I want to talk a little bit about your history. I got the impression that your early work was actually doing live sound system gigs inspired by the Jamaican style, right?
Sound systems? No. To be honest with you, I was a chancer.* I was a massive fan of reggae, James Brown, a lot of the black American funk and dance, Tamla [Berry Gordy's Motown], and everything as a kid. But then I became quite obsessed with reggae. I was lucky enough to get involved in the business through a Jamaican friend who worked for Pama Records in the '60s. I didn't really have a father; he was the person most like a dad to me, ever. He took me under his wing. Eventually I met musicians, cobbled together some releases, and started a little label. We went to do some shows; the first show was at the 100 Club, a famous club on Oxford Street in England.
Yep.
We had put together a band, all really last-minute, with Prince Far I, a legendary Jamaican DJ, chanting over the top. We were paying [for] a PA, and I was only maybe 19. I was leaning over to him and going, "More hi-hat! More bass! Turn up the vocal!" And he said, "Look, you do it! You do it!" He wasn't rude to me; he was like a chummy rock 'n' roll PA man. But we had a spring reverb, a [Roland] Space Echo or something, and he showed me, "There's the hi-hat, and there's that." I balanced it up, and put a little tiny effect on the snare and on the lead vocal. After the gig, people said, "Wow, that sounded amazing!" I think people had listened to it sound so badly [before]. I didn't know what I was doing! That was it.
You'd done releases? Had On-U Sound started before that?
No. I was involved as a junior partner in the Carib Gems label. Then I started the Hitrun label. After that came 4D Rhythms, and then On-U Sound at the end of 1980.
What were your first recording studio experiences?
My first studio one was through meeting artists. People always wanted me to run a session, and try and make some money however they could. I saved up. One of the people I was working for was called [Anthony] "Chips" Richards, who's a famous Jamaican character. He arranged for me to go into the studio with Dennis Bovell, who did The Slits, The Pop Group, and other records as well. I paid the musicians, and I hummed the bass lines to a bass player. I made an album called Dub from Creation [by Creation Rebel]. That was my first venture. I did it thinking, "Well, if I lose the 200 pounds I'm spending, it's not the end of the world. I'll have some fun!"
You're not a traditional musician, as far as playing an instrument, correct?
No, I'm not.
I love the idea of humming bass lines.
[laughs]
Traditionally with dub, one takes a song and deconstructs it; stretch it out, add effects, and drop instruments out. But you've always made new creations built to be dub tracks.
Pretty much, yes. I was involved in the whole dub scene, in one way or another, from very early on. We used to license tapes from Jamaica in the mid-'70s, when I was in my teens. A lot of the dub was created by record labels in London – they saw that there was a market for it. I was involved with that. Someone would come over, like [Henry] "Junjo" Lawes or one of the producers, and would have loads of dub versions left over from their songs. Those albums, Scientist Meets... whoever or whatever, they weren't real albums. People don't actually know it. Chris [Cracknell] at Greensleeves [Records] put them together and gave them the names. He basically took a load of dubs that had been mixed by Scientist [see interview this issue]. These people would evoke your imagination: King Tubby, Keith Hudson, Augustus Pablo, Scientist, and King Jammy. What Chris did, he put together these albums and said, "Oh, Scientist Meets... whatever," with funny sleeves, and people think they were actually conceived as a work! But they were put together out of dub versions by the record producer. People were sitting around, smoking a spliff, and listening to this. Interestingly, the first wave of reggae fans were the skinheads. They weren't racist; they were quite the opposite, working-class people who loved reggae. They liked the happy and funny and gimmicky records. But as soon as it became quite black – as black awareness happened in Jamaica and America; blaxploitation, the Black Panthers, Garveyism, and the Rasta movement – the crowds moved away from reggae, because it was too "black" for them. When dub came along, along came a "Smokey Bear," student-y hippie lot. It wasn't about having a lot of lyrics rammed down their throats, and a lot of them could get off on the instrumentals; the dubs. I made it for me as a fan. I was a fan of Keith Hudson's brand, a fan of Augustus Pablo's records, and obviously a big fan of the early King Tubby Meets The Upsetter – At The Grass Roots of Dub. I'd suddenly met these great musicians, like [Eric] "Fish" Clarke, and later [Lincoln] "Style" Scott, Errol "Flabba" Holt, Clifton Morrison, and Crucial Tony [Phillips] in London. I just started having some fun, as a fan. That's how it went.
Were you still having to hum bass lines and guide it?
Yeah, I was humming the bass! Or someone else came up with the bass line, or I'd come up with some lyrics. Some people are brilliant, brilliant songwriters. I'm a "part-songwriter."
What were some of the first records where you felt like you got your style going, as far as putting these dub records together?
