INTERVIEW : CLIVE HUNT
Interview by : Benoit Georges & Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Tuesday, April 08th 2008 - 14 321 views
You could listen to him for hours. And we did. His life is a novel, and Clive Hunt is an encyclopaedia of the history of Jamaican music all by himself. His path as a Jamaican boy Mozart saw him rub shoulders with the greatest names in reggae, this man who had been tipped for a prestigious academic career. He was not yet 25 when he produced the Abyssinians' "Satta Massagana", a classic of classics in the reggae liturgy, and probably the most pirated album in Jamaica.
Clive Hunt knows almost everything and almost everyone. An innocent question, an optional detail inspires dozens of other anecdotes. His journey as a gifted child follows the template of a success story: the peak reached too early, the fall into drugs, the rebirth. Today as yesterday, he is in demand everywhere. Including in France, where he produced most of the reggae hits, from Bernard Lavilliers to Pierpoljak. This son of a rasta steers his own course as musical opportunities arise.
PART ONE
From discovering music to recording the Abyssinians.
Reggaefrance / Where do you come from in Jamaica?
Clive Hunt / I come from Linstead, in the parish of St Catherine. It's a really special place for the Jamaican music industry, but nobody talks about it. The Soul Defenders, the Studio One band, come from Linstead, and still live there. They played on a lot of Studio One singles.
When singers came to audition and Coxsone saw potential in them but felt they weren't quite ready, he would send them to the Soul Defenders to rehearse. Everybody went there: Dennis Brown, Freddie McGregor, Freddy McKay, Al Campbell, Horace Andy... I used to go along, but I wasn't interested at the time.
In France, you're known as a producer, but you're first and foremost a musician... a multi-instrumentalist, in fact.
I have been a musician since I was 12. I was in a school for bad boys. I wasn’t one, but some people thought I was. Not my mother, though. I was at Stony Hill Approved School, in a small suburb outside Kingston. At that school, on top of a regular education, you had to learn to develop other, manual talents. It was not like the Alpha Boys School, which took in mostly orphans. In those days, the musicians, the horn players especially, came half from Alpha Boys School and half from Stony Hill. I never wanted to talk about it, my mother never liked that school. But I think it was a blessing for me, and for a lot of people who came out of it. I love sport, and the music room was right next to the sports field. So when I wasn’t playing, I looked out of the window. That’s how I learned, from the outside. I learned every instrument, the notes, the chords… but I had never physically played. I knew solfège, the theory. Two months later, I knew more than most of the pupils in the music class.
At the end of December, we were allowed to go home to our parents for Christmas. It is part of the rehabilitation: pupils they trust can go home. When they told me I had permission, I refused to go home. I didn’t want to; I told myself everybody would laugh at me in my village. I wanted to go home proud of myself. I was taking tailoring classes, that was my “manual” activity. At 12 and a half, I was teaching the younger ones how to do it, and the teacher thought I could finish top of the year. I went to see him and asked whether anyone had ever finished top in two activities at once. He said no. So I joined the music class, since I knew more than they did. The teacher refused because it was exam day, he wanted me to come after the holidays. I said I wanted to take the test, that I had learned music through the window, and I started telling him what I knew. He let me sit the exam, and I came out top. The teacher told me: “from now on, you do nothing but music”. He was a military man and he started talking about me to his friends. It was very easy for me, I picked up the theory quickly. People began to talk about me in musical circles, along with other youngsters who were like “protégés”. I heard about Cat Coore, Michael “Ibo” Cooper (who would become famous with Third World, editor’s note), Pete Mia, Glen Ricks and a few others.
When I left school, the army and the police both wanted me to teach and play music for them. I went home and had nothing to do there, so I worked as a tailor until I was 17, in 1969, when the police offered me a place in their band. When I arrived, the military didn’t look on it kindly. They had me join the army, where I did my basic training. I was in the infantry regiment. Once my service was done, the Governor General granted me a scholarship to go to England. Only one student from each Commonwealth country is selected every year to go. And I came second. I remember the interviews: the BBC came to interview me because I was the youngest foreign student and I had finished second in the college. The first time I played music for money was at that school in England, there was a big band concert. They wanted a trumpet player, and that was my first instrument. I was nervous, I went along, and there were only old grandfathers, all grey. And they wouldn’t let me see the music. They paid me, because the school was very famous, they knew they had nothing to worry about if the school sent me. After that I went back to Jamaica to play classical music, and nothing else. I was in the army, but I wanted to be a doctor of music.
