David Katz’s introduction to the world of Lee “Scratch” Perry was bewildering. The Jamaican producer had been living in London for several years, and Katz, a music journalist who had fallen in love with reggae as a teenager in San Francisco, had moved to the UK capital in 1987 and wanted to interview the notoriously evasive artist.
Katz tracked him down to a recording studio in Rotherhithe, just over the river in south London. Perry welcomed him before insisting he present him with “13 stones from your country” with no further explanation. When Katz informed him he could hardly just pop back to the west coast, Perry told him to “go down to the River Thames and get me 13 stones!”.
When he returned, Perry counted the rocks then walked over to a TV monitor. “He unscrews the monitor, puts the stones inside, screws it together, and goes back to work,” says Katz. He then spent a few hours with Perry, which involved attempting to mic up an alsatian dog.
The whole thing seemed to be a hazing of Katz – who would later work with Perry on his biography – and an initiation into the production pioneer’s eccentric, inscrutable and utterly unique approach to making music.
As bizarre as Perry’s methods were, they bore spectacular results. Before moving to London, he helped Bob Marley and the Wailers shape their sound on Soul Rebel and Soul Revolution (before a violent bust up over royalties). He produced Super Ape, arguably the most important dub record of all time, and through his own Black Ark studio came up with almost a decade’s worth of peerless roots reggae.
His productions, which featured samples of crying babies, sub-bass low enough to crack a rib and an often overlooked penchant for a beautiful melody, attracted artists from beyond Jamaica who wanted his counsel. The Beastie Boys sought him out, as did the Clash and Keith Richards, while it is said that John Lydon tracked him down at the Black Ark to rework some of the Sex Pistols’ back catalogue, although Lydon’s representatives told me that story is apocryphal.
Five years after his death, as fans try to unpick the lies from the lore, a much-needed reappraisal of reggae’s great eccentric is taking place. Katz’s new book, Dub Revolution, explores the genre through its practitioners such as Perry, and is part of a wave of activity. This year has seen a spate of reissues featuring classic productions, including the Congos’ sensual spiritual, Ark of the Covenant. Another book – illustrated doorstopper Lee “Scratch” Perry: Black Ark – unveils the secrets of Perry’s famed studio; and there’s his “final” album, a collaboration with German electro outfit Mouse on Mars recorded two years before his death.
Perhaps part of the reason for this burst of activity is a desire to truly grasp Perry, an artist who is seen by many in Europe as reggae’s court jester. Towards the end of his life he was often draped in fluorescent clothes, sported dyed red hair and beard, spoke in riddles, and declared himself a “madman”. A lack of quality control during his last decade didn’t help.
There was also his tendency to turn interviews into farce. Krishnan Guru-Murthy famously tried to interview him in 2009. I say try, because he might as well have been talking to a cloud of smoke. Perry delivered his answers in rhyming couplets while intermittently sticking his tongue out, saying things like: “I kill the devil brain, so that the devil can’t reign.” Jools Holland once asked Perry why he’d placed a toaster on top of a breeze block wall in his Jamaican compound. “It means that I’m a toaster,” he replied, deadpan. (Presumably he was referring to “toasting”, or emceeing, but he seemed to enjoy implying that he believed he was a small electrical appliance.)
Adrian Sherwood, his longtime collaborator and friend, says Perry revelled in a good wind-up. The pair once sat next to each other at a screening of Volker Schaner’s 2015 documentary, which followed Perry’s exploits over 15 years. Whenever he was shown baffling an interviewer during the film, Perry would turn to his friend. “He kept elbowing me in the ribs and laughing,” says Sherwood, who believes Perry “always loved mischief”.
Katz tells me that if you want to understand Perry, you need to go back to Jamaica. Born in 1936, Rainford Hugh Perry grew up in Kendal in the north-western parish of Hanover. His father was a dance champion and manual labourer, while his mother practised ettu, a form of west African spiritual healing and “magic” that can be traced back to Yoruba traditions and is mostly practised only in Hanover.
Katz’s “stone initiation” on the Thames can be traced back to Perry’s belief in ettu, which he thought provided guidance throughout his life. After working in a quarry as a young man, he claimed that the sound of clashing stones directed him to Kingston (“I go up to King Stone”) where he ended up working for Studio One’s Coxsone Dodd as an A&R and handyman. He discovered the Maytals, worked with a young Delroy Wilson and had hits of his own, such as Chicken Scratch, which gave him his nickname.