When Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews picked “Ghost Town” for an unforgettable appearance in Father Ted, they apparently wanted the worst record imaginable to play at a disco. But there’s actually a lot of dancing in the song, which knots its competing jostle of ideas together with an incisive – and wholly struttable – mid-tempo groove. The reason you wouldn’t dance to “Ghost Town” is that the floor’s already full – of fighting, but also of spectres. The record is full of crescendos and horn vamps that beckon you to dance and then break off, plunging the song back into shadow. And when the dance does kick off you’d rather not be part of it – those horrible shrieking backing vocals are the sound of a danse macabre, a skeleton skank conducted by the sleeve’s bony pianist.
In the astonishing video these hellbound howls soundtrack a car crammed with Specials swerving and banking chaotically through a deserted, apocalyptic London. The car isn’t out of control, its driver spins the wheel with determined abandon, its lunatic progress catching the sense of awful, mocking liberation in those vocals.
The video also illuminates the song’s other great moment of malevolent jauntiness, Terry Hall’s brief reverie of the “Boom Town”. Hearing the track, you could almost mistake his doleful delivery for sincere regret, but when you see him sing it – head tilted, corpselit and simpering – it sounds rotten, as haunted and corrupted as anything else in the Ghost Town. What makes this single so amazing is the way its emotional tenor is constantly shifting and reshaping, evoking horror and collapse so well but also making them sound darkly attractive: the shiver that runs down the spine on “People gettin’ angry” is a thrill of anticipation as well as fear.
All of which is to say that even if the grim energy of “Ghost Town” hadn’t fitted the times so well, even if the song had remained simply a lament for a scene (and a band) in breakdown, it would still be a gothic masterpiece. The near-coincidence that made “Ghost Town” a legend – British cities erupting in riot while this sat at Number 1 – shouldn’t obscure the fact that this is an astonishing achievement anyway. It’s the culmination of Jerry Dammers’ obsession with easy listening and program music, the perfect patchwork of those influences and the Specials’ tight ska roots, the sound of a group getting it stunningly right (and promptly imploding: “Ghost Town” is as unfollowable as “Good Vibrations”). From the dust-laden fade-in to the faltering heartbeat drums on the fade, there’s not one single element in this song that doesn’t work beautifully.
Score: 10
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Footnotes:
– I think this was a likely 10 from the moment I conceived the project, but I still wonder if I’d have reacted differently to this song had Popular progressed at its intended pace and I’d got to it in, say, Summer 2006 rather than January 2009
– The third track on the EP, “Friday Night Saturday Morning”, is of course as unsentimental an account of nightlife inna de Boom Town as you’re likely to meet.
Slightly over-egged, if I may say so, Tom, but yes, this is one of the highlights of the year, a wonderful production. Interesting comparison with Saint-Saens’ masterpiece. I’ll have to dwell on that one.
The riots were indeed kicking off, Bristol first, I think. Waldo copped the whole nine yards from his high-rise vantage point overlooking Brixton, the poor fucker. Not too much rioting in Eastbourne, although I do remember a couple of guinea pigs being hurt.
Er… what he said.
There’s not a lot I can add to that Tom, and for once your idea of a 10 coincides with mine. Atmospheric, chilling, brilliant – one of my top ten number ones of all time. Swings like a good ‘un, but when the vocal kicks in you realise it’s swinging like the hanging corpse of the town they’re talking about. The video may have been shot in London, but Coventry was suffering historically high unemployment at the time and there must have been an echo of this.
It brings back really inappropriate memories for me, of the beauties of the Cornish coast. Not to pre-empt Billy’s TOTP Watch, but “Ghost Town” was number one on the 900th edition of TOTP, which I watched in a pub in Tintagel before heading back to the youth hostel which nestled beside the south-west peninsula coastal footpath. I’d been visiting friends in southern Cornwall and was about to hitch back to Manchester the following day, but Britain’s ghost towns and riots were a world away from the onshore breeze and sea views this song brings back to mind.
