Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright

by Hank Bordowitz

  Tuesday. Another writer, the man from Swank, comes to my room and turns me on to the legendary herb. It’s good, all right, but nowhere near the rep. It didn’t move my attention to unexpected places, inflate trivial ideas into fascinating discursions, or even get me deeper into the music like American dope. It did, however, get me stoned.

  Later we went with Wooly on a ride through Kingston. It reminded me of a drab melding of California and Detroit, with slums so bad they made the latter’s look like the Sheraton. Wooly takes us to the studio of Lee “Scratch” Perry, one of the most prolific Jamaican producers. True to form, Perry is not home. The man from Time, who had stayed up all night when he got here finishing his last story and is on a tight schedule, is visibly hassled, and in the car Mr. Swank begins to complain about the fact that everybody is waiting around for Marley to be ready to be interviewed. This writer had apparently been promised an audience with Bob yesterday, and is annoyed to learn that he will not be getting one today either.

  Wooly patiently explains that no one can get a really good story on Jamaica without getting into the tempo of Jamaican life, and that everybody will take back from Jamaica whatever they bring there. Wooly is, obviously, very much taken with the tempo and lifestyle himself, even if he is staying in the Sheraton.

  We go shopping at Aquarius Records, where I first experience the peculiar Jamaican syndrome of walking into one record store after another and asking for top hit singles or albums like Best of the Maytals, and being told again and again that they don’t have them. I had a long list of records I wanted to buy, and was only able to obtain a few during my stay on the island. I discovered eventually that this was because the music business here (cf. The Harder They Come) was almost totally controlled by the producers, most of whom had their own record stores, where you pretty much had to go to obtain the records they had produced. And the records are not cheap, either—most albums are $6.00, one dub album was quoted at ten bucks to Wooly by a guy in Aquarius, and singles are a dollar. I wondered how a country as poor as Jamaica could support the highest per capita singles issue (thirty released a week) in the world, and was told that Jamaicans almost never bought albums—apparently pressed mainly for export and reggae-loving American tourists—but would at times actually go hungry to have money for a single they wanted.

  I was also impressed to learn that Jamaica is the only place I’ve been where people actually like to play music louder than I do. When you go in the record shops it blares at a volume perilously close to the pain threshold, as the clerk plays deejay, switching off between two turntables and two speakers, one in the shop and one on the street. So your head gets rattled back and forth like a pinball between two raucous tracks and one speaker in the distance and another right on top of you. It’s jarring, and emphasizes the violence underlying the laid-back “gentle” character of reggae. Many of these records may be little more than a rhythm with a guitar chopping out two or three chords, no solos except a guy hollering things you can barely understand over the whole thing; but that rhythm is rock steady, the guitars chop to kill, and the singer is, often as not, describing class oppression or street war. There is also a sense of listener-as-artist that is one of the most beautifully developed I have ever encountered. In the first place, all the singles have an instrumental version of the hit on the B side, so the deejays can flip them over and improvise their own spaced-out harangues over the rhythm tracks. Since Jamaican radio plays so little reggae, most of these deejays come off the streets, where until recently you could find, periodically, roots discos set up. Out of these emerged deejay-stars like Big Youth and I Roy, and along with producers like Lee Perry and Augustus “King Tubby” Pablo they have pioneered a fascinating form of technologized folk art called dub. An album by I Roy can thank six different producers on the back “for the use of their rhythms.” Don’t ask me where the publishing rights go. Don’t ask anybody, in fact. And don’t ask how musicians might feel who play on one session for a flat rate, only to find it turn up on one or more other hit records. The key with dub is spontaneity, the enormously creative sculpting and grafting of whole new counterpoints on records already in existence. And this sense of the guy who plays the record as performer extends down into the record shops, where the clerks shift speakers, tracks and volume levels with deft magicianly fingers as part of a highly intricate dance, creating sonic riot in the store and new productions of their own in their minds: I control the dials.