Like a musicologist?
More than a musicologist! Nowadays, musicologists are people who play records, disc jockeys, self-proclaimed musicologists. It really annoys me in reggae: there are loads of people I have known for a long time, some were there before me, others during or after, who consider themselves authorities on reggae. They are not, they are just fans. Some may have degrees, know people, can speak in public, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. Music means transcribing music into notes and into feelings. I was talking to Earl Chinna Smith about it two days ago: since reggae became reggae, nobody has ever transcribed a Family Man bassline (Aston Barrett of the Wailers, editor’s note) with its feeling. Nobody is capable of it. I can do it, and I can explain how. They can’t write that down, I’m telling you. I don’t respect a single one of them as a musicologist.
By musicologist, we meant academic.
Yes, that’s what I wanted to be. My music teacher wanted it too. He stopped speaking to me when he learned I was starting to do reggae sessions. He has never spoken to me since. He was really disappointed, because I had broken every existing record. He was a very classical man, upright and good.
When did you first work on reggae?
I went to do a session with the Fabulous Five (Fab 5), they needed a trumpet player. I was with them, looking at the girls… In 1971 Lorna Bennett recorded Breakfast in Bed for Harry J, which was a big hit in Jamaica and in England, straight to number 1. She was due to make an album, and they called me in to do it. I was in the military bars next to the studio, right beside the stadium, the studio is still there. Geoffrey Chung, he was my protégé, his brother Mickey Chung, “Wire” Lindo, Mickey “Boo” (Mickey Richards), Robbie Lynn, I think Sticky (Thompson), that was the Now Generation Band… They called me to play horns, so I stole instruments from the camp, only for a few minutes because it’s simple. I already knew reggae was easy, not much to it.
You didn’t know reggae before you played it?
No, I had only heard it. I had been taught it was rubbish, and that I should rise above it, and by a long way. When they called me, it was nothing to do: it was like going back to basics, with the chords… It took them so long to finish the track that I couldn’t play any horns. I was starting to get annoyed, so I helped them speed things up, explaining to each person how to play their instrument. They asked me to come back the next day. That was in 1972 and from that day on, that’s how it has been. In ten days of work, I had made more money than in fifteen days in the army. So that was really something.
Did you join a producer, or did you stay freelance?
I was freelance until I worked with Geoffrey Chung, because he was more organised with Now Generation. But then I had problems with the army, which I decided to leave. I got closer to Derrick Harriott. I was at his place every day, if anybody wanted to find me that’s where they came looking. It’s the only time I was truly attached to a producer. There was a period when I worked mostly at Joe Gibbs’s studio, but even though I was a session musician, there were people I wouldn’t play for, wouldn’t work with. There are many producers and people in the music business I like, who are friends, but with whom I have never worked. I never worked for Bunny Lee or for Coxsone, even though he was my friend. But I worked with Joe Gibbs because I was making the first Abyssinians album.
How did the recording of that album go? You played all the instruments.
I’ll tell you how it went, we’ll come back to the story with Joe Gibbs and the Abyssinians. But first, I was working for a company, Sound Tracks, it was both musical and political…
It was a label linked to the PNP (Sound Tracks was run by Pat Cooper, a PNP member and PR man for Michael Manley. He stood against Edward Seaga, then left Jamaica for England in 1975)
Yes, the PNP was in power at the time, and in that big office there were people writing speeches for the Prime Minister, advisers, young, brilliant Jamaicans with university degrees. And even a famous journalist of today was one of those young people. Everything happened there, but in different rooms. The musicians, Geoffrey Chung, Bob Andy, had an office as production directors. But I saw things, young rudeboys coming there to collect money. Everybody came to get paid every day, you see these youngsters who know nothing about music coming to collect money. To me it was a real set-up. But the music was there. The Abyssinians were going to make this album, and I signed with them. Bob Andy wanted to do it, and so did Geoffrey Chung, but they said: “We want the young one”.
You didn’t know them?
