Well, my sister got tickets and whomever she was going with dropped out. So I thought, well, why not? I didn’t get to see them back in 1978–81.

You will, of course, point to the obvious reason ‘why not’: keyboardist Jerry Dammers is not a part of the reunion line-up, and acrimoniously so.

An early review of this tour concluded that no one really minded who had been playing keyboards. This is clearly and entirely missing the point: here is a case where it really does matter. Jerry Dammers was the founder of the band, it was his sound, he wrote most of the songs, he created the record label, he provided the band’s iconic look – whether because of his signature dentistry or because he created all of the iconic black and white chequered artwork. Certainly, and most importantly, his political outlook provided the foundations for the music.

The Specials were a deeply important band – more political and vital than scene-mates Madness (though less accomplished and adaptable). They lashed together a punk singer, a rasta-ish MC-type, a reggae guitarist, a roackabilly guitarist, a lounge keyboardist, and more besides. Alluringly, they were here and then they were gone, a sparkling, spitting match that flared up in the oxygen of the time, lit the cultural wick and then burned out, leaving an enduring flame behind to light up the ensuing years.

So probably the thing to wonder about is this: why would they reunite? Aside from conjuring teary-eyed nostalgia from a lot of overweight skinheads, what could they actually generate afresh on the night? Well.

What they created for me was the first crowd I think I have ever been in where the mix of black and white faces was significant. No ethnic group owns The Specials. The whole crowd enjoys the same music for the same reason, and that is that The Specials weren’t just white kids performing black music, like so many R&B or rap artists. They were black and white kids performing a unified music. No one dominated or imitated anyone, it was a strength in unity: a new sound (1978).

The Two-Tone name and design is no mistake: it’s not grey, “it’s black and white (don’t try to hide it)”, to quote Madness’s own pre-lucrative-phoenix-from-the-ashes swansong.

So that was new to me: a realisation that something so positive and realistic could have existed at such a time of flux in the UK.

The Leeds gig I went to made headlines because fans started throwing coins at lead singer Terry Hall, after he crowed about Manchester United’s European Champions’ League final spot. This was the cause of another realisation to me. Here was a man, faced with thousands of people, and he was prepared to face them down. “One more coin,” he said, “and I’m leaving this stage – I’m not joking” – instantly followed by “and I’ll be right behind him” from Lynval Golding. Another show of strength and unity in front of a 21st century crowd more used to abusing the star turn. It felt good to hear this – and it worked.

Of course, these things are not quite new creations. Well, they are new to the kids who didn’t know the Specials the first time around — the Leeds teenagers who were dressed up in the kind of immaculate two-tone retro clobber that never existed at the time. To the rest of us they are reminders. Reminders of the grey, dilute message we have grown accustomed to, and reminders of the punch packed by someone on stage with a microphone, an attitude and something worth saying.

It would have been all the more powerful if the unity of The Specials had been total, and they’d been able to practise what they preach. But, hey, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, do you? Who knows what intraband politics have gusted through the last 30 years?

The reunion conundrum is: these people shaped a generation, and their creativity was a real force for good. Am I prepared to permit them to earn a pension off the back of that?

Actually, yes.

j

I was struck by John Squire’s medium-hopping attempt to quell the latest rash of stories. The man who has for years tried to distance himself from his musical past and reinvent himself as an artist-not-musician finally faced the question head-on by taking a piece of his art, and scrawling on it a statement apparently about the future (or the lack of it) of the Roses.

I was impressed by the imaginative way that this targeted the central problem. The public (prompted by the press), or the press (patronised by the public) already has its story: the resurrection of The Stone Roses. It’s a done deal. It just hasn’t happened yet. And anything John Squire says is viewed through the prism of “the reunion”. It’s “John Squire’s latest word on the reunion”.

What Squire has achieved is to take this foregone conclusion, over which he has no control, and turn it into a conclusion over which he has some control: a good, steady focus on his art. Simple and effective.

The rub: he hasn’t done himself any favours with the wording of his response. “I have no desire whatsoever,” he wrote, “to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group The Stone Roses.”

Now, I genuinely hope and believe that he means: “I am never, ever going to take part in a reunion of The Stone Roses”.

But let me interpret what Squire has said: “I would willingly reform The Stone Roses, and bring them back better than ever, and enhance their legacy further”. Or: “don’t worry, I won’t desecrate the grave”. Or: “I don’t want to do this, but that doesn’t mean I won’t”.

Whether it’s a pernickety point or not, it just doesn’t dampen any suspicions that he might be leaving the way open for some future lucrative rift-healing. The speculation won’t stop coming round.

And it leads me to wonder what — if he really wanted to cease the whispers forever ‘n’ ever — John Squire would have to do. Words won’t do the trick. Too many artists — musicians in particular — have gone back on their ‘never again’ for it ever to be an effective response. The Specials, Pixies, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, just in the last couple of years.

So what else would Squire have to do? Burn his guitars? He could always get more guitars, at the expense of some starry-eyed record company.

No no. The only way I can think of him doing it is to take a meat cleaver to his right hand: “say goodbye to the opposable thumb that clutches the plectrum that plays the opening notes of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’” [/slice/].

It’d be very Van Gogh.

I am not, I feel it polite to clarify, suggesting that John Squire should actually do this. But it is the only gesture I can think of that would convince me that he is fully in control of the non-resurrection of The Stone Roses. It would be a commitment to say, what’s done is done, and I will never have a change of heart. Or if I have a change of heart, I’m prepared to not be able to act on it.

Only now of course do I remember the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard, and realise that even a thumbectomy wouldn’t guarantee a result.

Ah well, back to the drawing board. Maybe they should reform. Maybe that’s the only thing that would quell the desire for a reformation.