13 minute read
T e Specials
from Kutucnu_0921
by aquiaqui33
The Specials at the Hope & Anchor, north London, 1980: (l–r) Horace Panter, John Bradbury, Terry Hall and Lynval Golding
Specialstune,originalorcover,seems tocarrysomeformofasocialmessage.Theband themselvesarethephysicalembodimentofapolitical ideal–inclusive,progressive,vocal,committed. “TheyrepresentsomethingpositiveaboutBritain andofferacommentaryonwhat’sshitaboutit,”says guitaristSteveCradock,whoplayedonEncoreand ProtestSongs.“They’vealwaysmadeprotestmusic andthey’vealwaysdoneitinaneffortlessand importantway.Theystandupforthingsandthey makepeoplethink.”
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Thealbum’s12songsincludecivilrightsanthems, folkandreggaesongs,buttherearealsomoments thatwillsurprisethelistener–whoeverexpected they’dhearTheSpecialscoveringFrankZappa?“We hadbrokenafewmusicalmouldswithEncoreand peopleseemedtocope,”saysPanter.“Sowebrokea fewmorewiththisone!MusicallyIstretchedmyself. Iplayeddoublebass,electricstand-upbassandeightstringbass.Mostofthesongswerequicktakes.Ifwe hadtodomorethanfiveweleftandcamebacktoitthe nextday.Wedidn’tfuckabout.”
SingerandguitaristGoldinghadspentthesummer athomeinSeattle,attendingBLMprotestsand watchingwithdelightasstatuesofslavetradersand Confederategeneralsfellonebyoneonbothsidesof theAtlantic.OnEncore,hissong“BLM”outlinedin intimatedetailthedailyindignitiesheandhisfather hadexperiencedasblackmenintheUKandAmerica. OnProtestSongs,hepoursthatemotionintopowerful readingsofBigBillBroonzy’s“Black,BrownAnd White”andMarley’s“GetUp,StandUp”–songsthat inmanywaysrepresentthemoralheartofthealbum.
“We’vealwaysbeenaprotestband,”Goldingsays. “WewereoneofthefirstmultiracialbandsandJoe StrummerwasresponsibleforusgoingontheClash
HORACE PANTER
tour. That was a tough, but we grabbed the chance as we wanted to show people what we were dealing with and to educate them. That’s what we did. I used to DJ with Jerry [Dammers] in Coventry and there were certain records that Jerry chose. I’d say, ‘Jerry, nobody is going to dance to this.’ And he’d say, ‘Lynval, we have to educate them.’ And the man was right, he is right.That’swhatTheSpecialsisallabout.”
WHEN The Specials returned to active service in 2008, it took them a further 11 years before they released a note of new music. That’s not to say they didn’t try, though. In November 2015, the band convened at the Belsize Park home of drummer John Bradbury, where they demoed several songs – including Talking Heads’ “Listening Wind”, from Remain In Light, which finally appears on Protest Songs.
“By then, there were four of us left,” says Panter. “Brad, Lynval, Terry and I. We said, ‘Let’s make an album as we are all facing the same way, finally.’ That was the last time I played with Brad, because a couple of months later he died. So when we recorded this, it felt like we had his memory in mind.”
Despite this setback, the band persevered. Bradbury’s seat was taken by Kenrick Rowe, who’s also played with PJ Harvey. He was introduced to The Specials by Danish keyboard player Nikolaj Torp Larsen, who joined for the 2008 reunion and is now what Hall describes as “our silent fourth member”. With Steve Cradock on guitar, The Specials finally went into the studio to record Encore. It followed the template set by More Specials way back in 1980 by combining musical variety with political commentary. As well as “BLM” there was “Embarrassed By You”, which updated the
The late John Bradbury in 2012 and (inset) current Specials sticksman Kenrick Rowe
theme of “A Message To You, Rudy”, and the woman-empowering “10 Commandments”, which utilised the vocals of Saffiyah Khan, who had been photographed confronting an EDL protestor while wearing a Specials T-shirt. It felt relevant – but did people still want new Specials material? The answer was emphatic: the record went to No 1. Which raised a new question: how do you follow an Encore?
As it transpires, for this latest project, the band originally intended to record a reggae album – Golding was especially eager to record in Jamaica with local musicians. Sessions were scheduled in the UK in February 2020 to pool material. “We started in the studio maybe 18 months ago just kicking around some ideas,” says Hall. “But then, because of Covid, everything came to a halt and we had to lock ourselves away.”
While Panter, Golding and Larsen all tested positive for Covid, Hall was sequestered indoors. He and his son covered the windows in NHS posters as they waited for lockdown to end. “I was bewildered for a lot of the time last year,” he says. “My young boy guided me through that in a funny way because I had to do home schooling and that took up a lot of time. When I had time to reflect, I decided I’d rather not reflect. I’d rather watch a goat climbing a tree on YouTube.”