I had already worked with them, with Geoffrey Chung producing. When two people work together, sometimes one leans on the other. That was before I did Max Romeo’s “Revelation Time” for the same company. Max Romeo pressed it and started selling it, then he put his own name down as producer. Lots of artists do that, you know; same with the Abyssinians, they wrote “produced by the Abyssinians”. But you can’t do that when you know you’re not even close. A lot of people may have made money that way, but when people wanted that kind of work, they came to me, never to them.
You are the producer of that album, you were in the studio with them…
I am the only producer in Jamaica who has no label. I don’t sell records, I produce music. On that album, we ran into a lot of problems. First, the Abyssinians wanted all the money. So I got nothing. But I found another way, I knew I could make money as a musician. Anyway, all the company’s staff left Jamaica because something political was going on. All the directors flew off to England, but not Bob Andy and Geoffrey Chung, they didn’t care, they had their own business. So I was still in the studio, and the Abyssinians didn’t want to take the money out, because they were broke. I went to Joe Gibbs’s studio, where we worked at the time when they had all left. I impressed everybody there, they didn’t know me the way Joe Gibbs did, but they saw me work and asked me to work for them. So I struck a deal: I work for Joe Gibbs and he gives me studio time to finish the Abyssinians’ album. So I worked with Dennis Brown and the whole crew. Dennis Brown was already a friend, along with Derrick Harriott. Staying at Joe Gibbs’s, I worked a lot and I finished the album.
But something really went off the rails at the end, because one of the directors lived in New York. I spoke to the guy in England who told me to talk to the director in New York to make the master. I think I went and made it at Federal. The guy called me and told me to keep the master and to send him the test pressings (first pressings before approval), or the other way round. So I went to see Gussie Clarke. At that time he was a little boy, but I respected him because he was still wearing his school uniform when he had a number one hit in Jamaica. He was the real producer of it, not the executive producer like on Big Youth’s “Screaming Target”. He walked around in his school uniform with his masters under his arm… He told me he had a record export business, and that he could do the test presses. But he wanted 500 copies, which weren’t really mine. He tried to convince me and he succeeded. I told myself “Fuck dem! They never paid me” and I told him to press the 500 copies. I took the master to Jo Jo Hookim’s pressing plant, at the bottom of Chancery Lane, near the African Museum. From the moment I gave him the master, nobody wanted to talk to me for fifteen days, I couldn’t get the master back because they were busy pressing the album and selling it all over the world, can you imagine! It became one of the most bootlegged albums in the history of Jamaican music. It came out on 19 different labels! I never sold it; once they were pressed, I gave 1,000 copies to Miss Pat (Patricia Chin, editor’s note) at VP. I always laugh when I go to see them, because they still have a few copies, they still press it and still sell it. It was a really twisted story, you must know that. That was the story of the Abyssinians, I was young and I learned. I’m a good musician, and that is why I wasn’t worried, but I was a bad businessman. I always had to be on top of my game in my work to keep my family’s head above water, really.
Why did you decide to leave for New York?
It was 1976 and I was a bit fed up. But I am a militant person and if somebody had wanted to take me out, I would have gone. But I didn’t leave because of that, even though Jacob Miller told me that some bad boys downtown were angry following what had happened with the Abyssinians. I paid no attention. I have this attitude: if someone has it in for me, I run away but I don’t forget and I keep thinking about it. Bullwackie (the New York producer, editor’s note) told me one day, and I haven’t forgotten it: “if someone is looking for you, you mustn’t hide, you must go to his place and wait for him, don’t wait for him to come and find you. When he arrives, all you can do is pray to God”. That’s my attitude, there’s no sense living in fear. Bullwackie also said: “Go and find the one who’s looking for you, if he has a gun, you take one or two or else you go with two or three people to explain yourself”. Because you have bad people and illiterate people who think they have the right to live and you don’t. That’s a problem for me in Jamaica, I really don’t like it.
Anyway, I left because something serious had happened, because I was tied to those people... Many people were killed, women and children burned to death... I went to the office and there were people in tears. They told me they had seen the Prime Minister, who was crying too.
Because I had my military past where I had kept friends, and because I was young and hot-blooded, I offered the man to do some jobs for him, so nobody would know anything. He took me seriously, he came to my place, and told me he had spoken to other people whom I can’t name in the interview. I worked six months and I left. I was married at the time and I told him: give me a visa, and one for my wife and my daughter. They agreed, but my wife didn’t want to. When that person left, I really felt threatened. I had put my foot in it, now. I went to see a guy who is a producer and businessman and I told him I needed to leave the country that very day. He gave me money, and I flew to New York though I didn’t know anybody there.
