Browse content similar to Reggae Britannia. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
When Jamaican music first arrived here in the '60s, | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
it spoke mainly to the West Indian community. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
Ska and early reggae were little more than novelties, | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
though they offered a new soundtrack for the working class teens, black and white. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:21 | |
But during the '70s, British reggae came out on the streets. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
It joined forces with rock and then punk, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
a rebel sound that was changing British music. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
# Him kick de bucket... # | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
Reggae took on Babylon and, by the '80s, had become a mirror for | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
the cultural and racial changes that were transforming Britain... | 0:00:40 | 0:00:44 | |
# In the first race... # | 0:00:44 | 0:00:46 | |
..while Britain transformed and absorbed reggae into the mainstream. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
# Get up, get up | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
# In the first race | 0:00:52 | 0:00:54 | |
# And him pull up the place | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
# Longshot | 0:00:56 | 0:00:58 | |
# Him kick de bucket... # | 0:00:58 | 0:00:59 | |
The Real Thing, Whenever You Want My Love. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
And that's riding up the charts. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:03 | |
And now from sunny Liverpool to the sunny Caribbean with | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
the first reggae record ever to make number one. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
Desmond Dekker and the Israelites. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
CHEERING | 0:01:11 | 0:01:12 | |
# Get up in the morning slaving for bread, sir | 0:01:12 | 0:01:17 | |
# So that | 0:01:18 | 0:01:19 | |
# Every mouth can be fed | 0:01:19 | 0:01:24 | |
# Oh-oh | 0:01:25 | 0:01:31 | |
# The Israelites | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
# Get up in the morning slaving for bread, sir | 0:01:40 | 0:01:43 | |
# So that every mouth can be fed | 0:01:43 | 0:01:47 | |
# Oh-oh... # | 0:01:47 | 0:01:48 | |
Israelites was the first reggae number one, | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
reaching many who had never even heard the word reggae before. | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
# My wife and my kids they pack up and leave me | 0:01:55 | 0:01:57 | |
# "Darling" she said "I was yours to receive"... # | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
Desmond Dekker was like a breath of fresh air. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
# The Israelites... # | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
He just sailed to the top of the charts with Israelites. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:12 | |
And I remember thinking it was, you know, a pop song with a reggae beat. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:17 | |
It made us want to be like that. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:20 | |
# I get up in the morning slaving for bread, sir | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
# So that every mouth can be fed... # | 0:02:25 | 0:02:30 | |
It was slightly different to a lot of the other records, wasn't it? | 0:02:30 | 0:02:31 | |
It had a bit of attitude to it and a bit of a strut. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
It was a bit tougher than what you were generally hearing on the radio. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
He was right at the right time, you know, the way he used to open his mouth. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:43 | |
-JAMAICAN ACCENT: -"It mek you haccidentally fall." | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
You know, brilliant lyrics. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
Great hardcore reggae at the time. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:50 | |
# After a storm there must be a calming | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
# You catch me in the palm you sound your alarm... # | 0:02:54 | 0:02:57 | |
The Israelites and the hits, you know, that was my introduction to reggae. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:01 | |
You know, I was fascinated about how do you play it. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
You know, even as early as that, I had the idea of merging | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
rock music with reggae music, and finding some sort of middle ground. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:14 | |
# Poor me, Israelites... # | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
Hits like Israelites may have sounded like novelty music at the time, | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
but they inspired a new generation with a taste for reggae, which they would eventually make their own. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:26 | |
I think people forget that there was this golden period in the late '60s, particularly early '70s, | 0:03:26 | 0:03:32 | |
where there was a lot of particularly melodic | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
reggae tunes having top 20 hits. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
Hit the spot! | 0:03:40 | 0:03:41 | |
Black people on the telly period in the '60s and '70s, even if they were a criminal, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:47 | |
we'd be all... I was going to say ringing each other up, but we didn't even have phones in those days. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:51 | |
But we'd be knocking on each other's doors, "Black man on the telly, black man on the telly!" | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
If they were singing great music, even better. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
Work! Work! | 0:03:58 | 0:03:59 | |
Work! Work! Work! Work! | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
Your thing, baby, your thing. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:05 | |
On a twist spin, baby. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:08 | |
So by the time Dave and Ansell Collins had come along and was | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
doing a kind of Booker T, with a James Brown kind of voice, | 0:04:13 | 0:04:18 | |
"Huh! Hit it! I've made it! Uh! | 0:04:18 | 0:04:20 | |
"Ow!" | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
Much power. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:23 | |
Good God. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:26 | |
Too much, I like it, huh! | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
What really got me was the fans. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
We had to actually run for our lives. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
You know, screaming and shouting | 0:04:38 | 0:04:39 | |
and grabbing and tearing off shirts | 0:04:39 | 0:04:41 | |
and all them things, you know, it was crazy but we enjoyed it. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:45 | |
I am the magnificent... | 0:04:47 | 0:04:49 | |
They would be banging on the door, they would be banging down the door, | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
and you're saying, "Man, these people are crazy." | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
It was a bit surprising, as well, to us at the time, because we never thought that English people | 0:04:56 | 0:05:04 | |
had so much oomph | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
where the music is concerned. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
In the early '70s, reggae inspired both the West Indian community and white working class fans. | 0:05:14 | 0:05:20 | |
First mods, then skinheads. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
I suppose sort of late '60s, early '70s, | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
when I was like a little suedehead, a little mini, sort of | 0:05:32 | 0:05:36 | |
post-skinhead, I mean, going to the local dances on a Thursday night and just hearing black music. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:42 | |
Desmond Dekker, Return Of The Django, Liquidator, I mean they were big records. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:49 | |
You know, you'd always hear them. And that was kind of it, really, that was the start of the love affair. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
So in some ways for us it became our music, so to speak. | 0:05:55 | 0:06:00 | |
Because, I suppose, the lyrics, the sentiment was sort of like, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:04 | |
it was to do with a rebel stance, which we all associated with. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:08 | |
It's protest music, protest against injustice. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:13 | |
And they saw me as a rebel and identified themselves as such. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
So there was some compatibility there, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:18 | |
I think so, because | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
you should have seen them. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
An anthem of the Skinheads was Max Romeo's Wet Dreams. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:28 | |
They loved the rebel beat and risque lyrics that saw it banned from clubs and BBC. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:35 | |
# Every night me go to sleep | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
# Me have wet dream... # | 0:06:38 | 0:06:39 | |
# Every night me go to sleep | 0:06:40 | 0:06:44 | |
# Me have wet dream | 0:06:44 | 0:06:45 | |
# Lie down, girl, let me push it up push it up | 0:06:46 | 0:06:48 | |
# Lie down | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
# Lie down, girl, let me push it up push it up | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
# Lie down... # | 0:06:53 | 0:06:54 | |
I think what happens is that they have a lot of anti-social | 0:06:54 | 0:07:00 | |
feelings bagged up inside, and there was no way to actually spell it out. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:07 | |
And here I come, the rebel, blurting out something like that, creating an upstir. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:13 | |
So it was a good time for them to jump on the bandwagon and vent their anger. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
# Lie down, girl, let me push it up, push it up | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
# Lie down | 0:07:20 | 0:07:21 | |
# Lie down, girl, let me push it up, push it up, lie down... # | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
That "chk, chk, chk, chk", it's just wonderful. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
And I used to like it when I was 15. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
I thought the dances that the girls did with all their little feather cuts | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
and their nice little tonic suits and things, that was just so cute. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
# Throw all the punch you want to I can take them all... # | 0:07:41 | 0:07:46 | |
These records, which were helping transform teenage Britain, had been arriving from | 0:07:46 | 0:07:50 | |
Jamaica since the early '60s when they were distributed by a profusion of independent labels. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:57 | |
Producers like Jamaican-born Chris Blackwell were planting the seeds of the reggae music business. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:07 | |
We were just about | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
the first people who decided to record | 0:08:09 | 0:08:14 | |
Jamaican artists making popular music for a Jamaican audience. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
# Well, won't you tell me tell me, baby | 0:08:18 | 0:08:21 | |
# What is a boy to do? | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
# Woah | 0:08:24 | 0:08:25 | |
# Hey-yeah, hey-yeah | 0:08:25 | 0:08:27 | |
# Tell me, baby | 0:08:27 | 0:08:29 | |
# Don't you ever tell me, baby... # | 0:08:29 | 0:08:31 | |
Giant sound systems took these Jamaican hits all over the island. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
# You're treating me bad... # | 0:08:39 | 0:08:40 | |
I used to go dance when I was very small. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:42 | |
I couldn't get in the dance. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:44 | |
And even Coxone Sound System used to come and play in my area. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:48 | |
And I've heard a lot of songs when I was looking for | 0:08:48 | 0:08:49 | |
Coxone Sound, which was champion sound, man. Trust me. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:53 | |
Sugar Minott was one of many artists who would later influence the British reggae scene. | 0:08:53 | 0:09:01 | |
He learned all about ska music there. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
I used to imitate all those songs after the dance, the next day I used to know them all. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:10 | |
So that's where I know about ska, you know? | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
