“He revolutionised his artform, and influenced the wider world in ways still being fathomed.”
A reggae titan and master trickster left the planet on August 29.
“Serious joke, that’s what it is.” LEE ‘SCRATCH’ PERRY
KEITH RICHARDS, Adrian Sherwood and Linton Kwesi Johnson all likened Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry to Salvador Dali. Like the Catalonian surrealist, Scratch rejoiced in outré facial hair, saw the duality of the spiritual and earthly, and moved in the celebrity firmament. But more than Dali, Scratch can be said to have revolutionised his artform, and in revealing the endless possibilities of dub, influenced the wider musical world in ways still being fathomed.
Born in rural Hanover Parish, Jamaica on March 20, 1936, Perry’s mother was an “Ettu queen,” whose spirit dances could be traced back to the Yoruba people of West Africa. He numbered Fats Domino and James Brown as early musical touchstones, telling MOJO that music made him “harder than I was before, making me to be an aggressive person for my rights.”
After working for Kingston producers including Clement
‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd and Joe
Gibbs, Scratch hit big with 1968’s early reggae landmark People
Funny Boy. In 1969, he helmed The Upsetters’ UK Number 5 hit Return
Of Django, and the year after that produced the first of two albums for The Wailers.
Though Scratch was stung by Bob Marley’s defection to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records in 1972 (Scratch was reputed to have had a picture of the Tuff Gong on a dartboard), virtuoso, unique, innovative productions including 1973’s game-changing Upsetters
14 Dub Blackboard Jungle kept flowing out of him. He completed his legendary Black Ark studio at his Washington Gardens home in Kingston in early 1974; in time, the inspiration-over-restriction 4-track set-up would bring forth such preternaturally charged reggae classics as Max Romeo’s War Ina Babylon, Junior Murvin’s Police &
The Upsetters’ Super and The Congos’ Heart Of
several of which were licensed to Island for international release. In London in 1977, he also found time to produce The Clash’s Complete Control.
Yet turmoil was approaching: relations with Island broke down, and decay seized the Black Ark, which was consumed by fire in mid-1983. It is widely believed that the increasingly rum and ganjaaddled producer did the burning himself, to free himself from avaricious hangers on. He moved to London in the mid-’80s and then, at the end of the decade, to Switzerland, where he lived with his wife and manager Mireille Campbell. A vast amount of music would be released over the next three decades – a tireless collaborator, Scratch’s foils included Keith Richards, George Clinton and the Beastie Boys – and while few would compare the results to his golden period, his cosmic riddles were always a joy to hear. In a 2019 encounter, this writer found him to be a walking art installation with a suitcase full of mystic stones, given to gnomic talk of God, Satan and Stan Lee, though his old pal Max Romeo assured MOJO that Scratch always talked to him normally.
“Serious joke, that’s what it is,” Scratch told me, then a hale, clean-living 83. “I am a good man, I am sure of that.”
He released new music in August and was planning to tour the UK in October.
His death, in Jamaica, was sudden. Among many tribute-payers, Scratch co-conspirator Alex Paterson called him “the dub original specialist and chemist of the most high,” adding, “the disco devil has left Babylon.”