Uncut
MARCH 2023 TAKE 310
Onthe cover: CurtisMayfield by Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images
IN August, 2016, I spent the afternoon with Terry Hall in London’s St Pancras Hotel for an Uncut cover story about The Specials’ miraculous comeback. Hall – sharp, dryly humorous – considered how, as the youngest member of the band, he had handled their rise to fame during the late ’70s.
“It was weird and happened in a very short space of time,” he told me. “Our first retainer was £70a week or something. It was four times what I had been earning. I just bought sweets, drugs, whatever. It was very hard. It wasn’t for one second in my head to be a success and sell records. It was about being in a band. Then suddenly people start to listen to what you’re saying when nobody’s listened to you – at school, family – before. That’s fantastic, but there is a big cost, mentally. It is weird when you’re treated like shit and then people adore you.”