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Part 2
Interview by : Benoit Georges & Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Friday, April 25th 2008
You could listen to him for hours. And we did. His life is a novel, and Clive Hunt is an encyclopaedia of the history of Jamaican music all by himself. His path as a Jamaican boy Mozart saw him rub shoulders with the greatest names in reggae, this man who had been tipped for a prestigious academic career. He was not yet 25 when he produced the Abyssinians' "Satta Massagana", a classic of classics in the reggae liturgy, and probably the most pirated album in Jamaica.
Clive Hunt knows almost everything and almost everyone. An innocent question, an optional detail inspires dozens of other anecdotes. His journey as a gifted child follows the template of a success story: the peak reached too early, the fall into drugs, the rebirth. Today as yesterday, he is in demand everywhere. Including in France, where he produced most of the reggae hits, from Bernard Lavilliers to Pierpoljak. This son of a rasta steers his own course as musical opportunities arise.
PART TWO
The New York interlude, Alpha Blondy and Bob Marley
How did you get involved in music when you arrived in New York?
I first went to New York with Burning Spear, with the In Crowd band who were playing for him and Linval Thompson. But in fact I left the tour, because as far as I was concerned the guys were jokers: the band slept in the promoter's living room and I wasn't happy about it. After the first show, I woke Mikey Boo (who also played in Now Generation and on the Abyssinians' album, Ed.) and told him: "I'm off to Jamaica, bomboclaat, I'm not sleeping on a rug!" Anyway. When my wife agreed to come with me, we decided we would do it my way, because we had a visa. But we only had US$70 in our pockets to live on. My name was already known, and wherever there was reggae, or even a Jamaican record shop, in the United States or in London, I knew I could turn up and say: "Yo, I'm Clive Hunt, I need work." I knew I'd get work straight away. I took a hotel room for my wife and daughter, $20 a day. On the third day, I decided to take the train from 42nd Street, Times Square. That's how I met Bullwackie.
I ended up in the Bronx on the express train, looking for someone who looked Jamaican. At the last stop, I got out and saw a rasta. In those days, if you saw a rasta with dreads, you knew he was a "dread", a real rasta. So I asked him whether he knew of any record shops or studios in the area. He told me there was a studio two blocks away but that, anyway, one of the guys lived just outside the station, on White Plains Road. I knocked on the door and, looking inside, I saw a friend of mine, Allah, who played keyboards with Chalice and is now a producer. His name is Earvin Lynn Allah and he used to call me Azul. I told him the whole story and he took me to see Bullwackie. Bullwackie sent someone to fetch my women: we had a house that same day and I was working in the studio that same evening. I lived in the United States for six years. Three years before going back to Jamaica and commuting back and forth for sessions. I worked with Peter Tosh and also for Sam Ash Music, one of the biggest music store chains in the United States at the time. Thanks to that, I became interested in electronics, and I even introduced Sly Dunbar to the electronic drum kit, really.
In the studio, did you work as an engineer? Had you already mixed dub before?
I play every instrument on the records: I know their tones, their keys, transposition... All the producers wanted me for their sessions, even when I wasn't playing: people hired my services just so that I'd be there, to look after the session and keep the work moving fast. I've done a lot of different things. I've never mixed an album myself, without an engineer, but I'm the one who records. When it comes to the mix, I step back. Any engineer with a feel for music would never finish that job without me being there. I produce like a conductor, and I don't trust any engineer to mix the things I've spent so long putting together. I stack the sounds on top of one another, like tones, like colours. Some engineers don't understand that. So I pick the best engineer of the moment, like Errol Brown. We were together at Treasure Isle before I left Jamaica. He worked for Duke Reid or Miss Pottinger of High Note, who produced Culture... I was very young, but I was the one representing the musical side, because neither Miss Pottinger nor Joe Gibbs came to the studio. They had people for the business and me for the music, to make sure the work was done properly.
