Ghost Town A Message To You Rudy You're Wondering Now The Specials

Ghost Town Album: The Singles Collection (1981)
A Message To You Rudy Album: Specials (1979)
You're Wondering Now Album: Too Much Too Young (1996)
by The Specials

The Specials keyboardist Jerry Dammers wrote and recorded Ghost Town in a Tottenham, London apartment. On the surface, it is about the decline of Coventry, where the band grew up, but the latent meaning is quite different.

Ghost Town was written just as three band members - Neville Staples, Lynval Golding and Terry Hall - were leaving The Specials to form Fun Boy Three. According to Dammers, the song was inspired by the band's split. He said in 2008: "'Ghost Town' was about the breakup of the Specials. It just appeared hopeless. But I just didn't want to write about my state of mind so I tried to relate it to the country as a whole."

Many in the UK could relate to Ghost Town. Coventry was a thriving industrial town in 1960s, but fell on hard times in the 1980s. "Ghost Town" caught the mood of Summer 1981 as levels of civil unrest not seen in a generation hit the UK.
The song was influenced by scenes noted during the band's UK tour. Dammers recalled in an interview in the music magazine Mojo, "In Liverpool, all the shops were shuttered up, everything was closing down. In Glasgow there were little old ladies on the streets selling their household goods."

"Ghost Town" was the seventh UK Top 10 for The Specials and their second #1, following "Too Much Too Young." The song wasn't even released as a single in America, where the band tried and failed to break through in 1980 with a tour and an appearance on Saturday Night Live. They learned that getting on the radio and placed in record stores there was nearly impossible because there was no classification for ska or two-tone, and they didn't fit under the aegis of pop, punk, reggae or rock. It wasn't until the '90s that America warmed to the sound they helped create.
Dammers took a year to write "Ghost Town" and "begged" his bandmates to record it to his specifications.
The lyric, "All the clubs have been closed down," refers to the Locarno in Coventry. The site is now the city library. (above two from Q magazine, March 2008)

Ghost Town was featured in the 2000 Guy Ritchie-directed film Snatch.

"Rudy" (or Rudi, Rude boy) is a Jamaican term for criminal juveniles; The Clash sing about one in "Rudie Can't Fail." The message to Rudy is straightforward: stop your messing around and think of your future.

Jamaican immigrants to England in the aftermath of World War II brought their music and culture to that country, influencing bands like The Specials.

"A Message To You Rudy" was originally recorded by the reggae artist Dandy Livingstone in 1967. His original recording was a portrait of social unrest amongst the youth in Kingston, Jamaica.

The Specials' update is a comment on British disaffection in the late 1970s that led to the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent when a succession of strikes seriously disrupted everyday life and later the riots in the Summer of 1981.

"A Message To You Rudy" was the second Specials single, following "Gangsters." After it climbed to #10 in the UK in November 1979, the group toured America, where they found audiences were indifferent or perplexed by their sound, which didn't have a handy classification. Despite an appearance on Saturday Night Live, they didn't make much impact and didn't return, focusing instead on their stronghold of Britain.

The trombonist on A Message To You Rudy, Rico Rodriguez, also played on Dandy Livingstone's original recording.