# You don't know you don't know... # | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
Later on, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:16 | |
I took over the management of the jukeboxes when I had some of my own records. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
SKA MUSIC PLAYS | 0:09:21 | 0:09:25 | |
If I took off a record, which had been on the jukebox for a bit and replaced it with a new record | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
that the people didn't like, you'd hear immediately. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
It was something that I really learned, you know, from that experience. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
Within about ten seconds they would say, "Take the record off." | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
They didn't want to give it the time. That was it, it was just done within ten seconds. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
And then sometimes, you know, there'd be a record that they'd like | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
and everybody would get really excited. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:50 | |
You know, it was an incredible sort of experience of instant response. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:55 | |
SKA MUSIC PLAYS | 0:09:55 | 0:09:57 | |
You used to have people in Jamaica like Caribbean Distributing Company, | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
they used to make a good living by, even now, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
buying records and sending them to England. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:13 | |
England is the gateway to real reggae music. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
The name of the music in England was Blue Beat, it was called Blue Beat. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
And so I was trying to sort of market the music | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
and everybody would say, "Oh, do you have some Blue Beats?" | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
And so I really pushed the name ska, because in Jamaica, it wasn't called Blue Beat. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:34 | |
In Jamaica, it was called ska, cos it's a sort of onomatopoeic word for the guitar on the offbeat. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:41 | |
So I really pushed the name ska. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
The earliest ska performers arrived in Britain in the early '60s. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:50 | |
Singers like Prince Buster followed their records into this country, and were mobbed by West Indians | 0:10:50 | 0:10:55 | |
alongside adoring mods and skinheads. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:57 | |
The first big Jamaican success in the British pop charts came in 1965. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:06 | |
It was a Chris Blackwell production - Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
# I love you, I love you I love you so | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
# But I don't want you to know | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
# I need you, I need you I need you so | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
# And I'll never let you go-oh-oh | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
# My boy lollipop... # | 0:11:24 | 0:11:26 | |
This record of Millie, which I knew was going to be a hit when I finished | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
working on it, it never got to number one, unfortunately - it got to number two. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
But it became a huge hit and it changed my life completely. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:37 | |
# My lollipop... # | 0:11:37 | 0:11:39 | |
By the early '70s, a small number of producers were firmly in control | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
of the Jamaican and therefore the emerging British reggae business. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
Though tens of thousands of records were distributed around the UK, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
many artists were not receiving much reward. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
Accountability was always a problem. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
Because it was about them. | 0:11:58 | 0:11:59 | |
"Oh, I'm selling your record in England and, you know, you'll just have to take my word for it. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:03 | |
"This is how it goes." | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
It was difficult to sue these people because you didn't know | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
who to sue. We were told that it went to Jamaica to the producer. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
When we went to Jamaica to get our portion, we were told that it was left here and for Trojan | 0:12:12 | 0:12:17 | |
to give it to us. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
I never really | 0:12:19 | 0:12:21 | |
trusted these...outlets. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
You're supposed to get a percentage on every record that is sold. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
That is royalty, mechanical royalties. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:31 | |
You could get publishing, money from publishing, copyright and these things. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
And I never used to get that at all. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:35 | |
Just the £10 and that's it. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
You discover that you haven't got anything to show | 0:12:39 | 0:12:45 | |
for what you have done. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
I became very depressed | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
and I locked myself away | 0:12:53 | 0:12:57 | |
for quite a while. | 0:12:57 | 0:12:58 | |
Times were hard for Jamaican artists who had settled here | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
but found there was little support for their careers or follow up to their early successes. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:13 | |
Their records were one hit wonders. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:15 | |
It was the tunes that mattered, not the artists. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
One reggae singer even recorded a musical plea to the BBC to play his people's music. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:24 | |
# It is a long walk to the BBC | 0:13:26 | 0:13:29 | |
# But I've got my walking shoes on | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
# Can't take a plane, a bus or train cos my money ain't that long | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
# But people, I believe | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
# Oh, yeah! | 0:13:40 | 0:13:41 | |
# That you love reggae still | 0:13:41 | 0:13:43 | |
# Oh, yeah! | 0:13:43 | 0:13:44 | |
# So I'm going to see the management Lord | 0:13:44 | 0:13:46 | |
# Oh, yeah | 0:13:46 | 0:13:47 | |
# To wipe away my fears I tell you to look out... # | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
A lot of the DJs had a snobbery towards Jamaican music | 0:13:50 | 0:13:55 | |
that sometimes bordered on racialism. | 0:13:56 | 0:14:01 | |
There was nothing played on the radio. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:02 | |
There wasn't a few, there was nothing played on the radio. | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
I never sent any of the records to the radio after a bit because nobody was ever interested in them. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:11 | |
I never sent them to the press because nobody was interested in them. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:15 | |
You know, according to rock press and the whole student rock scene, reggae was like idiot music, it was | 0:14:15 | 0:14:23 | |
regarded as some sort of weird novelty music. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
It wasn't taken seriously at all. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
# I am on my way, oh yes I will | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
# Long walk to the BBC... # | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
Determined to get radio play, producers began remixing | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
Jamaican recordings to make them sound sweeter. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
First off, they reduced the bass frequencies, and then they added an orchestral sound. | 0:14:41 | 0:14:46 | |
It seemed like companies like Trojan, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
to make the records accessible to the British buying public, | 0:14:51 | 0:14:56 | |
seemed to add strings to make it more classical. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:00 | |
And then there was things like Young, Gifted And Black, | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
that went into the charts, Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths, Bob and Marcia, that had strings all over it. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:10 | |
# Young, gifted and black | 0:15:13 | 0:15:15 | |
# Oh, what a lovely, precious dream | 0:15:17 | 0:15:22 | |
# To be young, gifted and black | 0:15:22 | 0:15:24 | |
# Open your heart to what I mean... # | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
First time when he does that... | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
# The whole world, you know | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
# There's a million boys and girls | 0:15:34 | 0:15:38 | |
# Who are young, gifted and black | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
# And that's a fact... # | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
I was very satisfied and very pleased with the strings. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
And so to hear a Jamaican recording, probably the first | 0:15:49 | 0:15:54 | |
to be so well endowed with such beautiful arrangements, I felt good to be a part of that. | 0:15:54 | 0:16:01 | |
It was the music that we identified with, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
and my time in school, there wasn't many black kids in the class. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:11 | |
There was about three or four of us at the time. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:14 | |
-Present, Miss Atkins. -We took our music to school. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
It was our music. It was something that we said, "This was ours." | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
In the early '70s, British school curricula virtually ignored West Indian culture and history. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:31 | |
Bearing in mind, you know, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:35 | |
we were never taught about ourselves at the schools. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
It was always about William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings, Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada. | 0:16:38 | 0:16:44 | |
Things that really had nothing to do with our development, | 0:16:45 | 0:16:50 | |
our growth, spiritually, physically, mentally. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
At that time, it was very important to me. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
As a matter of fact, I've never looked back since in the direction I've decided to take. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
As a first generation British-born black, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
we'd seen how our parents were really getting shafted | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
by trying to anglicise themselves to be accepted. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
And we weren't buying that. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
What we did reject was the caution that our parents, | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
and the restraint that our parents had. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
In a hostile racial environment, they were limited | 0:17:35 | 0:17:39 | |
in the ways that they could fight against racial oppression. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:44 | |
They had responsibilities. They had to put kids through school, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
they had to put bread on the table, send money back home to their families and so on. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
Though West Indians had been migrating here since the late 1940s, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
to do the jobs the British didn't want to do, many were still haunted, well into the '70s, | 0:17:57 | 0:18:02 | |
by Enoch Powell's Rivers Of Blood speech condemning immigration. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:08 | |
Though violence sometimes broke out, irony was perhaps a sharper weapon. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:13 | |
COMIC JAMAICAN ACCENT: Hello 'dere. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:17 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:18:17 | 0:18:18 | |
DROPS ACCENT: Hey, you're lucky I came tonight, you know, cos I won't be here tomorrow. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:23 | |
Enoch Powell has offered me £1,000 to go home. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
Which is great, really, cos it's only £10 on the train from here to Birmingham. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE | 0:18:29 | 0:18:31 | |
