MONk 2009 preamble - this is a long one kids. If you are a reggae music fan of any weight then you already know about Adrian Sherwood and his On-U-Sound label.
If not, then start looking for some of these releases as you will not be disappointed.
I haven't really kept up with Mr. Sherwood. I am sure he's doing fine and music is still a premier daily activity for him and his crew. Settle in for this one kids. And enjoy. Feedback (i.e. volume knobs turned to eleven) is always appreciated. Jah Lives.
Language warning.
Did You Get Any On-U? or
The Return of Adrian Sherwood. a.k.a. Did He Even Go Away?
As the British music scene exploded with the white heat of punk rock in the late 1970’s a young English kid, enamored with the freedom of expression the new musical style supported decided to become involved. Adrian Sherwood chose not to align himself with the clanging, Chuck-Berry-on-speed edge of the new rebellion, but instead focused his energies on spreading the vibes of his first musical love - jamaican reggae and dub music. He started young, first by mixing current JA hits into his soul and pop deejay sets in school as a young man. The spirit of the music and it’s adherents in the large immigrant community in London allowed him the ready market and easy access to very talented players. Eventually he built the On-U Sound label which released some of the hardest dub and reggae music of the time. Merely name checking his roster doesn’t do justice to the high level of skill and overt dread power these wicked sides oozed. You have to hear them. While Sherwood has never really left music, his less-than-high profile of late has left fans wondering what happened to this talented producer, mixer and engineer? The following interview was done with Mr. Sherwood via phone at his home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire which is about 45 minutes outside of London. He was at his own studio, working on his first ever solo album. He was in a talkative mood as you will see. There will be a full slate of On-U Sound re-issues in 2002 as well as new titles on the umbrella labels Green Tea and Pressure Sounds. These albums are regarded by both critics and fans as some of the best sounding, roots reggae and dub music made anywhere on the planet. Look for them and buy them. You won’t be disappointed....
November 12, 2001-Tuesday CST 15:30
Phone rings, special long distance tone.
Adrian Sherwood: ’Ullo
Jeff Monk: Hello, this is Jeff Monk calling for S****s Magazine.
AS: Hi Jeff
JM: Is this Adrian Sherwood?
AS: It is, speaking (slight giggle at the formality)
JM: How are you sir?
AS: (more giggles) I’m very well Jeff how are you?
JM: Good, I’m glad I got you. The first time I dialed there was a problem getting through or something and I got nervous about missing the time.
AS: We’re here.
JM: Do you have a few moments?
AS: Yeh, sure...um hang on a few moments Jeff....(inaudible)
Sorry.
JM: Everything okay?
AS: Yeh, we’re just in the studio, it’s actually my house and we’re in the studio as well.
JM: And what are you working on, there’s a good place to start.
AS: Umm, I’m actually working on about four projects simultaneously, I haven’t made any records myself for four years.... three and half years.
JM: Right, and word has it that, and the whole reason I’m talking to you is that you are on the verge of something big, I heard five new releases and some number of re-issues is that correct?
AS: What we’re doing we’re um...I’m making a solo album, in my own name, which sounds a bit mad but basically I’m using ragga beats and hip hop beats all blended together at about ninety or a hundred beats per minute or whatever. You can play it in clubs. Kind of like Tackhead with vocal cut ups, big fat bass and wah wah pedals with distortion pedals and everything. It’s a great big fucking noise is what it is and what it sounds like, really. I’m putting a single out on my own label which is Green Tea, which is a division of Pressure Sounds my reggae label. That label is going very well. We just released a Burning Spear album that’s doing very well. On-U has been asleep for awhile. What my intention is that the new albums I’ve been making in Europe I want to put them out on a new label. It’ll still be, the mother company, it’s just like in America you’ve got a corporation so your corporation might have different labels but it’s still the same corporation. So I might record as Freaks-R-Us, like Toys-R-Us, y’know, or find some fucking new name for it y’know. Now in Europe I’m going to release my own solo album, I’m going to release a new Little Axe album-which is absolutely stunning, we spent a long time making that-I’ve got another project which is called Too (Two?) Bad Card and the Ghetto Priest which again is mad ragga and Irish music and distortion stuff all fucked up together.
