How The Specials’ Ghost Town became the anthem of ‘a country falling apart’ Forty years ago, as violence and poverty menaced their hometown, The Specials set out to unite the races. Then the National Front arrived The Specials in Coventry in 1980 Credit: Eugene Adebari/Shutterstock Coventry-formed ska band The Specials wrote Ghost Town in a pressure cooker – one that you could measure as barely six-foot-high. “I’m not going to say too much because I don’t want to upset anybody,” says the track’s producer, John Rivers, reflecting on the 11-day recording session that took place in his tiny basement studio in Leamington Spa.