We wanted to be British. We wanted to be fitting and become a part of the society, but we found ourselves | 0:18:31 | 0:18:37 | |
in a racialised environment, and this is where reggae came in. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
Reggae afforded us our own independent cultural identity. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:46 | |
We were rejected by the wider society, so this was our music, this was our culture. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
My generation, we were the rebel generation, | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
and we refused to tolerate the things our parents tolerated. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
Listening to the imports coming in from Jamaica, | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
you could keep in touch with what was happening in the society, | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
you could keep in touch with the language. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
We knew what we were supposed to sound like, cos we were getting the music from Jamaica. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:14 | |
But there was no visual accompaniment. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
I mean, I guess Bob would come along soon with the dreadlocks and everything, | 0:19:16 | 0:19:20 | |
but for imagery of Jamaica, it would invariably come from a postcard. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
There'd be a man riding a donkey on a beach with a straw hat, or somebody limbo dancing. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:28 | |
But then I saw The Harder They Come. That would have been in the early '70s. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
And I walked out inspired and empowered. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
I mean, we were all empowered after seeing The Harder They Come. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
I mean, it was the story of somebody who'd come from the country coming to the city to make it. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:44 | |
And again, that really appealed to us, as, you know, we weren't exactly foreigners, we were born here, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:50 | |
but we were made to feel like that. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
So Jimmy Cliff's struggle, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
yeah, it struck a chord with us. | 0:19:56 | 0:19:58 | |
While cinemas introduced the Jamaican rude boy image to these shores, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:04 | |
it was the sound systems that carried the music around the country. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
Home-made monster speakers updated the old Jamaican equipment. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:12 | |
The sound system is totally responsible for the development of reggae in this country. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:18 | |
Because radio didn't play it. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
In order to have the audience know that it was available, it had to be played on a sound system. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:28 | |
If the sound system didn't play a particular record, you could bet it wouldn't be a hit. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
I remember in my teens standing up in front of the 18-inch bass speaker. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
That used to be a great feeling, | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
hearing the bass running through your solar plexus or whatever you want to call it, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:52 | |
running through your system. The bass. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
And Jamaican music is bass-led. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
We would just be fascinated and in awe of these people. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
They just look exciting, intriguing and different, | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
something you've never seen before. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:16 | |
They would be sitting in front of a speaker, and you could see their bodies going... | 0:21:19 | 0:21:24 | |
And I wanted to experience that. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:26 | |
And I used to stand in front of the speaker waiting for the beat of the bass line, so I could go... | 0:21:26 | 0:21:31 | |
Then you started to smell the weed, right, and it was part of their culture, | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
and it was a lovely smell. And I remembered dabbling, trying it out. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:43 | |
High as a kite! | 0:21:43 | 0:21:44 | |
There used to be, in the neighbourhood where I lived, | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
there always used to be house parties. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
And I'd sneak out of my bedroom window | 0:21:52 | 0:21:54 | |
and go down the road to one of these house parties, stay there for a couple of hours. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:59 | |
And then come back, sneak back into the house, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:04 | |
hopefully without my parents finding out. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
But occasionally I got caught and got the beating of a lifetime, | 0:22:06 | 0:22:09 | |
but for me, it was worth it. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
What they were playing were the latest '70s imports | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
from Jamaica, featuring new artists like Big Youth. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:23 | |
The sound system, to be honest with you, | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
the sound system was our BBC and ITV and CNN and everything, | 0:22:27 | 0:22:32 | |
cos through the sound system we could get to communicate with the common people on the street. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:38 | |
To be perfectly honest with you, Big Youth took the scene. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:49 | |
Big Youth helped introduce the British reggae scene to mystical truths | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
about Jamaican street life, and the pride and the faith of Rastafari. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
Big Youth came with kind of lyrics that were pertaining to what I wanted to know about, what I was studying. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:14 | |
It was Rasta lyrics, he was telling bits of scripture. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
# So come on down along the sound The way is out, play | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
# Yeah! | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
It was just an amazing thing. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:38 | |
It was like, "Wow, where did this guy come from?" | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
The proverbial wisdom of Big Youth's first UK hit record was inspired by his Yamaha S90 motorbike. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:49 | |
So I said, "Ride on, but don't you ride like lightning. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
"Say, man, if you ride like lightning, you'll crash like thunder." | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
# So come on down along the sound and lead | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
# The way is out, play. | 0:24:00 | 0:24:01 | |
# Huh, good gosh! # | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
It was just like something totally new, totally original, never heard it before. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:09 | |
And I said, "yeah, I want to do that," you know what I mean? | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
Young British musicians were enthralled by these Jamaican records, | 0:24:14 | 0:24:18 | |
and were desperate to see the artists who made them. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
Those artists were now fleeing the island to escape political gang wars. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:25 | |
The songs they brought with them told of rough justice on the streets of Kingston. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:29 | |
# My name is Capone | 0:24:29 | 0:24:31 | |
# C-A-P-O-N-E | 0:24:31 | 0:24:35 | |
# Capone... # | 0:24:35 | 0:24:37 | |
If you listen to Guns Don't Argue and listen to the lyrics of that song, | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
because it was the time when the gun was just introduced to Jamaica. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:49 | |
You know, and it was introduced by the politicians. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
What I was saying in that record, "I'm a defender, not an offender. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:57 | |
"So don't let the children cry, or you'll have to tell Al Capone why." | 0:24:57 | 0:25:01 | |
# Don't let the children cry | 0:25:01 | 0:25:03 | |
# Or you'll have to tell Al Capone why | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
# My bucka will drop you, don't you know? | 0:25:06 | 0:25:09 | |
# Yeah! # | 0:25:09 | 0:25:11 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
All these Jamaican imports would change the style and sounds of the British reggae scene. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:25 | |
The latest recordings of producers like Lee Scratch Perry and Max Romeo | 0:25:25 | 0:25:30 | |
were hotly fought over in the specialist record stores that sold them at top dollar. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:35 | |
It's like, going to the record shop, I was excited, you know? | 0:25:36 | 0:25:39 | |
You're like a little kid. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:41 | |
OK, let me go to Dub Vendor, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
or Black, or Dread Records, or whoever it was at the time, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
you'd go there and say, "Right, what have you got new?" | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
On a Friday evening, I mean, I was there till 8pm-9pm sometimes. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
And the shop would be packed. And this is a small shop. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:57 | |
And as soon as you put a record on, it's played five seconds | 0:25:57 | 0:26:01 | |
and ten hands have gone up, wanting that record. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
Because sometimes you might be in there and there might be only two records left, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:09 | |
and you walk in, and so there'd be people in there saying "No, you can't have that." | 0:26:09 | 0:26:14 | |
You know, we'd be fighting over who's going to get that seven-inch and who's not. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
It depends just how much they've got in stock, cos it's not even a wink. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
It's like, "Me, I'll take this. I was here first!" | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
But there was one Jamaican whose music combined a rude boy image | 0:26:27 | 0:26:31 | |
with Rasta consciousness in a way no other artist had. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:35 | |
He would take Britain and the world by storm. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
At last there was a reggae star who'd be promoted as a hit maker and as an artist. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:43 | |
# Slave driver | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
# The table is turned | 0:26:48 | 0:26:51 | |
# You've got your fire You're gonna to get burned | 0:26:51 | 0:26:56 | |
# Yeah, slave driver | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
# The table is... | 0:27:00 | 0:27:02 | |
# Got your fire Got your fire | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
# you're gonna get burned, oh... # | 0:27:06 | 0:27:10 | |
Marley, the importance of Marley on the black British youth, | 0:27:10 | 0:27:13 | |
it's almost impossible to put into words. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:16 | |
I mean, I saw him play and it was like a religious experience - I mean, my top gig of all time - | 0:27:16 | 0:27:22 | |
and walked out of there a new man, a reinvented man. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
Because we saw somebody here that was being accepted on his terms. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:31 | |
You know, no straightened hair, no speaking English, it was his way or the highway. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:37 | |
I think Bob Marley probably had the most impact of any artist | 0:27:37 | 0:27:42 | |
on us collectively as a group of mates. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:45 | |
We went to see him, and that to me was the closest thing to a spiritual experience I'd had. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
He was incredible. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
The band were brilliant, the Wailers were great, but he was something special. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
# Today they say that we are free Only to be chained in poverty | 0:27:59 | 0:28:05 | |
# Good God, I think it's illiteracy | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
# It's only machines that make money... # | 0:28:08 | 0:28:11 | |
The Wailers had been together as a trio since the mid-'60s, | 0:28:11 | 0:28:15 | |
