Terry Hall, Lead Singer for the Specials, Dead at 63

Terry Hall, lead singer for the English ska revival band the Specials, has died at age 63.

The information was confirmed in a social media submit on the band’s official accounts.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing, following a brief illness, of Terry, our beautiful friend, brother and one of the most brilliant singers, songwriters and lyricists this country has ever produced,” reads the submit. “Terry was a wonderful husband and father and one of the kindest, funniest and most genuine of souls. His music and his performances encapsulated the very essence of life … the joy, the pain, the humor, the fight for justice, but mostly the love. He will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved him and leaves behind the gift of his remarkable music and profound humanity.”

Born and raised in Coventry, Hall was impressed early on by singers like David Bowie, whose 1975 album Young Americans made a deep impression. “I come from a gypsy-spirited family, and everyone used to sing in pubs whether you liked it or not,” Hall defined to The Guardian in 2009. “I didn’t want to be that sort of singer. Then when I was 16 this album gave me a look, a sound and a way of holding yourself.”

Hall joined the Coventry Automatics in the late ’70s, a band that was the Specials. The group’s first success arrived in 1979 when their track “Gangsters” was performed on BBC Radio 1. A transforming of Prince Buster’s 1964 ska track “Al Capone,” the Specials wrote “Gangsters” about an incident that occurred whereas the band was on tour in France with the Clash: The Specials had been held fiscally accountable for resort injury allegedly attributable to members of the Damned. “Gangsters” turned a Top 10 hit in the U.Ok.

Watch the Specials’ ‘Gangsters’ Video

Later in 1979, the Specials launched their self-titled debut album, which contained two extra hits, “A Message to You Rudy” and “Too Much Too Young.” A yr later, their second album, More Specials, yielded one other three hits: “Do Nothing,” “Stereotype” and “Rat Race.” In June 1981, they launched “Ghost Town,” a track with themes of disenfranchisement and concrete decline that turned a No. 1 hit and a defining track of the period.

Shortly after the launch of “Ghost Town,” Hall left to kind a brand new band, Fun Boy Three, with two of his Specials bandmates, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple. They launched a pair of hit singles, “The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)” and “It Ain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It),” adopted by the album Fun Boy Three, which reached No. 7 on the U.Ok. Albums Chart. Their second album, Waiting, included “The Tunnel of Love” and “Our Lips Are Sealed,” which Hall wrote with girlfriend Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s, who had a Stateside hit with their model of the track. (“Gutted to listen to of the passing of [Hall],” Wiedlin wrote on Twitter following the information of Hall’s dying. “He was a lovely, sensitive, talented and unique person.”)

Waiting additionally included a track referred to as “Well Fancy That!” that Hall wrote about his expertise of being a sufferer of sexual abuse. When he was 12, Hall was kidnapped by considered one of his lecturers at college, taken to France and delivered to a pedophile ring. “On school trips to France / Well, fancy that / You had a good time / Turned sex into crime,” he sang in the track.

“That was the first time, through making a record or writing a song, that I addressed myself, properly on a personal level,” Hall defined to Mojo in 2014. “The reaction I got from that was really brilliant because people would communicate with you saying, ‘I went through a similar sort of thing.'”

Listen to Fun Boy Three’s ‘Well Fancy That!’

Hall went on to sing in a number of extra bands, together with the Colourfield; Terry, Blair and Anouchka; and Vegas (a duo fashioned with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics). He additionally launched solo albums and collaborated with the likes of Toots and the Maytals, Gorillaz and the Dub Pistols.

In 2008, the Specials reunited and commenced touring once more. In 2019, they launched a brand new album — the band’s first new materials with Hall since “Ghost Town” — referred to as Encore, which shot to No. 1 in the U.Ok. “Achieving a first number one album in our 60s restored our faith in humanity,” Hall instructed The Quietus in 2021. The band launched a covers album, Protest Songs 1924–2012, in 2021, too.

“Age has taught me that the quiet protest is equally as valid,” Hall famous. “I’m at the stage where I will shout for everybody else who wants unity, love and togetherness, not literally shout, necessarily, but speak on their behalf because I know I’m here to represent them.”

Watch Terry Hall Perform ‘Ghost Town’ at His Last Specials Concert