Terry Hall, a Coventry singer and all-around music hero, is forever identified with the UK musical tapestry and the ska rebirth that followed punk’s disaffection.
Hall led the 2-Tone seven-piece The Specials for their 1979 debut LP and songs ‘Gangsters’ and ‘Rat Race’, winning over working-class fans with their mod look and punk-infused rocksteady. The Specials were founded in response to the National Front’s rise and economic crisis, and their early work captures the UK’s tumultuous social past.
However, labeling Hall the ‘face of ska’ hurts his creativity. After ‘Ghost Town’s haunting capture of Thatcherite decline, Hall, Staples, and Golding formed Fun Boy Three, collaborating with Bananarama and writing one of The Go-Go’s biggest hits, before switching to acoustic pop with The Colourfield. On 1980’s excellent second LP, More Specials, The Specials’ legendary line-up experimented with elevator muzak and psychedelic post-punk.
Hall, known as the ‘voice of a generation’ in UK music, was ambivalent about Britsh punk and its hostility to pop mystique. Hall honestly told The Guardian in 2009 that he favored American punk bands over British ones when discussing his “songs of his life”. Richard Hell sang with sweets in his mouth to avoid being understood. He has an extraordinary anxious cough, which may be related to sweets.”
Hall said, “I didn’t really like the McLaren/Westwood angle on punk, of making everyone look styled. In the Voidoids, some were bald and others had lengthy hair. Not a problem. I imagined Richard Hell couldn’t do anything else, but The Damned bassist could fix my plumbing.”
Richard Hell, one of the first punk wave pioneers to play New York’s CBGB, founded Television with Tom Verlaine and briefly played with Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers in the mid-1970s. By the time of his debut album with The Voidoids, he was a veteran of the scene. 1977’s Blank Generation, featuring a pre-Ramone Marky on drums, blended his love for Bob Dylan’s literate songwriting, The Velvet Underground’s avant-garde decadence, and The Stooges’ feral garage rock with bristling energy on the album’s title track.
Hall chose his favorite Richard Hell song for BBC 6 Music’s 40th anniversary of 2-Tone in 2019, saying, “I’m going to leave you with Richard Hell and the Voidoids and the song that made me want to form a band more than any other. ‘Blank Generation’.”