Jerry Dammers heard the reggae song "At the Club" by actor and singer Victor Romero Evans played on Roundtable, the singles review show on BBC Radio 1. Fascinated by the record's sound, Dammers telephoned the song's co-writer and producer John Collins a few days later, although as Dammers' first phone call was in the middle of the night, Collins initially took it to be a joke. Following conversations with Dammers, Collins travelled from his home in London to meet the Specials at their rehearsal studio and agreed to produce their new single.

Music video

The music video, directed by Barney Bubbles, consists of bass player Panter driving the band around London in a 1961 Vauxhall Cresta, intercut with views of streets and buildings filmed from the moving vehicle, and ends with a shot of the band standing on the banks of the River Thames at low tide. The video's locations include driving through the Rotherhithe Tunnel and around semi-derelict areas of the East End as well as in Lothbury and Throgmorton Street in the financial district of the City of London in the early hours of daylight on Sunday morning, where the streets were deserted as it was the weekend. The shots of the band in the car were achieved by attaching a camera to the bonnet using a rubber sucker: Panter recalled that at one...