Hall remained active with The Specials into this year, with their last show together taking place at Escot Park in Devon on August 20. The band’s last release with Hall was the compilation ‘Protest Songs 1924-2012’, which arrived last September.

Taking to social media, the ska icons confirmed that the influential singer had passed away from a “brief illness” at the age of 63. They honoured him as “a beautiful friend, brother and one of the most brilliant singers, songwriters and lyricists this country has ever produced”.They released their debut single, Gangsters (a reworking of Prince Buster’s Al Capone) in 1979, which reached No 6 in the UK singles chart. They would dominate the Top 10 over the next two years, peaking with their second No 1 single, and calling card, Ghost Town, in 1981. The lyrics, written by the band’s main songwriter, Jerry Dammers, dealt with Britain’s urban decay, unemployment and disfranchised youth. a b "The Official Charts Company – Terry Blair And Anouchka". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 10 March 2009. We knew Terry had been unwell but didn’t realise how serious until recently,” he wrote. “We had only just confirmed some 2023 joint music agreements together. This has hit me hard and must be extremely difficult for Terry’s wife and family.” Hall struggled to write lyrics for a follow-up, he said. “The arrival of the pandemic affected me enormously. I spent around three months trying to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t write a single word. I spent the time trying to figure out how not to die.” Instead, they covered historic protest songs and released Protest Songs 1924-2012 in 2021, which peaked at No 2.

In 2008, inspired by the Pixies’ reunion in 2004, Hall announced that he would be reforming the Specials for a tour and new music, albeit without founding member Jerry Dammers, who claimed he had been forced out. Next, he formed the trio Terry, Blair & Anouchka, who delved even deeper into 60s and 70s-inspired pop on their solitary album Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes, a genuine lost classic. Improbable as it seemed, Hall had a genuine facility for sunshine pop; as if to underline where they were coming from, it concluded with a cover of Captain & Tennille’s corny-but-fantastic 1975 hit Love Will Keep Us Together. Just as the global influence of The Specials became readily apparent, thanks to a wave of American ska-punk bands, Hall had never seemed further from the music they were inspired by. Filename G:\EAC What\Terry Hall - Laugh... Plus (1997)\10. Terry Hall - Laugh... plus - I Saw the Light.wav

Filename G:\EAC What\Terry Hall - Laugh... Plus (1997)\16. Terry Hall - Laugh... plus - Love to See You (Acoustic Version).wav Afterwards, you get these 17- or 18-year-olds coming to you and talking about the music and the effect it has on them. This one kid, he had a Specials tattoo on his arm and when I met him, he started crying. I thought I'd done something to upset him, but it was the songs, the multiracial thing, it had really touched a young generation. It's fantastic, but it's pretty strange. And that's when I started thinking, oh my God, perhaps the Specials should reform." Ever the laconic contrarian, Hall closed Laugh with a deadpan but faithful cover of Todd Rundgren’s FM radio staple, I Saw The Light. In addition, there's the feeling that the Specials reunion has to do with the band's members reconciling themselves with the past, putting a final positive spin on their turbulent history. All of them struggled with life in the shadow of the Specials' legacy. After the split, Hall, Golding and Neville Staple had success with the Fun Boy Three, while Bradbury and Dammers soldiered on together through another Specials album, In the Studio, which spawned the hit single Free Nelson Mandela, but seems to have been even more traumatic to make than its predecessors. But it gradually became apparent that nothing they did for the rest of their lives would ever quite measure up to what they had achieved for two years in their early 20s. His political awakening came in his teenage years “when I discovered that working men’s clubs had a colour bar on their doors. You could only get in if you were white. That really shook me. I couldn’t work it out.”

Unfortunately, the band were possibly enjoying themselves too much, and a combination of drink and drugs with an intense work schedule made relationships fractious. “For the first album, we were all drunk, and we had a lot of fun,” says Golding. “By the second album, we were falling apart. It was very painful to make.”Co-wrote "Imaginary Friends", "What If..." and "Like You Do" with The Lightning Seeds from Dizzy Heights.

Terry Hall with Lynval Golding and Neville Staple of the Fun Boy Three in 1982. Photograph: Steve Rapport/Getty Images) Filename G:\EAC What\Terry Hall - Laugh... Plus (1997)\08. Terry Hall - Laugh... plus - For the Girl.wavFilename G:\EAC What\Terry Hall - Laugh... Plus (1997)\03. Terry Hall - Laugh... plus - Ballad of a Landlord.wav Perhaps the final word should be about Hall’s music. October saw the release of one of the last – if not the last – recorded song that he had a hand in. It was called Emily Smiles and it appeared on The Lightning Seeds’ latest album See You in the Stars. Hall co-wrote it with his old pal and Lightning Seeds frontman Ian Broudie. The lyrics couldn’t be more apt. They speak to the hope, the openness and the communication that Hall deemed so important. They suggest that life, although bruised, is beautiful. Relations within the band became fraught, exacerbated by a punishing work schedule - "we played everywhere," says Bradbury, "including a caravan park in Crosshands, which, with all due respect to the people who live there, is a little out of the way" - and the kind of arguments that bands with a less determinedly political stance might never face: there was much heated discussion over the ideological correctness of travelling by limousine.