At 20, according to his biography, People Funny Boy, by David Katz, Perry left his village, eventually finding his way to the teeming capital of Kingston, where he got a job running errands at Studio One, the Motown of Jamaica. The third of four children, Perry grew up watching his mother perform the Ettu dance – a ceremony held to commune with the spirits of the afterlife in which the devotees enter trancelike states. Rainford Hugh “Lee” Perry was born on March 20th, 1936, in the rural sugar-cane fields of Kendal, Jamaica. You will wear a funny hat – only then will Rolling Stone understand the Upsetter.” He bends over the assortment of colors, takes a dab of purple and white, and begins to paint his own face lavender and says to me, “You must become the Mad Hatter of Manhattan. Despite his isolation, Perry still produces a tremendous volume of music – he has three releases out this year, and he will be playing dates in Europe and the U.S. When his wife leaves the garage, Perry returns to his work and paints the words “Reggae Judgment in the USA” on the wall, a warning, he says, to Rolling Stone. “I guess sometimes he just takes his belief in the natural too far.” “I don’t understand it,” says Mireille with a sigh. How Lee 'Scratch' Perry 'Forever Changed the Sound of Music Everywhere' Like a Swiss Zsa Zsa Gabor, the 50-year-old beauty puckers up and lays a wet one on her husband. My wife, my knife, enemy of my mess!” Perry laughs, looking up and down at his blond wife’s voluptuous body spilling out of her designer dress. “She is my shadow, the fish that cleans my gills. You must believe you have a guardian angel, only then can you be perfect too.”Īfter an hour of painting, the garage door swings open and Perry’s wife and manager, Mireille, shouts, “Lee, you need air!” Large tubes of industrial-strength glue and spray paint have created a toxic fog that hangs like a cloud in the room. “Well, then I say I don’t want to be a human being! Because I have to be perfect. Meanwhile, Perry’s pursuit of extremes on his seminal dub releases – mesmeric rhythm tracks chopped and rebuilt with primitive electronics and confounding logic – laid the foundations for hip-hop, electronica and the entire remix industry.Īlong the way, the 74-year-old Perry has also been called a madman, charlatan, con man and prophet but mostly, he is just an obsessive-compulsive artist who believes that he is a vessel for the divine, placed on this earth to spread a gospel of peace, harmony and positive vibrations. Perry cannot read or write music, but with his intuitive ear for the natural complexities of reggae rhythms and the spiritual rebellion in R&B voices, Perry produced Bob Marley and the Wailers‘ best early recordings – Seventies sessions including the righteous anthems “Soul Rebel,” “Small Axe” and “Duppy Conqueror” – and the mid-Seventies Rasta-protest classics War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo and Police and Thieves by Junior Murvin. It is a title Perry conferred on himself with his 1968 Jamaican single “I Am the Upsetter.” It is also a perfect description of Perry’s historic, confrontational impact as a record producer, in the late Sixties and Seventies, on reggae and beyond. I am the Upsetter! Sutler, you were born to suffer! I am the Upsetter!” When they think you are crazy, they don’t come around and take your energy, making you weak. “Being a madman is good thing!” Perry shouts over the music. His mohawk and beard are painted cardinal red. His black biker boots are covered with a mosaic of shattered mirror pieces that he has glued to the leather. His foot taps to the beat of a dark dub track he created more than 30 years ago. Dozens of medals and pendants hang from his army jacket and jangle as one of reggae’s founding fathers stretches his wiry frame to reach the canvas. Just before dawn, in the garage of his mansion, set high above a medieval village in the Swiss Alps, Lee “Scratch” Perry balances precariously on the top step of a ladder and spray paints an abstract self-portrait.
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