Back home my dad was stopping off at a petrol station in Moss Side, and realised with horror that he was the only customer at the station putting petrol in his car, as opposed to stocking up for the action to come later that night. Luckily my lift the following day took me as far as Bolton, so I re-entered Manchester from the north instead of the south, which was one big tinder-box that week.
Wholly struttable indeed Tom.
I once DJ’d a party a few years back in an old warehouse (I don’t often do this sort of thing) and “Ghost Town” was the biggest floor filler of the night. Absolutely unstoppable – I was quite taken aback.
I was 14 the Summer this came out and in July (right in the middle of the Edgebaston Test dammit) went to France for a 2 week exchange. A wonderful experience and I have very fond memories of being in a car tearing down country lanes in Brittany on the way to a party, packed full of French teenagers yelling along to “Ghost Town”. They all absolutely loved it.
It’s an incredibly powerful recording, for which “More Specials” and the Ice Rink Strings had prepared us, but this was Jerry Dammer’s finest hour (and Terry Hall’s too – his laconic delivery never better suited).
I think Peel described it as the best song to make Number 1.
10.
Incidentally, I loved this at the time too, for the scary spoken bits and the video and the general vibe – I was quite a studious boy and watched the news a lot and was aware that this (and UB40’s “One In Ten” which TBH I probably liked more!) were Serious in a way that other pop wasn’t, so I was a bit in awe of it too.
The first time I heard of this song was when ILM did a “best UK No 1s ever” poll a few years back, and it was the only song in the top 10 I wasn’t familiar with – I think it may have even come top? Anyway I went to listen to it and was hugely underwhelmed then, and still am now. It’s not awful or anything but I keep finding my attention drifting elsewhere by the first minute, it doesn’t stick with me at all and is actually just a drag by the end. The “hellbound howls” are ridiculously hammy and I can’t take them seriously at all, ditto the “spooky” wind machine effect, and I find the singer’s voice a rather pale, grey thing. I would give it 5, and am completely perplexed by the reverence being paid to it.
A 10 only coz this one doesn’t go to 11… Ace write-up too, bad times never sounded so good, I can’t imagine what it must have sounded like in the riot-scarred dystopia of 1981.
Terry Hall always sounds like the last man you’d want to knock round with, even, no, especially when singing about fun – I think Tom alluded to this in his Too Much Too Young piece – even more malicious than Johnny Rotten, the man literally hasn’t got a good word to say for anyone or anything ‘I won’t dance in a club like this…I’m a parasite’ – thrillingly nasty stuff
The great thing I’ve learned from my short time on this project is how you will always get the odd dissenter thrashing away in a sea of tunnel-visioned enthusiasts. On this occasion, Lex has pitched in at number six and taken “Ghost Town” apart, whilst the rest of us have pretty much been playing with ourselves in its praise. Bravo, Lex! I don’t agree with you but it’s very refreshing when someone puts the brakes on. A mature democracy, I think it’s called.
Talking of number six, he’s facking deed, is he not?!
Perhaps the ‘tenniest’ ten out of ten that we’ll come across on Popular, for the extrordinary circumstances of so many great things coming together in one moment;
The bold, innovative, incredibly evocative approach to arrangement and songwriting…
The video as much more than a promo but as a striking short film in itself (the way that the appearance of the buildings and motion of the car cuts to the music!…
All of the details of a band’s design and image working together to become something like a way of a life – far beyond a pose…
A song that is patently about something that actually matters, and about life in 1981…
And *for once*, the British public en masse gets all of this and puts it at number one for three weeks, at the height of the worst recession and most violent social unrest in (mainland) Britain for a generation.
For all its murkiness and menace, ‘Ghost Town’ is also a shining beacon of all that pop music can be and can achieve.
Best ‘Ghost Town’ experience in my life: Walking into a pretty rough bar in East Manhattan in 1999, it playing on the jukebox, and seeing some pretty tough-looking drinkers embrace each other and dance along to it. So far from its original context, and yet still something outlandishly remarkable.
