Remembering Terry Hall

I was deep into some family time yesterday and when I checked my phone I had a dozen downbeat messages from friends that Terry Hall had passed away, at a now unbelievably young 63.

Terry Hall’s legacy was sealed when The Specials burst out of Britain in the late 1970s. Hall became the lead vocalist with The Specials as a teenager and was a star by 20. He kept going after that and quickly developed into one of the most original and idiosyncratic British pop singer-songwriters before rejoining The Specials for the last decade of his life. I saw them on back-to-back tours when they first reformed. Perfect shows, and very different from each other. The first one was punkier and rawer and the second one was jazzier and more 1960s.

I saw The Specials before I heard them on record when they appeared on SNL — one of the few times my older brother made sure to be home by 11:30 on a Saturday night to watch it. They were AMAZING.