Although Hall doesn’t touch on it directly, his fellow Specials suggest he struggled to write lyrics within the claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing lockdown environment. “I have a vague idea of how Terry works,” says Panter. “He has these notebooks with pages and pages and pages of lyrics and out of that will come something like four lines. It’s a very convoluted process and he needs freedom from distraction. He almost has to leave the country, but during the pandemic he couldn’t do that. Living in London, he had to contend with the paranoia and the plague and that heavy atmosphere.”
This is when Hall began thinking about protest music. Protests for and against Brexit and Trump had been taking place almost weekly since 2016 – resonant for a band like The Specials who emerged during the era of Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. Digging deeper, Hall felt this was a family tradition: his great-grandfather had been on the Jarrow march in 1936. In 2020, thousands of Britons were joining BLM and Extinction Rebellion protests – while across the Atlantic, Golding was attending protests in Seattle. Everything from the murder of George Floyd to the removal of the statue of Bristol slave trader Edward
PROTEST SONGS: THE SOURCE!
Terry,HoraceandLynval guide you track by track through their new album
THE STAPLE SINGERS (1965)
PANTER: “This was a civil rights anthem. The original version is by the Staples Singers and has a real groove. Ours is a bit more RL Burnside.”
LEONARD COHEN (1988)
HALL: “I’ve always wanted to record a Leonard Cohen song. I’m not entirely sure what the protest is, but it felt like he’s protesting something. It was great to be able to sing a Leonard Cohen song and the songfelt quite apt in its message.”
MALVINA REYNOLDS
(1965)
HALL: “I took this as my own personal protest song because I don’t mind failing. It was the same as “Fuck All The Perfect People”. That’s a personal view of life, it’s saying ‘I really don’t care what you say about me, this is how I liveand this is what I am, I’ve gone beyond caring’.”
BIG BILL BROONZY (1947)
GOLDING: “This says everything, it’s what it is. We know that black people like my father had to work so much harder and do more overtime to make u their wages just because were black.”
“AIN’T GONNA LET NOBODY TURN US AROUND”
DIXIE JUBILEE SINGERS (1924)
GOLDING: “The sound was very much inspired by the gospel church – that was the feel we were going for. This is a spiritual and it’s one of those songs that make me want to shout and sing like in an old evangelical church.”
CHIP TAYLOR (2012)
HALL: “I didn’t know this song and I was astonished by it. How many times can you say fuck in a song? It was brilliant. I get some personal pleasure about being in our sixties and having parental advisory stickers on the fronts of our records.”
The Staple Singers, 1965: “a real groove”
doombutitdoestalkaboutprotestingwhat your neighbour is doing. I like it because it was really funny. The story is that you have a neighbour who keeps borrowing things and not giving them back and it really gets on your nerves. You can take this as a metaphor or it can just be about having an annoying neighbour.”
K ZAPPA AND MOTHERS OF VENTION (1966)
NTER: “The first album ever bought was Freak
Out, so I have known his song for 50 years. When we decided to o protest songs this ust came to mind. It was ritten in LA during the tts riots in 1965 and it nded me of what was ing in America in 2020.”
TENING WIND”
LKING HEADS (1980)
NTER: “I don’t know if David yrne intend this as a protest ong but it deals with topics of mperialism, so that seemed prescient. Terry is a big Talking Headsfanandlovedthesong ut didn’twanttosingit;he id hewastooclosetoit.”
VE INACITY”
NA REYNOLDS(1960)
s simpleandverybeautiful. Ithoughtthiswas theperfectsongfor Coventry’s City Of Culture.Itsayseverything about Coventry, an industrialcitybuiltbythe people – black, white,whatever–everybody who lived in that citymadeit.”
ROD McKUEN (1963)
PANTER: “That was asongthatTerrybrought when we were doingouroriginalreggae album in February. Itoriginallycameoutin 1963 recorded by TheGatewayTriobutwas re-released during Vietnamandbecame prescient. It’s about militarism,andthat’s always relevant.”
BOB MARLEY ANDTHEWAILERS
(1973)
GOLDING: “One songIwantedtodowas‘Get Up, Stand Up’, the Marleysong,andthatwas easy to convince theothersabout.Theversion we do is based on PeteTosh’sacousticversion. That was a song I feltverystronglyabout.”
Colston affected them deeply, as you’d expect. But at this point, collating protest songs was more like a distraction, an intellectual exercise to keep the trio connected. Over time, however, the direction of travel became clear.