but now they were about to transform the British reggae scene. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
It was probably the most important event in my life. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:25 | |
I felt we should position him more as a rock act, as a black rock act. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:30 | |
And in so doing, I wanted to move the music away from being its raw reggae, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:37 | |
into having some elements which I felt would pull in the people | 0:28:37 | 0:28:45 | |
who are interested in rock music, that kind of music. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
Catch A Fire's original Jamaican tapes were adapted for the rock market by Chris Blackwell, | 0:28:48 | 0:28:54 | |
who overdubbed American musicians onto the recordings. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
They started playing this strange music, | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
I mean, I'd never heard the likes of. It was... | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
Compared to anything else I'd ever heard in my life, everything, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
the R&B, the church music, anything I'd ever heard, this was backwards. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:13 | |
GUITAR RIFF PLAYS | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
And Bob had his guitar on and he was going "chicka, chicka," | 0:29:18 | 0:29:24 | |
like they do. And I was just meandering on the organ, like... | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
And he said, "No, no, bumbaclart, rasclart," all this, you know. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
So I made it a chord, and went... | 0:29:35 | 0:29:37 | |
It's what he could teach you about his music that helped you with your own music. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:46 | |
For my generation that bought that album, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:48 | |
not only did we not know that Blackwell did that and there was an | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
original roots version, we didn't care. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
It was those things that made our ears prick up | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
and go, "Wow, this is somebody that's really doing something different." | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
# Darkness has covered my light | 0:30:00 | 0:30:02 | |
# And has changed my day into night, yeah | 0:30:05 | 0:30:09 | |
# Where is the love | 0:30:10 | 0:30:12 | |
# To be found? | 0:30:12 | 0:30:16 | |
# Won't someone tell me? | 0:30:16 | 0:30:18 | |
# Life | 0:30:18 | 0:30:20 | |
# Must be somewhere | 0:30:20 | 0:30:23 | |
# To be found | 0:30:23 | 0:30:24 | |
# Instead of concrete jungle | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
# I say, where the living is hardest | 0:30:30 | 0:30:35 | |
# Your concrete jungle | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
# Man, you've got to do your best | 0:30:41 | 0:30:45 | |
# Oh-oh-ho-ho... # | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
But Blackwell still needed the help of a major rock star to get | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
Marley's music to the mainstream that reggae had not yet touched. | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
Now, at that time, there was no bigger artist in England | 0:31:00 | 0:31:05 | |
and maybe the world than... than Eric Clapton. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:09 | |
And when Eric Clapton picked some material from Bob Marley, | 0:31:09 | 0:31:14 | |
that, I think, was probably Bob's biggest break. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
# I shot the sheriff | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
# But I did not shoot no deputy... # | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
The rock audience was becoming aware of reggae. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
And the record business wondered whether other British bands | 0:31:29 | 0:31:33 | |
would grab this opportunity to reach a new audience. | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
# Freedom came my way one day | 0:31:39 | 0:31:43 | |
# And I started out of town | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
# All of a sudden I see Sheriff John Brown... # | 0:31:50 | 0:31:54 | |
But the fledgling black reggae bands found themselves in the shadow of Marley's music, | 0:31:54 | 0:32:00 | |
and they faced sceptical fans who were now looking for an authentic sound. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:05 | |
We had a split audience. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:07 | |
We had the slightly older generation that looked to Jamaica, | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
and then we had the British audience, who were still in a flux | 0:32:11 | 0:32:16 | |
as to whether they looked towards the Caribbean, which was authentic, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:22 | |
or looked at what was happening on their doorstep. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:25 | |
The young roots bands sharpened their musical skills in local bars and clubs. | 0:32:28 | 0:32:33 | |
At the same time, we're rehearsing every week, hoping that the band's successful. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:43 | |
Meanwhile, the parents have no interest in music at all. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:48 | |
They had their share of musical snobbery and prejudice to overcome as well. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
Lots of people were hurling criticism at reggae. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:01 | |
"You just have to know how to play two chords and you're there." | 0:33:01 | 0:33:05 | |
A lot of reggae has been two chords, | 0:33:05 | 0:33:08 | |
but two of the sweetest chords you could put together. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:11 | |
We were more interested in trying to fuse | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
a pop style with a soul style with a reggae beat. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:25 | |
If you said roots and British, the two didn't sit side by side comfortably. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:41 | |
Roots was Jamaican. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
Roots and British | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
didn't really work. | 0:33:47 | 0:33:49 | |
One band that quickly gained credibility with reggae fans was Aswad. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:59 | |
They offered a British flavour to Jamaican roots sounds. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
Our attitude has always been that the band and the music | 0:34:19 | 0:34:23 | |
was about our experiences in inner-city London. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:28 | |
And a lot of the bands at that time were just copying music that came from Jamaica. | 0:34:29 | 0:34:35 | |
They weren't telling their own story. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
And I think this was probably the unique thing about Aswad, and | 0:34:37 | 0:34:43 | |
later on we were not only identified with by the black youth, but also | 0:34:43 | 0:34:49 | |
white kids, Indian kids were identifying, because we were talking about what was happening to us. | 0:34:49 | 0:34:55 | |
# It's not our wish That we should fi-i-i-ight | 0:34:55 | 0:35:01 | |
# It's not our wish | 0:35:03 | 0:35:06 | |
# That we should fight fight fight... # | 0:35:06 | 0:35:09 | |
We were confronting the system | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
and how the system created a negative space | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
for people of colour. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:28 | |
This is where we were speaking from. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
We used to use the term Babylon. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:40 | |
The Sus laws was an expression of Babylon. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
It was the long arm of the law | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
that said, "If we suspect you might be doing something, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:50 | |
"that gives us the right to strip search you, on occasions publicly." | 0:35:50 | 0:35:56 | |
Your parents would say, "Look, don't go out on your own, make sure you come in before it's dark." | 0:35:56 | 0:36:02 | |
"Don't dress a certain way, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
"because that will give them an excuse to stop you." | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
Social divisions were growing. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
The summer of '76 would be long and hot, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:17 | |
the hottest since records began. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
# Then it was 96 degrees | 0:36:21 | 0:36:24 | |
# In the shade | 0:36:24 | 0:36:26 | |
# Ten thousand soldiers | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
# On parade | 0:36:31 | 0:36:33 | |
# Taking I | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
# To meet to the big fat one | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
# Sent from overseas | 0:36:43 | 0:36:45 | |
# The queen employ... # | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
At the Notting Hill Carnival, tensions were building. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:51 | |
The British roots bands and their families were arriving. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:56 | |
Aswad among them. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
We had just released our first album, Aswad. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
It was just a great experience, it was a great energy. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:05 | |
# You got me on the loose | 0:37:05 | 0:37:06 | |
# Fighting to be free | 0:37:06 | 0:37:08 | |
# Now you show me a noose on the cotton tree... # | 0:37:08 | 0:37:12 | |
Then suddenly from Portobello Road, someone came around screaming, "The beasts are coming! | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
"The beasts are coming!" | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
We was at the point under the Westway when there was some scuffling, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:25 | |
and like the police went in to arrest somebody. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:27 | |
Suddenly, it was like a whole separation of people, of police... | 0:37:30 | 0:37:37 | |
It was like them against us. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
Well, the first thing that we had to do was to get our instruments into the van, | 0:37:42 | 0:37:46 | |
so while things were going and missiles were flying around, we were loading stuff into the van. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:51 | |
Yeah, I just remember me and Joe spending ages trying to set this | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
car alight that was upside down, | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
and then a police motorcycle zoomed through, and I threw a bollard. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:04 | |
And shit, I don't know what I would have done if the guy had come off, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
but it hit his front wheel and it staggered for a moment. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
# Send in the riot squad quick | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
# Because they're running wild... # | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
By that time, the police were coming this way, and they were hurling missiles. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:18 | |
And the next thing that we had to do was to find our parents. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:27 | |
We don't know where they went. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:29 | |
That was our carnival experience. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
Inner-city riots spread all around England, including Handsworth in | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
Birmingham, home of Steel Pulse, reggae's most militant and musically adventurous home-grown band. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:47 | |
# We're walking along just | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
# Kicking stones Me minding my own business | 0:38:51 | 0:38:55 | |
# I come face to face with my foe | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
# Disguised in violence from head to toe... # | 0:39:02 | 0:39:03 | |
Ku Klux Klan warned of the danger | 0:39:03 | 0:39:07 | |
of American-style white supremacists gaining a voice in Britain. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
My imagination just got the better of me, where I started to imagine | 0:39:10 | 0:39:14 | |
me minding my own business walking along the streets of Handsworth | 0:39:14 | 0:39:18 | |
and then getting reprisal | 0:39:18 | 0:39:21 | |
from some white extremists of some kind. | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
So that's how that song came into play. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:26 | |
The hoods were made out of pillowcases initially. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:30 | |
We simply cut slits for, er... the eyes. | 0:39:30 | 0:39:37 | |
So the hoods was a very powerful, confrontational, militant statement, saying, "We're here, we're here to | 0:39:37 | 0:39:44 | |
"stay, and we are prepared to fight for our position." | 0:39:44 | 0:39:47 | |