#2 Watch: 2 weeks of ‘Stars on 45 Part 2’. Medleymaina continues to sweep the nation.
what i remember about terry halls voice is how funny its deadpan always seemed — mordantly hilarious, and (ike eeyore) ever funnier with repetition, my sister and i (we shared a flat t the time) used each to yell to the other one whenever he came on TV so we could enjoy it together
what i can’t now calculate — bearing lex’s response in mind — is how much of this effect was visual (TH has a clown’s stoneface demeanour, doubly so when still a whip-thin young man surrounded by people frantically jumping around) and how much was an effect of (and counter to) the times; a shared point for people living through an era as it unfolded, which (like a lot of punk for the younger; or indeed 50s rock’n’roll for ppl my age) seems somehow drained of the thing it’s being celebrated for by its celebrants
my theory has always been: it’s the comedy that dates that was actually funny; the comedy that “stands the test of time” isn’t actually funny — it just sounds like it is
My eight-year old self really loved this, especially with the video, driving further and further away and ending up throwing stones into the river. The narrative of things getting worse resonated totally with me, making ‘Ghost Town’ one of the few singles of that time which I think I completely understood what it was about.
Hmm. Mark inflation has set in good and proper. I can’t hear anything in this but a whining dirge from a bunch of deadbeats who think the world owes them a living. How can this possibly be better than Grapevine, or Good Vibrations, or Jumping Jack Flash?
4 at best from me.
On reflection I think it may be as well for me to bow out of Popular quietly before I had planned. I don’t think I have anything to contribute from here on.
I can’t go along with that last dating comment, but otherwise I agree – the implied comparison with Keaton is apt, I think.
I loved this then and still do. It really connected with me: I had loved the band for years (since seeing them as the Coventry specials supporting Suicide and the Clash), and I was extremely aware of the circumstances of the Bristol (where I lived) riots in particular, aware of a lot of things that never seemed to reach the newspapers (like what actually kicked it all off, more info on offer – actually, I might just do an entry on my LJ about that (martinskidmore)). I still find it an exceptionally compelling and potently moody record.
TOTPWatch: The edition of the 9th of July 1981 is an important one for The Specials as it was the last time that the full line up appeared together – Terry, Lynval and Neville walking out to form the Fun Boy 3. It was also the 900th edition of Top of the Pops.
Also in the studio that week were; Kirsty MacColl, Randy Crawford and Imagination, plus Legs & Co’s interpretation of ‘Wordy Rappinghood’. The hosts were Pete Murray, Jimmy Saville, Alan Freeman and Adam Ant.
An honourable mention must go to the 12″ version of this, in which most of the track strips away leaving just the drums and bass and Rico’s gorgeously haunting trombone to carry on.
And although its historical circumstances no doubt add weight to the record, it would surely still be a 10 without them.
This is one where cultural context is vitally important, I think.
Interesting point about the overproduction, Peter—and one that relates, I think, to my initial experience of the song as a listener here in the States. This video was a staple of early MTV; most young-teen viewers, though, had no social context for the song, or indeed for ska in general. For a number of reasons—some having to do with signifiers alien to American pop at the time (the suits, the squawky horns), some to do with the relative overexposure of Madness over here—there was a half-formed idea that two-tone was a novelty music, somehow inherently comical. (Something Mark kinda touches on, too.)
And in that light, “Ghost Town” does sound like a novelty record: the theatricality of the bass voice, the sound effects and horror-movie keyboards, the wailing vocals. Fourteen-year old me assumed it had to be a joke of some kind, albeit (and this is crucial) a joke that I wasn’t in on.
I’ve come around, of course—in retrospect it’s plain that even Madness weren’t entirely about the laffs, and the jarring production elements of “Ghost Town” sound like what they are—an Expressionist groping towards any available means for creating the necessary emotional atmosphere.
