Q: Nice gesture. How about a song called 'Love You Most of All'? It's supposedly from this era. A: 'Love You Most of All' was done by Lloyd Shakespeare, me, and Brenton Matthews. Q: So Audley (Rollen) wasn't on that one. When I spoke to Audley, by the way, he said that it wasn't he, but you wrote the majority of, if not all, his solo hit, the Matador classic 'Repatriation'. A: Oh, you mean...? OK. I wrote 'Repatriation Is A Must', I wrote 'All That Glitters (Is Not Gold)'. Audley Rollens and I were very close, like brothers. And when I leave Jamaica he went and record this song. Q: Did you record with Audley when he did stuff for people like Keith Hudson too? A: Occasional times we do harmonies around Keith Hudson, I do so many harmonies around him that I can't even remember the songs, to be honest with you. It was more of a friend thing. We passed by the studio and... you know? Q: Just asked you 'could you fill in here?', or something? A: That type of thing. So we end up doing quite a bit of harmony 'round him too. Q: What was the connection to Hudson? A: I knew Hudson from way back, way back from in the early days. He was a little young bwoy, hustler downtown an' we used to bump into each other all the time. He knew me as a singer much longer than some people. He remembered my boy days when I used to go up and down the place and sing. Q: Hudson's creative reputation is still intact, never one to choose the easy road, that's how you remember him too? A: He want to be a producer, he want to be a singer, but he was better at producing. Q: Right. A: He had that thing about him, the sound, he want that sound. He's not a musician, he can't play an instrument or anything of that, but he can always describe a sound to you that he'd like (chuckles). So, he had his own way, man, he served his purpose.

Keith Hudson.

Lee Perry.

Q: Hudson and Lee Perry are similar in that way, brave productionwise, always willing to try the unpredictable and the difficult paths in the music. A: That's right, I almost called the name, Lee Perry, to say that I would compare him with Lee Perry. But having said that, Lee Perry had more knowledge than him, 'cause he had been around longer than him, than Keith, but similar. Q: There's that special imagination that they could transform into something concrete and possible, obviously. A: Yes, they had that special bit of vibes about them. If you watched them guys work, man, they go into studio, you almost go crazy from what them demand, to get the hits. (Chuckles) But it worked, so... Q: Back to 'Repatriation' again, what inspired you to write that song? A: (Sighing) Ahh, gosh, nobody ever asked me this question before. OK, growing up in Trench Town... Q: Audley suggested that it wasn't only a Rasta thing, but also about your attempt to leave Jamaica, to migrate and settle down in foreign, Canada, and that was just as much a part of the lyrics, would you agree about that? A: Right. He don't even know the birth of this story, you're the first person to ask and you're the first person who's gonna get a real answer to this. Growing up next door to Lloydie Charmers, his parents to me was the first Rastafarians in Trench Town that I know of, as serious, devoted Rastafarians. A lot of people don't even know what I'm gonna say to you now, right. They used to always - especially his dad, a cold guy - say 'Rastafari cyaan dead, Selassie cyaan dead', and they used to say 'Repatriation is a must!', you hear me? So I grow up hearing that around me, all of the Garvey-ites people dem, y'know, people who used to follow Marcus Garvey, a lotta dem used to live around my area where I grew up. And I used to hear that all the time: 'Repatriation is a must'. So, there was an argument... funny, man, 'round one Christmas time, there was a guy working at Appliance Traders, same place in Kingston right by Butch Stewart's, I used to do all the graphics on the vehicle. The boss bought a Peugeot for this guy, but it's a company car and he didn't want the name on it. The boss wanted the name on it but the salesman didn't want me to do this name, so he want me to avoid doing it over the holiday, so he could drive a car without the lettering on it. So the boss said, "Leroy, you know you have to do it today". So I was out there and the guy came by and stop at me and he tried to stop me, I held on to his hand and, for some reason, the song 'Repatriation' came to me. 'Cause to me, this guy was a visitor in Jamaica, and I start to say "Find your way, why don't you go home?" The song start from there, it start come into me then. Leaving from that place in Cross Roads, to my house, I had to go somewhere else, that's where that song came from. That's the whole story, nutten but the truth (chuckles). Q: OK. So that was one of the last things you did in Jamaica before you left? A: Yes, that was winding down to... Yes, you're correc' about that.

Leroy Brown.

