After a night filled with the sounds and images from the lives of two legends of 20th century music, Woody Guthrie and Roy Orbison, it's inspired an exploration of the music that soundtracks my life but particularly, the influence of reggae.
The progression from Woody Guthrie or Roy Orbison to reggae might seem quite a leap, musically at least. But then both Guthrie and Orbison came from grassroots folk traditions; country music in the case of Orbison and folk music for Guthrie. Both, in turn, fashioned their own, unique style and voice from those foundations.
Reggae music came from a dancehall culture and the ability of Jamaican musicians to fashion their own versions of the American rock and roll, country and Gospel music they picked up from US radio broadcasts in the '50s and '60s.
Two of my favourite reggae versions of classic songs are John Holt's version of Kris Kristofferson's 'Help Me Make it Through the Night' or Toots and the Maytals version of John Denver's 'Country Roads.' But if you dig around, you'll find reggae versions of anything and everything, including Beatles' songs.
My first memory of hearing and seeing reggae performed was watching Millie Small sing 'My Boy Lollipop' on Top of the Pops. That was in 1964, about a year after I'd first seen The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, my two all time favourite bands. Millie's voice was quite shrill and almost childlike, immediately appealing to an impressionable 8 year old but it was the irrepressible dance rhythm that won my heart.
It would be another four or five years before I encountered reggae and this was with the birth of the skinhead movement in England. Now the irony of why a white and racist gang movement from England should champion a musical style from the Caribbean has always confounded me but at least they put reggae back in my consciousness. Songs and artists from this period - the late '60s and early '70s - that stand out for me, are Desmond Dekker with 'The Israelites' and Max Romeo's banned 'Wet Dream.' Then came Bob Andy and Marcia Griffith's cover of an Aretha Franklin song, 'Young, Gifted and Black' that rose to 11 in the charts in 1971 and Derrick Harriot's version of Pete Wingfield's 'Eighteen with a Bullet.'
But it wasn't until 1973 when I first encountered Bob Marley and The Wailers. I was working in a pub in Paddington at the time and on a day off, I took a stroll up to Portobello Road to browse the market stalls. Back then, Notting Hill had a thriving West Indian community and the walk from Praed St to Portobello brought you right through the heart of it. I remember hearing 'No Woman, No Cry', everywhere and I became obsessed by it. My only regret since then is that I missed out on a chance that summer to witness Marley's first shows in London. I did manage to catch the groundbreaking 'The Harder they Come', the first Jamaican reggae movie starring Jimmy Cliff, in a small cinema in Notting Hill and believe me, it was an awakening for a whole raft of reasons.
The following year I landed a copy of Natty Dread, the first album released as Bob Marley and The Wailers. I remember pouring over that album with my friends, a packet of Rizla and a bag of 'erb.
That summer I was working in Denver, Colorado and decided to hitch hike to New York to hook up with my mates from the UCD Freshman football team for a brief tour of New England. On the road I couldn't escape Eric Clapton's version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' which was being played off the air on FM radio stations, coast to coast. Reggae had suddenly hit the big time.
When I got home I discovered the original version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' on Burnin' by The Wailers, released in 1973. It only fuelled my thirst for reggae and the music of Marley and his companions. Soon I had Catch a Fire, the original vinyl version which I own to this day with it's gimmicky Zippo lighter cover. Two years later the band released Rastaman Vibration. But before that I was in London again, working in The Hog in the Pound on Oxford St where I got to know a Jamaican born dancer named Sylvia who danced topless in the basement bar, two nights a week. Sylvia brought me to Jamaican speakeasies and yard parties in Notting Hill where my love and appreciation of reggae music and the culture that surrounded it, blossomed and expanded.
The progression from Woody Guthrie or Roy Orbison to reggae might seem quite a leap, musically at least. But then both Guthrie and Orbison came from grassroots folk traditions; country music in the case of Orbison and folk music for Guthrie. Both, in turn, fashioned their own, unique style and voice from those foundations.
Reggae music came from a dancehall culture and the ability of Jamaican musicians to fashion their own versions of the American rock and roll, country and Gospel music they picked up from US radio broadcasts in the '50s and '60s.
