THAT FIRST ALBUM
I recorded Dub Ranting with a small label called Radical Wallpaper, run by Red Saunders. As well as being a founding member of Rock Against Racism, he was also a well-known left-wing operator, photographer, dedicated anti-racist and someone who could get things done. He stood out at gigs; he would come on stage in a bright boiler suit and introduce the acts, but again it wasn’t just about introducing the bands; it was also about reminding people of the cause.
He wanted to record some of us ranting poets, so he signed Swells, Attila the Stockbroker and me. I can’t actually remember signing anything – we just trusted each other. Dub Ranting was mainly poems, with only one track that was a poem with percussion accompaniment. It was recorded by the well-known, soon-to-be-legendary south London reggae producer Mad Professor. The recording didn’t really capture the way the poems were performed at gigs, but it still worked.
Around this time I met a guy called Spartacus R. He’d had minor fame as the bass player in the Afro-funk band Osibisa, and was once a friend of Eddy Grant’s, but he didn’t really make it. He tried going solo, but that didn’t work out either, and by all accounts he became a little bitter. He started doing a one-man-band thing, with bells around his ankles and his guitar in his hands. We started hanging out and doing a few gigs together, and soon he became my informal manager. One day we went into a small studio and recorded a musical version of ‘Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death’ – the poem that’d had the crowd joining in at the Anti Nazi League gigs.
It was just a little version for ourselves but it ended up on a tape for the massively influential music paper the NME (New Musical Express), which was putting out compilation cassettes of indie recording artists. The cassette was called Racket Packet and it went out in ’83. John Peel heard it and asked me to go into the BBC studio and record a session for him. So we did. We were given a date for the broadcast of the poem, then on the night we waited and waited but it wasn’t played. When I contacted John Peel he told me it wasn’t his fault and I should talk to his producer, John Walters. When I got John Walters on the phone he told me that it wasn’t played because I’d said the word ‘fucking’ in the middle of the poem. I argued with both John Peel and John Walters, saying it was always in the poem and nothing had changed since they’d first heard it, so it was crazy for them to now say they couldn’t broadcast it. It didn’t matter what I said, they weren’t going to play it, and they never did. That tape must still be hidden in a BBC vault somewhere.
Despite our initial disagreement, John Peel and I became good friends. He thought what I did was in a world of its own, and would always advertise (or plug) my performances before they happened, and after the gigs he would always ask me how I’d got on. One night, as I was driving to a gig in Harlow organised by Attila the Stockbroker, I was listening to John on the radio doing his gig guide. He mentioned my gig and said he hoped that I would get on all right there and get home safely. He sounded really concerned, which made me worry. I began to wonder what kind of a place Harlow was.
It turned out to be a great gig, with one of those moments on stage I would never forget. Attila introduced me and, as I arrived on stage to a roar from the crowd, they were right with me and I was ready to give it to them. The first poem I was going to perform was ‘African Swing’, so I said to the crowd, ‘I’d like to dedicate this first poem to the all the Africans in the audience.’ Suddenly the place fell silent, everyone looked around to see if there was an African in the house, but not one could be seen. Attila looked at me, smiled, and the audience burst into spontaneous laughter. I later reported to John Peel that it all went well, but it was nice to know he was concerned about me.
I was soon approached by record labels asking me to record a whole album, or LP, as they were called back then. The biggest offer came from EMI. One of their A&R people came to see me. He offered me a lot of money but he wasn’t sure how to deal with me; he said they wanted to give me studio machinery, like drum machines, and I was to go away and work on some tracks, which would be recorded later, but he didn’t seem to know what my poetry was about. I had the feeling that someone had sat at a desk, read about me and sent this man out to offer me a deal.
There were other offers, but one label stood out above the others. This was Upright Records. They were probably the smallest label that had approached me, but I immediately took to the owner – a bearded family man called Bill Gilliam. He ran two labels, Upright Records and Workers’ Playtime, which had names contracted to it like Dead on Arrival (aka DOA), Jello Biafra and the reggae duo Laurel and Hardy. Bill offered me a deal and, to everyone’s surprise, I chose him over the others. I liked the intimacy of the label, and I liked the other bands on it, plus Bill had been watching me as I’d developed and we had a similar political outlook. Although he was offering the smallest financial deal, he seemed to be the most sympathetic to my ideas and what I was doing.
When it came to recording the album, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to use two producers so we could work as a team. I had never heard of anyone doing this before. If an album was credited with two producers, one of them would be a band member, but I had this idea that I would bring people together on the project to move away from the common reggae sound that was around at the time.
I approached Spartacus R and asked him to work with me on the album with another producer, and he said, ‘Absolutely not.’ He said he wanted to do it on his own or he would walk away. I tried to convince him to stay on board but he refused to work with anyone else, so I told him to walk away. He then told me that if he wasn’t working on the album, then I couldn’t use the track ‘Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death’, at which point I laughed, but so did he, telling me that the track belonged to him.