JM: And the mother corp. is On-U yes?
AS: Yes. The company is On-U Records Sound Limited which has been trading for about twenty years now as of this year. By March there will be a fantastic new On-U website up with information on what I’ve been doing for the last four years. It seems I’ve been quiet but I’ve produced everyone from Placebo to Sinead O’Connor and from Primal Scream to Junior Delgado. I’ve actually been very busy but because nothing’s on my own label, my own imprint, my visibility has been quite low.
JM: I’ve got a compilation cd here that looks like it’s from 1998....
****at this point a very loud pakistani yodel starts emanating from the background on Sherwood’s phone line......
AS: ’Ang on a sec Jeff...Nick, oi, Nick...the machines playing!...Stop that Indian c*nt noise will you! (laughs) Sorry! (laughs) Sorry!
JM: I’ve got some new stuff as well as old stuff but since the station has only been broadcasting on the airwaves for nearly three years there’s still a backlog of classic stuff that I want to expose listeners to.
AS: The worst thing is people going into a shop, they hear a record by - I shouldn’t mention names - but these certain people and they think it’s going to be a good record and they end up buying something and it’s rubbish. People need to be educated about what is actually really fucking good.
JM: You started off when punk did in England. How does a white kid even think that they can do anything in the reggae music industry?
AS: You can do anything in the world you want to. I mean you’ve got Adam F., he’s producing fucking big American acts at the moment like Chaos and that stuff. There is no reason a white English kid couldn’t go to Jamaica and work on a reggae record. I think if you are really motivated and you love it enough and want it you can do anything in this world in music.
JM: And this was the case when you started then?
AS: Yeh, when I started it was wide open, it was kind of like virgin territory and I was very fortunate to meet some great musicians from Jamaica and great artists.
JM: And how did that come about?
AS: Well I left school and I was working with a Jamaican friend who had a club who previously worked for Pama Records, which was a pioneer reggae label in England. I worked in a record shop on my summer holiday from school and when I left school I started buying and selling records. Then I started recording musicians for like next-to-nothing and putting out tapes from Jamaica. The I started doing my own sessions.
JM: You were dealing with some pretty serious dreads right? Hardcore rastafarians?
AS: Listen, humans are humans, y’know. Mike Tyson might be a looney, but you and Mike Tyson might get on very well. Um, that was very bad analogy but there’s no reason why anybody should not get on in the world if they’re interested in each other. The real problems that you’ve got with people is misunderstanding, or the inability to relate to one another. You’ve probably got very little in common with a kid from Bedford-Stuyvesant , where I think Tyson came from or whatever, and he’s probably got nothing in common with a kid that grew up in High Wycombe, Bucs, (Buckinghamshire, England where Sherwood lives) but if you met you might get on well or you might find there’s a common thing just for some strange reason where humans get on with humans from another part of the world or whatever. Music, at the moment, is on the planet to heal people. I’ve got my own views on world politics and everything to the degree that I can understand why the situation in Palestine or Israel or whatever you want to call it, why there’s so many angry people and why the current affairs are going on.
JM: How did you hook up with Prince Far-I for instance?
AS: I had already released a tape of his. Someone offered me a tape, business-like, like I was buying or selling a fucking car. I said, “I like that, I will give you an advance for that.”. I mean generally if you’re passionate about something...people’s work or if it’s some mad hobby they’ve got or anything, you will get on with people as long as you’re mad and you’ve got fun and mischief yourself or something...you can deal with anybody! You, this minute, even though we’re a bit older, if you were twenty years younger, or I was, and you were obsessed with hip-hop, I could walk into any ghetto in America and deal with the people in the right way and you go “Look, I love this fucking shit. Move out the way I’m quite a serious geezer I’ve haven’t come here to see you, fuck off, I’ve come to see a man here and you know what? I've got a reason to be here.” Do you know wot I mean? You can carry it through. It’s like if you walk into somewhere, stoned off yer tits and say (making stoner voice) “Oh I love reggae, I want to go to Kingston.” You’re gonna get mugged! Do you know wot I mean? (laughing) You know like, “Who’s this silly fucking like white fucking rasta coming down here with some silly ideas about what’s going on? ”. I have got no silly ideas about how Jamaica is. It’s a very, very tough society to thrive in if you’re black. The whiter you are, the better you’re treated. The darker you are...your almost like, you’re born to suffer. It’s a fucked up place. I don’t care if I ever go there in my life again. I’ve been there a couple of times and still now I’ve got love in Jamaica and I had a great time when I was down there. But it’s not a matter of I’ve got something to prove or I wanna be black or fucking whatever.