# Here to stamp out black man, yah | 0:39:47 | 0:39:52 | |
# The Klu Klux Klan... # | 0:39:52 | 0:39:54 | |
At that time, I felt that Steel Pulse had their finger | 0:39:56 | 0:40:01 | |
absolutely on the button of really furthering British reggae music. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:07 | |
They were putting out stuff which was highly charged, highly political. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:13 | |
These were black people doing this, and that was just shocking, it was absolutely shocking. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:21 | |
But a new musical alignment was taking place | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
between what had until now been separate musical cultures. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:32 | |
It would radically change reggae's impact and acceptance almost overnight. | 0:40:32 | 0:40:36 | |
# It takes a joyful sound | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
# To make the world go round... # | 0:40:50 | 0:40:52 | |
In the late '70s, young British blacks found a musical and ideological ally in the punks. | 0:40:52 | 0:41:00 | |
# It's a punky reggae party... # | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
What we were writing about was everyday life, | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
and what the reggae musicians were writing about was | 0:41:04 | 0:41:06 | |
every day, contemporary life, | 0:41:06 | 0:41:08 | |
what's happening now, the violence, the poverty, the injustices. | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
Out of the punky reggae explosion came Rock Against Racism, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:19 | |
which was really a response to the rise of the right wing that was happening in the late '70s, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:24 | |
during the kind of time of social crisis, you know. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
Rock Against Racism brought together reggae and punk bands in musical protest and solidarity. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:41 | |
Up to that time, black bands didn't play on the same stage with white bands. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:52 | |
That's a really important point to make, people forget that now. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
You had black concerts and white concerts. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
We got increasingly large stages to perform in front of, where the audience were | 0:41:59 | 0:42:05 | |
saying, "We never instigated this segregation between the musicians, and we support this coming together." | 0:42:05 | 0:42:12 | |
The Clash offered reggae performers a new audience, but this was reggae in punk clothing. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:24 | |
We weren't trying to do a slavish copy. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
We were trying to give our interpretation of ingredients to our | 0:42:33 | 0:42:37 | |
music, you know, and people say, "Oh, it's not like reggae." | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
It wasn't meant to be like reggae. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
It was our... We were a punk group, you know. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
# Police and thieves in the street | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
# Oh, yeah | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
# Scaring the nation with | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
# Guns and ammunition... # | 0:42:56 | 0:42:58 | |
The Clash embraced the work of respected Jamaican artists and producers like Lee "Scratch" Perry. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:04 | |
The thing is, Police And Thieves was quite a popular tune at that time. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:08 | |
We decided to do a cover of it, | 0:43:08 | 0:43:10 | |
which was quite interesting, because Lee Perry said, when we finally met him, | 0:43:10 | 0:43:15 | |
"What do you think of our version?" He said, "Oh, you ruined it!" | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
which made me laugh! | 0:43:18 | 0:43:20 | |
# From genesis | 0:43:20 | 0:43:23 | |
# To revelation | 0:43:23 | 0:43:24 | |
# The next generation... # | 0:43:26 | 0:43:28 | |
The punk movement had in | 0:43:31 | 0:43:33 | |
common with the reggae movement was that it was frowned upon. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
People, you know, looked at it as an inferior genre. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
So together... you know, they came out fighting, you know, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:48 | |
and then everybody wanted a piece of reggae in his punk tune. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
Dennis Bovell was asked to produce the debut album of the punk band the Slits. | 0:43:55 | 0:44:01 | |
It's very normal for me to feel that music was a conduit for protest, | 0:44:02 | 0:44:07 | |
and that's what punk was and that's what reggae was as well, | 0:44:07 | 0:44:12 | |
and I think that's where the two really came together, | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
talking about life on the streets when you were an underdog, | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
where you had no money, you had no voice, | 0:44:18 | 0:44:20 | |
and you wanted to point out the wrongs in the world | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
and your only way through that was through music. | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
I think what reggae really taught punk musicians was about space | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
and being brave enough to let there be holes and gaps, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
and dub even more than that. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
Because punk was very strict, very fast, you know - | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
get through it as fast as possible - very, very urban, | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
whereas reggae also came from an urban background, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
but it was about letting go, being loose, | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
and it was such a relief after the strictness and minimalism of punk. | 0:44:57 | 0:45:00 | |
This is a street way of getting your voice out there | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
and, you know, punk and reggae both did that. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:10 | |
Reggae was now finding its way into even the most unexpected corners of the country. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:19 | |
Hidden away in a leafy London suburb was a musical foundry | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
that would feed British sound systems throughout the land. | 0:45:25 | 0:45:29 | |
Why write no more? | 0:45:29 | 0:45:31 | |
Keep it dubbing. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
We're working it, you know. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:35 | |
Rock-solid base. We rule, innit. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:37 | |
While thumbing through the Yellow Pages one time, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:42 | |
looking for a place to cut an acetate, | 0:45:42 | 0:45:47 | |
found Hassell Recordings. | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
Phoned up, gone over there. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
An elderly gentleman, who was famed for smoking a big fat cigar - John Hassell - answers the door. | 0:45:52 | 0:46:00 | |
We go into his house, into his living room, right, | 0:46:01 | 0:46:06 | |
and he's got this wonderful | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
German disc-cutting lathe set up in his front room. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
They had come to cut an acetate - | 0:46:13 | 0:46:15 | |
the metal dub plate from which vinyl records would be cut. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:19 | |
And his wife Felicity has offered us a cup of tea, a cup of coffee. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:24 | |
Then we put on these tapes and it's, like, reggae. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:27 | |
You know, imagine stumbling on that through the Yellow Pages, right. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
Then we were telling other people, "Listen, we found a guy | 0:46:33 | 0:46:39 | |
"who knows how to cut reggae." | 0:46:39 | 0:46:41 | |
Doing straight dub, are we? | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
You can have a fantastic-sounding thing on the tape | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
and then it all falls to pieces at the cutting end of it. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
And someone who would be sympathetic to the frequencies | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
and know how to capture that sound from the tape onto the disc... | 0:46:53 | 0:46:59 | |
And John was a master at that. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:00 | |
It's an esoteric world. It's a world of subtlety and refinements. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:10 | |
To them, | 0:47:11 | 0:47:12 | |
sound is important, it has a meaning, | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
so it has to be done right and professionally and proper. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
Next stop for Bovell's British dub cuts were the sound systems | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
where DJs would preview new tunes | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
and gauge whether the dancers liked them. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
But sound systems only wanted to preview Jamaican imports. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:37 | |
To get British reggae played required a further sleight of hand. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:42 | |
So we had this idea | 0:47:42 | 0:47:45 | |
to get a machine that could make a big wide hole in records | 0:47:45 | 0:47:50 | |
that were pressed in this country | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
and don't put on it, "Made in England". | 0:47:53 | 0:47:56 | |
HE LAUGHS That was another dead giveaway! | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
You know, put as little information as possible. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:01 | |
Then parade them as pre-release and mix them in with the Jamaican stuff, | 0:48:04 | 0:48:10 | |
and very often they passed off as that. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
That was definitely the way of getting our music played on sound systems. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:18 | |
To decide which pre-releases would become hits, | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
sound systems used the old Jamaican tradition of bare-knuckle competition. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:28 | |
It's like, you know, Mike Tyson fighting Lennox Lewis. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:32 | |
People pay to see and people want to go | 0:48:32 | 0:48:36 | |
because they don't know what the outcome's going to be, but they go. | 0:48:36 | 0:48:40 | |
You know, the sound system clashes, it's the same kind of thing. | 0:48:40 | 0:48:45 | |
They want to see who's going to play the best music on the night. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
The most powerful and respected sounds were Jah Shaka, Coxsone and Saxon. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:56 | |
Each sound had its own partisan following and its own DJs. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:03 | |
We were always looking to Jamaica, | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
but when Saxon came along, you know what I mean, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
Jamaica started to look to us, which was never done before. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:16 | |
There was a new confidence and a sense of home-grown identity | 0:49:18 | 0:49:22 | |
to the British sounds coming out of the black communities in areas like Brixton. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:27 | |
Perhaps British reggae's most distinctive voice in the late '70s was Linton Kwesi Johnson, | 0:49:28 | 0:49:34 | |
who pioneered a distinctively British dub poetry. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
# Ganja crawling creeping through my brain | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
# The cold light's hurting and breaking and hurting | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
# Fire in the head and the dread beat bleeding, beating | 0:49:44 | 0:49:48 | |
# Fire, dread... # | 0:49:48 | 0:49:50 | |
Dread is dread, dread is fear. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
Dread is a kind of terror. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:54 | |
Dread Beat An' Blood is kind of a metaphor | 0:49:56 | 0:50:00 | |
for the tension and the violence that were part of... | 0:50:00 | 0:50:06 | |
that culture of resistance | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
to which reggae was so essential. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:10 | |
His record Dread Beat An' Blood absolutely knocked us for six. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:15 | |
It was his delivery, his words were so clever, the beats, it was so understated. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:21 | |
It was like nothing you'd ever heard before. He was like a god to us. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:25 | |
