The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah

by Benjamin Zephaniah

  I reached under the bed and pulled out a big folder containing some of my poems and the letter Bob Marley had sent me. I read the letter again; the last words were ‘Britain needs you, so forward on.’ Right then I thought only the police needed me, and I wasn’t forwarding on. Something had to change.

  The next day I told everyone it was over – that I wasn’t doing this anymore, and they should stop too. I told my boys I had no bonus money for them, no pension, it was now every man for himself. And then I told them I was going to London. I can remember that day vividly. They all protested. A normally quiet guy called Testa said, ‘Come on, man. You know you can make good money here. Why do you want to leave us?’ The guy almost had tears in his eyes.

  I reminded them of how good I used to be on the sound systems, that that was where my heart was. I told them I wanted to be a revolutionary poet, thinking about the big questions, talking about human rights, peace and the things I used to care about. I looked at Testa and said, ‘It’s crunch time, mi breddrin. Me a go kill a man, or a man a go kill me. Or we can just stop now.’

  They looked at me stony-faced, and I ended by saying, ‘What I’m doing right now is like saving your lives. So set up yourselves and do another ting.’

  I paid them what I owed them, told them to leave, and that was that. When another of the group asked me when he would see me again, I said, ‘Next time you see me, it’ll be on TV.’

  Of course, the moment I’d made the decision to pursue my dream I began to wonder how I would actually do it. What would it involve? I had so many questions and so few answers. I knew I had to get away from Birmingham otherwise I’d be drawn back into crime. London felt like the logical place to go. I’d been down to the capital many times with various sound systems, but I felt there would be opportunities for me there that weren’t possible in Birmingham. It’s hard to reinvent yourself when you’re surrounded by familiar things and familiar people.

  To add to my troubled mind, the police had started looking for me. They were just behind me all the time. On numerous occasions I found that places I’d just been to would be raided shortly afterwards. I thought the police were investigating my business affairs, until I visited Cathy, another girlfriend. After leaving her house she was also raided, and she got a message to me: ‘Disappear,’ she said. ‘The police want you for murder.’ I made some enquiries and found out they wanted me because my fingerprints linked me to the murder of a man whose body had been found in a car. I instantly knew which car, and which body, they were referring to: it was my night of training the new recruit, when we’d gone looking for tools and found a man’s leg in the boot of a car.

  I didn’t tell anyone about this, not even family. The only people who knew were the ones tipping me off. I was chewing it all over, thinking on the one hand it was surreal, and on the other that this was really serious and was upsetting other people. Even though the pressure was on, I was reassuring myself that the police would soon find the real culprit; they must know that I hadn’t committed murder.

  Looking back, that confidence was probably optimistic. In the late 1970s the police were fitting people up left, right and centre if it suited their agenda. It was like the TV series Life on Mars, but with much more racism and brutality. They wouldn’t have cared if one more black man with a history of juvenile crime was banged up for a murder he didn’t commit.

  A friend gave me the address of one of his ex-girlfriends in London. Her name was Clara. I had met her only once, when she came to visit him in Birmingham, so I hardly remembered her. I packed up a few things, jumped into my Ford Escort and started driving across Birmingham in the direction of the M6. On the way there, I stopped off at a music rehearsal space in a cellar in Moseley, where a band was rehearsing. The band didn’t have a name then, but they went on to call themselves UB40. I didn’t know them particularly well, but I knew a couple of guys they knocked about with. I also knew Astro, the percussionist; we’d been around the same sound systems.

  When I arrived, there was a girl watching them. She was very glamorous and interested in Astro. I walked up to her and told her the band was going nowhere. I said they sounded too white for a reggae band and that I was going to London to be a famous poet, so she’d be better off with me. I remember thinking I’d have to spend some time chatting her up and working on her, for at least half an hour, but she said, ‘Yes, I want to go with you.’ She just got in my car and we headed off to London.