Before going to New York, I made a dub album, the first dub album ever released on Bullwackie. But it doesn't belong to Bullwackie, it's mine, made in Jamaica: "African Roots Act 1". The last time I recorded something in New York, I left before it was finished. Bullwackie put the thing out as it was, but it wasn't my music. He does that all the time: I could have sent some guys round to have it out with him, but that's not me. I don't play a part, I don't want to be a rich and famous producer, I just want to stay the same "roots man", simply do good work, have fun, go home and wait for the next day.
It was in New York that you met the singer Alpha Blondy.
He wasn't a singer yet at the time! He wanted to sing, he had a few songs. He was at Columbia University, and there was a concert there. I can't remember now, but it must have been Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, Max Romeo or Black Uhuru, something like that. Because Alpha is a fan. Me, I'm a fan of reggae, not a fan of an artist. Some people are like paper: you set fire to them and they go up in flames. Alpha is one of them. He's a terrible man, he's a good musician, but when he became a star, he changed completely. He started behaving like a star, you have to walk behind him, be a coward... He went mad in New York, he went into the asylum, I was there with him. He's a coward, he's afraid of his own shadow.
Anyway, I'm telling you the story because I want people to know. I was at that concert, I had never stayed away from Jamaica for so long, three years. I was working in Manhattan and I decided to go. When I arrived backstage, all the musicians and artists came to greet me, because they know I count for something in Jamaica, that I solve problems and that I make good music. After a while, I noticed this guy with a big file in his hands. I kept looking at him, the Jamaican way: to find out what the brother wants, whether he's a rude boy... Sorry, but that's how I grew up, and my country is still very much like that. He asked me "Who are you?" (he imitates an African accent, Ed.). "I'm nobody," I replied. "Then why is everybody talking to you?" I answered: "I'm one of them, we've worked together, I haven't seen them in a long time and they're happy to see me". He told me he had songs he wanted me to look at. But I'm not a poet, I have to hear the songs, the melodies. So I gave him a number in the Bronx and he came to Bullwackie's the next day.
What came of it?
At that time, in many studios, I was the all-round man: I'd open the studio in the morning, set everything up... I always want the studio to be ready, so that if I have an idea, I can record. I would test the piano, the bass and the organ. I was playing Bob Marley's War on the piano when Alpha started singing in French. I was fascinated by that African accent, and that singing in French. I started recording him. But it was nothing serious, and Wackie had nothing to do with any of it. In fact, it's only a few years ago that I told Wackie that the African who was in the studio back then was Alpha Blondy. He was shocked! But nobody wanted to tell Wackie because he would have stolen the tapes. I was told they were destroyed in a flood. Wackie was actually the instrument of a Japan-Jamaica connection. He met Sonny Ochai (of Tachyon Records, Ed.), Ischi's brother. Wackie moved his studio to Sonny's place, in his cellar in New Jersey. Rae Cheddie, Bullwackie's partner in London, told me a few days ago, after all these years, that the tapes had been flooded. But I know they're still good, they just need to be put in the right hands to be repaired. They don't know, they're idiots. I'll ask Sonny if he still has them, but not Wackie.
We only did six or eight tracks with Alpha because he went mad: he didn't even recognise me. He went to Bellevue Hospital for a year and we lost touch. When he came out, he settled in Texas. Then he went back into the asylum there, for another year. Here's what happened: somebody put "angel dust" in his spliff. Me, I'm Jamaican, a rastaman, I never share a spliff. If I have herb I share it, but never a spliff. Alpha lived in Harlem where the Yankees got up to all kinds of crap. Alpha was cool, he lived with a Jamaican girl, a girl from Mo'Bay, who went to the same university. I never saw him again under the name Seydou Koné, his real name. I even called one of my songs Seydou. I never saw him again until the next episode...
Do you mean he was already known as Alpha Blondy when you saw him again?
Actually, I was in rehab in February 1991 and I was in a bad way. I had worked with the Rolling Stones and everybody, as a trumpet player, and I had started doing all sorts of silly things, apart from touching guns. But I'm not that kind of person: I drink two Heinekens and I'm drunk, I don't even smoke spliffs any more, but I grew up among the ganja and I like people to smoke it around me, just to smell it, its aroma. But I don't smoke any more because it made me stupid. So I was in rehab and after a few weeks, I needed clothes, underwear and so on. So I called Wayne Hammond, a guitarist who played with Chalice and Jimmy Cliff. He came and started talking about me to people. After that, everybody looked at me differently. My counsellor, an Englishwoman, questioned me and said that Alpha Blondy was her favourite artist. I had never heard that name. When she went back to England, she came back with a magazine about Alpha Blondy, with just a photo of his eyes. When I saw it, I cried out "Seydou!". That's how I came to know him as Alpha Blondy.
