COOL DOWN, RASTA
In February 1993 my father died in Barbados. I didn’t attend the funeral but relatives took care of things and a couple of my sisters went over. I wouldn’t say I’d made my peace with him exactly by the time he died, but I was glad he spent his final years enjoying himself. Apparently he was the first person on Barbados to have a satellite dish. As a final gesture of respect, and because he’d loved his old job so much, he was buried in his GPO uniform. Apparently, in the days leading up to his death, he would sit and look at a photograph of me and Mum. I think there was something deep there, but those men of that generation really didn’t know what to do with their feelings.
Back in Birmingham, love was blossoming in Mum’s life. I first heard about it when she called to tell me she had ‘found Mr Right’. He was in fact known as Brother Robin Wright, and she’d met him through her church. Brother Wright had been very dutiful and, after admiring my mum from afar, he’d gone to their pastor to talk about his feelings for her. Their church didn’t allow for relationships outside of marriage, so once he had the pastor’s blessing he proposed and Mum accepted. After a bit of playing with his name I told her I had to meet him; I felt like someone had started dating my little sister and I had to check him out.
I made the trip to Birmingham and I immediately got on with Brother Wright. He was a retired reggae DJ but he still had his sound system with its massive speakers, and played heavy bass music, except instead of playing rude boy reggae he was now playing Christian reggae. The other thing was, like me, he was a lover of old Triumph cars. I’d been through a series of Triumphs by now – there was that GT6, of course, that the police had impounded back in 1977, but I’d also had a TR2, a TR4 and a TR6. I’d always loved the TR models, but Brother Wright had two classic Triumph 2.5 PIs, with two spare engines. He was also very interested in world affairs and loved listening to Radio 4, so we had a lot to talk about.
On 1 July 1993 they were married, and me and all my brothers and sisters attended the wedding. Brother Wright had his own kids, who would visit from time to time, but he didn’t talk about them very often. Everyone got on with Brother Wright, and we also got on well with all of his kids, but it felt very much like he was ‘ours’; he treated us like his kids, although we were all fully grown.
When I was in Britain all I did was work, and when I had time off I did more work, and when I travelled to get away from work I always ended up doing yet more work. I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t because I was ambitious, and I certainly wasn’t seeking fame – I hated being called a celebrity – I just wanted as many people as possible to hear what I had to say about the world. If I was asked to appear at a political event or something I was passionate about, I couldn’t say no.
My political campaigning was as important to me as my creative life, and in the mid-1990s it probably took over from my creative life. But it was unsustainable, and things came to a head when I came off stage one night during a tour in the USA, having just performed, and collapsed in the wings. Fortunately the audience didn’t see me. When the hotel doctor came, he asked to see my itinerary. I was absurdly busy, with something like forty-six gigs in as many days.
The doctor told me to rest, so I did, and the next day I felt fine. I went back on stage the next night but the same thing happened – I collapsed as soon as I walked off. The doctor came out again and this time he shouted at me, reminding me that he’d told me to take a rest the night before.
‘I did take a rest,’ I said. ‘I slept all night.’
He said that wasn’t good enough. He meant a rest from performing. He told me I was suffering from exhaustion and I had to take a proper break from all the travelling and touring. I had burned myself out.
I had heard about artists being burned out, but now I was experiencing it for real, and it wasn’t good. It was as if the electrical circuits in my body were shutting down, and fuses were blowing.
The doctor said I had to take a complete break. He didn’t mean a few days or a few weeks; he said I should have at least six months off from touring solo and playing live with my band, and if I wanted to be active I should take up a hobby. But I had made commitments I didn’t want to break, so I struggled on with the rest of the tour then, when I returned to England, I decided to make some big changes.
I was going to take it easy. I decided I’d take up a hobby to distract myself from work, because I’d stopped doing anything other than writing and touring. I bought a little sports car – a Triumph, of course. I got me a TR7. I’d originally got it for Amina, but she didn’t like it, so I began working on it. That particular car wasn’t great, but it had rekindled my interest in working on motors, so I got rid of that one and, with the help of some friends, started to rebuild another old one from the bottom up. When we’d done the job, I drove it for a while and then completely rebuilt it again, this time on my own.
I also started collecting banknotes – a strange hobby, but it happened by accident. I was on a TV programme and when I was asked what I did in my spare time, I said I collected money. I don’t know why I said it, I think it was just to get a laugh, but then people started sending me banknotes from all over the world.
This might strike you as a low-key or even boring hobby, but banknotes can tell a lot as to what a country cares about, or what the rulers of that country care about. And there are some very interesting stories behind the designs of notes: some are about revolution, some about work and industry, and some are designed by the greatest artists of their day. I enjoyed looking at the detailed artwork and also getting hold of rare ones. I liked it when people laughed at my hobby, then I would pass them an album of notes and that would be it – they would be engrossed for the next two hours.
So this, and the rebuilding of old cars, took me far away from the world that had consumed me for the previous couple of decades. I’d switched my focus from anything else I was doing or had done and I started to feel better for it. A change is as good as a rest, after all. On top of all this, I began to take my martial arts more seriously and made sure I was super-fit. But it wasn’t only about being physically fit; I started to really get into the mental and spiritual side of it. I went from concentrating on the external to the internal, and I started to meditate, and spent time forgetting time.
We were still living in a housing co-operative place, and I was still paying £5 a week rent, but a rumour had started that the housing co-op was going to fold. I didn’t like the idea of renting commercially, and had always hated the concept of being tied to a mortgage, but we had to do something. Not far from where we were living, in Lonsdale Avenue, East Ham, a house was for sale, but it had no ‘for sale’ sign up and I’d heard the estate agent was finding it hard to sell. So I formed a plan. I found the owner of the house and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. It was cash, it was quick, and it was done. It was on Roman Road, East Ham, and it didn’t take long for Amina and me to make it our first real home together.