JM: It’s the love of the music.
AS: Yeh.
***We talk about various On-U releases from the back catalog and Adrian gives me his capsule reviews of a few albums discussed.
JM: Any of these re-issues getting North American distribution?
AS: The re-issues are all being handled by EFA (Garo) in Los Angeles. All the mid-price stuff is available, it’s very underground, it’s quite old but there’s some good stuff like Dub Syndicate, there’s all kinds of tracks you can buy. Compilations like Pay It All Back Volume 3 that’s a very good one. It’s a good introduction to the old school On-U stuff.
JM: (getting geeky) Do you remember an album called “Wild Paarty Sounds Volume 1”?
AS: Well Jesus! That album was made for about $2000 in the space of about four days, twenty years ago. It’s got it’s moments, but it’s not the best album on earth. It’s got the solarized sleeve.
JM: I’ve also got a friend that has a few of the ten inch vinyl dub plates.
AS: They’re very rare.
JM: Then Pressure Sounds is the current label to look for?
AS: The latest one is a Burning Spear album. It’s been out for a while. It’s sold about thirty thousand so far, it’s a fantastically successful album. It’s called “Spear’s Burning”. And then there’s an album of King Tubby’s productions, which is very very rare.
JM: Are you familiar with the “Blood & Fire” label?
AS: That’s my friends, they’re my very close friends. Well, Blood & Fire and Pressure Sounds, are probably the best two re-issue labels from England. We’re not really rivals or anything, we’re very good friends. We’ve known each other for a donkey’s years.
JM: You both are finding these old tracks....
AS: It’s like the blues really. Basically you’ve got this legacy of incredible music that is being re-packaged and re-introduced to a public that isn’t even aware of it. With reggae the difference is the immigration that happened. You’ve got original people that left the Caribbean, settled in Canada, settled in England and they settled in the United States and the music became part and parcel of the people who were living there prior to their arrival. So the influence Jamaican music had on ourselves is very great. It’s down to the wealth of the former British Empire (laughs).
JM: Any stories of someone giving you an unmarked box of tapes an finding some gold?
AS: With Pressure Sounds basically it started with our relationship with Prince Far-I’s widow who let us release some of his back catalog. Keith Hudson, again another person I knew. Israel Vibration. And Lee Perry of course another person I worked with. We’ve not had actually people turning up. The only real rarity is the Prince Far-I album “Health and Strength”. It had been lost for years and a friend of mine found a cassette off the master in a box twenty years after everyone in the world thought it was lost forever, which I think is an amazing story. That album is amazing and it's amazing that there’s even a copy of that available.
JM: Who produced that?
AS: Prince Far-I produced it.
JM: Do you tnk you started industrial music with Gary Clail and Tackhead Sound System and such acts on On-U?
AS: I think there are other bands around who might disagree with you (laughs)! Lots of people. I worked with Mark Stewart, who I think is a genius. He had the Pop Group. The thing is what we were doing at the time was very, very noisy, very, very angry. We were doing lots of speed at the time and if you’re doing speed every day you get very angry and you write stuff like.....“we wanna conquer the world - listen to this you c*nts!” (laughs) That was how we felt. I was working, luckily, with some of the best funk musicians in the world in Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald. They had been the house band at Sugarhill Records. We hooked up and decided to form a partnership...that turned into Tackhead, Mark Stewart and the Maffia and Fats Comet in that period. Keith and I did the first Nine Inch Nails hit “Down On It” which was Trent Reznor’s first hit. We actually put that together for him.
