3
Adrian Sherwood
ADRIAN Sherwood's music is probably more responsible than any other for the existence of this book, inasmuch as it gave me several key epiphanies. As a teenager, he was a “gateway drug” both into industrial music, particularly via his work with Tackhead and Mark Stewart, and into the heaviest of real deal reggae like Prince Far-I and Lee Scratch Perry. His use of Jim Morrison's voice and Ravi Shankar's sitar (on Dub Syndicate's ‘Stoned Immaculate’ and ‘Reggae Raga’) opened me up to how reggae versioning and sample/remix culture were intertwined. And as my tastes diversified, fast around the turn of the eighties into the nineties, at every turn, there he'd be: dubbing out Nine Inch Nails, Sinead O’Connor, Depeche Mode, Moroccan acid house records, his snares sharper, his sudden cuts more dramatic and his echoes proliferating more wildly than anyone else… Working backwards through his career took me to The Slits via New Age Steppers, the band he formed with Ari Up, and to The Pop Group via his work with Mark Stewart. As time went on, he stayed connected to all the things I was discovering – Andrew Weatherall, the emergence of Jungle, all the way through to his embrace of dubstep in his partnership with Bristol's scene leader Pinch.
As so often with the interviewees for this project, the adage “never meet your heroes” was proved spectacularly wrong. Brian and I got the train down to Ramsgate to meet Sherwood, and he was the consummate host: picking us up in a slightly battered borrowed car, taking us to the pub to meet some extraordinarily colourful local characters, playing us tracks from the new Coldcut album he was working on (hilariously, through tinny laptop speakers), and taking us to see his home. Or rather, homes: he has two adjacent houses, one containing his studio, both overflowing with memorabilia, including artworks, collages and scrawlings by Lee Scratch Perry on seemingly every wall. There he made cups of tea, waxed lyrical about his kids’ achievements, and reminisced happily. Though his 1980s and 90s were wild to say the least, with the sprawling On-U Sound collective existing in a haze of drugs, he is now sober, not even smoking weed, and sharp as a razor, full of dry jokes, occasional sideswipes at those who'd crossed him over the years, and impressively precise memories.
He also remains excited about music, hungry for new experiences and generous with his willingness to experiment and collaborate: after this interview we stayed in touch, and it led directly to him agreeing to do a live dub mix as I interviewed Magic Magid, the super charismatic Somali born Green Party mayor of Sheffield, when we were all at the city's No Bounds festival in 2018. The theme of the discussion was “Hybrid Britain”, and the idea of having a former bassline raver and hip hop fanatic turned public dignitary with his voice processed by Sherwood, who's been the catalyst for so much cultural hybridity over four decades, felt too perfect. Sherwood agreed to do it purely for the fun of trying out a ridiculous idea, and without rehearsal he turned our discussion into an immersive experience that had a packed room of people mesmerised. It could have been a gimmick, but with just a reverb, a tape echo and a tiny mixing desk, he transformed the room. In one sense it was a bit of fun, but in another it was as bold an illustration of someone still excited by the possibilities their craft affords as are his recent collaborations with dubstepper Pinch or Japanese repetition-rock band Nisennenmondai. Soundsystem culture, it seems, keeps your ears keen and ready for the next new thing.
Can you remember the first time you got hit by heavy bass and thought, “This is for me”?
Very muchly, I can clearly remember everything. I grew up in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, I went to school with West Indian friends, and I got invited to house parties from the age of 12. And everybody had a big amp at the houses. They were mainly Vincentians, from St. Vincent. Quite a few Jamaican, but the predominant was Vincentian. But before I actually heard the big speakers, my friend was Gilbert Barker's sister Jean, he was my best friend, he's sadly dead now, him and a few of us – that little gang of you when you're 12 – we'd go up the house, literally at lunchtime, and Gilbert's parents when they were cooking West Indian food it was like “Wow, this is amazing.” The chicken and the dumplings, even having burgers was amazing. They did food. So these amazing things, really tasty food, seasoned, nice seasoning, and his sister had a little record player that opened up, sat there in her bedroom while she did her hair, playing a pile of sevens. Like 80% reggae, 10% calypso, 10% soul and bit of whatever else. This is like 1970-71, we'd sit there listening to the records had come out in the last probably six years. From 1964. All different stuff, from ‘Cherry Oh Baby’ 14 to whatever else.
Anyway, they had a house party and I got invited, and they brought in a system. Like, “Bloody hell this is great!” Where your parents would be like, “Turn that down!” Really good old bass end and everyone dancing, a proper family thing, lots of friends and little kids right through to the old folk, and a big lady coming and dancing with me to amuse herself. Like, “Help me, she's smothering me!” It was a big woman, like 40-50, “Can I have a dance?” “Ooh help me!” And everyone laughing at you. This was Tower Street in High Wycombe, and the neighbours were a white family and a couple of them were in there so it was mixed. It was my first experience of a house party. They had one every two or three months, but across town a family called the Clarkes had an open door every Saturday. This was when I was about 14. I'd tell my mum I was staying at my friend Trevor's – which I was – but we'd go to the house party till four in the morning, or five, then go back to Trevor's and sleep it off on the Sunday.
