The Specials disagreed. Having recently celebrated their first number one record – Too Much Too Young – and as one of a handful of bands alongside The Selecter, Madness, The Beat and The Bodysnatchers, they spearheaded the 2 Tone movement rallying against the incumbent government. 2 Tone was black and white; a multi-racial force of British and Caribbean island musicians singing about social issues, racism, class and gender struggles. Their music spoke of injustices in society and took fight against right-wing extremism.

The Specials introduced themselves with an impromptu round of It’s all a load of bollocks, variously spoken, slurred or shouted in overlapping ad-hoc timings by anyone in close proximity to a microphone. The comic revelry crescendoed with a keyboard riff and an energetic rendition of Pearls’ Café. Adding vocals to the musical melee, special guest Rhoda Dakar (The Bodysnatchers) then collapsed in hysterics as Jerry Dammers pounded at the keyboards with his fists, emitting atonal chords, discordant notes and swirling avant-garde figures over I Can’t Stand It. Impenetrable and deadpan behind a pair of large dark sunglasses and wearing a green paisley shirt, singer Terry Hall insouciantly chewed gum throughout until trapping his foot in a beer crate at the lip of the stage.

• Terry Hall: ‘The Specials have always been about protest
• ‘Injustice is timeless’: The Specials talk enduring politics in music

A year earlier, Coventry’s Specials had bonded with London’s Madness over the selection of ska on the pub jukebox in the Hope & Anchor. But when Jerry Dammers shared his plans to start a record label, Madness’s lead singer was doubtful. “He said it was going to be an English Motown,” says Suggs. “Then he told us he didn’t have anywhere to stay so he came back to my mum’s flat!

“The Specials were like us but turbocharged,” Suggs continues, “they were playing a tuba and we were playing a trumpet: theirs was more deeply resonating, but you could still hear ours from a distance!”

“It changed culture and changed England,” says The Beat’s David Steele. “A lot of people like me came from a little town and it was the first time they’d seen bands like this. It opened their eyes to other things.” Against a backdrop of division and despair, disaffected youth united and asked questions, challenging the status quo. “We weren’t politicians,” says singer Pauline Black. “We couldn’t change things in the way that a policy or law can change society. But we changed attitudes.”

“Before 2 Tone there was black music and there was white music,” says The Selecter’s Compton Amanor, “and never the two shall mix. We didn’t live in a segregated society but there were always those tensions. But for the first time my generation was saying, ‘We’re Black and we’re British and we’re here to stay’.”

Today, Suggs sees a young generation mixing their music “like it’s nothing. But back then it was very delineated: Black people did this and white people did that. 2 Tone had a huge impact on changing that perspective.”

This is an edited extract from Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Record Story (White Rabbit) by Daniel Rachel, out now.You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.