Terry Hall’s lyrics referenced how he was abused by a paedophile teacher as a child.
It has emerged The Specials’ late frontman – whose death aged 63 after a brief illness was revealed on Monday (19.12.22) – hinted at the horror in lines from a 1983 track with his band Fun Boy Three.
Mail Online reported on Tuesday (20.12.22) the song ‘Well Fancy That’ only gave a nod to how the singer was abducted and taken to France by a school teacher who molested him.
Terry sang: “On school trips to France, Well fancy that, You had a good time, Turned sex into crime.”
It wasn’t until years later Terry would tell the world what the words meant.
Mail Online said he first revealed his abuse nightmare in a 2019 episode of ‘Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast’.
He told the comedian: “I find it quite easy to forgive and forget. It’s like, you know, going back to my abduction, it’s like you can let that eat away at you but then well you know it’s paedophilia and it’s like part of life really.
“It’s unfortunate it happened to me but you can’t just let it destroy your life, it’s not good.”
Terry also told how the only way to deal with his experience was to write about it in ‘Well Fancy That’, despite finding it “very difficult”.
Terry also said in The Spectator in 2019: “I was abducted, taken to France and sexually abused for four days.
And then punched in the face and left on the roadside.”
The experience left the ‘Ghost Town’ singer fighting depression for life, leading him to drop out of education aged 14 and develop a Valium addiction after being prescribed the tranquilizer by a doctor, before he later became an alcoholic after he started self-medicating with gin.
In 2019 he said about getting hooked on Valium: “I didn’t go to school, I didn’t do anything. I just sat on my bed rocking for eight months.”
Terry tried suicide in 2004 and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, before telling in 2019 how he had been prescribed medication to help him cope with his trauma and addictions.