So in this period I started getting used to the idea that people would put a bigger system than I'd ever seen in a house to have a party, because they didn't have a club. But in the town, there was a club run by a chap called Joe Farquharson, the Newlands Club at the Twilight venue. Now my dad had died when I was young, and Joe became like a father to me. He really is to this day, he basically got me in the record business and everything. His friend was Johnny Nash, he did their first ever show, 2,000 people queueing to get into a club that legally only held 600 and fit 900. At the time it was more like a soul club. Then there was two places in town where they had late-night parties in houses. One was in the back, in sheds, but basically like a club. And the predominant thing was the fact that the bass was constant all night. If you went to another club they might be playing a couple of reggae tunes that had a bass on it, and then amazing soul records of the time – but this was just reggae.
We also used to get the bus to the California Ballrooms and the Devil's Den in Dunstable, and stay with friends in Luton, another Jamaican family, the Redisons. Listen to John Holt and stuff like that on the Sunday morning. This was still when I was 14-15. No mobile phones in those days, my mum didn't even know where I was for the whole weekend. But the first ones were those house parties. and hearing music much louder than your parents would ever dream of playing in the house. My stepfather loved music, he was a big music fan although he didn't like reggae. which made me like it even more. And I soon got to know all the older West Indian people and because I've always been quite a polite person, sociable, I got on with everybody. As I got a bit older, we all go the pub at the age of 13. Called the Black Boy, with a picture of a black child. Later they changed it to a chimney sweep. We'd go to the door at lunchtime, take our school jackets off, go in, have a pie and a half a pint three days a week and play darts – while teachers were in the other bar – and then go back to school.
That's the most 70s thing I've ever heard
I'm not kidding. I was leering at the girls and drawing mouses with tits on the bar board – it was so wrong it was unbelievable. And just giving you an image of what it was like in the 70s here, there was another pub in the town, The Red Cross Knight, and basically the right side of it was totally West Indian. West Indians would drink on the other side, but it became a reggae pub, you'd get your weed there, and they had a soundsystem that was always playing. So from the age of 14, I was going to The Red Cross Knight as well. And I'd already started DJing at school by then, and I got more and more linked to Joe Farquharson and the Newlands Club. Which turned into a reggae club. The reggae fans would smoke two spliffs, drink two special brews and that was it. Whereas the soul crowd would drink eight pints, have a load of chasers and spent a fucking fortune on the bar. So the one hot summer closed the Newlands Club eventually. But it went up to another gear with the bass.
The reason was, if you went where they play funk and other things, it would be [bang bang click click noises] beautiful great tracks and everyone would be dancing and rocking and then they'd play a slow record for people to hive up to and slow dance to – and then it went back to the reggae. But the reggae went constantly for the whole evening. The predominant driving force was the doov-doov-doov [bass noises] all night and you soon get mesmerised by it. At age 13, I was still into T. Rex and Mungo Jerry, whatever bloody pop tunes were coming, and I had friends who liked Pink Floyd. I said “The fuck? That's rubbish!” It didn't touch me at all. I was forced to sit there listening to Love and Pink Floyd and whatever else people were listening to, Wishbone Ash or Yes or some other awful fucking stuff. OK it's not awful, but it didn't do anything for me. I was like “Turn up the bass and give me a rhythm.” I was getting more and more obsessed with the b-lines. Then the Newlands Club started putting on soundsystems, and I was by now DJing in the afternoons on a Saturday and then a Sunday afternoon.
Playing reggae?
No no no, playing pop music, and maybe four reggae tunes. But before I was allowed in, me and Gilbert and other friends, we would stand outside the back door and all you could hear by now was “doov-doov-doov”. This is when Coxsone came – I could rattle off all the other soundsystems playing in there, but Coxsone was an important one. One of the first ever soundsystems in England. He was Joe's friend, they went to school in South London. The first ever dance Joe promoted was at my father's hotel, the Leigham Court hotel in Streatham, he and his partner owned it. But my dad died and lost everything when I was five. Joe and Coxsone were the only two black lads in their school in the late 50s, early 60s. He then got the Newlands Club. To be honest with you this transformation into a reggae club was the end of it, but it lasted a couple of years, and during that time we would literally stand outside hearing this like [bass noises] and the door was just rattling.
