Celebrating
it’s 40th anniversary today is the landmark single by The Specials,
Ghost Town, which was released on June 12th, 1981. It would not only
capture the zeitgeist of a a crumbling UK in the early years of
Thatcherism, but it would end up haunting the 21st century as we came to
grips with a deadly pandemic in 2020.
The title song began to
take shape in Jerry Dammers’ head while touring through the UK in 1980
during a period of severe economic hardship and social unrest as riots
became a frequent event in major cities. With shop keepers boarding up
windows as a precaution and pensioners on the sidewalks flogging
precious mementos for spare change in order to buy food, the depressing
conditions of the times seemed to demand a statement from the band.
Dammers came to some very specific conclusions in terms of how he wanted
this song to sound and feel, meticulously working out every detail of
its arrangements, and some of those concepts were quite alien to the
other band members, incorporating unfamiliar chord progressions and
unusual arrangements in order to create the mood the song required. But
Jerry was insistent on these elements, something which only served to
exacerbate the already percolating tensions within the band. These
conflicts had begun to boil during the recording of their sophomore LP,
More Specials, with some members of the group taking exception to
Dammers insisted on expanding the sound palette of the band while
diverging into other musical styles. Pushing the strange song structure
for Ghost Town during its recording nearly resulted in outright
rebellion in some cases.
Yet he persisted and managed to get it
all recorded. That process itself was something of a deliberate, self
inflicted constraint. While More Specials was recorded in a state of
the art 24 track studio, its possibilities only caused confusion for
bandleader Dammers as he felt overwhelmed by the possibilities on offer.
So, for Ghost Town, the decision was made to record on a modest 8
track system, essentially recording all the major parts in mono and then
mixing them with stereo reverb and delay. The results of this process
give the record a decidedly well balanced sound though it got a little
tricky when, at the last minute, Jerry decided he needed to add some
flute to the mix and there were no tracks left. He took a gamble on
dropping in the overdub on the same track as the horns. It was a
dangerous move given the horn section were no longer available for
re-recording during the flute recording. If there were any mistakes on
the timing of the drop-in, it could bleed over the horn section and ruin
it.
The single features two tracks on the B-side. The first,
Why?, is an emotional plea for tolerance written by Lynval Golding in
the aftermath of a brutal, racially motivated attack that sent him to
hospital with broken ribs in 1980. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was
written by Terry Hall and offers up a recounting of a mundane night out
in Coventry.
The reception of the single upon its release was
somewhat mixed in terms of critical response, but any doubts about the
song were soon swept aside as, by year’s end, the single was ranked
number one on the “best single of the year” lists in all three of the
major UK music rags: Sounds, NME and Melody Maker. It became the theme
of the times in the UK with its ghostly atmosphere and dire depiction of
a decaying urban landscape. As civil unrest and rioting continued
after its release, it couldn’t help but be considered the soundtrack to
the times. In terms of charting, it held onto the #1 slot for 3 weeks
and lingered in the top 40 for ten weeks. It became the crowning
achievement of The Specials in their original incarnation, but also
their farewell as the band fractured and fragmented soon after its
release, with Terry Hall, Lynval Golding & Neville Staple peeling
off to form Fun Boy Three before the end of the year.
As
brilliant as the title song is, it’s hard to imagine anyone predicting
how poignantly appropriate it would become again nearly 40 years after
it’s release in the spring of 2020 as the world sunk into the misery of a
global pandemic. As COVID-19 sent the population into hiding, closing
shops and emptying streets, the refrain, “This town is coming like a
ghost town”, became all too much a reality for communities around the
world. It’s no wonder the song found itself experiencing a surge of new
appreciation and popularity. Its message of loss and suffering echoed
across the decades to find a new and even more horrifying reflection
than the unrest and fear which had inspired it in the first place.