JM: So it’s as easy as walking into any situation with the right attitude that makes these magical musical moments happen?
AS: Anybody can do anything now if really want it or it somehow takes your spirit over, I think the rules now are there to be broken.
JM: Are you personally hearing things these days that surprise you as far as chillout music or the newer....
AS: Chillout music?
JM: The newer dub stuff?
AS: I think a lot of people have tacked the word “dub” onto anything. I don’t think that it’s true. I think some fantastic stuff still comes from Jamaica. I still buy all the new singles that come out of the country.
JM: I know you’re familiar with drum’n’bass....
AS: Well drum’n’ bass, the English blokes and girls or whoever is involved in it are very proud of it. It’s probably the first kind of rebel music from England since punk days. There’s guys like Timbaland who have copied the phrasings and things on drum’n’bass, done their own programming around it and pulled the groove out of it that’s how a lot of those tunes are put together.
JM: Does that stuff make sense to you...?
AS: Well I’m more your age group so I’m very much locked spiritually into the spirit of early, the seventies reggae from thirty years ago where it’s the message of the lyrics tare strong, the Last Poets, the countless things from America. I immediately..., one thing I want to say is.... ’ang on, these c**ts in the Taliban have got to check themselves... they’ve banned music. Any society that bans music, as far as I’m concerned, is preventing healing of their own people. My main thing, what I can always go back to, what I can completely rely on is the vibe of the stuff from the ghettos of Jamaica. I don’t know why. I mean I don’t want to go there or be part of that. I’m just not interested. I have quite a comfortable lifestyle and I like that. I don’t want to go live in a fucking tin shack in some shitty little dangerous place with a lot of horrible people and a few nice ones. But what that place has conjured up, from this place that on one hand is extremely radical, and the other is extremely conservative is beyond comprehension and that’s what held me all these years. It’s the same with America! I love coming to the States. I’m like a voyeur watching a carnival when I come to America. You’ve got this society that’s completely ghetto-ized, well not ghetto-ized but segregated...you’ve got your Blacks here, your Jews there your fucking poor people there, your Italians there, your Hispanics over there it’s like... mad! But somehow it manages to work. I coming to do a show on Sunday.
JM: New York?
AS: Seattle. I’m doing a show with Lee Perry, Scientist, Mad Professor and Mikey Dread. We’re doing a dub show at that Jimi Hendrix place, I can’t remember the name...it’s at a university or something. It’s where they’ve got King Tubby’s mixing desk or something.
JM: Experience Music Centre?
AS: Yeh. But I’m back in England on Monday. I’ve got to do my own show.
JM: What’s your view on the current war in Afghanistan?
AS: What happened on September 11th is appalling, and any c*nt that doesn’t listen to music is a fucking..., there’s something very sinister about. It’s the manifestation of a lot of anger. No one does what they did without being very, very, very, very, very, very angry. That is what needs to be talked about and no one is talking about that. They just talk about retribution. Retribution after retribution. Do you not agree with me?
JM: Yes. I heard someone on CNN say that the Muslims believe that they are God’s chosen people and if that is the case they are also wondering why their lives are such shit, and their shit lives are in a hostile environment on top of it, while the so-called “godless Americans” have all the luxuries in life. They feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick if you will.
AS: It’s fucking hard to sort this out. If you had leaders that had a bit of vision....people don’t always see things the way a white anglo saxon with a teddy bear does! They don’t. They think “Oh that’s not christian to do that.”. But hang on a minute. We’re gonna torture you for three days until you die in agony. It’s like, that’s what we do. Do they actually like to do what people are saying? No! I think there is a lot of injustices done to indigenous people. Lots of things haven’t been addressed. You know the atrocities of the settlers in the United States against the indigenous people of America or the British settling of Australia or whatever. Those things have been almost swept under the carpet but people have been pushed to the brink of annihilation. Anyways, it’s been very nice talking to you.