When my mum died last year, I found a book of my bookings at Newlands from this period to a couple years later, 1971-72-73, from when I was 13-14, with the fees and who I played with and what date. We did a couple of weddings. I played in the Newlands Club with Johnny Walker, DLT, Noel Edmonds, they all played there as DJs on Radio 1 roadshows playing pop. But then it went up a different gear because I started playing with Steve Barnard, who was the first DJ on the radio playing reggae. He had a show called Reggae Time on BBC Radio London. He was [slick presenter voice] “Steve Barnard, 94.3 VHF 206 medium wave, and this is Reggae Time.” We all tuned in on a Sunday – he had half an hour and then they gave him an hour and it was massive: “Reggae Time, it's Reggae Time.” Steve played at the club. Dave Rodigan I'm sure did his first ever show there a few years after.
I was in a little cupboard with our little PA. We had our own little system, it was quiet and everything. And the next person I was asked to open for was Emperor Rosko. He was doing like 50% soul and 50% reggae, but he turned up with an orange speaker system that stretched from this wall here to [gestures across his living room] where that picture of Bim Sherman is on the wall. Floor to ceiling of orange speakers. So I finished, me and Steve, in a little cupboard with our poxy PA. He was, “Thank you Mr DJ,” like Wolfman Jack. He put the system on and it was the heaviest thing I'd heard in my life at the time. Rosko was a don, a very big promoter of soul and a very big contributor to the development of reggae. I know people go John Peel, bless his heart, he championed it a lot – but this man took the most fuck-off system out on the road and he was turning up the bass and playing it how it should have been played, mixing it with soul. I sampled a lot of Rosko because I had a lot of tapes of his so I got to know him. I was only like 14, but the impact of watching Rosko, the first person to me playing outside the soundsystem field. Whether he realised it, had a big competitive rig of his own, he was going out doing his roadshows and it was like “Yes, yes!”
Then when Coxsone arrived at the Newlands Club it was wall-to-wall, like all round the room. I think he had the air raid siren from Biggin Hill. He would flick the switch and everything went into skrrrr-skrrr-skrrr-doov-doov-doov [deranged filtered high hat and bass noises]. This all coincided with the whole Rastafarian thing coming along, Garveyism and everything. Bit by bit I personally got drawn more and more into the space in the sound, and then I got my first opportunity by meeting a load of musicians when I was 18-19, my first ever session. All I did was hum basslines to a local bass player and mixed him up with a couple of Far-I's musicians, and got Dennis Bovell to mix my first record. I'm not a musician, I was a chancer really.
Clary [aka Harry] Palmer was one of the founders of Pama Records, he lived in High Wycombe in his massive bungalow on the top of the hill out there. I knew all the family from being 13, Carl Palmer, Jeffrey's got to be 84-85 now, he still runs The Apollo in Willesden, the longest-running black club in Britain. Joe had worked for Pama Records in the 60s, they had a club 67 and Joe worked in promo helping with the distribution, looking after Max Romeo when they had ‘Wet Dream’. After that is when he went to Wycombe and got the Newlands. But he'd worked in promotion and was very close with the Palmers.
Then he got a job working with Pama and when I was 15, I got a job there in my summer holidays. I was going up to Wigan Casino and all over the north on the train, honestly on my own, doing promo for the reissue of ‘Wet Dream’.15 I stayed at my uncle's in Leyland and I went to met Russell Winstanley and all these people, giving them all copies of certain tunes and doing a promotion run for Carl. Then when I was at college, Joe said “Look, let's start a distribution company because there's lots of these labels, it's not worth their while going up north.” So we started JA – which was “Joe-Adrian” not “Jamaica” – distribution, taking Trojan and Virgin. The percentage was so low, it wasn't like 30% distributors make now, it was like 7-8%.
But within a year or two we'd started Carib Gems records with Chips as well, we had about four vans on the road and that went on for a couple of years before that went bust. So when I was 19 I was in debt for about three-four grand – and you could buy a house for 15 grand. So I started off in a stressed old thing.
Welcome to the music industry!
Everyone thinks it's fucking easy, it isn't. I've lost things a few times. The bottom line is you love it – and the bass, you become addicted to bass. By the time we're talking about, it's got a level of super-bass. A lot of the records made now wouldn't sound great if you played them on the systems we had in those days. A lot of the great records made in those days still sound competitive basswise to dubstep or anything else with super sub on, they still sound amazing on big rigs. I think the legacy of those Jamaican producers is beyond anything, it's insane.
It's interesting because the history as it's written suggests that indie labels started with punk, but there were British independent reggae labels well before
If you go back to the 60s, the people I met first was R&B records in Stamford Hill. That was a Jewish couple, Rita and Benny, who had been doing it for years. They were literally putting out a Prince Buster record and a Lonnie Donegan record on the label. The catalogue was very odd, but their customers were Irish and West Indians who wanted music, so they started licensing stuff. A very funny couple – I think they shot off to Israel or something like that. To be honest with you, the whole of the industry was mainly run by Jewish people in that area. Blue Beat was Emil Shalit, Klik was Larry Sevitt, Trojan got taken over by Marcel Rodd. They weren't necessarily into the music to start with, it was a business – and a lot of people held on really dodgy contracts. I remember Ken Boothe was desperate to get away from Trojan, but he was held on some archaic contract. Marcel actually asked me to come and run Trojan when I was 19, when Hit Run started going wrong – my second venture, my third if you count the distribution – and I said, “I'll do it if you'll free Ken Boothe from the contract and let me go to Jamaica and kind of rejig everything.” He wasn't having it because obviously Ken Boothe had been a number one artist for them. Boothe went years and years refusing to record because he felt really badly done by the contract he'd signed, prior to Marcel Rodd getting control of the label.