I don't begin with a piece of music. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:32 | |
I begin with the word. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:34 | |
The language of the verse I write | 0:50:34 | 0:50:36 | |
will determine the rhythm of the music. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:38 | |
I hear music in language, so that... | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
in a poem like, for example, It Noh Funny, I say, | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
"Dem wi' tek chance," and that's exactly what the bass plays. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:55 | |
Da-da-DUH-da. | 0:50:55 | 0:50:57 | |
And the horn section will play the same rhythm as well. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
That was my aesthetic - | 0:51:02 | 0:51:04 | |
that I wanted to write verse that sounded like a bass line. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
I wanted to write lines of poetry that sounded like a reggae bass line. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:12 | |
The mix of instrumental sounds, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:16 | |
the bass and echo effects in Dread Beat An' Blood, | 0:51:16 | 0:51:19 | |
were the result of an unusual partnership. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
The great thing about dub is that | 0:51:31 | 0:51:33 | |
it's the engineer's art, | 0:51:33 | 0:51:37 | |
it's what the sound engineer does. | 0:51:37 | 0:51:39 | |
It's the deconstruction of a piece of music | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
and its reconstruction as an act of illusion. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:53 | |
By act of illusion, I mean you have a spatial dimension, | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
which is created with echoes and reverbs. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
British dub is quite a lot different to its Jamaican counterpart. | 0:52:11 | 0:52:17 | |
Quite a lot of young British people like the fact that | 0:52:19 | 0:52:24 | |
the echoes will take them into a different world, you know. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:29 | |
You could hear your favourite song mashed up. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
It was like making scrambled eggs. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
Bovell's first experience of this musical bricolage | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
didn't come from Jamaica, but from an album he had at home. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:45 | |
I thought that the first dub I'd heard was Jimi Hendrix, | 0:52:45 | 0:52:51 | |
a song called Third Stone From The Sun. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
The amount of echo on the guitars and the sound effects in there | 0:52:54 | 0:52:59 | |
were positively the first sort of dubbing I heard. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
Then to find that creeping into reggae, it was like, "Yeah!" | 0:53:02 | 0:53:08 | |
It was this mixture of early influences from pop records, school friends and sound systems | 0:53:11 | 0:53:16 | |
that would earn him the title Godfather Of British Dub. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
Dub sounds became part of the musical mix for many British rock and punk bands at that time. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:35 | |
Police came along and turned reggae into rock and roll, | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
by adopting the Jimi Hendrix Experience style | 0:53:45 | 0:53:51 | |
of a three-piece band - drums, bass and guitar - | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
and, em, playing reggae. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
# Dreaming dreams of what used to be | 0:53:59 | 0:54:02 | |
# When she left I was cold inside... # | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
'We completely...' | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
bastardised reggae. We plundered it without remorse. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:12 | |
We took from it what was useful to us, but we made no attempt to repackage it | 0:54:12 | 0:54:18 | |
and deliver it back unto the people, which would have been false. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:21 | |
The Police began life as a punk-reggae band in 1977 with an agenda all their own. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:29 | |
Roxanne, off their first album, became their signature tune. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:34 | |
# I've loved you since I knew you | 0:54:36 | 0:54:37 | |
# I wouldn't talk down to you | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
# I have to tell you just how I feel... # | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
The first time I heard Roxanne, I heard Sting come up with this song | 0:54:48 | 0:54:53 | |
and he had it as a sort of bossa nova with the chords going... | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
HE PLAYS BOSSA-NOVA STYLE GUITAR CHORDS | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
So it was very soft and a kind of sexy song. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
"Yeah, really nice. But bossa nova? This is the punk scene. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
"We're going to get killed!" | 0:55:13 | 0:55:14 | |
We started to sort of change it around. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:18 | |
We were sort of being influenced by reggae at that point, | 0:55:18 | 0:55:21 | |
to see if there was some way we could change the drumming. | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
And so we reggae-fied this bossa nova tune that he had written. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
And it's not even real reggae. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
Andy Summers, his guitar part, is not the up-chick, it's the downbeat. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:35 | |
He plays one, two, three, four, chick, chick, chick. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:38 | |
And that locks the whole thing together. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
So with the straight four on the bar guitar | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
and the drums doing this kind of reggae feeling | 0:55:49 | 0:55:52 | |
and the bass line going with that - dum-DUM, da-da-da, dum-DUM, da-da-da. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
# ..Oh, Roxanne, oh | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
# Oh, Roxanne, oh-oh... # | 0:56:00 | 0:56:03 | |
We tried to be as mercenary as possible | 0:56:03 | 0:56:08 | |
because we want to conquer the world, but actually we can't resist | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
playing with this thing that really is fascinating us and turns us on | 0:56:11 | 0:56:15 | |
and we find this new rhythmic formula, | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
which applies to Sting's new-found ability to write fancy chords | 0:56:18 | 0:56:23 | |
and with a guitarist who can play them. | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
It was like candy for us. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
Here we go. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:36 | |
# ..Roxanne | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 | |
# You don't have to put on the red light | 0:56:38 | 0:56:42 | |
# Those days are over | 0:56:43 | 0:56:45 | |
# You don't have to sell your body to the night | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
# Roxanne... # | 0:56:48 | 0:56:50 | |
At the same time, there was a little group of mainly Midlands bands, | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
digging further back into Jamaican history. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
In Coventry, they were reinventing the sound of the '60s. | 0:56:59 | 0:57:03 | |
2 Tone were a kind of musical commune that included Selecter, The Beat and Madness. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:11 | |
They injected old-school Jamaican ska with a new punk energy. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:17 | |
The 2 Tone guys, they were from Coventry, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:20 | |
and Jerry Dammers, the maestro who pulled that all together, which was the weirdest thing. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:25 | |
I never got to know Jerry at all. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
Some of the other guys, yeah, | 0:57:28 | 0:57:29 | |
but Jerry seemed like a complete mastermind. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
I don't know what part of his brain was working, but some part clearly was in focus. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:37 | |
I'd say we were the beginning of the imitation generation, you know. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:42 | |
At least we were one of the first to do it. | 0:57:42 | 0:57:44 | |
We were like The Jam. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:45 | |
It was like imitating the past, but in real life. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
This was our inspiration. | 0:57:52 | 0:57:54 | |
'It would be really hard to say why retro culture happened, | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
'but it did and it was exciting. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:01 | |
'I think it was good' | 0:58:01 | 0:58:03 | |
from the point of view that it probably... | 0:58:03 | 0:58:05 | |
introduced a younger generation into that music. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:09 | |
You go and find the originals and it's like, "Oh, that's what it's about." | 0:58:09 | 0:58:14 | |
Then those originals lead you on to something else. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:17 | |
They're like stepping stones, I think. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
I think 2 Tone was important from that point of view, you know. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:23 | |
The ska that we played was very different. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:31 | |
We didn't really know how to play Jamaican ska properly. | 0:58:31 | 0:58:35 | |
If you listen to it, it's actually a strange fusion | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
of bits of skinhead style, bits of Mod style, bits of Jamaican rude-boy style. | 0:58:38 | 0:58:44 | |
Mixing it and matching it and... | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
creating something, which never actually happened in the first place exactly. | 0:58:47 | 0:58:51 | |
# Now you're on your own | 0:59:13 | 0:59:16 | |
# I won't return Forever you will wait... # | 0:59:17 | 0:59:24 | |
There are, I believe, periods of huge energy and change. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:30 | |
I think youth always needs something to kick against | 0:59:30 | 0:59:35 | |
and if the political climate feels more oppressive to them, | 0:59:35 | 0:59:38 | |
they will kick harder and something bigger and better will grow out of it. | 0:59:38 | 0:59:43 | |
# Call me immature Call me a poser | 0:59:43 | 0:59:47 | |
# I'll put manure in your bed of roses | 0:59:47 | 0:59:49 | |
# Don't bother me Don't bother me... # | 0:59:49 | 0:59:52 | |
In a way, The Specials were playing out the kind of... | 0:59:56 | 0:59:59 | |
drama of British society on the stage, you know. | 0:59:59 | 1:00:03 | |
That was part of the concept. | 1:00:03 | 1:00:06 | |
# You done too much Much too young | 1:00:06 | 1:00:08 | |
# You're married with a kid when you could be having fun... # | 1:00:08 | 1:00:12 | |
2 Tone. I think that we were using elements | 1:00:12 | 1:00:17 | |
of that time of what Jamaican reggae artists and Jamaican ska artists | 1:00:17 | 1:00:22 | |
like Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, all those kind of people, | 1:00:22 | 1:00:25 | |
and The Skatalites were doing, but we were really of the punk generation. | 1:00:25 | 1:00:31 | |
Recycle it, OK? | 1:00:31 | 1:00:34 | |
Three Minute Hero was about | 1:00:38 | 1:00:42 | |
what it was like to have a job clocking on and just living, in a way, just for the weekend. | 1:00:42 | 1:00:48 | |
# They asked you if you're all right | 1:00:48 | 1:00:52 | |
# You said yes | 1:00:52 | 1:00:54 | |
# But all the time you know | 1:00:55 | 1:00:58 | |
# It's a mess | 1:00:59 | 1:01:00 | |
# It's 5pm and you're on your way home | 1:01:00 | 1:01:04 | |
# It's just another day with that endless grey drone | 1:01:04 | 1:01:07 | |
# Three minute hero, I wanna be... # | 1:01:07 | 1:01:10 | |
It was possible for us to use political lyrics with that kind of music and still keep it high energy. | 1:01:12 | 1:01:20 | |
Pauline's band, The Selecter added the strongest punk stamp to this 60s retro-culture. | 1:01:22 | 1:01:27 | |
They toured the country alongside The Specials, with high-energy songs like On My Radio. | 1:01:27 | 1:01:33 | |
On My Radio showcased the vocals because of the very high... | 1:01:40 | 1:01:45 | |
(HIGH-PITCHED) # On my radio... # business going on. | 1:01:45 | 1:01:47 | |
It sort of sounded a bit like Kate Bush crossed with, I don't know, Millie Small, | 1:01:47 | 1:01:54 | |
crossed with some other kind of reggae thing that was going on. | 1:01:54 | 1:01:57 | |
# On my radio... # | 1:02:00 | 1:02:02 | |
'It had all the ingredients of a quirky pop song | 1:02:03 | 1:02:07 | |
'and people loved it.' | 1:02:07 | 1:02:09 | |
# On my radio, my radio My radio... # | 1:02:09 | 1:02:14 | |
With 2 Tone at the time of the ska revival, I always found there was | 1:02:14 | 1:02:18 | |
a closer connection with punk than there was with ska. | 1:02:18 | 1:02:21 | |