Several years later, when I produced Lavilliers and Jimmy Cliff with Barclay, I told everybody that Alpha was my friend. One day in Paris, a guy took me to Alpha's hotel at La Défense, as a joke, to try to embarrass me. He told the receptionist to call his room and the receptionist hung up quickly. The guy was laughing. I told him: "If Alpha knows I'm here, he'll come, that guy slept at my place in New York!" It didn't take long, three minutes, and he was there shouting "Mister Hunt!". We worked together again on two albums. But now we have parted ways, because of personal and musical differences. For me, it's OK, I still consider Alpha to be one of your best talents, and I'd like to work with him again, to keep the musical vibrations alive. At one time, nobody in Jamaica played live music any more. I was the only one. That's why I worked at the Tuff Gong studios: nobody was working there when they bought them, not even the Marleys. I went there to record my own productions, until Barclay contacted me to work with Bernard Lavilliers.
I was producing Jimmy Cliff and they loved that artist: they wanted to do something with him and Bernard Lavilliers. But they didn't know how to approach him. So they asked me and I said "no problem". And it became a hit! The people who worked with Alpha had a hard time working with him, they didn't know which way to turn. It's a pity. I worked with Alpha, with people like me, and he wouldn't give us credits as arrangers or points on the sales. He just paid me a small, flat fee. When I worked with Barclay, they paid me four or five times better for Pierpoljak than what Alpha had given me: they gave me arrangement credits, points, they treated me like a gentleman. Even though he's a brother, Alpha has never admitted these things, and if you asked him about it today you would certainly get a different story.
You've worked with everyone, but if there is one notable absentee, it's Bob Marley...
I never really worked with him in the studio, because of certain vibrations. The first time I did something with him, I was in a band and we were backing them, I'm talking about the Wailers. I learned a lot from them, I liked them, I liked their spirit. Their Tuff Gong headquarters were "downtown", almost next to Derrick Harriott's shop, on Beeston Street, and I was part of Derrick Harriott's crew at the time. I was trying to make a name for myself. Bob and I knew each other. He always asked me to play for him. When he first toured, he asked me to play flute for him, which I found ridiculous. But it was one of his favourite instruments. I remember that when he was making that album, when he was touring with a horn section, I was at Joe Gibbs's working and he sent Headley "Deadly Headley" Bennett to ask me, because Bob wanted me for his horn section. He sent Headley because he knew me. But I decided not to go because I grew up among the rastas and there were all those stories in Trenchtown. Bob was OK but there were all those Trenchtown rude boys hanging around at his place and I wasn't into that. I had a friend, a good musician, who has died. He was a friend of ours, and Bob's too. Bob wanted him to join the Wailers. He never toured with them, but whenever they came back, he'd be in the studio recording and playing with them. But he never wanted to tour because he wasn't into that bad man business and that bad spirit. There are things you never read about Bob: he hit his musicians, you know, he insulted them... Nobody can treat me like that, ever. And if he had done it, I would have gone far away from all that, seriously. We were talking about it recently with Chinna, because Chinna also worked with Bob and never toured with him, for the same reasons. It was full of bad vibes, bad boys. So I never really worked with Bob, because of that. But I like what he did for reggae.
He's unavoidable...
I only recently realised how important his fame is. When I was in Africa with Alpha Blondy, when people introduced me and mentioned my biography, everybody wanted to interview me about Bob. The same thing happened to Chinna, in France, when someone interviewed him. He was annoyed because the person kept bringing him back to Bob Marley. Me, I don't care, but whenever people talk to me about Bob Marley I say: "Bomboclaat, what happened to Peter Tosh or Dennis Brown?" Because when Bob was alive, if you asked him who his favourite artist was, he'd tell you Dennis Brown. When you say reggae, people outside Jamaica say Bob Marley, always. A few of us, who are real reggae connoisseurs, know that many artists contributed, and Bob just took from all of that and took the best among us to work with him, like Wire Lindo. And Chris Blackwell did a very good marketing job putting the package together. A lot of people consider themselves rasta now, but rastas don't cut their locks, unless they're ill or the locks fall out. Bob cut his several times. When he started growing his locks, Chris Blackwell saw it as an image that would go down well. And his family too: his father, a white Englishman, his mother, a black Jamaican. That's perfect marketing.