  I can’t even remember her name, but she had nothing with her, not even a change of clothes. I had a bit of money and a few clothes, but that was all. I was also worried about my old Escort; it wasn’t in great shape and I wasn’t sure it would make it. It was halfway through being sprayed and had been rubbed down with patches of body filler and primer, so it was quite conspicuous. Also, I still wasn’t a legal driver because I didn’t have a licence, so I was quite nervous about driving to London, but we did it anyway and of course I kept my worries to myself.

  A few hours later we arrived in south London and knocked on Clara’s door, but she wasn’t there. In fact she didn’t show up for two days. So there I was; this was the big time . . . well, at least the beginning of it. I was in London with a beautiful girl who I’d promised a life of fame and the bright lights, sleeping in a Ford Escort in a car park in New Cross. ‘Well,’ I told her, ‘this isn’t too bad really, and things can only get better.’

  When Clara finally did show up, she was happy. She was in the money. She was a ‘clipper’, fleecing gullible men of their cash. She would go through the routine of soliciting for sex, but once she got the man in a vulnerable position, usually with his trousers down, she would take his wallet and disappear. Or she would find tourists or an out-of-towner looking for an illegal smoke, and take him somewhere that looked like a dealer’s house, tell him to wait around the corner, then she’d disappear with his money. So, after two days of hustling, she’d come home to find us waiting for her. She was very welcoming, even though at first she had a bit of a shock because she wasn’t expecting guests.

  Me and my new girlfriend shared a bed with her. That may sound a bit strange but that’s the way it was, and nothing happened. Honest. We had to sleep where we could. All kinds of ladies of the night and men of mystery were passing through Clara’s place, so she thought if we slept with her it would guarantee a place for us, and the others could fight over the remaining beds.

  One night, about four weeks after we’d arrived, my new girlfriend had a telephone conversation with one of her mates in Birmingham who told her that UB40 were beginning to get noticed. The friend talked them up and said she should have stayed because they were really going places.

  So that was it. She upped and left me. She didn’t even have things to pack. I was told that she went back to Birmingham and, although I never saw her again, her mother once turned up to one of my performances, where I told that story. She came to me after the show and said, ‘That was my daughter, that was. She was a right one. But she’s doing OK now.’

  One day Clara told me a reggae toaster called Dillinger was coming to stay, along with a singer called Horace Andy. I jumped off my seat with excitement. I didn’t particularly like Horace Andy’s music. He’d done a couple of rootsy tunes but I thought he was a bit too sweet and loverboy-ish, but I was mad about Dillinger. He was a militant Rasta who’d released a legendary album in 1976 called CB 200, a massive hit with the title track being about a couple of Rastas flashing their dreadlocks as they rode on a then-popular Honda CB200 motorbike.

  From the moment Clara told me they were coming I could hardly control myself. I was going to meet the great Dillinger. I’d come to London to mix with the stars and now it was going to happen. But when it did happen it wasn’t as I’d imagined. Dillinger was very arrogant and show-off-ish. He dressed like Elvis Presley, in a shiny jumpsuit, and all he did all night was talk about his gold rings and money. Horace Andy was totally different. He was a very humble guy, and charming, and I’ll never forget how he
sat me down and spent hours showing me how to play a few tunes on an old guitar.

  I’d picked at the guitar a little since the days of going to church with my mum, when I’d been given an old instrument by one of the musicians who played there. Although it was a rhythm guitar, I played it like a bass. Horace Andy was amazed that I could do vocals and play at the same time. I don’t sing, but doing vocals and playing bass (to reggae) at the same time is very difficult, because the bass is going in a different direction from the voice.

  Horace also gave me some really good general advice about the music business and how to get on in it. By the time they’d left I’d completely changed my view – I didn’t like Dillinger anymore and Horace Andy had become a true brother. And the time I spent playing guitar with him inspired me to keep practising the instrument.

  By then I was starting to think like a poet, and I was looking for ways of making myself known. I wasn’t writing much but I was resurrecting some of my old poetry and performing it to people. Most importantly, when people asked me what I did, I told them I was a poet. I had to, to get myself in the right frame of mind. I now had no interest in crime. Some of the people Clara mixed with were good pickpockets and occasionally they’d follow her to the West End. I was on the periphery of that, and they’d ask me if I wanted to go with them, but I never did. As much as I loved pickpocketing, and as good as I was at it, I resisted the temptation because I didn’t want to go back down that road.