  Wednesday. Waiting around the Sheraton pool for Marley. There is a mood of exasperation with the celebrated Jamaican tempo, which many business-minded visitors seem to view with disgust so extreme it turns to amusement. An English musician, here to do sessions, laughed when I asked him if the state of the Jamaican music industry had undergone any significant alteration since The Harder They Come. “Things haven’t really changed that much. Before Chris Blackwell set up Island, musicians got six dollars a session. Blackwell revolutionized things by giving them twelve dollars a session, and I think by now it’s up to fifteen. But I’ll say this—Blackwell may be the only person I’ve ever met in the music business, especially in Jamaica, with any integrity at all. I mean, all these guys like I Roy, making these hits—do you think any of them have any money?” He laughs again. “Maybe got nice car, mon. Of course we’re all still involved in fucking colonialism and exploitation of the people here, with all these record companies. It’s inevitable, there’s no way around it. But I suppose there’s a certain price we pay too, you see. I hate this fucking place, and can’t wait to get out, because I can barely get a session started, much less done, because everybody’s so fucking laid back you can’t depend on anyone to be at a certain place at a certain time or get any work done. Drives me fuckin’ crazy. It’s all ‘Soon come, mon. Soon come.’”

  I also have a revealing conversation with a New York music biz veteran who used to manage Mountain. Now he manages one of the top reggae acts in the world, one with records out in the USA, and he is down here trying to sign Peter Tosh, one of Bob Marley’s ex-Wailers and writer-singer of the currently big, banned Jamaican hit “Legalize It (And I’ll Advertise It).” My New York vet laughs and says: “This is the only fuckin’ place I know where the rooster crows while I’m eating lunch. It’s the only place I’ve been where you can buy a 14-karat gold bracelet for ten bucks off a guy in the hotel parking lot, and when you look inside ‘karat’ is misspelled. I’ve been here a fuckin’ week, waitin’ for one tape from Peter Tosh.”

  “Why didn’t you just go get it from him?”

  “He never got around to making a copy yet.”

  “You mean he has it? Then why don’t you borrow it from him and make a copy yourself?”

  “Well, you see, when you go to the studios, the engineers may or may not be there, and if they are there they may or may not get around to doing this or that. . . . Also Tosh wouldn’t talk to the guy from Time magazine who wanted to interview him. Too establishment.” He laughs again. (I later found out that Tosh did, eventually, speak to the Time writer.) As the subject turns to the reggae artist my friend already manages, he says that his charge “can’t write very well. When he has to sign his name, he does it so slowly that it’s embarrassing.”

  “Why don’t you just tell him to get a rubber stamp?”

  “I thought of that. He just tries to avoid having to sign autographs. As far as all the business stuff, of course, it’s totally left to me.”

  “That must be quite a responsibility.”

  “You’re not kidding. He can’t sign a contract, but I imagine he gets around to signing the royalty checks when they come.”

  I believe I just saw, in the tropics yet, the tip of an iceberg.

  Dusk. Swank and Stephen Davis, a journalist who is doing a book on Jamaica, are finally getting their interview with Marley, and have asked me to come along. I would just as soon get it out of the way. There is very much the feel that it is an audience, and everyone is anticipating a difficult time with some cat who might
well figure himself the Lion of Judah. Wooly drives us there, and we wait by the car as he goes in Bob’s house to check out the vibes. The house itself is a rambling ramshackle affair, a sturdy and capacious abode particularly by Jamaican standards yet looking curiously as if someone began a remodeling job three years ago and never got around to finishing it: pieces of the roof are literally falling out, and there are stacks of wood in back that serve no discernible purpose.