It’s simultaneously goofy and brilliant, right up there with the motorcycle SFX in “Leader of the Pack” or the crazed knob-twiddling of Joe Meek; and if it took me a while to recognize how good it truly is, it’s partly a result of my own ongoing musical education and partly due to shifts in the landscape of pop. A document of its time, yes, but hugely forward-looking in its conception and execution. A well-deserved 10.
Rosie – my advice is to pay attention to the discussion not the marks, which have always been a gimmick anyway
I can easily imagine times when I’d prefer to hear any of the excellent records you mentioned to “Ghost Town”, even though, yes, I do think “Ghost Town” is the best.
Jack Fear – great post! I think this is the answer to Lex’s complaints too: yes they’re hammy, they’re theatre, like gunshot sounds on a hip-hop or dancehall track are hammy. I think they’re incredibly effective, though – the violence of the screaming cutting in suddenly works really well.
Pink S – Yes, Terry Hall is very funny: “Saturday Night” being a prime example.
Rosie, in the words of KC and the Sunshine Band, please don’t go. Just because you’re the dissenting voice on something everyone else is raving about (and you’re not alone) you needn’t think your views are in any way irrelevant or unwelcome. I can see a few occasions coming up when I’ll be the grumpy one!
The day “Ghost Town” chalked up its third week at number one (and I’m talking about the Tuesday the chart was announced, not the following Saturday which is the “official” date Tom is using) was 21 July 1981. A landmark day in English sporting history, the day Bob Willis’ 8 for 43, following Ian Botham’s 149 not out, skittled the Aussies to win what is probably the most famous Test match ever. Like a fine wine, you don’t need to say anything more than “Headingley ‘81” to bring it all back!
It was either a lucky coincidence or a prescient release which saw this record at the top during the riots – but it was a trick Jerry Dammers was to pull off again, albeit with a record you were unlikely to hear on the radio. The following winter “The Boiler” by Rhoda and the Special AKA, a harrowing tale of date rape, was in the top 40 during what was dubbed “National Rape Week”, the week when an early docusoap about Thames Valley Police highlighted the sensitive approach the police of the day took towards rape victims – an officer hears a sobbing girl pour out her tale before sitting back and declaring, “That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard.”
Agree with Glue Factory @18. the 12″ was what the fans bought in those days and is the true masterpiece. I’m looking forward to hearing how they do this on stage at the reunion gigs later this year. My strongest recollection of the riots when this was number one is of a terrrified house-mate who works as a waitress coming back from Nottingham’s Ben Bowers restaurant, where rioters had smashed their way in while customers hid in the basement, but she was one of the last to go down and had a brief (non-violent) confrontation with one of the looters. I was all for heading out on my bicycle and checking out the action but the other people in my house wouldn’t let me go. Probably a good thing, a mate of mine who did the voyeur bit got arrested. Mind you, I was unemployed for most of that period, so maybe I should have been rioting.
Number 7 Watch – during Ghost Town’s reign Abba’s “Lay All Your Love On Me” peaked at 7, their smallest hit for several years, which was a shock. One place below the Motorhead Live EP…
My link to Terry Hall btw – in 1984 my girlfriend’s dad had a singing telegram on his birthday. A few months later we saw The Colourfield doing the sublime “Thinking Of You” on TOTP and recognised singer Katrina Phillips as the girl who’d done the singing telegram!
Wasn’t that ABBA record only available on 12″?
a ten from me too, probably the second greatest of all the number ones. though i can’t add much to the great comments so far. like tom says, even as a seven year old it was obvious that there was someting about this that went beyond what was normally in the charts (even during that golden period) and that it somehow encapsulated what was a pretty terrible time. (not that seven year old me was having a terrible time, but it didn’t take much to see that lots of people were). now i like the fact that you know for an absolute fact that when maggies’ “where there is dischord may we bring harmony” appears on tv the next shot will be petrol bombs on railton road with ghost town playing over the top.
i’m intrigued by rosie’s ‘think the world owes them a living’ comment – how do you get that? not that whines from oiks who think the world owes them a living are a bad thing – ‘statisfaction’ for a start
yes, friday night/saturday morning is fantastic too – bleak clubbing songs are always good – see the streets, soft cell, smiths, iggy, whigfield, etc – but there’s not much that matches terry’s doleful ‘wish i had lipstick on my shirt/instead of piss stains on my shoes’ for bringing a shudder of recognition.
