It’s a lot of pressure being made to be the face of anti-racism, no? “It has been a lot of pressure but I’ve always made it clear that I don’t speak on behalf of anyone,” says Saffiyah. It’s a powerful photo that was quickly seized on, and one which made Saffiyah – UK born, of Pakistani and Bosnian heritage – the face of a Britain we can all be a bit more proud of. Facing meathead rage with perfect condescension, it’s a modern version of the Vietnam protester holding up flowers to a gun-toting soldier, except instead of a flower, Khan has a Specials T-shirt and a brilliantly superior smile. It pictured Khan, then 18, fronting up to an English Defence League member in Birmingham he and other EDL protestors had surrounded a hijab-wearing woman who’d called them racists. You’ll know Saffiyah from an image that went viral in 2017. But – as on the record – there’s a special guest here, too: activist, model, and vocalist Saffiyah Khan. But no, it just happened to be, I’d say, the three most talented and attractive members left.”Īnd so it is, some 40 years after that first LP, we’ve gathered the core 2019 incarnation of The Specials – Terry, Lynval and Horace, handsome and talented all – to discuss their new album, the drily titled ‘Encore’. But the three of us sort of do get on and I think, musically, we share a lot, really, and there are certain members who don’t fit into that for whatever reason. “It just so happens that people have dropped off and they want to go and do their own thing. Are they just the three who can actually get along? Wikipedia lists no fewer than 31 members who’ve been through the band’s doors in their 40 years together (and not together), but they’ve essentially now got it down to a core of three of the original seven. Subsequent years saw numerous side projects, but The Specials regrouped in 1993, 19, since when they’ve been more or less back in action on the touring circuit. Where founder member Jerry Dammers continued with a splinter group, The Special AKA, Terry, Lynval and Neville Staples formed the more pop-tinged Fun Boy Three. Is that true? “We had a band meeting then, if you could call it a meeting at the time,” says guitarist Lynval Golding. Rumour has it they split up in the green room at the studio when booked to play ‘Ghost Town’. After just two hugely influential albums – 1979’s ‘The Specials’ and 1980’s ‘More Specials’ – the seven-piece band split into warring factions, and would soon collapse. Where the song spoke of “ too much fighting on the dancefloor”, there was fighting in the dressing room, too. It wasn’t so much a protest song, says Horace Panter, bass player, “It was just us looking at the landscape, not wagging a finger, avoiding a polemic, just making an observation and leaving the audience to make up its own mind.”
“ This town is coming like a ghost town,” it goes, “ Why must the youth fight against themselves?/Government leaving the youth on the shelf.” The 1981 track, and winner of Best Single at that year’s NME Awards, reggae by way of Ennio Morricone via Coventry, is a state-of-the-nation song about Thatcher’s Britain that could equally be written about the urban decay and disenfranchisement that fostered Brexit. Terry’s right to hold up ‘Ghost Town’ as The Specials’ crowning achievement. “We got to Number One with ‘Ghost Town’, they got a Number One with a comedy record…” Given both Madness and The Specials are still going concerns, who’s winning in the long run? “Well, I don’t know,” says Terry, with a smirk. “I always liked the bit of rivalry between us and Madness, it always felt quite good,” says Terry Hall, the band’s deadpan, dry-as-a-bone frontman. We could have a turf war on our hands: back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, the two bands were short-time 2-Tone labelmates and long-time enemies. It’s a bright afternoon in February, the first one of the year, and NME has gathered Coventry band The Specials in Camden, the home of North London ‘nutty boys’ Madness. There are invaders in Camden: ska invaders. Alert the Men In Black (and white check).
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