  When Bob finally does appear, there is a sense of immediate relief: a slim, barefoot, medium-short, intense-countenanced man, he nev- ertheless projects an amiability that contradicts his reputation. As well he should: this guy is being billed, implicitly, as some sort of Noble Savage, a Jamaican cosmic revolutionary, and yet the truth is that while he was born in Jamaica he spent two years of his life in Wilmington, Delaware, where his mother still lives, and his father was a white lieutenant in the British armed services. Even though it is getting dark now, there is some feeling in the air that it would be uncool to do the interview(s) inside Bob’s house, so first he leads us out to a corner of his front yard by the fence. I explain to him that this is no good, because the fence is by the street, and the noise of the passing cars will obscure our voices on the tapes. Which will be complicated already by the fact that like most Jamaicans and all Rastas, Bob talks in the indigenous patois that is so thick that The Harder They Come may well have been the first English-language movie in history to require subtitles in the United States. Of course, he could moderate the sometimes nigh-impenetrable patois enough to facilitate greater understanding, as many other Jamaicans that I met during my stay, from record producers to cab drivers, did—but then he would not be so apparently the most prominent media front-man for the Rasta Revolution. So what he does instead is speak more slowly than your average Rasta, and pause occasionally to ask us if we understand. I don’t remember any of us ever saying no, even though we all agreed later that there were parts of Bob’s spiel that went right by us.

  We took a short trek across the lawn into Bob’s backyard, where he perched on the hood of his blue BMW, leaned back against the windscreen spliff in hand, and answered all our questions between laying down the gospel of Rastafari. Often there would be spaces between his statements, grand cumulous cannabinol ellipses, but all was cool. We three journalists massed our tape recorders together on the hood in front of Bob, and stood in a semicircle by the bumper, there being no place for us to sit, all of which helped to emphasize the sensation of gently ironic ethnocollision. Bob laughed often, dodged sticky questions like an old media hand, and in general maintained himself admirably for somebody who was probably stoned out of his fucking mind, as various other Rastas wandered out to lean on the car and listen in the gathering dark.

  Stephen Davis began on mildly shaky ground, asking Bob if he felt any pressure since a lot of Jamaican musicians were waiting for his success to pave the way for reggae to make it big in the outside world. Bob laughed. “I never feel the pressure that much. But theah dat, is dat the reason for? . . . I never know . . .” He laughed again, and began to expound upon what he did know most intimately: “I have a message and I wan’ to get it across . . . tha’ message is . . . to live . . . y’know . . . like evrabody believe in life an’ death . . . anyone can live . . . as a Rasta-man . . . so . . . dat is all . . . I come as a Rasta-man now . . . so my message call da worl’ Rastafari . . .”

  “Would you like to see white kids in the U.S. with dreadlocks?” I asked.

  “Yeahmon!” He laughed. “Sure! . . . y’see . . . righteousness shall cover d’earth like da water cover d’sea . . . y’unnarstan . . . so . . . as far as we can go . . . we gonna live right . . . we’re all jus’ children on d’earth . . . but all mind—wiggy-woggy . . . ”

  “What do the Rastas think is going to happen in Jamaica?”

  “Yehmon . . . yehmon, whoever over here has come, Rasta man mus’ go over to Africa . . . ”

  “Will Rasta man settle for making Jamaica more like Africa and staying here?”

  “No, no one settle for Jamaica . . . we like Jamaica, y’know, but— Jamaica spoiled . . . in a sense a Rasta man is concerned a history of Jamaica it has prophesy you know is something no one can change. Jus’ like if you have an egg an’ break, no one can put it together again— Jamaica is like dat. Something a must happen in creation, dat we from da wes’, go back to da eas’ . . . Jamaica canna fix for I & I, Rasta man. The only way Jamaica can be fix is we bow to the colonial type a thing what dem ’bout . . . ”

  “Are you as disappointed,” wondered Stephen Davis, not quite getting the point yet, “with the current government as a lot of other Ras-tas seem to be in discussions I’ve had with them?”

  “Well! The present government—past, present—only one government me love: the government of Rastafari. Ca’ I know it, we don’ live in dem guys’ a-things, y’know, we live outside it. Come like a bird—we gon’ check out certain things, because we know what is going on, we know dat the rule don’ come down from uptown, some a those guys a kick up hell mon, a nothing a goin’ on . . . ”

  “Are you concerned with changing government here in Jamaica, if Rastas don’t vote?” asked Mr. Swank.