The only really black label was Pama, and they went bust because they got tied up in the property business, the crash of 1971 brought them down. That's why I got involved in the second phase three-four years later, when they tried to rebuild the label. But you had lots of independent labels – there was Ethnic Fight in Brixton, DIP in South London, Fay Music – on and on and on, all these people manufacturing just a couple of titles and maybe selling 100,000. But not even getting in the lower reach of the charts because they're all controlled by chart return shops. So all these fucking business people were doing payola to get results, then paying off a Jimmy Savile type fucking person to do whatever. Sorry I'm being horrible, but [shakes head] there was no fucking chance. You'd go to places like Baba or Sound 7 – who is actually still there on Ridley Road, amazingly – or Birmingham Bull Ring, Bailey's Records, they would take 500 of one title and sell it between Friday and Saturday.
Where did your own recording sessions start?
Well like I say, I started a distribution company with Joe. And the first release on Carib Gems was ‘Girl You Shouldn't Stay Out Late’ by Bobby Thomas,16 one of Sly Dunbar's first ever productions, pre Sly & Robbie. And I was only there a couple of years before it all went pear-shaped with JA and I started Hit Run. I'd already met Far-I and we'd become mates, and I used a couple of his musicians and he said, “Look, here's some rhythms” [i.e. backing-track tapes]. He'd already signed a deal with Virgin so he gave me a load of dubs, a couple of good ones, but to be honest they were a bit boring. So I took them all in the studio and overdubbed them all, putting funny like [mimics echo] “wuk-wuk-wuk” noises and guitars and synths and backwards bits and everything on it, and we did Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1. And at the same time I went in the studio and recorded a Calypso bass player from High Wycombe who I hummed all the basslines to, and I met Bigga Morrison, Clifton Morrison and his cousin Crucial Tony, and I got Sucker playing percussion, from High Wycombe again – another lad I knew from The Red Cross Knight, he did stuff with Osibisa – and I got Eric “Fish” Clarke, the drummer who played with Far-I and the Arabs. And I did my first album for £200 and that was Dub From Creation. And Chips introduced me to Dennis [Bovell] and Dennis mixed it for me.
I was 19. And I put all that out, and it sold as well as the other records I was licensing, and it was John Peel, bless his heart, who really got me going, because that was my first record. I was sat with Prince Far-I on Westbourne Grove, I swear to God, and in those days everybody turned on the radio at 10 o’clock on the dot to listen to Peel's show, and he started and said “I'm going to play you now the best dub record to come out of England” and I thought, “Oh what's that?” And he played three tracks off my album, one after another. Makes me feel emotional talking about it. Before that I'd gone into one of the big distributors and played it to them: “Sorry man, can't really do anything to help you!” So I'd manufactured 1,000 myself, me and Pete Stroud had them, and I sent a copy to Peel. I didn't know he was going to play it. I was sat next to Prince Far-I in the cab and I said, “That's my record!” “Bloodclart!” He played three tracks without stopping, the first three tunes of the show. And from that, I gone back in the distributors, and it was “Oh hey man, it's amazing that album.” The cunt didn't fucking remember a few weeks before I needed the help.
Did other reggae musicians listen to Peel because he was playing their stuff?
No. Bear in mind, one of our partners, my mate Ron Watts, again from Wycombe Lane – he died last year I think, he was an ex-boxer and singer in a band called Brewers Droop – but Ron run Tuesday nights at The 100 Club, and the Nag's Head in High Wycombe and Uxbridge where all the students were. So he basically pioneered the whole punk thing, he put on the first Pistols gigs, he could offer every punk band, all the legends, the Tuesday night at the 100 Club. And Thursday night at the 100 Club was reggae night, which another elderly Jewish couple, Ron and Nanda, ran. So the whole ambience was like that. The 100 Club is a very significant place as well for the development of the punky reggae party – basically it emerged in the West End, with the Vortex and the 100 Club. Sham 69 used to do the Vortex – I got a phone call and said, “Oh look, can you get in touch with Jah Woosh to replace Sham 69?” Sham 69 had a horrible crowd, but he went and did the gig and it was OK. It was a very weird turn around.
