January 1981 and the start of what would be a spectacularly bad year even by the standards of the grim, grey, hate-filled city of our youth: Belfast. We were laughing, though, we’d got tickets to see The Specials at the Ulster Hall.
This was no small matter, bands rarely came to Belfast and not of the calibre of The Specials supported by The Beat. They were doing it for the “deprived children” of Ulster.
One thing we were not deprived of was sectarian animosity. Gigs by The Specials often resembled a riot by the end, but this was one from the beginning. On reflection, it was a bit of a hairy city in which to be a teenager; plenty missed the message of Doesn’t Make It Alright.
A mate got his hand cut open in the massed tension outside. Suddenly we were funnelled into the Hall, then backstage, where to our disbelief we found ourselves in the dressing room. There, sitting nonchalantly, were our heroes – Terry Hall, Jerry Dammers and the rest. It was magic. They were magic.
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First aid was applied, as was kindness and consideration. We left, grateful, overwhelmed. It’s not something you forget.
Terry Hall died this week. He was only 63. The news was almost as bleak as it used to be in 1981.
What we didn’t know then was Terry’s hero was George Best; what Terry didn’t know was we’d walked from our homes on the Cregagh Road to the Ulster Hall and that Best was a Cregagh boy.
What we also didn’t know fully was the depth of football-music crossover and how the two would dominate our cultural lives and shape our worldview.
Sometimes today these things can be explicit – in the League of Ireland, for example, there’s Bohemians and the imagery of Bob Marley, and at Shelbourne, there is the heartfelt music of David Balfe. Back then it was less apparent, or had less formal profile, but it was there.
Hall came from Coventry but the first match he remembered was Manchester United versus Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final at Wembley. United wore vivid blue and Best scored. Hall was smitten and would travel to United games home and away for 50 years.
He was there in Barcelona in 1999 but he was also there for the kind of drab draws that saw United finish eighth under Dave Sexton in 1981. He was an authentic fan; the club paid tribute to him on Wednesday.
That was to be the end of Sexton. In came Ron Atkinson, who had done great work at West Bromwich Albion. They had just finished fourth.
Funnily enough, about eight weeks after that Specials night, West Brom were in Belfast, to play Linfield in a friendly at Windsor Park. This meant another big night out in curfew town, seeing in the flesh the dynamic brilliance of a 24-year-old Bryan Robson and the sheer class of Derek Statham.
Then there was Cyrille Regis. Regis was a totemic presence, physically and symbolically.
In England this was an era in football when the National Front would sell its newspaper, unmolested, outside grounds, when fascist wannabees would fly to England matches with their NF flags, sometimes on the same plane as England’s players. This was a time when racists would discount the goals scored by black players, even those who played for their team. It was vicious.
Regis, along with Brendan Batson and Laurie Cunningham, played together for West Brom. There were clubs without a single black player, so West Brom’s ‘Three Degrees’ – a music reference to the Philadelphia soul band – stood out. That this was happening in England’s Midlands seemed to chime. West Brom and The Specials were positive, visible representations of the region’s immigration.
An indication of the status of Regis was the New Musical Express putting him on its front cover in an issue about football, music and race. Regis carried people with him in the way The Specials would, altering the mood by saying No, that there was an alternative. It was there in the name of their label, 2-Tone.
People like Hall and Lynval Golding led from the stage. Rock Against Racism was a loud force trying to combat the NF. Music was the lead vocal in this role. Football had its voices – the decision by Brian Clough and Jack Charlton to join the Anti-Nazi League was front-page news – but it was not a chorus.
Yet the message was being absorbed, by footballers and fans swaying to the rhythm. It made you think and it stuck, so that many years later in a London office, Simon Jordan, owner of Crystal Palace, could speak of his two ambitions: to establish Palace in the Premier League and to re-form The Specials.
“Terry Hall comes to a lot of Palace games now,” Jordan said. He spoke of how influential the band was, and he was right.
Jordan was fulfilled in one respect – The Specials got back together, or most of them did, in 2008.
By then the landscape of music, football and race was changing, if not changed. In South Africa Nelson Mandela had gone from prison to president and black footballers were common across England and Europe.
They were, in the main, judged on ability as opposed to being prejudged on colour. Rio Ferdinand was not a black player appearing for England – as Viv Anderson or John Barnes were described – he was just Rio Ferdinand. The NF no longer stood outside grounds.
At Old Trafford a young local lad, Marcus Rashford, was making his way through; and as popular music fragmented and became less political in the mainstream, footballers such as Rashford emerged. They did so because they were prepared to stand up – or kneel – in the manner music had done 40 years earlier.
Some days it can feel as if progress has been made, yet the same racial issue remains in the game and just as the 2-Tone bands received a lot of abuse, some of it physical, the players now get it via social media (after Euro 2020) or in the case of Raheem Sterling at Stamford Bridge in 2018, directly in his face.
Because it irritates and infuriates racists – this is why taking the knee matters. But this football colourfield could do with support.
The Colourfield, of course, was the name of one of Terry Hall’s bands. They had a song called Take, which was not about knees. In the accompanying video, Terry is shown on his settee watching TV. He has old footage on, it’s George Best scoring at Wembley in 1968.
Goodnight, Terry.