The original long list included “Eve Of Destruction”, “Give Peace A Chance” and “Kick Out The Jams” – although none of these made the final cut. Each band member, they discovered, had a slightly different notion of what constituted protest. Unexpected songs began to surface. Panter was eager to have another stab at “Listening Wind”; he also introduced Frank Zappa’s psychedelic rocker “Trouble Comin’ Every Day”, about urban riots. Golding wanted to record “Get Up, Stand Up” by the Wailers as a hymn to resilience. Hall brought “Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes”, an anti-Vietnam War song, to the original February 2020 sessions. This now acts as the sole bridge to that lost reggae album.
Hall also came up with civil rights-era classics “Freedom March” and “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me Around”, but digging deeper found himself drawn to songs of personal protest like Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”, which he found he could make his own by changing the key. He discovered ’60s folk singer Malvina Reynolds’ “I Don’t Mind Failing In This World” and Chip Taylor’s ecstatically ribald “Fuck All The Perfect People”, written in 2012 after Taylor had visited inmates in a prison. They studied lyrics and listened to different versions to whittle down the list. If there was a single sentiment in any song that the three did not agree upon, the tune was cut. Equally, they didn’t want anything too obvious unless they could bring something new or valuable to the interpretation.
In late summer last year, between lockdowns, the three met in person to confirm the plan. They’d kicked around the idea of recording in a barn to get a unique atmosphere, but eventually decided to head back to Eastcote, the studio by the canal in North Kensington where they’d recorded Encore. Four weeks were booked for April 2021.
Musical director Nikolaj Torp Larsen Bob Marley And The Wailers in London, 1973
Songwriter and political activist Malvina Reynolds circa 1970
WHEN the trio decided to record a covers album of protest songs, Nikolaj Torp Larsen – their musical director – suggested they kept the recording as simple as possible to create a unifying sonic environment. A rule was devised: each musician was only allowed one overdub across the whole album. It didn’t quite stick, but the sentiment was grounding. “It’s a fucking great rule!” says Steve Cradock, who was present for the first two weeks of recording. “The way people record these days, you have endless tracks and it can go on forever and something can get lost “The spirit of Jerry is in this album. through that. But this does sound like a group playing in a room. The choices of songs are really eclectic. The fact they are all protest songs are the only thing that holds it together, along with the way it was recorded.” Cradock suggested the final mix was in mono,
Trust me” something that acted as a further guide to the feel – even if the group eventually decided to mix in stereo.
LYNVAL GOLDING The stripped-back “lockdown” vibe puts focus on melody and lyric. Hall particularly enjoyed working with other people’s material. A late finisher, some of the lyrics for Encore were not completed until the backing tracks were recorded – but in this case, everything was already there, the song’s sentiment clear. “I find sometimes when I am working on an album there’s a missing verse or a line that isn’t quite right,” he says. “But here all I had to concentrate on was singing and that really freed me up. I could do a guide vocal without having to think about whether a word is right. I hadn’t used my voice for a year, so it was like a liberation. I just wanted to sing. That’s what I do after all: I sing songs.” Golding, meanwhile, supplied lead vocals to “Black, Brown And White” – a song written in the 1940s about racial bias that is as relevant today as it was when it was written. “Whatever Lynval sings, he wants to bring personal stuff into it,” says Larsen. “He’s talked about his experiences, getting attacked, getting abused, the victim of some horrific racial abuse. I don’t think anybody who has been through that can sing these songs without putting something personal into it. He said he’d been to some BLM protests and was pleased to see so many white people there. It felt there were other people finally standing up and acknowledging what somebody like him had been through.” Golding also delivers a soulful rendition of Marley’s classic, “Get Up, Stand Up” – recorded on the same console used for Exodus, no less – based on a Pete Tosh acoustic demo. With only Cradock accompanying Golding on acoustic guitar, it’s stripped-back qualities are a perfect example of the album’s aesthetic. “There’s nothing cluttered,”
Fewer Specials: Golding, Hall and Panter release Encore in 2019
confirmsGolding.“There are no complicated instrumentals to get in the way in the message, it’s entirely about the song. This was about lockdown and being at home listening to music. Just play it and listen, no distraction.”
“Everybody Knows” is one of the few songs with a production style similar to Encore. Others, like the two Malvina Reynolds numbers, are almost like nursery rhymes in their melodic simplicity. For “Listening Wind”, The Specials reached outside the band for support. Larsen’s arrangement was inspired by the spiritual reggae of Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelations Of Rastafari. Panter suggested they use Rastafarian nyabinghi hand drummers, encouraging Kenrick Rowe to bring in Brixton-based West Indians Michael “Bammie” Rose and 92-year-old Tony “Groco” Uter. Deciding they wanted a female vocalist on lead, they called on the services of Hannah Hu, a 23-yearold singer from Bradford whose previous experience included touring with Primal Scream. Hu ended up singing backing vocals on other songs, “Listening Wind” singer including Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”. Hannah Hu “I knew the Talking Heads album but I’d never really listened to thatsongbefore,itfeltlike a hidden gem,” Hu says. “It’ssohauntingandcinematic. Digging into the lyrics,itwasreallydeepstuff about imperialism. Itmightnotbemystory,but I can use my voice to tell it. It’slikeachillinthebackbone of the album, the destructionthatcomesfrom politics.”