Erithian @ 21: K C & the Sunshine Band? Surely you mean Big Joe Williams? Or better still, Them featuring the nascent Van Morrison (now there was a shoo-in 10 double-A side – with Gloria – had it hit the top!)
I’ve had a peek at what’s to come and I realise that I can’t go yet as there are things coming up I need to say things about (whether good or bad you’ll have to wait and see but it includes something that I’ve tended to rate 1 on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and 10 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.) So I’m not going down to Noo Orleens just yet!
#27 SURELY he means K – *strangled by Rave Bunny*
The video was directed by the ace graphic designer Barney Bubbles whose work has been lauded here before (the sleeve of ‘Rhythm Stick’ for one), it was filmed in the Rotherhithe Tunnel.
Tense times indeed, you really did expect it to kick off anywhere at any moment. I vividly remember a breathless newsflash! on the telly about a riot down the road from us in North End Road in Fulham, turns out it was just some kids having a fight outside the McDonald’s but it just shows how the nation’s nerves were on a knife’s edge at the time.
Perfectly suited for the echoey strangeness of Dub, you can almost see the empty burger wrappers blowing across the desolate street.
I think this might be the song I’ve heard discussed in documentaries the most. I do like it a lot, but as other people have mentioned, historical context is pretty important here and I was still just a collection of cells in a uterus at this point. I prefer Too Much Too Young.
The Father Ted disco sketch was fvcking brilliant though.
thinking about it, in terms of their hold on the public imagination, i wonder whether the 1981 riots don’t benefit from the ghost town association as much as the other way round? the riots later in the eighties – where people actually died – don’t have such a readymade representation and so get a bit overlooked. and the huge riots in blackburn (or was it bradford? i can’t even remember) in the early 00s are already all but forgotten.
What a great cover. I had failed to notice this until now.
Love at first listen for me. As well as the memorable flute hook the mocking/deranged ‘laaaa la la la la”s helped there. Both they and the middle eight are terrific counters to the mood of the main hook and I love this kind of switching in a song (esp. where it’s denoting reflection to another time and place). Obvious but effective and compelling.
I just relistened, because I couldn’t remember how it went (from this morning! which says it all) – the trouble is I’m not hearing any of the violence and horror and derangement which you all say is key to it. I can hear where it’s meant to be but it just sounds limp and unexciting to me – the beat is like Casio-preset dub, thin and tinny, lacking the overwhelming cavernous feel that I tend to love in the genre, and nothing about the song gets me emotionally. It sort of plods along and goes nowhere exciting. The whole song is more pleasant than violent!
I want Rosie to stay as well b/c I am looking forward to what you all have to say about the songs which I grew up with…though that’s still a decade off, sigh.
#30 this is a very good point!
(Five minutes later and I have already forgotten how it goes AGAIN.)
Funny, most other people don’t seem to have this problem (altho I suppose it is a blessing if you don’t actually rate the song)
No arguments from me – 10. Never again was the Number One single such an accurate barometer of national mood.
The other thing that should be noted is that Ghost Town almost instantly attained ‘classic’ status. Everyone – from my 11 year old contemporaries to Radio 1 DJs to the inkies, even my 8 year old Shakin’ Stevens fan brother – thought it was brilliant.
Never again was the Number One single such an accurate barometer of national mood.
Sadly I can think of at least one glaring counter-example, which probably won’t be getting a 10.
Lex is objecting to the cheesy theatricality of the backing voices, the wind effects and Phantom of The Opera organ but I think that’s what makes it. Take all that away and it would be in danger of being a rather worthy dirge like ‘One In Ten’
#30 – Yes! that may be right. But I also think the juxtaposition of the rioting with a certain wedding (and perhaps even the cricket) have helped give Summer ’81 – and by association, the riots themselves – a kind of iconic status.