There was a few National Front in Sham 69's crowd
Yeah but there was a lot of National Front in The Clash's crowd and in Madness's crowd, so it was contradictory. In my experience there were more active anti-racists in the skinhead movement – more likely to put their fists up and fucking defend people – than there were wrong uns.
Did you like punk?
No, not particularly. I thought it was a fucking horrible din, to be honest – I only appreciated things after. I toured with The Clash in January 1980. I did a tour with The Slits in 1979, that's how I got out of the reggae sphere really. But by now I was so engrossed in the reggae stuff and the bass stuff, and I'd learned about space in sound, not cluttering your productions and your mixes. So then I gleaned stuff from other music, because it was all around. You'd get good ideas. I remember going in Rough Trade and Geoff [Travis] playing Link Wray & The Ray Men. I said “What the fuck's that?” It was a record where the sound effects was twice as loud as everything else. And I remember hearing Jesus & Mary Chain, the drums were like this big [spreads arms] and the guitars were like this [screws up face in appreciation]. And obviously I worked with Mark E Smith,17 and he become a friend, and got into dry productions. With him I got fascinated by having really dry and tight then exploding in reverbs and delays then it coming back to being dry and tight. I become a fan of The Fall as I started realising how good his lyrics were. I became fascinated by things like The Cramps as I got on. At school when people say to me, “Pink Floyd's wonderful,” I just didn't get it. But I'm not really a proper musician, I'm into sound. The sound that emanated from the Jamaican recording studios, that warmth and that space was what captured me. Then along came the message of Garveyism and improvement of life for black people, but it also related a lot to white people: “Let's fight the hypocrites and fight this fucking system. Bomb the church and kill the hypocrites!”
Which is more punk than punk
I didn't at all think of punk in those terms. I was completely engrossed in the reggae world. But then I met friends like Pete Holdsworth who was in the London Underground, who was a big Lou Reed fan, and his mate in the band Kip was a big King Tubby fan. Pete liked his reggae, but he was originally more into The Velvet Underground – that's why it was The London Underground.
So when you started meeting serious reggae musicians, was there ever any issue you being this white kid wanting to play reggae?
Well I actually didn't want to be a producer, I was running a label and distribution company, and I just decided for fun to run my first session, me and Pete Stroud, who was my partner in Hit Run. We got these tapes off Far-I, Pete played melodica so we called him Dr. Pablo – a mixture of Doctor Alimantado and Augustus Pablo – and we tightened up the tapes for fun and everyone said, “This is great, this is really trippy and interesting.” We had a Rolf Harris Stylophone going through a reverb plate on one track, played by Clifton Morrison. People loved those first three Cry Tuff Dub albums.
I mixed them and worked with other engineers, I was learning my stuff. Dub From Creation was my first ever record, when I was 19. And I was releasing it myself and I owned it. I thought, “Fuck, this album's cost me a couple hundred to make.” In those days £40 was somebody's wages for a week so it was a month's wage. Made it cheap, I paid musicians for the studio time, did it in a couple of days and I did Starship Africa18 as well, but I didn't release that for two years after because people thought it was a bit weird. Then I got the bug. The first time I ever mixed, I was actually doing a live gig at the 100 Club. I kept saying to the sound man, “Turn this up.” He started going “You do it, not me! Yeah, you do it.” I balanced it and added a little delay and reverb – this was the Prince Far-I show, the first time I ever did it. After four-five gigs I started doing live sound. You wanted the bass to be just filling the room, the foot drum kicking your tummy, the snare knocking your forehead off, and the hi hat dancing between your two ears up in the air. The rhythm guitar – jang jang – to make your eyes water a little bit, and the voice in front of you. So I saw a picture very clearly where you position the instruments in the space. Jamaican music is my favourite music to this day because it's got more space and tone than anything else, it's uncluttered. Whatever I'm working on I always make sure there's separation in the sonic, space in the tune, and equalisation techniques I use completely from all my life in that world.
So does Hit Run go straight into On-U?
I had a very short-lived label called 4D Rhythms, then it was On-U. I never went bankrupt, mind you, I always paid off my debts. It took me about five years to pay off the debts I had from JA and Hit Run.
And by this stage you were mixing with The Slits
Yeah, I was friends with Ari [Up]. I knew lots of people. Mark Stewart became a lifelong friend. Being with those two is where the New Age Steppers thing came about. I learned a lot from Mark, he had a massive influence on me. His anti-production techniques and his maverick ideas. And from looking outside the reggae world. The beauty of music, if you are lucky and you go into the studio with a really good artist, is you're going to learn something. You pick up a little touch or a spark or a little idea, and they go with you. I'm not a musician, so I've been a very self indulgent person making records to make myself happy. I always looked at On-U like our label, and a second interest to other people, they all had their own things. I never tried to sign. I never was interested in trying to make some big fucking Babylon catalogue of people tied down to contracts. Everyone was free to go do what they liked. Which in hindsight was a bit of a shit idea but that's what I did.