TheSpecialshavealways managed to combine this sortofheavypoliticswithmusic that has a serious strut,andProtestSongscontains songs that are humorousandelevatingand music that is moving and upbeat.Itmightnotsound much like their self-titled debut–butitdoesn’tsound a whole lot like Encore either.Larsendescribesitas “brave”, while Cradock saysit’s“wildlyunexpected”. What it isn’t, is ska.
“Newsflash:itain’t1979,” says Panter. “We have finallygivenourselveslicence to make our own musicalmark.Wecouldn’t have made this record if we
Single (channel) minded: Steve Cradock
BACK TO MONO?
“Itbecameabig talkingpoint…”
AT the start of sessions, Steve Cradock proposed that the album be mixed in mono to create a suitably vintage and claustrophobic atmosphere. That influenced the recording style with almost no reverb and few overdubs. Initial mixes were done in mono before a late decision was made to mix in stereo. “We wanted to do a record in mono, but with record companies now you cannot record in mono with Spotify and Amazon,” says Golding. “So we’re making a record for Spotify and Amazon now? In the end we had to cave in a little bit. So instead we made sure it was closely recorded, with us all sat down and playing together.”
“It became a big talking point,” says Larsen. “Going back and forth with the label and streaming services. We were all trying to second guess how it would be received. We didn’t do it in the end but some of the older people at the label were excited about the idea, so we might do a special edition, a limited-edition mono mix.”
Jerry Dammers at a Rock Against Racism show in Leeds, July 4, 1981
hadn’tmakeEncore.Itwasajoyousexperience becausewehadn’tplayedtogetherforsuchalongtime andtherewasallthisamazingtalentintheroom.We hadjustdone‘Ain’tGonnaLetNobody...’andthe engineersaiditwasthemostjoyousbitofmusiche’d recordedforalongtime.Allthatpent-upemotion cameout.Itwasacelebration.”
WHENTheSpecialstakeProtestSongsonthe road,theywillbeaccompaniedbyCradock, LarsenandHu.Butthesoulofthebandwill continuetobeHall,PanterandGolding.“It’s thethreeofus,”saysPanter.“Weweretheoneswho travelledinatransitvanin1978andopenedforThe Clash.Werecorded‘Gangsters’inHorizonStudiosin 1979.Thatwasus.”
ForGolding,ProtestSongsisanextensionofwhat TheSpecialshavealwaysdone:exploredifferent genresandstandforsomethingpositive.Thatgoes rightbackto1977,hesays,whenheandDammers formedthefirstversionoftheband.“Sometimes peopleaskwhatTheSpecialssoundlikeandIlist somesongs–‘Stereotype’,‘InternationalJetSet’,‘Sock ItToEmJB’,‘HolidayFortnight’–theyarealldifferent andtheyareallgoodmusic.TheSpecialshasalways beenaverymusicalbandandIhavetogivebig-time credittoJerry.Wejustcontinuewhatwewouldhave donewithJerry.Nomatterwhatwegothrough,the spiritofJerryisinthisalbum.Trustme.”
Duringthepast18months,TerryHallhasobserved ratherthanparticipatedinprotest.Thiswasmoreto dowithhisfearofcatchingandtransmittingthe virusthananydisagreementwiththemessageor movement.SinceBrexitescalatedtheculturewarsin 2016,heisconsciousthatTheSpecialsremainvery muchapartofthatconversation,cuttingthroughthe dinwithamoralclaritythatcontinuestoinspire.
“Aprotestsongcan’talwaysembracesuchambiguity,” saysHall.“Allwecandoistryandraiseawarenesswith thepeoplewhobuytherecord.Wecan’ttellpeoplehow tolive,buthopefullytheywillhearasonglike‘Black, BrownAndWhite’andthey’llgetit.They’llgetwhat peoplegothroughandrealisethatitisn’tright.I’ve alwaysthoughtthatthisisourrole.Becausewearea populargroup,weknowthere’sachancealotofpeople willlisten.Ourgigsarelikeourprotestmarch.It’s prettyobviouswherewestandpolitically.Itcouldn’tbe clearer.That’sourprotest,that’showwehandleit.”