Well, I was a long, long way from the context – Mexico City, to be precise, although I was aware was happening back in the old country and knew that Brixton was pretty close to our family home. Also, we already loved The Specials because my brother had brought the first album with him from England. But anyway, I loved Ghost Town instantly then and I love it still.
Good point about the ’81 riots being much more iconic than say Brixton 1985 (I saw the aftereffects of that one) and others since…
it’s refreshing to read the doubters and naysayers as it makes me think harder about what it is for me that makes this such a fantastic tune.
I was in Newcastle at the time – which had been suffering from decline and neglect for a good few years but which, IIRC, did not have riots like London, Bristol or Liverpool. Nevertheless this did seem to sum up the mood of the time as the full effects of Thatcherism began to kick in.
It partly reminds me of PiL’s ‘Careering’ from Metal Box in it’s use of a whining drone against the dubby rhythms – but this seems sourer in it’s appropriation of a end of the pier/icerink organ tone.
Given the current economic climate you can imagine some enterprising artiste releasing a new version of this song.
re# 28 I was astonished to discover that Barney Bubbles had directed the video. The new book on his work is a revelation to me as I’ve discovered that pretty much all the sleeve art I admired from that time was by BB. I even have an original copy of his poster for the ‘Lives’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery which I hadn’t realised was his work until now.
Oh come on Tom (#37), give us a clue to the one you’re thinking of!
I still have on tape an excerpt from the 1981 episode of “25 Years of Rock”, a Radio 1 precursor to “The Rock’n’Roll Years”. It splices “Ghost Town” with news reports from the time – the track fades in under a reporter saying “Parts of Brixton are burning tonight… a heavy orange pall lays across the scene, and graffiti by the burnt-out cars urges “Fight Back!” I don’t believe this is England”. Over the instrumental passages are women in Toxteth commentating on joyriders as you hear the screech of brakes in the background, and an account of a kick-off at a skinhead gig in Southall. It then segues to Darcus Howe talking about the New Cross Massacre (when 13 black youths were killed in an arson attack in January) and into another 1981 number one – bunny-bait, but it was two major acts collaborating on a song about “people on streets”. A fantastic piece of radio, would have made a great remix.
it isn’t just living through the riots and political turmoil, it’s growing up through the music of the era, as a sequence of changes and shifts — actually responding to records as “news reports from the collective consciousness”, in a very pressure-cooker sense
bah #39 i agree with Tom in that ‘One In Ten’ is ace altho i probably prefer the 808 State remix slightly more. neither ultimately as good as Ghost Town tho.
The tacky theatricality is also part of the horror, like a puppet show with ugly wooden puppets with mad stary eyes, the horror in the execution underscores the horror in the the subject matter.
#44 I am not sure I still think One in Ten is ace, I will relisten!
#42 “I feel like everyone else in this country today – utterly devastated…. We are today a nation, in Britain, in a state of shock, in mourning, in grief that is so deeply painful for us.”
I’d argue that the 1981 wave of riots probably are the most historically significant in postwar mainland Britain because of the combination of a racial catalyst (the Special Police Group’s Search Under Suspicion policy serving to antagonise many law-abiding black city dwellers), the social deprivation of much of Britain of 1981 – the height of the worst recession since the thirties, and the sheer geographic scale and sweep of events, many cities over several weeks.
one in ten is better if you sing “i have a one-inch head”
(this is an old danny baker joke but it’s funny because it’s true)
Tom #46 – oh of course, as glaring as that!!
I’s have thought the 1958 Notting Hill riots had more of an effect on government policy and British cultural life than any since. It changed immigration policy, certainly served as a catalyst to Enoch Powell’s change in political views on immigration which almost destroyed the Tories. It was also the catalyst for the Notting Hill Carnival.