It was like what would normally be a punk band | 1:02:21 | 1:02:24 | |
would get up there and play an offbeat | 1:02:24 | 1:02:26 | |
and suddenly you've got something that sounds vaguely like ska. | 1:02:26 | 1:02:29 | |
None of us was really interested in being part of what was effectively | 1:02:29 | 1:02:34 | |
just a ska revival. | 1:02:34 | 1:02:36 | |
To start playing ska was like taking two steps backwards. | 1:02:36 | 1:02:40 | |
We wanted something a little bit more long lasting. | 1:02:40 | 1:02:44 | |
# He wields his flute with an expert hand | 1:02:46 | 1:02:50 | |
# Then, all too soon... # | 1:02:50 | 1:02:52 | |
The band that would take '70s reggae into the pop charts for the next 30 years | 1:02:52 | 1:02:57 | |
was a bunch of Birmingham lads. | 1:02:57 | 1:03:00 | |
We called ourselves a jazz dub reggae band when we started. | 1:03:03 | 1:03:08 | |
But we wanted to make reggae music, you know. It was important to us. | 1:03:10 | 1:03:16 | |
It wasn't going to be Jamaican reggae, you know, because we were | 1:03:16 | 1:03:20 | |
a British band and we wanted to make British reggae, like a hybrid. | 1:03:20 | 1:03:23 | |
# There are murders that we must account for | 1:03:23 | 1:03:28 | |
# Bloody deeds have been done in my name | 1:03:28 | 1:03:33 | |
# Criminal acts I must pay for | 1:03:33 | 1:03:36 | |
# And our children will shoulder the blame | 1:03:36 | 1:03:40 | |
# I'm a British subject I'm proud of it | 1:03:40 | 1:03:45 | |
# While I carry the burden of shame | 1:03:45 | 1:03:49 | |
# I'm a British subject and I'm proud of it | 1:03:49 | 1:03:54 | |
# While I carry the burden of shame... # | 1:03:54 | 1:03:58 | |
Our environment totally shaped who we were. | 1:04:01 | 1:04:04 | |
I think if you went to Balsall Heath, | 1:04:07 | 1:04:11 | |
which is where most of us grew up, | 1:04:11 | 1:04:13 | |
and grabbed eight guys off the street, they'd look pretty much like us. | 1:04:13 | 1:04:18 | |
The same kind of racial mix. | 1:04:18 | 1:04:21 | |
We were immediately more attractive, I think, to a British audience because we were mixed. | 1:04:21 | 1:04:28 | |
As far as our image goes, we had no image. We just wear what we wore anyway. | 1:04:28 | 1:04:36 | |
We weren't into dressing up in uniforms and suits and whatever. | 1:04:36 | 1:04:42 | |
What you see is what you get. | 1:04:42 | 1:04:44 | |
We were called UB40 | 1:04:44 | 1:04:46 | |
because we were all signing on at the time. | 1:04:46 | 1:04:49 | |
A friend of ours suggested the name when we were trying to think of a name. | 1:04:49 | 1:04:53 | |
He said, "You've all got UB40 cards, why not call yourselves UB40?" | 1:04:53 | 1:04:58 | |
It was honest, as well, because we really did come from that. | 1:04:58 | 1:05:02 | |
Without taking dole money we'd never have been able to afford to rehearse. | 1:05:02 | 1:05:06 | |
We'd have had to get a job. We were actually in the middle of that. | 1:05:06 | 1:05:10 | |
It wasn't something we took from the outside hoping we might attract an audience. | 1:05:10 | 1:05:15 | |
We were responding to the circumstances we were in. | 1:05:15 | 1:05:19 | |
So, obviously, when we made our first album, it was just a natural progression to call it Signing Off | 1:05:19 | 1:05:26 | |
because we weren't signing on any more. | 1:05:26 | 1:05:28 | |
It was a facsimile of the UB40 card. | 1:05:28 | 1:05:31 | |
It was pretty clever because it gave us three million card-carrying fans instantly! | 1:05:31 | 1:05:37 | |
It sold eight million copies, you know. | 1:05:45 | 1:05:47 | |
For an album made in a bedsit, that was pretty good going. | 1:05:47 | 1:05:51 | |
# Refugee without a home | 1:05:52 | 1:05:55 | |
# A housewife hooked on Valium | 1:05:55 | 1:05:56 | |
# I'm a pensioner alone | 1:05:56 | 1:05:58 | |
# I'm a cancer-ridden spectre that's covering the earth | 1:05:58 | 1:06:02 | |
# I'm another hungry baby I'm an accident of birth | 1:06:02 | 1:06:07 | |
-# One in ten -A number on a list | 1:06:07 | 1:06:10 | |
-# One in ten -Even though I don't exist... # | 1:06:10 | 1:06:14 | |
To us, reggae didn't represent palm trees and beaches, it represented the inner city. | 1:06:14 | 1:06:19 | |
When I heard reggae music, that's the image I picture in my own head. | 1:06:19 | 1:06:24 | |
By the dawn of the '80s, new-wave reggae from 2 Tone to UB40 was taking on Thatcher's Britain. | 1:06:30 | 1:06:36 | |
# Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town? | 1:06:39 | 1:06:44 | |
# We danced and sang as the music played in any boomtown... # | 1:06:46 | 1:06:50 | |
We were touring the country. | 1:06:55 | 1:06:57 | |
Margaret Thatcher was busy closing down huge swathes | 1:06:57 | 1:07:02 | |
of British industry because they weren't profitable. | 1:07:02 | 1:07:05 | |
She was like...Al Capone, I would guess. | 1:07:05 | 1:07:09 | |
Because her mob weren't getting paid she was going to shut them all down. | 1:07:09 | 1:07:13 | |
That's what happened. We were touring the country and we could literally see it happening. | 1:07:13 | 1:07:17 | |
# This town is becoming like a ghost town | 1:07:19 | 1:07:23 | |
# Why must the youth fight against themselves? # | 1:07:23 | 1:07:25 | |
Ghost Town just captured what was happening | 1:07:25 | 1:07:27 | |
all over England at the same time. | 1:07:27 | 1:07:29 | |
It was all closing down. | 1:07:31 | 1:07:33 | |
Your local corner shops were closing down. | 1:07:33 | 1:07:36 | |
Dance halls getting closed down. | 1:07:38 | 1:07:40 | |
It meant something to you. | 1:07:40 | 1:07:42 | |
In Ghost Town... | 1:07:53 | 1:07:55 | |
I got a good solo in Ghost Town. | 1:07:55 | 1:07:58 | |
I think I did everything in that solo. | 1:07:58 | 1:08:01 | |
I was talking about suffering, I was talking about goodness. | 1:08:01 | 1:08:05 | |
If you listen to that solo, you hear everything that you like to hear in music. | 1:08:05 | 1:08:10 | |
I play my trombone to speak for all those who cannot speak | 1:08:14 | 1:08:17 | |
and because I have the opportunity to be there. | 1:08:17 | 1:08:21 | |
We know oppression very well. | 1:08:28 | 1:08:30 | |
We know oppression very well. | 1:08:30 | 1:08:32 | |
The death of Bob Marley, reggae's only superstar, saw him given a state funeral in Jamaica in 1981. | 1:08:57 | 1:09:05 | |
# I need strength to make my own way... # | 1:09:11 | 1:09:15 | |
The British roots bands that had once built themselves in Marley's image | 1:09:16 | 1:09:20 | |
now found they were losing the support of their record companies and their audience. | 1:09:20 | 1:09:24 | |
These bands - Aswad, Matumbi, | 1:09:29 | 1:09:33 | |
had gone...slower reggae and a bit more political. | 1:09:33 | 1:09:39 | |
And the...fun had gone out of reggae for a lot of those bands. | 1:09:41 | 1:09:47 | |
It was serious music now. | 1:09:47 | 1:09:49 | |
But the BBC playlists mostly remained a no-go area for reggae artists. | 1:09:50 | 1:09:56 | |
It's the brotherhood of flower pots. That's it. | 1:09:56 | 1:09:58 | |
'The industry still did not gravitate or cotton on to reggae music | 1:09:58 | 1:10:02 | |
'in its proper context.' | 1:10:02 | 1:10:05 | |
Music was still not played on the airwaves. | 1:10:05 | 1:10:08 | |
It still wasn't publicised in newspapers. | 1:10:08 | 1:10:12 | |
Interviews were still pretty much secluded to | 1:10:12 | 1:10:15 | |
the black community papers. | 1:10:15 | 1:10:17 | |
I can remember record company... | 1:10:17 | 1:10:20 | |
individuals saying to me, "Look, Michael, | 1:10:20 | 1:10:23 | |
"the audience likes to buy itself." | 1:10:23 | 1:10:26 | |
"What do you mean?" "You don't look like the audience." | 1:10:26 | 1:10:28 | |
# Red, red wine | 1:10:28 | 1:10:32 | |
# Goes to my head... # | 1:10:33 | 1:10:36 | |
Bands like UB40 we saw as cashing in | 1:10:36 | 1:10:40 | |
on all that hard work that we'd done to bring British reggae to a point | 1:10:40 | 1:10:46 | |
where we could exploit it, only to be superseded by what we thought at the time | 1:10:46 | 1:10:53 | |
was a more pastel, a weaker version, a commercial version of what we were doing. | 1:10:53 | 1:11:01 | |
# All I can do, I've done... # | 1:11:01 | 1:11:06 | |
I think there are some bands that think white guys | 1:11:06 | 1:11:10 | |
shouldn't be playing reggae and that we've stolen their music. | 1:11:10 | 1:11:15 | |
But they're as English as we are, you know. | 1:11:15 | 1:11:17 | |
# I'd have thought | 1:11:17 | 1:11:20 | |
# That with time... # | 1:11:20 | 1:11:23 | |
As the '80s unfolded, reggae moved away from its earlier militancy. | 1:11:23 | 1:11:28 | |
UB40 now did an about-turn and paid tribute to the softer | 1:11:28 | 1:11:33 | |
classic hits of the early '70s that had inspired them to play reggae in the first place. | 1:11:33 | 1:11:38 | |
# Red, red wine | 1:11:38 | 1:11:41 | |
# Stay close to me... # | 1:11:43 | 1:11:46 | |
Labour Of love, which was the album we'd wanted to do | 1:11:46 | 1:11:50 | |
from the beginning but everyone in this industry had gone, | 1:11:50 | 1:11:53 | |
"You can't do that, you mustn't do that. | 1:11:53 | 1:11:55 | |
"It would be commercial suicide." | 1:11:55 | 1:11:57 | |
And, of course, | 1:11:57 | 1:11:59 | |
as is usually the case, the opposite turned out to be the truth. | 1:11:59 | 1:12:04 | |
It turned out to be another stroke of accidental genius. | 1:12:04 | 1:12:07 | |
There was a more romantic British reggae evolving in the black community too, | 1:12:11 | 1:12:17 | |
for dressing-up, for feeling good, for a fun night out. | 1:12:17 | 1:12:20 | |
They called it lovers' rock. | 1:12:20 | 1:12:22 | |
We understand lovers' rock is similar to rock steady | 1:12:23 | 1:12:29 | |
but it's English style. | 1:12:29 | 1:12:31 | |
It's laid back. | 1:12:31 | 1:12:33 | |
The lyrics are a bit more soppy, know what I mean? | 1:12:33 | 1:12:38 | |
That's it, really. | 1:12:38 | 1:12:39 | |
But people love it. | 1:12:39 | 1:12:41 | |
It's love songs with a difference. | 1:12:41 | 1:12:45 | |
# Cos if I keep on seeing you, baby | 1:12:45 | 1:12:48 | |
# You're gonna make me feel so blue... # | 1:12:48 | 1:12:51 | |
Lovers' rock is... | 1:12:53 | 1:12:55 | |
one of the British-created vibes in reggae music. | 1:12:55 | 1:13:00 | |
You can be a revolutionary, you can be a soldier, but a soldier needs to come home to the family. | 1:13:00 | 1:13:06 | |
A soldier needs love, the same way. | 1:13:06 | 1:13:08 | |
It was time to dance with your girl, | 1:13:08 | 1:13:11 | |
whereas when you listen to the roots stuff, | 1:13:11 | 1:13:16 | |
it was chanting down Babylon on your own, basically, dancing on your own. | 1:13:16 | 1:13:20 | |
With lovers' rock, it was where you found yourself a girl to hold close | 1:13:20 | 1:13:25 | |
and dance to. | 1:13:25 | 1:13:27 | |
You dressed up to make an impression, right? | 1:13:27 | 1:13:30 | |
And if you knew someone who sang that tune, oh, you were famous. | 1:13:30 | 1:13:34 | |
It's a whole lifestyle, a lifestyle. | 1:13:34 | 1:13:38 | |
Just like the rasta and the roots culture was a lifestyle. | 1:13:38 | 1:13:42 | |
Lovers' rock IS the British sound. | 1:13:42 | 1:13:45 | |
Lovers' rock is the British sound of reggae. | 1:13:45 | 1:13:48 | |
From the days when people said "You cannot make reggae in London. | 1:13:50 | 1:13:54 | |
"You have to go to Jamaica, to get the feel." | 1:13:56 | 1:13:58 | |
In England, artists WERE the producers. | 1:13:59 | 1:14:03 | |
# Girl, you, high up above | 1:14:03 | 1:14:09 | |
# Girl | 1:14:09 | 1:14:10 | |
# You are high up... # | 1:14:10 | 1:14:12 | |
British-based musicians were honing their musical and business skills. | 1:14:12 | 1:14:17 | |
In our case, we played our own studio, right. | 1:14:18 | 1:14:24 | |
We didn't have some executive. That's why we fell out with Trojan. | 1:14:24 | 1:14:27 | |
Trojan wanted us to do cover versions of songs. | 1:14:27 | 1:14:30 | |
So a pop song would come out and they'd go, "That's it. | 1:14:30 | 1:14:33 | |
"That's your next assignment. Reggae version of that, please. Thank you." | 1:14:33 | 1:14:38 | |
And then, someone else would cop all the publishing, you know. | 1:14:38 | 1:14:44 | |
We wanted to write and produce our own material and it came out that way. | 1:14:44 | 1:14:51 | |
Though lovers' rock was mostly sung by women for a female audience, | 1:14:56 | 1:15:00 | |
the production was still handled by men. | 1:15:00 | 1:15:02 | |
All the producers were male. | 1:15:04 | 1:15:06 | |
I dared to have an opinion, which I did often. | 1:15:06 | 1:15:09 | |
-Well, yeah. -And I would... -..fall out with people! | 1:15:09 | 1:15:12 | |
-Fall out of favour very quickly, to have an opinion. -Yeah. | 1:15:12 | 1:15:15 | |
And I did often find that I'd have to filter my opinion through a male, | 1:15:15 | 1:15:19 | |
to have it realised. It was about the track, wasn't it? | 1:15:19 | 1:15:23 | |
Yeah, it was about the track, then by the time you got to the vocals, | 1:15:23 | 1:15:27 | |
it was like near the ending of the session | 1:15:27 | 1:15:29 | |
and then you'd have the producer... | 1:15:29 | 1:15:31 | |
"Time is money!" And it's like, | 1:15:31 | 1:15:33 | |
I want to get everything perfect, | 1:15:33 | 1:15:35 | |
but there's never enough time to get everything perfect. | 1:15:35 | 1:15:38 | |
The studio time used to cost so much money back in the day, | 1:15:38 | 1:15:41 | |
so you sing a harmony and think, "That's not right. | 1:15:41 | 1:15:44 | |
"I need to do it again." He's like... | 1:15:44 | 1:15:46 | |
My first track, the first record that came out, was a demo. | 1:15:46 | 1:15:50 | |
I just went in there to try out. | 1:15:50 | 1:15:52 | |
And I'm thinking, "Ooh, that sounds familiar" and I came down | 1:15:58 | 1:16:01 | |
and I thought, "That's me, that's my song!" And it was on the radio. | 1:16:01 | 1:16:06 | |
-The next day. -And I hadn't even had a chance to go back and review it and make sure it was in tune. | 1:16:06 | 1:16:11 | |
I was just sketching it. | 1:16:11 | 1:16:12 | |