So it's the end of the 70s, you've got the punk, post-punk, experimental rock influence, obviously you were well immersed in reggae and you had strong contacts with the British and Jamaican reggae scene – but when did you start being aware of electronic music-making, people with drum machines, people with synthesisers and stuff?
The first time we heard it was Lee Perry used a drum machine, didn't he? I was like, “I'm not sure if I like that!” Well, I actually did quite like that. Most of my stuff had been live played, then as we got into the early 80s, I could hear drum machines everywhere. Being honest with you, I wasn't really a fan, because I liked the feel of four or five people playing together: get them doing, mic-ing up the drum kit, getting the tones sounding right, EQing it, let them tune it properly, then rehearsing and letting them record is by far the best way. You can make a great album in a couple of days, it's all down to performance, performance, performance. When you're programming, you can take days and days disappearing up your own backside. It wasn't until like 1982 that I recorded a drum machine.
So you weren't into Human League and Cabaret Voltaire early on?
Well, I met them all at Rough Trade – Richard's a friend of mine. I did that Code album with them. I started getting fascinated by the drum machine when I met Keith LeBlanc, who could programme one like a scientist and like a musician. Then a lot of people really liked the tunes I did without drum machines. Real playing and whatever.
But that electro thing, and what came from the musicians who became Tackhead, was the other pillar of what you became known for – your edging into industrial sound
I was doing that, but using live stuff: Head Charge and Dub Syndicate and all that. I was making live drums sound like drum machines, processing the sounds with hard frequencies. I was possibly hearing the sounds made by drum machines and mirroring them on our own records, using trigger samples with AMSs,19 and things we'd discovered. But that was working with live players. The first time I recorded a drum machine properly was with Steve Beresford. We did some recordings with the girl group Akabu, and that ended up getting me a trip to America with Tommy Boy. And then when I was in a studio with Tom Silverman in New York I met Keith LeBlanc and Skip and Doug.
This is post-them doing the Sugarhill stuff?
After that, yeah. Keith was in litigation with Sugarhill over Malcolm X, Doug and Skip had had enough really. It was all gone a bit wrong.
So the hip hop world was just beginning to coalesce, and they were already disenchanted and looking for something else to do
Well I think they'd been not been looked after very well. They'd done a year or two living on a bus. This was 1984, we started really working properly full on from 1985-90, that five-year period, to when Doug met Bernard Fowler. Doug went off and did a Mick Jagger tour where he met Bernard, he could have become bass player in the Rolling Stones in fact, but he'd already joined Living Colour. So the end of Tackhead came. It burned itself out in a haze of cocaine and bad drugs and misery. I wasn't using coke for years and years, it's a horrible drug, but that last album we made was awful. And then Bernard went off and joined the Stones full time, Doug had Living Colour, Keith was doing his Interference stuff, so Skip and me teamed up and started doing more productions into the 90s.
Back at the start of the 80s, how did the collective around you come together? Was there ever a clear delineation of who was Dub Syndicate, who was New Age Steppers, who was On-U Sound?
So everything on On-U Sound wasn't a real group to start with. If you look on the early Hit Run record, it's a Dub Syndicate production before Dub Syndicate existed. I didn't have Style Scott drumming. I had Charlie Fox, Eek-A-Roo and some other people drumming. Style came over with Gregory [Isaacs] but he was my good friend from the Far-I days in 1979. So I luckily had one of Jamaica's best-ever drummers play for me as my good friend, I'd hire him and pay him a good fee. Singers and Players was just a name I had at the time – it was one of my worst-selling records but now those records are a big cult thing. New Age Steppers was Ari's name for her and my project, the idea was we were going to mix everybody up. We had Vicky [Aspinall] from the Raincoats, Mark Stewart, members of Creation Rebel and Public Image all on the same record. The second album was more straightforward reggae, then Dub Syndicate. I made Dub Syndicate records every time Stark came to England, I'd do the b-lines or do it with whoever. Chins from Missing Channel, Head Charge again, Bonjo's project was actually Noah House of Dread. By the end I let Style Scott have the name Dub Syndicate so he could tour with it, and we ended up co-producing the albums from Stoned Immaculate for the next five years. Then for the last 20 he was releasing the stuff himself, I just let him have it.
The first four African Head Charge albums were experimental albums with loose lineups, then by the fifth one it had evolved into a band. We made Songs of Praise which is more coherent and more easy to listen to than the first one. The other projects I had was Missing Brazilians, which is a studio problem record that never went any further, or other ones that like Barmy Army, they were just names I had. I was just basically indulging myself, trying to be successful. Mark Stewart and the Maffia, the first was basically Creation Rebel with Mark singing over the top, which I think to this day is a timeless record. So each thing started off as a name: in the case of Head Charge it evolved into Bonjo's project, in the case of Dub Syndicate, Scott started running with it. I don't mind, if they're out gigging and promoting it, it's good for me. I'd have liked to have taken Singers and Players on the road but it never happened.