Q: What brought you to Canada, you had family members over there at that point? A: What brought me to Canada, I have a brother who lived here, and he was was to help me go to school. Because, to him, he never see music as something that you could live from. He already know that I was in the commercial art field, so he figured if he could get me here, studying, then I could go back and do better. Q: I think you had some idea to study the law at some point too? A: Oh yeah, teachers always think that I was one of those guys who was 'Mr Talkative' (chuckles), that I should be a lawyer. But they had that great idea due to the fact that I could've been everything. That idea about going to law school was very good, but what really took over is - as soon as I walked in to a place to get application papers, the guy said: "But you're an artist, you can get a job right away". I got a job from that same day and I've been painting pictures and signs and all of that, making a good living. And I must extend to all of this too, a lot of people don't even know this either. One of the things that got me back into the music business, is that the computer came and it basically wiped out my trade as a graphic artist, sign artist. The skill before the computer came that I was really good at - maybe I was good at doing it too, but with the computer, everybody think they're an artist now and can do everything in a computer. It's not even the trade that we had, anymore. That's just a part of it, making back my switch to my first love, which was the music. So I stepped out of the trade. Q: So you never stepped into the computer designing and all of that, fully, before you gave it up? A: I stepped into it, but the trade got cheapened. Like, the job that we would get sixty dollars for then, now you're lucky if you get thirty, so why bother with something that there's no more feeling in it anymore. I still do it until today, I do any bit when I'm not on the road. But there's no more feel in it, so I don't enjoy doing it anymore. Q: So how did you like the reggae scene in Canada when you first came up there? Toronto was the first place you settled in? A: Yes, it was. When I came here no reggae was happening here, really. Alton Ellis was here before, and Jackie Mittoo and all them guys. The system already bent them into doing R&B, because they couldn't survive singin' reggae here. So I came here and I stood out, I said no, reggae and reggae only. That's what I stayed with. So Alton came back a few years after from England and said, "Man, you still singin' reggae?" I wouldn't sing anything else. I did everything here. I started a record store, I get involved with studios, I get involved with bringin' - putting artists together, as producer. Leroy Gibbons, I'm the first one to produce him. Yes, I had quite a few artists, they always come around me 'cause I'm already in the business and they want to get into the business. I was always ready to help people with talent. Other good artists that I worked with here too is Nana McLean. She is one of the heaviest female singers, she just gone religious now. She used to sing for Studio One too.

Nana McLean.

Leroy Gibbons (Photo: Teacher).

Q: What was the big hit she got known for? A: 'Till I Kissed You', I think. That was one, but she had a couple of big songs. She was even on the A&M label here, she managed to do better than us. She used to do soul music, she even won a JUNO award here too. Q: I see. A: So, I helped to build this and I can take credit for it in Toronto here, 'cause, trust me, a lot of people didn't even know how to get involved. I made things happen. First of course when I come was, I find the best studio, where I record like 'Prayer of Peace', when Leroy Sibbles had just come up, the Chosen Few, I put all things together. I helped to build this business here, and it is a business now that, eventually, now that the population has grown, it will be a bigger business. Q: What studios did you put to use in those days? I know about reggae studios like Half Moon and Summer Sounds. A: Never record there. What happened is - I should say that Summer Sound, yes I remember that when (then still Prince) Jammy was there for a while, when they just started out. And Robbie Shakespeare was on a tour with with Johnny Osbourne - not Johnny Osbourne, Johnny Clarke, and he and Bunny Lee came here. Robbie was staying at my place, and Jammy asked me to bring him over to the studio to play one song for them. And we went over to the studio that day and that was how the birth of that song, 'Color Is A Barrier', came about. It was the birth of that there. There was a little incident that took place here in Toronto, some guy say he's gonna kill the first black man he see, he went on and on, and he did. A big story came out of it, so I wrote the song. Q: Like a neo-Nazi guy? A: I think the guy was going off his head. I think he was going off his head, 'cause he just get up and said "The first black man I see, I'm gonna kill him". And he did. Q: Mad man action. A: I guess that's the word (chuckles). Robbie was here the same time I was writing the song, 'Color Is A Barrier'. We went to the studio and it was the first song we played, we liked it so much that we said we should record that song in Jamaica. And we went down and recorded it. The studios in Canada, I used to use The Sound of Canada, which was one of the 8-track studios then that was really powerful. Q: Was it Jamaican-owned? A: No, no. Canadian, their studio. It was one of the top studios.

Q: I spoke to Willi Williams some time back, and he said he wasn't too pleased with the regular Toronto studios at that time, because they couldn't really handle the Jamaican sound, the mix for reggae music, they didn't push the buttons... A: ... to the red. Q: Yes. A: (Chuckles) Q: So you got that sort of lame, flat sound out of it. A: That's facts. Q: But still you wanted to use those kind of studios? A: Yes. I used Sound of Canada when I came here, 'cause I was looking for the best studio and I was fortunate to have Karl Pitterson - you know that name? Q: I do. A: Yeah, he's a great engineer. He was an engineer that... Bob (Marley) died on that tour, too. He was the man. And he's a good guitarist, he actually played on the song, 'Remember What The Old Man Say', on my album, on that same recording at Sound of Canada, and 'Prayer of Peace'. And he engineered the session also. So, having the fresh musicians coming up from Jamaica, everybody was young and fresh, in the early twenties. And having a studio that was - we could compare to our studios that we left in Jamaica, it was then the West Indies Studio (WIRL), now it's called Dynamic. But it was very similar when I got that engineer, so we did well. Q: It was coming close. A: Yes, we could get 8-track Jamaica sound. Because what it is, it's just vibes, mainly they have down there, over the engineers here. But it's the same equipment, as you know they don't make it in Jamaica. So we had the same stuff. Q: Right. Basically, it depends on the engineer. A: Depends on the engineer.

Leroy Brown.

Q: OK. But 'Prayer of Peace' now, that was a 7" on the Kismet label. A: Yes it was a single for us, yea. Q: But was it an album then? A: It wasn't an album then, it came out as a single before. Q: I see, I thought for a while that the first album you did came out in the mid seventies with that title, 'Prayer of Peace'. A: Yes, that's the first album, but what I'm sayin' is, the song 'Prayer of Peace' itself was a single. Q: Yep. A: And that song came out of the Watergate scandal, 'Prayer of Peace'. Q: So around the mid seventies period, circa '75 or the year after. A: Mmm, lickle bit before, it was about '74.

	Page:  | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
	[ Previous ]      [ Next ]

Article: Peter I (Please do not reproduce without permission)