  18

  KILBURN AND OTHER HIGH ROADS

  Clara was a godsend. She never asked me for a penny in rent, but the longer I stayed, the more I thought I should register as unemployed to get some money to help her, but for reasons unknown she didn’t want me to do that. Maybe the money she made from clipping was enough. Still, I knew I couldn’t stay at her place forever, and my opportunity to move on came when I went to hear a sound system in Brixton called Soprano B.

  I was in the darkest corner of the dance floor, doing what could loosely be called dancing with a Jamaican girl who was as sweet as chocolate. As we rubbed our groins together and she started to melt, I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I looked around I saw one of my good friends, Pops, from Wolverhampton. A couple of years earlier, when he’d needed somewhere to stay, I’d taken him to Birmingham to stay at Yvonne’s. He was amazed by her place. It was the first time he’d seen a really plush carpet. This time, Pops returned the favour. He said he could get me a place of my own that was rent-free.

  I looked at him and said, ‘What kind of place is that?’ He said it was a squat, a licensed squat, so it was legal. There was a row of houses in north London that was there for the taking. The local council owned them but didn’t know what to do with them, so they were gradually being occupied by creative people who needed the space to work on their art and music. Some arrangement had been made with the local council and the squatters were allowed to stay. I thanked Clara, said goodbye and moved into a squat on Princess Road, Kilburn. The only problem was there was no bath. But it had everything else: a toilet, bed, cold running water and so on. There was a public baths nearby, so we would go there, pay 50p and shower or bathe for as long as we liked.

  It was an amazing place. I had my own large room and most of my furniture was recycled from builders’ skips. I even made a table from old coat hangers. Like a number of places in London at that time, the whole street was occupied by creative people. The place was a magnet for musicians with an alternative edge. Some guys who hung around were in the reggae band Aswad. Ian Dury and the Blockheads were also knocking about. I saw Elvis Costello there, Joe Strummer from The Clash (on an excursion north from his west London scene) and Annie Lennox. The houses were big Victorian buildings and most of them doubled up as rehearsal spaces for bands. We always lived in fear that one day we would be told to get out and the houses would be destroyed, but every now and then I drive past and they’re still there – albeit now privately owned and worth a fortune.

  As well as the house in Kilburn, I spent time in East Finchley, also in north London. I’d met a woman who lived there called Sheila. She was much older than me, and although I didn’t really think of her as a girlfriend, she sometimes allowed me to stay at her place. It was as if my place was one star and hers was five stars – a little luxury. She was also a twin, and much better educated than me but, more importantly, she was interested in my poetry, and she encouraged me to start thinking creatively again.

  She explained what she knew of the publishing world. And, because I still had difficulty writing, she helped me by typing out my first book, Pen Rhythm. We didn’t talk about it much but I suspected she had been a groupie when she was younger. In conversations she would casually slip in the name of a singer or actor; they were usually locals, but one day she asked me if I wanted to go with her to meet Peter Tosh.

  ‘What, you mean Peter Tosh, Peter MacIntosh, from Jamaica?’ I shouted. Peter was one of the original Wailers alongside Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer. I loved Bob for his songwriting ability and his poetry, but I admired and respected Peter for his militancy. He was uncompromising and had been arrested many times by the Jamaican police, beaten and imprisoned, but he would come out, put his band together, and carry on where he left off.

  Sheila took me to meet him at the Holiday Inn in Swiss Cottage. As we travelled there I was waiting for her to say she was joking, but she wasn’t. When we arrived he was doing an interview in the lobby, and he was as militant as ever, even with the journalist. He had a reputation as a very difficult person to interview, and I could see why. As the journalist questioned him, he questioned the journalist.