Two of my favourite reggae versions of classic songs are John Holt's version of Kris Kristofferson's 'Help Me Make it Through the Night' or Toots and the Maytals version of John Denver's 'Country Roads.' But if you dig around, you'll find reggae versions of anything and everything, including Beatles' songs.
My first memory of hearing and seeing reggae performed was watching Millie Small sing 'My Boy Lollipop' on Top of the Pops. That was in 1964, about a year after I'd first seen The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, my two all time favourite bands. Millie's voice was quite shrill and almost childlike, immediately appealing to an impressionable 8 year old but it was the irrepressible dance rhythm that won my heart.
It would be another four or five years before I encountered reggae and this was with the birth of the skinhead movement in England. Now the irony of why a white and racist gang movement from England should champion a musical style from the Caribbean has always confounded me but at least they put reggae back in my consciousness. Songs and artists from this period - the late '60s and early '70s - that stand out for me, are Desmond Dekker with 'The Israelites' and Max Romeo's banned 'Wet Dream.' Then came Bob Andy and Marcia Griffith's cover of an Aretha Franklin song, 'Young, Gifted and Black' that rose to 11 in the charts in 1971 and Derrick Harriot's version of Pete Wingfield's 'Eighteen with a Bullet.'
But it wasn't until 1973 when I first encountered Bob Marley and The Wailers. I was working in a pub in Paddington at the time and on a day off, I took a stroll up to Portobello Road to browse the market stalls. Back then, Notting Hill had a thriving West Indian community and the walk from Praed St to Portobello brought you right through the heart of it. I remember hearing 'No Woman, No Cry', everywhere and I became obsessed by it. My only regret since then is that I missed out on a chance that summer to witness Marley's first shows in London. I did manage to catch the groundbreaking 'The Harder they Come', the first Jamaican reggae movie starring Jimmy Cliff, in a small cinema in Notting Hill and believe me, it was an awakening for a whole raft of reasons.
The following year I landed a copy of Natty Dread, the first album released as Bob Marley and The Wailers. I remember pouring over that album with my friends, a packet of Rizla and a bag of 'erb.
That summer I was working in Denver, Colorado and decided to hitch hike to New York to hook up with my mates from the UCD Freshman football team for a brief tour of New England. On the road I couldn't escape Eric Clapton's version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' which was being played off the air on FM radio stations, coast to coast. Reggae had suddenly hit the big time.
When I got home I discovered the original version of 'I Shot the Sheriff' on Burnin' by The Wailers, released in 1973. It only fuelled my thirst for reggae and the music of Marley and his companions. Soon I had Catch a Fire, the original vinyl version which I own to this day with it's gimmicky Zippo lighter cover. Two years later the band released Rastaman Vibration. But before that I was in London again, working in The Hog in the Pound on Oxford St where I got to know a Jamaican born dancer named Sylvia who danced topless in the basement bar, two nights a week. Sylvia brought me to Jamaican speakeasies and yard parties in Notting Hill where my love and appreciation of reggae music and the culture that surrounded it, blossomed and expanded.
After that there was no stopping. I bought albums by u Roy and I Roy, Dillinger, Culture, Max Romeo, The Upsetters, The Heptones and The Abyssinians and countless others. Soon, I could discern ska from rock steady and dub from dancehall. I bought a single by a band called Dirty Work from Belfast, a reggae version of The Rose of Tralee. Then The Stones released Goat's Head Soup, recorded in Jamaica and I took that as a sign. When they followed that with Black and Blue, I knew I was on the right track. Meanwhile, The Wailers' split up after Rastaman Vibration with Bunny Livingston retreating to his Roots and Peter Tosh became more militant. I bought their solo albums and admired The Stones' patronage of my heroes but the real magic lay in Bob. When the first shows were announced for the tour to launch Exodus, I knew I'd be there.
