Terry Hall RIP.
I wasn't expecting that to be staring out at me from a social media post this December. It was true though that after a short illness Terry had died.
It can often be said that a musician was the soundtrack of your youth and Terry fits that bill in my case, though perhaps elongated into young adulthood. With the Specials AKA he offered something different from the 'punks not dead' griminess and the post punk seriousness and you could also dance to the Specials. As the laconic front man in a interracial band Terry quickly became an icon moving from Fred Perry blue beat skinhead chic to pinstriped double breasted suits and a flattop. His diffident almost conversational delivery was deadpan to say the least. His delivery suited the early period ska stompers and the later cinematic acid easy-listening lounge dub ska equally well.
It would be easy, perhaps too easy to pigeon-hole Terry as a key member of both the Specials and the Fun Boy Three (and their collaborations with Bananarama) due to the uncanny run of chart topping singles, memorable videos and Top of The Pops appearances. His return to the revived Specials in recent years probably cements that legacy. But with Terry Hall there was more than those guises however successful and beloved they are.
Not all he did was commercially successful. The pop trio Terry, Blair & Anouchka failed to break through and what on track record alone should have worked his teaming up with Eurythmics Dave Stewart for Vegas also failed to produce hits despite 'Walk Into the Wind'. The constant in these guises is his voice shining through allied to some sublime song writing.
Terry explored further interracial music in his 2003 collaboration with Mushtaq from Fun-Da-Mental where they mashed-up a variety of influences to impressive effect.
Terry was a talented songwriter and that is maybe missed a bit in the Specials due to their cooperative ethos but it was evident fairly early that he could craft songs beyond the bands he inhabited. The prime example of that is 'My Lips Are Sealed' a co-write with Jane Wiedlin and a hit for Terry's Fun Boy Three and Jane's Go-Go's. That ability to write catchy pop songs seems always to have been with him through The Colourfield hit 'Thinking of You' to the songs on his two solo albums 'Ballad of a Landlord', 'Forever J', 'No No No' and others often co-written with Craig Gannon. He had a eye for good melodies and the songs he chose to cover can be quite stunning see Todd Rundgren's 'I Saw the Light' and the Lightening Seeds 'Sense'. I've read that he sometimes struggled to produce material which is a shame because on the evidence he has left us he could easily have sung the soundtrack of our more mature selves.
Terry Hall RIP
