One of the blogs I take great pleasure in linking to is my man Mark’s delectably named Trotsky’s Cranium, here. There are always worthwhile and insightful nuggets to glean over there (what else would you expect with a name like that?) but I give him major props for posting a piece I would have otherwise missed. Interview Magazine has an amazing interview with Chris Blackwell here. Who is Chris Blackwell, you ask? The founder of Island Records, obviously. Who was associated with Island Records, you ask? Oh, just a few moderately successful and impactful artists like Steve Winwood (Traffic), Bob Marley and U2. Have I got your attention now? Good.
The interview is great, and Blackwell very obviously is a living encyclopedia of the music scene (British, Jamaican and U.S.): he was on the front lines at the time it was all going down. He was the front lines. And just because the Mighty Upsetter, Lee “Scratch” Perry famously called Blackwell a vampire because of his aggressive (and better funded) business acumen, attention still must be paid to the man who discovered, and promoted, some acts who significantly altered the musical landscape.
There are a couple of indispensable quotes from the article, touching on two of the more beloved musicians Blackwell mentored, Steve Winwood and Bob Marley. Of the former, he has this to say:
BLACKWELL: It was the voice of Steve Winwood—because I loved Ray Charles, and Steve Winwood was like Ray Charles on helium. Because it was the same phrasing, the same drive—it was like blues chords, but there was also just this incredible voice and musicianship. So I signed The Spencer Davis Group. And, at that time, we pretty much managed everyone that we signed, so we managed them. The rock scene was just sort of exploding at the time, with The Beatles and, after that, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. It all just changed. It was like the lights went on in England in the early ’60s, because up until then, nobody you heard on the radio had anything other than a BBC-type voice or accent. It was impossible for anybody with a Cockney accent or a Liverpool accent or a Manchester accent to get on the radio, much less have a decent job. But then, with those bands, that all started to change.
Like Ray Charles on Helium. That is perfect, and by far the best description I’ve ever heard of the diminutive blue-eyed boy wonder. The work he did with Traffic is largely overlooked these days, and it shouldn’t be. John Barleycorn Must Die is one of the great early ’70s rock albums and is, for my money, Winwood’s best work.
Moving on the Marley, this is where the real import of Blackwell’s involvement comes into clear focus. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that his destiny was to be the prime mover in terms of parlaying Marley’s raw genius into a more accessible vehicle. It took a while to take off, but the perfection of Catch A Fire (Marley’s first real exposure outside of Jamaica) simply was impossible to overlook. The album’s title was certainly prophetic, and one envies Blackwell’s mere involvement with the incendiary proceedings:
So they came around and picked me up and took me to the studio and played me some of the songs. The first one I heard was “Slave Driver,” and I remember it particularly because, firstly, I was excited that they had recorded anything. So I was really encouraged. It had this great kind of bass line. The second line of the song says “catch a fire,” and, you know, I remember thinking right there, Wow, if this record is good, then that’s the title of the album.
Blackwell does not have much to say about U2; he signed them (and that speaks volumes) but he admits he had little to do with their success. Rather he focuses on the one act he hoped, and expected, to break through: the amazing Jacob Miller:
First of all, after Bob, somebody who I felt could have been a big star was Jacob Miller. Bob basically became a rock star in Jamaican music, and Jacob, I felt, could have done the same. He was a big guy, but an incredible personality. Incredible. I mean, I have a picture of Bob and Jacob and myself standing in front of a plane, and you look at it, and you would say that Jacob is the biggest star there without any question. He just had that presence. But then he was killed in a car crash, and things ended before they began.
There is more where that came from.
