100 Greatest Songs of the 70’s #12 The Specials – Gangsters

Released: 1979

The main strength of punk’s radicalism was that it didn’t begin and end in punk itself, which had fizzled into novelty not long after it’s peak in the middle of 1977. The minds it had warped in the process however were open, ready to embrace it’s conceptual threads and use them to foment change on their own terms.

Jerry Dammers was one of those waiting for the junction of thought and opportunity. In his mid 20’s by this point, from an early age the Specials impressario to be had imagined a purpose for which punk had opened a door, telling Mojo in 2008 “I knew I’d form a band that meant something and made a difference. I was aiming for revolution, of racial harmony, of peace and unity… I wanted us to overthrow the establishment while having a hell of a lot of fun too.”

Finding an unlikely early supporter in local DJ Pete Waterman (Yes, that Pete Waterman), a rite of passage tour supporting The Clash found them one night being held to ransom by a French hotelier following antics perpetrated by The Damned. Choosing to work the story to music, Dammers and co. scraped together the money to record the subsequent track, now known as Gangsters, at Coventry’s Horizon studios.

The song was a mood-heavy, bastardised upbraiding of Ska on which Hall excelled in his deadpan vocal. Embracing their learned DIY aesthetic, the band then released it’s 5,000 copies on their own 2-Tone label, Dammers creating the cover art whilst singer Terry Hall and bassist Horace Panter stamped the sleeves in Panter’s bedroom. Within weeks it had sold out, the movement formerly known as now pulling culture’s strings from beyond it’s tawdry grave.