# Ooh | 1:16:12 | 1:16:16 | |
# When I'm in love | 1:16:16 | 1:16:22 | |
# Oh, baby | 1:16:22 | 1:16:25 | |
# When I'm in love | 1:16:25 | 1:16:29 | |
# I'm hopelessly in love... # | 1:16:31 | 1:16:36 | |
I think what... I think for you, I mean, because Janet came before me, I was inspired | 1:16:36 | 1:16:40 | |
by Janet, so I remember seeing Janet do Silly Games on Top Of The Pops and thinking, "Oh, that's fantastic. | 1:16:40 | 1:16:48 | |
I could do that. | 1:16:48 | 1:16:49 | |
# You're as much to blame | 1:16:52 | 1:16:55 | |
# Because I know you feel the same | 1:16:55 | 1:16:59 | |
# I can see it in the eyes | 1:16:59 | 1:17:06 | |
# But I've got no time | 1:17:07 | 1:17:10 | |
# To live this lie | 1:17:10 | 1:17:14 | |
# No, I've got no time | 1:17:15 | 1:17:18 | |
# To play your silly games... # | 1:17:18 | 1:17:23 | |
It was still rare for black British reggae artists to appear on Top Of The Pops. | 1:17:23 | 1:17:27 | |
Some things hadn't changed in a decade. | 1:17:27 | 1:17:30 | |
# Silly games. # | 1:17:30 | 1:17:35 | |
When I recorded Silly Games again, Silly Games was recorded in the same way that Caroll and I spoke about, | 1:17:35 | 1:17:42 | |
in that you'd go into the studio, you'd do a tune, you don't know what's going to happen. | 1:17:42 | 1:17:47 | |
You just go in there. It was played by the sound systems for a while. | 1:17:47 | 1:17:51 | |
And it circulated in the community for about six months | 1:17:51 | 1:17:57 | |
before it actually got into the British charts. | 1:17:57 | 1:18:01 | |
We didn't even know how many albums or how many singles we'd actually sell, | 1:18:01 | 1:18:05 | |
so we didn't know how many hearts we'd actually touched. | 1:18:05 | 1:18:08 | |
Lovers rock suffered from reggae's old problems. | 1:18:11 | 1:18:15 | |
It was a cottage industry, dependent on the sound systems for distribution, | 1:18:15 | 1:18:19 | |
with little or no support from the mainstream pop record business. | 1:18:19 | 1:18:23 | |
The effects of reggae music, | 1:18:26 | 1:18:27 | |
as becoming pop music in the '80s, didn't really affect me, | 1:18:27 | 1:18:33 | |
because...I wasn't really invited into that world. | 1:18:33 | 1:18:39 | |
That was a record company push, that was like Virgin and EMI and the rest of them. | 1:18:39 | 1:18:44 | |
They weren't really interested in looking at black talent involved in reggae industry. | 1:18:44 | 1:18:48 | |
We weren't really invited to that party. | 1:18:48 | 1:18:51 | |
Lovers rock... In a funny sort of way, | 1:18:51 | 1:18:55 | |
it was reggae music that didn't frighten white people! | 1:18:55 | 1:18:58 | |
Safe to say, isn't it? | 1:18:58 | 1:19:00 | |
It was kind of, "Oh, this is nice. "You can dance to this", you know? | 1:19:00 | 1:19:04 | |
# Do you really want to hurt me? | 1:19:04 | 1:19:09 | |
# Do you really... # | 1:19:09 | 1:19:10 | |
George's debt to lovers rock was obvious in Culture Club's first big hit. | 1:19:10 | 1:19:14 | |
# Do you really want to hurt me? | 1:19:14 | 1:19:18 | |
# Do you really want to make me cry? # | 1:19:18 | 1:19:23 | |
But tabloid critics remained sceptical of George's dread credentials. | 1:19:23 | 1:19:27 | |
White people have always seemed to have a problem with me doing reggae. Not black people. | 1:19:29 | 1:19:33 | |
Black people say, "It's a nice tune, you can sing reggae good." I always get complimented. | 1:19:33 | 1:19:38 | |
White people seem to have a problem. I remember the first review that we | 1:19:38 | 1:19:42 | |
ever got for Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? | 1:19:42 | 1:19:44 | |
They said it was "fourth division, Kathy Kirby, watered-down reggae. | 1:19:44 | 1:19:48 | |
"The only think Culture Club have got going for then is the hideously unphotogenic Boy George. | 1:19:48 | 1:19:53 | |
I still remember it, word-for-word. | 1:19:53 | 1:19:55 | |
# You've been talking but believe me | 1:19:56 | 1:19:58 | |
# If it's true you do not know | 1:20:00 | 1:20:04 | |
# This boy loves without a reason | 1:20:05 | 1:20:09 | |
# I'm prepared to let you go | 1:20:09 | 1:20:13 | |
# If it's love you want from me... # | 1:20:13 | 1:20:17 | |
Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? was actually written as | 1:20:17 | 1:20:20 | |
the B-side of quite a famous reggae record. | 1:20:20 | 1:20:22 | |
I remember turning it over and playing the kind of dub version | 1:20:22 | 1:20:25 | |
and coming up with a kind of melody idea and then Mikey coming up with that brilliant baseline, | 1:20:25 | 1:20:30 | |
which one of the most memorable things about the song. | 1:20:30 | 1:20:33 | |
# Do you really want to hurt me? # | 1:20:33 | 1:20:38 | |
The reggae thing crept into a lot of what we did, you know, as a band. | 1:20:38 | 1:20:43 | |
We were a multicultural band. | 1:20:43 | 1:20:45 | |
It was a big thing for us. | 1:20:45 | 1:20:47 | |
# Don't put your head on my shoulder | 1:20:47 | 1:20:52 | |
# Sing me in a river of tears | 1:20:52 | 1:20:55 | |
# This could be... # | 1:20:55 | 1:20:57 | |
But I loved what we became. It was much more fun, much more exciting, kind of mixing | 1:20:57 | 1:21:03 | |
genres around and just sort of throwing them into a big pot and seeing what came out. | 1:21:03 | 1:21:08 | |
# Your time is precious, I know... # | 1:21:08 | 1:21:10 | |
The new-wave British bands adapted their image for videos, designed for teenage MTV audiences. | 1:21:13 | 1:21:19 | |
The Police dyed their hair blonde and took reggae into the rock video stratosphere. | 1:21:26 | 1:21:30 | |
# Walking on the moon | 1:21:30 | 1:21:32 | |
# I hope my leg don't break... # | 1:21:34 | 1:21:37 | |
'We were' | 1:21:37 | 1:21:38 | |
wearing the flag of convenience. | 1:21:38 | 1:21:41 | |
We were wearing the uniform de jour. | 1:21:41 | 1:21:43 | |
We had the haircut of the day - critical. | 1:21:43 | 1:21:46 | |
# We could be together | 1:21:46 | 1:21:50 | |
# Walking on walking on the moon... # | 1:21:50 | 1:21:55 | |
Well, every band struggles to get an audience. A bigger audience | 1:21:55 | 1:21:59 | |
and bigger and bigger and more and more and, at no time, | 1:21:59 | 1:22:02 | |
I don't think, is there ever a calculation of, "Well, am I now... Is this too much? | 1:22:02 | 1:22:06 | |
"Have I taken this too far? "No, let's take it further." | 1:22:06 | 1:22:09 | |
# This generation | 1:22:10 | 1:22:12 | |
# Rules the nation | 1:22:12 | 1:22:14 | |
# With version... # | 1:22:14 | 1:22:17 | |
The one black band that did briefly go global was Musical Youth. | 1:22:17 | 1:22:20 | |
Five school kids from Birmingham would turn an old reggae song | 1:22:22 | 1:22:26 | |
about smoking ganja into a homily to the cooking pot. | 1:22:26 | 1:22:29 | |
-# -I say -Pass the dutchie 'pon the left-hand side | 1:22:29 | 1:22:34 | |
# Pass the dutchie 'pon the left-hand side, it gonna burn | 1:22:34 | 1:22:37 | |
-# -Give me the music, make me jump and prance -It a' go done. | 1:22:37 | 1:22:41 | |
-# -Give me the music -Do you know? | 1:22:41 | 1:22:44 | |
Musical Youth getting into number one with Pass The Dutchie was... | 1:22:44 | 1:22:47 | |
Well, it was important to me because I made the video. | 1:22:47 | 1:22:50 | |
You've got to understand, this video was shown on Blue Peter | 1:22:50 | 1:22:53 | |
one afternoon and the next day it went to number one. | 1:22:53 | 1:22:56 | |
It was actually on the national news and then went to number one in 18 countries around the world. | 1:22:56 | 1:23:00 | |
# How does it feel when you got no food? # | 1:23:00 | 1:23:03 | |
Apparently, that was the first all-black video on MTV. | 1:23:03 | 1:23:06 | |
# How does it feel when you got no food? | 1:23:06 | 1:23:10 | |
Musical Youth reflected two cultures. | 1:23:10 | 1:23:12 | |
The first was the Jamaican homeland of their parents. | 1:23:12 | 1:23:15 | |
The second was their British upbringing and schooling. | 1:23:15 | 1:23:19 | |
# Give me the music Make me rock in the dance... # | 1:23:19 | 1:23:22 | |
Like the music itself, the twin cultures could now flourish side-by-side. | 1:23:22 | 1:23:26 | |
# Eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one-a | 1:23:27 | 1:23:30 | |
# It's I, Smiley Culture with the mike in my hand-a | 1:23:30 | 1:23:33 | |
# Me come to teach you right | 1:23:33 | 1:23:34 | |
# And not the wrong in the Cockney Translation | 1:23:34 | 1:23:38 | |
# Cockney's not a language It's only a slang-a | 1:23:38 | 1:23:41 | |
# And was originated, yah, so inna England-a | 1:23:41 | 1:23:44 | |
# The first place it was used was over East London | 1:23:44 | 1:23:47 | |
# It was respect for the different-style pronunciation... # | 1:23:47 | 1:23:50 | |
It's two different cultures and I feel that respect's due to both, | 1:23:50 | 1:23:54 | |
because I know both, so I thought that I'd do something | 1:23:54 | 1:23:57 | |
to kind of compliment that. It's looking at what you've got | 1:23:57 | 1:24:00 | |
around you and and making it into a lyrical thing. | 1:24:00 | 1:24:03 | |
# Say Cockney fireshooter We bust gun-a | 1:24:03 | 1:24:06 | |
# The Cockney say tea leaf We just say sticks man-a | 1:24:06 | 1:24:08 | |
# You know them have wedge while we have corn | 1:24:09 | 1:24:11 | |
# The Cockney say, you first, my son, we just say gwan... # | 1:24:11 | 1:24:14 | |
Whatever the lyric was, it was about the lyric and the whole story worked | 1:24:14 | 1:24:18 | |
as a story, as opposed to just having a verse here and a little thin chorus and, | 1:24:18 | 1:24:23 | |
you know, I think now it's more and more coming that way, but I think we were really ahead of our time. | 1:24:23 | 1:24:29 | |
# Rope chain and choparita Me say Cockney call tom-a | 1:24:29 | 1:24:32 | |
# Say cockney say Old Bill We say dutty Babylon... | 1:24:32 | 1:24:35 | |
Great. Not so much reggae, but the music is | 1:24:35 | 1:24:39 | |
definitely reggae-influenced, you know. | 1:24:39 | 1:24:41 | |
Smiley Culture had learned his style of video MC-ing with the | 1:24:44 | 1:24:47 | |
Saxon Sound System, which had been touring the UK since the mid-'70s. | 1:24:47 | 1:24:52 | |
He travelled with Saxon colleagues like Tippa Irie. | 1:24:52 | 1:24:55 | |
You used to just take styles from each other, | 1:24:59 | 1:25:04 | |
but the main thing is that we defeat the other sound, that's stringed up over there. | 1:25:04 | 1:25:08 | |
# No, me humble, me conscientious You know me righteous | 1:25:08 | 1:25:13 | |
# You want me on the ground Please wait, don't rush | 1:25:13 | 1:25:15 | |
# Tippa Irie is life and London blood | 1:25:15 | 1:25:18 | |
# But it's good to have the feeling you're the best... # | 1:25:18 | 1:25:20 | |
It's Good To Have The Feeling is really a lyric | 1:25:20 | 1:25:23 | |
that I wrote about the sound system stacks. | 1:25:23 | 1:25:26 | |
# Yes, it's good to have the feeling you're the best | 1:25:26 | 1:25:28 | |
# Cos I can show the north, south, east and west | 1:25:28 | 1:25:31 | |
# In London and Birmingham Enough to confess... # | 1:25:31 | 1:25:34 | |
But always original, always our own. | 1:25:34 | 1:25:38 | |
We wouldn't follow what they were doing in Jamaica. | 1:25:38 | 1:25:41 | |
# Putting that beat back... # | 1:25:41 | 1:25:45 | |
I think sometimes the understated backbone of British black music is the sound system. | 1:25:45 | 1:25:51 | |
It is reggae. | 1:25:51 | 1:25:53 | |
And we've all evolved out of that | 1:25:53 | 1:25:56 | |
collective experience of reggae in different ways. | 1:25:56 | 1:26:01 | |
It has spawned many sub-genres and many interpretations of it. | 1:26:02 | 1:26:07 | |
One of the best examples of that was Soul II Soul. | 1:26:07 | 1:26:11 | |
Reggae was being marketed for the '80s, packaged appeal to everyone, here and in the USA. | 1:26:12 | 1:26:18 | |
# Because it's all about expression... # | 1:26:18 | 1:26:20 | |
Our idea was based on the sound system. | 1:26:20 | 1:26:24 | |
We came up with an idea of a happy face, a thumping bass for a loving race. | 1:26:24 | 1:26:28 | |
One of our ideas was obviously to take the idea of the dread uptown. | 1:26:28 | 1:26:33 | |
So we were kind of creating a different style, a new myth, as it were. | 1:26:33 | 1:26:37 | |
And the whole effect of us trying to put all of these things into this | 1:26:37 | 1:26:41 | |
incredible melting-pot, which allowed us to be inclusive. | 1:26:41 | 1:26:46 | |
# I think you should come down | 1:26:46 | 1:26:49 | |
# And try to express yourself | 1:26:49 | 1:26:53 | |
# Yourself, be there | 1:26:53 | 1:26:55 | |
# Be there, be there, be there | 1:26:55 | 1:26:58 | |
# Be there I want, I want I want you to be there... # | 1:26:58 | 1:27:01 | |
The culture's blending. | 1:27:03 | 1:27:05 | |
It's merging more. I think that people... | 1:27:05 | 1:27:07 | |
It's hard, like I said, to distinguish between colour | 1:27:07 | 1:27:11 | |
as much any more, even though people kind of want to keep it black and white. I think you can't do that. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:16 | |
I think that it's just not going to happen any more. It's becoming people as opposed to just colour. | 1:27:16 | 1:27:21 | |
# Keep on moving | 1:27:21 | 1:27:26 | |
# Don't stop like | 1:27:26 | 1:27:28 | |
# The hands of time... # | 1:27:28 | 1:27:32 | |
In the 30 years since reggae first arrived here, | 1:27:32 | 1:27:36 | |
it had propelled and reflected many changes in our music and society. | 1:27:36 | 1:27:41 | |
And though reggae, as we knew it, had passed away, its musical descendants survive and flourish. | 1:27:41 | 1:27:47 | |
# This way, yeah | 1:27:51 | 1:27:54 | |
# Keep on moving, don't stop, no | 1:27:54 | 1:27:57 | |
# Keep on moving | 1:27:57 | 1:27:59 | |
# Keep on moving | 1:28:02 | 1:28:03 | |
Keep on moving, don't stop, no | 1:28:05 | 1:28:07 | |
# Keep on moving | 1:28:07 | 1:28:09 | |
# It's so tough | 1:28:14 | 1:28:17 | |
# It's tough today | 1:28:17 | 1:28:19 | |
# The right time is here to stay | 1:28:19 | 1:28:23 | |
# Stay in my life | 1:28:24 | 1:28:26 | |
# My life always... # | 1:28:26 | 1:28:28 |