Advertisement
Music

Revisiting Ghost Town: Watch our behind the scenes video with The Specials

It’s 1981. Britain is two years into the Thatcher era.

“The tide is a bit further in,” says Terry Hall. Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter, aka The Specials, are throwing rocks into the Thames at St Katharine Docks. It is almost 38 years since they were last on this tidal mudbank together, at 5am, rounding off a riotous night shoot for the video to accompany perhaps their finest achievement as a band.

Ghost Town was so much more than a hit record. It was a visceral, uncompromising portrait of how it felt to be young in Thatcher’s Britain.

“No jobs to be found in this country.” “Government leaving the youth on the shelf.” “All the clubs have been closed down.” “The people getting angry.” The song depicted a country on the edge of violent unrest.

The recording, release and success of Ghost Town took place against a backdrop of UK rioting, including Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham, Brixton in London and Moss Side in Manchester. The video showed the band careering through Britain’s deserted financial heartlands in the City of London, and if the 1962 Vauxhall Cresta driven by Panter seemed out of control, so was the country.

Advertisement
Advertisement

For an exclusive, behind the scenes look at our cover feature with The Specials revisiting Ghost Town, pick up this week’s Big Issue, on the streets today, and use our Augmented Reality app to bring the pages to life.

To download the GenARate app on the Apple App Store, go here

If you’re using Android, you can get the app here

Image: Mathew Parri Thomas

Advertisement

Change a vendor's life this Christmas

This Christmas, 3.8 million people across the UK will be facing extreme poverty. Thousands of those struggling will turn to selling the Big Issue as a vital source of income - they need your support to earn and lift themselves out of poverty.

Recommended for you

Read All
Laura Mvula: 'I don't know if I'd be a singer without my family'
Laura Mvula recording her rendition of Paul Simon's 'I Know What I Know' for John Lewis. Image: John Lewis
Music

Laura Mvula: 'I don't know if I'd be a singer without my family'

Reverend and the Makers release Samaritans charity single: 'You don't have to be on your own at Christmas’
Jon McClure from Reverend and the Makers
Music

Reverend and the Makers release Samaritans charity single: 'You don't have to be on your own at Christmas’

New Order's Transmissions podcast digs up wild new stories of the band – and I'm mad for it
New Order in 1989
Music

New Order's Transmissions podcast digs up wild new stories of the band – and I'm mad for it

Sells like teen spirit: Nirvana stopping being a band when Kurt Cobain died – now they're a brand
Music

Sells like teen spirit: Nirvana stopping being a band when Kurt Cobain died – now they're a brand

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Renters: A mortgage lender's window advertising buy-to-let products
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
next dwp cost of living payment 2023
3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue