REGGAE 🔥 ‘The Islander’ Review: Filling Reggae’s Jukebox

Island, once arguably the most prestigious record label in the world, introduced us to Bob Marley, Cat Stevens and Traffic. Mr. Blackwell, whom the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001 called “the only person responsible for turning the world into reggae music,” was also a notable record producer, responsible for such important singles as “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small. Jamaica’s first international hit, as well as albums that defined the careers of Marley, the B-52, John Martyn, Grace Jones and others. All of these nonconformists seem to have been created in the very image of Mr. Blackwell. He calls himself “a kind of hybrid. A mutant. “But it’s Marley, with whom Mr. Blackwell felt a strong personal affinity, who is the emotional center of” The Islander. ” in 1981 it continues to arrive, as if chasing Mr. Blackwell daily.

The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond

By Chris Blackwell

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352 pages

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Mr. Blackwell, now 84, was born in London but grew up in Jamaica at a very young age. James Bond and its creator, Ian Fleming, whose vision of Jamaica as the courtyard of a gentleman, Mr. Blackwell describes it as “a hangover from the dying British Empire” – they look great in “The Islander” during the first few episodes that Mr. Blackwell finds. he himself, as a young man, pissed off among the Anglo-Jamaican royalty. His first mentors include Fleming, Noël Coward, and Errol Flynn: the last blows to a young Blackwell to try to rob a girlfriend, but otherwise they are avuncular (“Errol thought my mother”).

In fact, it was Fleming who maintained a long “close relationship” with Mr.’s mother. Blackwell, the stunning and athletic Blanche Adelaide Lindo, finding in her the inspiration not only for Honeychile Rider, as Ursula Andress immortalized in “Dr. No ”, but also Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman to“ Goldfinger ”). This detail, explained on page three, is repeated shortly after, but it is certainly a fact about the mother that someone could be forgiven for repeating.

“The Islander,” among its many pleasures, is also a first-hand story of the development of Jamaican music: the acoustic chin of the 1940s and 1950s; Ska’s weird big bang, which dates back to the 1959 Fats Domino hit, “Be My Guest,” for which the Jamaicans chose to play in excess, “where it sounded best” and “where took the listener by surprise “; the origin of the heavy bass sound of Reggae, with the distortion “an intentional part” of its “flavor”.

In the 1950s, Mr. Blackwell enters the ground floor as a jukebox “selector”, the “person responsible for choosing the best songs and the best sequence to play them to keep the party going”. he ended up doing it for the rest of his life, which led him to wonder (as all empire builders should do): Why not produce and publish the discs that go on the disc machine? Thus, the birth of Island Records in 1959, its name a look at Harry Belafonte’s 1957 interracial romance film, “Island in the Sun.”

“The Islander” features a vivid series of John Aubrey-style “Brief Lives” by Mr. Blackwell. Elsewhere, much more has been said about Marley or, for example, Martyn, but Mr. Blackwell for his subjects reveals tacit truths that we believe we could have easily intuited if we had only listened to the music well enough. Marley may now be an icon, but it’s easy to forget that her last two dates in New York, before she died at age 36, were as the opening act for the Commodores at Madison Square Garden. The chapter on Marley’s posthumous marketing through a “best of” album is clear and delves into the logic of the release. Dave Robinson, who co-founded Stiff Records and, after a merger, directed Stiff and Island, “skillfully handled the difficult task of selling a complex revolutionary figure to the masses.” Although the “combative tactics of the mass market” of Mr. Robinson, focused on love songs, diluted Marley’s politics and thus clashed with Isla’s “long-established rhythms,” Mr. Blackwell knew it had to be done, even though he “wished there.” they were a world where you didn’t have to. “

I’ve never read anything better about Tom Waits, let alone with so few words. His first meeting, with Mr. Waits “looking down, no eye contact, very narrow shoulders, not a word coming out of his mouth” – he reminded Mr. Blackwell had his last meeting with Nick Drake, the island’s singer and songwriter (famous since 1999 for the posthumous inclusion of his song “Pink Moon” in a Volkswagen ad) who would soon die of a drug overdose in the United States. 26 years old.

Best of all, it’s always sent to a stream back to music: Grace Jones ’“ Warm Leatherette, ”a record with a great sound, never sounded as magnificent as it did after reading Mr. . Blackwell from his production at his Compass Point. He studied in the Bahamas, after finally finding his “Sound of the Island”.

Mr. Blackwell is arguably tougher and more ruthless than the spoiled and sandal “frightened without direction of the Anglo-Irish-Jamaican boarding school” narrated by “The Islander.” Ahmet Ertegun, who co-founded Atlantic Records, dubbed him “the baby-faced killer.” He was the bad headline of Jimmy Cliff’s 1974 song “No. 1 Man Scammer”. Lee “Scratch” Perry, who previously produced Bob Marley and the Wailers, christened him an “energy pirate” and a vampire. The Wailers were very bitter because Mr. Blackwell turned Marley into a solo artist. And there was the fight over U2’s unpaid copyrights: both sides emerged with dignity, U2 with ownership of their master recordings and 10% of Island. (It’s not clear what part of Ireland the band has.)

There are also those who escaped, losses that Mr. Blackwell admits to shrugging his shoulders when he misses a bus, knowing that there will soon be another: Elton John, “too shy and even leisurely”; Pink Floyd, “too boring”; Madonna, “I wouldn’t know what the hell I could do for her”; and Dire Straits, during the presentation of which Mr. Blackwell was “too busy talking.”

In fact, “The Islander” is more of a professional biography than an intimate memory. There are no children mentioned by name, and his wife’s designations are purely temporary: “At that time I was married to my first wife, Josephine” or “my wife at the time, the beautiful model and actress Marilyn Rickard “. Finally, when three chapters are missing, we meet Grace Jones’ friend Mary Vinson, with whom Mr. Blackwell married in 1998 but died in 2004 of multiple myeloma.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Blackwell admits, “jazz is over.” Marley was dead, and her other good friend Cat Stevens was now “On the Road to Finding Out” as Yusuf Islam. In 1989, Mr. Blackwell sold Island to PolyGram, with an initial commitment to continue as CEO. But as much as he could, he soon realized that it was impossible to “continue as the kind of entrepreneur” he wanted to be “within PolyGram’s corporate structure.”

And so, “The Islander” returns to Bond and GoldenEye, Fleming’s former estate, now owned by Mr. Blackwell. It has become part of his portfolio of luxury hotels, where he considered (and decided not to) number suites from 001 to 007, along with his other later businesses on the island, including his own Blackwell. Rum. That’s when the book takes a turn for the worse and starts to look a bit like a promotional brochure. From a typical GoldenEye experience, he is excited about his dream: “He walks down the catwalk leading to the Bizot Bar in front of the beach, and there’s Elon Musk just having a drink.” Depending on how you feel about the builder of the alien empire, this may or may not incline you to visit the resort. On the urges of billionaires to “scratch the itches non-stop” and “stretch their empires,” Mr. Blackwell, the most earthly tycoon, admits, “It’s not something I think about.”

—Sr. Stace is a music novelist, sometimes under the name John Wesley Harding.