Marco Pirroni’s moment in the sun was big, lucrative but incredibly short. It was under a year from Adam & the Ants’ first hit to their last and immediate break-up. Adam, he remembers, was the perfect writing partner – driven, intensely competitive and with “a pathological fear of only being Number 2”. He’s got no regrets, hasn’t had to do day’s work since, and looks back here at …

… being the first band writing songs for the video age

… “you can’t confuse fans buying records with love, it’s nothing personal”

… Telstar, Fireball XL5, Roxy Music and the “moon-stomping hits of Slade”

… playing covers of songs they didn’t like with Siouxsie at the 100 Club: “punk rock and my part in its downfall”

… Adam’s “Shakespearian tirade” at the legal meeting with Rolf Harris when he sued over Prince Charming and War Canoe

… Malcolm McLaren’s jukebox: the Flamin’ Groovies, Alice Cooper, the Troggs, “songs that weren’t very good”

… “we stopped being a punk band or a pop band or a glam band – or any sort of band at all”

… never tour America when you don’t have a bank account.

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The Specials have officially disbanded, bowing out with a swansong album recorded in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 2019. Horace Panter looks back at the first shows they played - when Jim Callaghan was still PM! - and the rigours of mastering ska when some of the group thought it was “old man’s music”. Along with …

… the dignified way for any band to retire

… the 2-Tone tour of 1979 – “like a school trip with no teachers”

… bonding with Terry Hall over comedian Ken Platt: ‘I won't take me coat off, I'm not stoppin'!"

… the day Jerry Dammers came to rehearsal with Prince Buster’s Greatest Hits – “for all your rebellious needs!”

… the poignancy of playing in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral when you start the set with an air-raid siren

… seeing the Faces and Mott the Hoople, “once in my school uniform”

… the sensory overload - “The space! The volume!” - of Led Zeppelin at the Albert Hall when you’re 15 and from Kettering

… “strange to think few people under 60 have ever seen the Specials”

… the bassist he pretended to be when posing in the mirror

... the Bilzen Festival in 1979 “when the chain-link fence was broken down and I came offstage like I was walking on air”

… and creating the 2-Tone look with ex-Mod tonic suits

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As this week’s news hurtles over the net, we sort the aces from the double-faults. The final score …

… Madonna, Shakira, Chris Martin and World Cup 11-minute half-time overload!

… how many Stones albums were “the best since Exile On Main Street”?

… Kevin Rowland’s heart-breaking songs about Life’s Third Act

… 10 good reasons to miss the Nineties

… Country & Western is about travelling through the vast geography of America. “Go 200 miles in Britain and you fall off the edge”

… Florian Pilkington-Miksa, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond: rock’s real (or invented?) double-barrelled names

… how “travel and never arrive” is the new entertainment experience

… plus Sly Stone’s Babies Makin’ Babies, the comforting cry of “Gambo’s in the building!” and birthday guest Patrick Butler.

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