  After the interview Peter invited me to his room and we spent a great day together talking about politics, kung fu and herbs, but I wasn’t to know that this was going to be the start of a special relationship. On the strength of that meeting he invited me on his tour around the rest of the UK. Of course I jumped at the chance. I didn’t get involved in the performance side of things; I was just there as a young Rasta feeling the respect and watching how the man went about things. Good times.

  I began to make homemade books of poetry, to see what a book of my poetry might look like. The first one I did was Pen Rhythm, the collection that Sheila had typed out for me and, like much of my early writings, the poems were very serious and heavily influenced by Rastafarianism. I was still working out how to write about Rastafarian spirituality and politics. I wanted to address the injustices I saw around me, and felt there wasn’t much room for humour. I tried to inject a bit here and there, but there wasn’t much.

  After watching a news report on television that was full of war, death, kidnappings and rape, I wrote a poem called ‘It Happens Every Day’, and then I went to bed. When I read the poem the next day I couldn’t believe the words that had poured out of me. It was as if there was some greater power working through me and controlling the pen. It was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this. Pure inspiration.

  The good thing about making my homemade books was that it helped me begin to understand the publishing process. I wanted to do as much as I could by myself. In those days, before computers were used to design books, I would pay for them to be typeset. I would lay out the pages myself, cut them to size with scissors, and stick them together. I made a few prototype books with titles and even credits. I loved working on them. After Pen Rhythm there was Calling Rastafari and City Psalms. I wanted the poems in City Psalms to sound like psalms in the Bible but with a modern spin. There were a lot of words like ‘Kush’ (a biblical word for Ethiopia); there was a lot of brimstone and fire and Babylon burning. As my friend the linguist David Crystal would put it, it was just a phrase I was going through.

  Hey, I was just thirteen when I wrote some of those poems, and in certain places I was more concerned with the style than the content.

  19

  ROCKING AGAINST RACISM

  One of the great things about being in London was that it opened up my mind culturally and politically. For
the first time in my life I went to rock gigs – gigs full of white people where I really was a minority but where I felt absolutely no fear at all. I once even bought a ticket to see 10cc play at Wembley, which was a strange experience. I had never paid so much for a concert ticket, or attended a gig with so many people to watch a band I could hardly see because the arena was so huge – there were no big screens then.

  One of my true pleasures, though, was going to punk and post-punk gigs. The Ruts, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sham 69, the Slits and the Dammed were bands I would see again and again. The energy that came from the stage would go though you, and if you couldn’t dance you had to jump. These bands would sometimes play on the same bill as reggae outfits like Aswad, Misty in Roots and Birmingham’s own Steel Pulse. You had punk music thrashing out 125 beats per minute, and reggae, which could be as little as 90 beats per minute, but they had so much in common. These poor white kids lived on some of the same estates as the poor black kids; they felt persecuted by the same politicians, hated by the same bigots, and they felt as alienated as the black youth, so it made sense to share the same platforms.

  A guy called Red Saunders, along with a few of his friends, had formed Rock Against Racism in 1976, not just as a reaction to the racist skinheads terrorising our streets, but also in response to comments made by Eric Clapton and David Bowie. It’s extraordinary to think that back then Eric Clapton (aka God) said he agreed with Enoch Powell and that Britain was in danger of becoming a ‘black colony’. And then there was David Bowie saying Adolf Hitler was the first superstar. Who’d have thought it?

  Rock Against Racism gigs were a mixture of political rally and rock concert. There was always a good mixture of punk and reggae bands, but there were also poets. At one of these gigs, held at Alexandra Palace one hot Saturday night in April 1979, I had just seen the Ruts, one of my favourite punk bands, who had ended their set with ‘Babylon’s Burning’, which I think is one of the best punk songs ever written. I had been dancing like a crazy pogo stick with a funky punky girl from Billericay. We poured with sweat as we waited for another of my favourites, Sham 69, to play. Then a strange-looking poet emerged on stage. He was tall and really skinny, wearing dark glasses with jet-black hair, and he stood up so high that he almost touched the overhead stage lighting. His name was John Cooper Clarke.