That's a very loose collective
I had a very distinct idea for it. When artists like Johnny Clarke were over recording, I liked the idea that they could perhaps do something for me, as a second interest for them under that umbrella.
You started pulling together this loose family of musicians who wouldn't fit in other places – like David Harrow had been in the electropop / industrial world, and he played disco too
Yeah Jah Wobble introduced me to David. By this time, we were cutting a lot of drum machines and he was very good with the sampling stuff.
I'm trying to think of more peripheral people who ended up on On-U. Who's the Scottish fella with the sword?
Jesse Rae. He always used to come to the Tackhead gigs. He'd worked with the Funkadelic boys so he was a massive funk fan – I didn't do that many things with him, but I really liked him, he's a good songwriter and a real character, really talented. But after Tackhead split up, I fell out with Keith LeBlanc – although we're friends now, it's not a problem now – but it disrupted things a bit. I wanted to make a funk version of Singers and Players, Strange Parcels.20 I think the album's good, a bit psychotic maybe. I had Basil from Yargo and Jesse singing and a couple of other people, Bim and everything. It was only short-lived. Then after that we were at a bit of a crossroads. Head Charge was ticking over okay with Songs of Praise [1990] and In Pursuit of Shashamane Land [1993], then Dub Syndicate done Stoned Immaculate [1991] and that was all ticking over nicely. Then the Gary Clail thing happened which was a pure accident. I don't even know how we even recorded him. We gave him a chance to make a couple of records, and we had a fluke hit that Oakenfold put together.21 And to be honest with you, it wasn't the best situation on earth, suddenly making someone who isn't really an artist successful.
He was all over Tackhead Tape Time
We made that one not thinking, just doing it more for fun, leftover rhythms, and put out this thing called Tackhead Tape Time and put him over it. But it's like creating a monster when you haven't got clear identities. It was confusing. People thought Tackhead was Gary Clail, and other people didn't realise this that and the other, so in hindsight that didn't work too well in our favour.
Great album though
Great album. I'm not attacking Gary, I'm just saying all these moving parts didn't work in harmony. Tackhead started going in all different directions, there was a lot of drugs, and this surprise monster hit in the middle didn't help anything.
With Oakenfold on board, the hit came right in the heart of what was happening in the dance music world. Had you been following the acid house explosion?
We used to go down to Dungeons on Lee Bridge Road, which is a great club. The best thing about all that period for me was I'd been witness to a lot of the football violence, this mindless racist bullshit that had gone on throughout the 70s, and I've got to say the ecstasy and the acid house movement seemed to make a major dent in getting people all loved up and wanted to go dancing, hugging each other. It really helped a lot of the aggression people had. I saw that first-hand. After that it seemed calmer on the terraces than it did prior to the acid house movement. Maybe it's me seeing the world through rose tinted glasses but –
Were you going dancing?
By that time I had a kid, this is 1988. I'd go down to Dungeons once a month, my pals were going every week but I was doing my music all the time. I'm sticking to my guns, completely embedded in the Tackhead world – and Harrow came along, we did a couple of things together which merged into Gary Clail house-y boof boof songs. Every time I cut a housey four-on-the-floor dance tune we seem to do very well, but I couldn't bear to be sat in a room listening to four-on-the-floor all day long, to this day that sends me mad. I like the rhythms to be a bit sexier, swinging, funkier. So rolling a tape forward, by the time that all happened it was now 1992-93. I was quite depressed to be honest with you, and I ended up splitting up with my wife [i.e. Kishiko Yamamoto] in 1994, which does take it out of you. It was my fault I broke up the family, but that period coincided with what we do with Skip, because by now Tackhead had ended and the Clail thing wasn't as nice as it could have been. We decided to do Little Axe, making a 20th-century blues record built around Skip and his heritage, because he came from that background, although he was a master funk and soul musician. We thought we'd use reggae tonality in the bottom end and make the album The Wolf That House Built, very proud of that. I wanted to call it The Misadventures of Blind Willy Drug Pig and call Skip Blind Willy Drug Pig, and he said, “You'll fuck right off, you think I'm going to go to customs and say this?” I still think it is a good name. I think Little Axe is really underrated. Some of the records we made have been absolutely brilliant. Maybe not whole albums but tracks. Then I broke up with Kishi and pretty much the whole second half of the 90s was about trying to get my life back on track. She'd been holding a lot of On-U together, and without that I had to do a lot of studio work to pay off my debts and get on an even keel. I did a lot of good albums in that time, mind you! I did Echo Dek with Primal Scream.