I did some research and found that he was partly right. This was a lesson I learned the hard way, and I tell young people about it as often as I can. How it happened was that when John Peel asked me to do the session for him, Spartacus R was producing the track and was therefore also taking care of the paperwork. This was at a time when, for the first time in my life, I was making a lot of money. I was in a hotel room, living it large with my big entourage, a couple of brothers to back me up, and a few girls to massage my aches and my ego. Spartacus R came into the room and said I had to sign some paperwork for the John Peel session. I was in front of my crew; I didn’t want them to see that I couldn’t read or understand the contract, so I made it look like I knew what I was doing and signed it. I didn’t know then that I was signing away some of the rights to my own creation.
So my message to young artists is that if you feel you don’t need to be able to read to rap or bang out a tune, the bottom line is you should at least be able to read your contract. When I recorded the track, for legal reasons I had to credit Spartacus R with some of the writing, which is odd. I remember once challenging him by saying, ‘If you have any part in writing that track, then perform it for me, just a bit of it.’ And he couldn’t. That track, in fact that album, keeps selling, but every time I get a royalty statement next to ‘Dis Policeman . . .’, I see his name, and it doesn’t feel good.
The album I recorded with Upright Records, my first full album, was called Rasta. I ended up producing it myself because I didn’t want to repeat the experience I’d had with Spartacus R. What I did find out was that even if Spartacus R wanted to work with me, nobody wanted to work with him, such was his reputation in musical circles for being difficult. All the tracks on the album were ones I had been playing for a long time. I would write the words and then, with a basic idea for the bassline, I would jam with a few friends – people I’d got to know since moving to London, who shared my view of the world.
Most of these jam sessions happened at the flat of a friend called Jerome. The block of council flats where he lived is no longer there, but I remember the place so well: number 111, on floor 11, Drinkwater Tower, at the top of Leytonstone High Road, east London. An informal gathering of musicians would hang out there, and we would play a few tunes, philosophise for an hour or so, play some more tunes, and then philosophise some more. It should never have worked, really, because me and Jerome were both bass players, but this was all about love. He played some, I played some and, as long as Jah was happy, we were happy. As it turned out, Jerome kept playing the bass and I didn’t, but he was always a much better player than me.
I wanted my jamming regulars to contribute to the album. Angela Parkinson was a long-time girlfriend, a good organiser (well, she organised me) and a reasonably good singer. Patsy was Angela’s friend, and an even better singer. Together they were known as the Sisters of Rant. Steve Parkinson was Angela’s brother, and a great drummer, and Tony Ash (aka Tony ‘Ganja’ Ash) had been my long-time collaborator. I couldn’t play rhythm guitar, but I could hear what I wanted in my head and then mimic the sound. Tony was always able to recreate that exactly, but in the studio something very strange happened.
I called Jerome in – it seemed the obvious thing to do, as he knew my tunes inside out, and he knew most of the other musicians I was using. He put on the headphones, began to play . . . and couldn’t. He tried and tried, then he tried again, but he couldn’t feel the vibe. I could feel his frustration, and I’m sure he could feel mine. He was downhearted and shocked. We could only put it down to the studio environment; it was the first time he had been in one. Just like singing in the bath is different from singing in front of a microphone, jamming with your friends, and even playing live, is very different from playing in a studio. You are in a room, alone, with headphones on. It doesn’t feel natural.
After two days, I had to say, ‘Sorry, man, I really want you on the album, but every hour is costing me money and, let’s face it, it’s not happening.’ He agreed and bowed out graciously and, because I knew the basslines to every track, I took over and played on the whole album. Bass players tell me they look up to that performance of mine, but I’ve never played on any of my recordings since, and I never intend to; I much prefer to pay for a real bass player’s imagination.
The Rasta album was one of the few examples of recorded dub poetry in existence. There weren’t many of us who had gone into the studio. Linton Kwesi Johnson – the best-known dub poet, and some would say the father of our movement – had recorded, so had Mutabaruka and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, but that was about it. Dub music was all about taking reggae, breaking it down to its minimal elements and adding sound effects – what clubbers went on to call a remix. Then the dub poet would speak on top of the music. Dub poetry combined words and music, but if there was no music the dub poet simply used her or his own sense of rhythm to make the verses ebb and flow.
To me, music and the spoken word are indivisible. With the album, I took the concept a little further. The foundations were reggae but I also used a sitar player and an oboist, alongside a mandolin player and African drummers. Many years later, one music journalist said it was the first ‘world music’ album, not because it came from somewhere exotic but because the instruments and musicians came from all over the world. But then again, who’s ever listened to music journalists?