  “This thing’ll never change, mon. Y’see da beauty ’bout it, ’bout Jamaica, is dat we come from Africa, and none of the leaders they want to accept dat. All ’em wan’ call it Jamaicans, and we not Jamaicans. They all live a thing, you mus’ say an die here.” Will the last person leaving Jamaica please turn out the lights.

  “How many people do you think would go back to Africa if they gave them what they wanted?” nervously pressed Mr. Swank.

  “Well, watch me. Today is not the day, mon, but 144,000, plus a multitude followed.”

  “What will be the Rasta reaction if there’s a lot of violence?”

  “Dem guys not dealing with twelve tribes of Israel. We not talking about govanment now, govanment wrong, we talkin’ ’bout de twelve tribes of Israel. We wan’ the unity and the only unity we can get is troo Rasta. And the only way we can get the message troo right now is troo reggae.”

  Mr. Swank tried to bring it down to business: “Since Chris Black-well has come down with Island Records, he seems to be someone who can communicate very well with you . . . and uh the rest of the people making the music. But CBS records, the big companies in America are catching wind of reggae and starting to come down, what do you see happening in that situation, big people from Babylon coming to exploit the music?”

  “It happen faster. Jus’ make the people, help to realize what is happnin’, quickah. Canna stop it. Because it’s not for the money, yoknow, and da big company, and a money, it’s soon ovah. Because if weah brothahs da money is nothing between us.” Right, and all Bob Dylan started out wanting was some couches and motorcycles. Marley did, however, have some advice for fledgling reggae musicians: “You have to be careful, ca you can get tricked, out deah. People have rob me, y’know, but once you can see dat dis is what happen, I know or I see dat dis happnin’, den dat trick don’ go on, y’know.” He laughed. “You make record an’ sell it, don’ get no royalties in Jamaica for long time . . . Lak Trojan Records rob me, mon! All Trojans robbers, mon, all dem English companies jus’ take Wes’ Indian music.”

  Stephen Davis observed that it seemed that you never heard reggae on the radio in Jamaica. “Because,” testified Bob, “da music is da type o’ thing would show up the situation in Jamaica dat some people don’ like to hear the real trut’, y’know. So dem not sayin’ what really happnin’ down heah. But when dem don’ play it on da radio, man, de people ’ave it in dem house. Goin’ dance an’ hear it. Radio is important, but once de music come out and dem don’ wan’ play on d’radio, den big promotion is dat once it’s banned evrabody wants ta hear it!” He laughed again.

  “But,” insisted Swank, “didn’t Manley promise that he wasn’t gonna ban songs?”

  Bob just smiled. “I dunno abouat, mon . . . Manley can’t stop prophesy . . . prophesy well �
��ave its coorse . . .” Someone questioned him about the Rastas’ reputation for nonviolence, and Bob surprised us all with, “No, Rastas physical. Y’know whai mean, we don’ come lak no sheep to da slaughta . . . ”

  “Like wan time,” added a Rasta who had been leaning over the hood of the car, listening. It had gotten so dark that I could barely see Marley’s face, and this other guy’s dreadlocks looked like a tarantula crawling down his forehead.

  “Like wan time,” said Bob. “We don’ ovalook war.”

  “With the situation in Kingston now, do you ever fear for your personal safety?” asked Davis.

  “Nossah,” said Bob. “No mon, me no fraid for them. I mean, if can avoid dem, will avoid dem, goin’ down street, see a roadblock, and dere is a street for me to turn off before I reach da roadblock, you bet I’m gon’ to turn off! It’s no good I ever get searched.”

  “Ever been in jail?” I wondered. It was a stock question, actually.

  “Yeh, wan time.”

  “For what?”

  He took a long toke. “Drivin’ witout license.” And laughed. So did we all, but then Swank took the offensive once more. “Do you feel that this car represents Babylon?”

  Bob seemed genuinely surprised. “The car? System represent Babylon, system represent death, we livin’ in da system—”

  “I was just wondering how you could feel you could have this, while—”