The show was in the old Rainbow Theatre, near Finsbury Park. I met a friend from Belfast the day before the show. We'd met a few months earlier at a Desmond Dekker show in a small club in Dublin, attended by reggae fans and a large group of, by now paunchy and nostalgic, skinheads and suedeheads. Peadar was from Andersonstown and spoke with his own unique accent that was a peculiar blend of Jamaican patois and West Belfast twang. There wasn't a political bone in Peadar's body but he couldn't escape where he came from. He called it 'Babylon' and we both understood what he meant. All he cared about was the music and the two eight foot high cannabis plants he'd grown and nurtured from seed in the back garden of his parents' house in A'town. He was looking forward to going home to harvest. But first, the concert.
The previous eight months had its hardships for Bob Marley, too. The split with his old mates, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, was, by all accounts, acrimonious. Bob had also become entangled in Jamaican domestic politics and he received a near fatal wounding when his Kingston compound was shot up by a rival political gang. He moved to England to record Exodus. Jamaica's loss was the world's gain.
Denim work overalls were a fashion de rigeur in those days, if you were a slave of hippy fashion and not a punk. They were baggy and comfortable and extremely useful for carrying your stash at a concert. Back in those days you could smoke indoors, even in a theatre so before we marched off to the show, we got rolling. I managed to squeeze half a dozen spliffs into the pen and tool pockets, chest height, on my overalls. But when we got to the show, we found the London Met surrounding the theatre in an over the top security response. There was no trouble but when we got to the door, the theatre's security staff were conducting body searches. The 6'4" Jamaican bouncer who patted me down, stopped on my breast pockets to enquire what I had in size. 'Spliffs,' I said. "That's cool, mon," he said with a smile, "we're only searchin' for weapon."
Although the number of white people at the show could fit in a phone booth, there was no trouble and Peadar and I were pleased to find our seat allocation put us in the fourth row, front and centre. The atmosphere of anticipation was electric. And no-one was disappointed. Marley danced onstage in blue denim shirt and matching trousers and for the next two hours he never stood still as, fired by the ground bass sound of Aston 'Family Man' Barrett, the vocal back up of the I Threes and the artful lead guitar work of Junior Murvin, he delivered a master class in reggae music.
Exodus was anticipated to be an opportunity for Marley to rant against the oppression of the political chicanery and thuggery that made him an exile. Instead, it became an international battle cry for reggae music and a paean to peace and love, too. They sang all the classics like No Woman, No Cry, I Shot the Sheriff and a stomping version of Peter Tosh's Get Up, Stand Up but it was the new songs that entranced, thrilled and won over the adoring audience from the title track, Exodus to the pastoral glory of Three Little Birds and the loving lullaby of Waiting in Vain and then the exploratory rootsiness of Natural Mystic and the final statement of One Love, a declaration of intent and purpose.
Four years later, I caught Bob Marley again. This time it was for one of his final shows in Dalymount Park. He was dying of cancer but just as before, he never stopped moving for the show's near two hour length.
In the preceding punk years, Marley brought reggae to a world audience and the music itself blossomed and found new protagonists such as Steel Pulse, Black Uhuru, Aswad and even UB40. The nascent Two Tone movement found its roots in ska through The Specials, The Selecter and The Beat and even punk found inspiration in reggae through, most notably The Clash's recording of Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves and the very obvious influence infused in many of their songs from London Calling and the heavy dub tracks of Sandinista. Punk and Reggae teamed up for many memorable shows in the Rock against Racism movement.
Thirty years later, Jimmy Cliff has brought it all full circle with an incredible interpretation of The Clash's Guns of Brixton on his 2012 release, Rebirth.
In the intervening years reggae has become an international musical dialect, employed with alacrity and enthusiasm by artists throughout the world. And Jimmy Cliff, a man who was in there at the very beginning, is the appropriate spokesman for its long journey through the years. In the song, Reggae Music, he claims his position with the track's spoken opening lines, 'In 1962 in Kingston, Jamaica, I sang my song for Mr Leslie Kong, he said, let's go record it in the style of ska...' and then the chorus, 'Reggae Music gonna make me feel good, reggae music gonna make me feel alright now...'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boPCNaFPrso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfui3DjgfrM&feature=related
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