Also a particular favourite of mine in this just post-acid house period, when you remixed that Jah Wobble Sinead O’Connor track, ‘Visions of You’.22 And that came off that whole Andrew Weatherall / The Orb axis, which brought dub into that back room thing
Weatherall's my favourite DJ ever. I think he's genius. He has amazing ears, he could mix rockabilly into house into whatever and does. He's class. Absolute class. He's always supported me and he's always respected what I've done. If he wanted, he could be one of the world's superstar house DJs, he was better than all those fucking people and he made his own music which a lot of them in those days didn't. But he'd rather walk his own path than suck the devil's cock for a few quid. The problem is, the house music scene, brilliant tunes – ‘I've Got The Power’ and all these tunes, there's hundreds that have come and I'd be jealous, I'd wish I made them – but to be sat formulaically in a studio trying to make a tune for people to dance to, that I haven't got my heart in doing. He clearly didn't have his heart in it 24/7 either, to be waving his hands behind the decks for a bunch of E'd-up people, he was more creative than that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it just weren't for me, and he obviously needed more variety too. We did quite well with the few house tunes we did, the obvious one being ‘Human Nature’. But my head was more in black funk rhythms or dub rhythms and African stuff. I'm not really that hit-oriented. But that's life, you know and, well, here I am. I don't look back. There's little things I wish I hadn't done but not major.
I'd happily cut another house tune if I was with somebody really good. I was going to do some stuff with Carl Craig you know. He's a mate of mine. I did some gigs with him. I got invited by Dubfire, who has to be one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. Every tune of [Carl's] is at 128bpm, and the movement is so subtle, whereas I'm more drastic. I wanted to do a record with him, me and Pinch. Then his management and mine had a brief communication and nothing happened.
Staying in the 90s, 1994 was a bad time for you but was when rave turned into jungle. Did you catch onto that, with the heavy bass and reggae influence?
The first time I heard jungle was on the pirate radios. I thought it sounded like drug music where they're putting codes out. It sounded frenetically mad and twitchy, like lads from Tottenham shouting drug messages.
In some respects it was
I thought, “This is mental.” It took me a couple of years to get into it and I never unfortunately met anyone that involved at the time. Congo Natty's my good friend now, he lives just down the road, I did my last album with him. I'd have definitely contributed my own sonic, but from afar was listening quite jealously to tunes. I like it when I hear a tune and I'm jealous, “I wish I'd done that.” It leans you towards grabbing a copy to play in your set. But I never actually met any of the great movers until quite a bit later. By working with Style Scott and the Roots Radics, and the Sugarhill boys, I'm with the absolute very very best, so I never looked out trying to go and say “Let's try and leap into somebody else's horse and cart.” If I'd suddenly met – bucked up as a Jamaican says – bumped into one of the great movers in the jungle field and said, “I want to get involved,” I would have done. But by this time my confidence weren't at its best. My life was going a bit mad and it didn't happen. I'd be happy to work with them in their own area if we were introduced and you start working you know. I did that Nisennenmondai album last year, in three-four days, I processed it subtly using a couple of old machines and a couple of new ones, and worked with the girls to get a record that reflected them and just a little touch of me to make it a nice album. But with the junglist movement, it wasn't until years later that I did the first junglist tune I did with Congo Natty, with Little Roy. Which is a version of ‘A Piece of the Earth’, which came on one of my albums.
So you were fairly enclosed in your own world through the 1990s
I'm very loyal, so I've got to stick with the people I like. I still make recordings with Skip, I've got a new Little Axe we've been chipping away at, first for years. Skip sadly had a stroke but he's alright, he's completely OK but he hasn't got the energy he had. He lives down here as well, I spoke to him earlier today. We did a Style Scott record last year. He was murdered, that was fucking dark! You end up just like “What the fuck? Who's time is it next?” I'm still friends with Doug, everybody comes stay here and we do work. If I met somebody from a different area and I started working with them, I know I can contribute to whatever I'm doing sonically and thoroughly enjoy it.
So the first time you took a big step outside your own circle this millennium was with Pinch
Well, first time was with Mala, when I went into the world of Moody Boyz, when we did the Lee Perry album.23 Tony Moody Boyz is a good friend, he's a great man. Then I met Mala on a gig and he and my eldest daughter became firm friends. I know all of those people proper as mates, we all get on well, mutual respect and everything. Mala did a couple of tunes for me. Then Pinch invited me to support him one of his nights at fabric in London, and we got on pretty well. I had an On-U night coming up in Paris so I invited him to come join me. We said “Why don't we do a little bit of recording, make some dubplates together?” And before you knew it, we're making an album. It's fucking mental, it's a wicked album, very happy with it.
Out of anyone in dubstep, he had your music running through his veins. He told me first time I met him that his brother gave him tapes of the Pay It All Back compilations when he was 12
I love Rob so much, he's like my son. We're very tight close. So here I am now, grand old age of 58. I know I've got a load to offer. I've been amongst very good people, I steered the records how I want them to go myself – or I've let people steer me on their own things – and I've had a very very good journey through bass land to be honest.