And it worked: since then, he has been the tree that hides the forest.
After 10 years, everybody considers reggae to be rasta music. No, rasta music is nyabinghi, reggae is "baldhead" music. No disrespect to Bob, thanks to him, my family and I can eat, and so can a lot of us. Bob did a lot for Jamaica and for Jamaicans. That's OK with me. But a lot of people, like Alpha Blondy, say: "Clive is a producer, he worked with Marley". I never worked with Marley as a producer, only as a musician backing him. I could have been part of the adventure, because I knew that if I had got involved for even one hour on a session with Bob, I would have stayed with him all his life. Because if I really need to work, I know how to make a good impression on any musician, so that we're bound for life. Because I'm that good, seriously. You have to remember that for me reggae is very basic music, it's A-B-C. Me, I learned from A to M maybe, so if I go to D, E or F, I'm already above the rest. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king! But I couldn't associate myself with all the social climate around Bob, the rude boys, even though the first school I went to was in Trenchtown and I grew up there a little. I'm a quiet little man, but if they had wanted to drive me crazy, I would have gone crazy and then I would have lost my life.
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Part 3
Interview by : Benoit Georges & Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Monday, May 26th 2008
The second and final part of our exclusive interview with Clive Hunt. After a plunge into drugs, he climbs back up through a series of encounters: Beres Hammond, Jimmy Cliff, Richie Spice and Pierpoljak. At last he talks about his latest dub project.
PART THREE
Drugs, rebirth and projects
We've talked about the 70s and the 90s, but what did you do during the 80s?
I was here and there for sessions, all over the place. I came to France for Culture's first tour in 1979, for the album "International Herb". We did the Bataclan and then the tour fell apart afterwards, a disaster. They wanted a good band and since I was involved, I suggested Dean Fraser, Nambo Robinson, Ansell Collins, musicians who don't tour regularly. After that, I worked in the "mainstream", with Peter Tosh, who was with the Rolling Stones at the time, and you can see my name as horn arranger. They recorded the tracks in Jamaica and came to New York to let me hear them. They gave me a piano, manuscript paper, a hotel room, and I wrote the arrangements. I told them to call the Brecker Brothers, they're great American musicians, on horns, studio musicians. Atlantic and Rolling Stones Records were backing us, so everything was going well. But there were people I started taking drugs with. And in the early 80s, New York was starting to get really scary, because quite a few of the "rude boys" you saw on the streets in Jamaica started dealing in New York. I left the city for Florida because I was afraid of all that. So, in the 80s, to tell the truth, I didn't do much. Little things here and there. I had become an addict. You have to understand that I was already addicted to cocaine before crack arrived. And when crack arrived, it got hold of me and I sank even deeper, until I left for Jamaica thinking it was the best place for me. But when I came back to Jamaica, it was just as bad, crack was everywhere just like New York or Miami. It took me quite a while to find a rehab: I told my mother and they took me in. And since I was there that day, I have never touched drugs again, even though they've always been around me since I came out and people I worked with in the studios were doing the same. It never bothered me, I just stopped drinking two years ago, but I have never touched drugs again since that moment, February 1991.
So in the 80s, when I came back to Jamaica, I did a few things and notably a song that became an anthem on the island, Putting Up Resistance with Beres Hammond.
Produced by Tappa Zukie...
Yes, I recorded it, I play all the instruments, I do the backing vocals... We did it for Tappa Zukie but Tappa was often absent: he kept going back and forth from the studio, because every time he came back with drugs, I sent him off to get more: if I had none left, I stopped working. Beres didn't like that but he's my friend and he also worked with Tappa. And Tappa was feared in his neighbourhood, where the studio was. So I was working for Tappa, not to feed myself, not for money... I did about 19 albums for Tappa, but "Putting Up Resistance" really was the trigger for Beres Hammond and me. I left rehab overnight, I didn't even know I was going to get out, they just tell you when you have to go. I stuffed all my things into a plastic bag and I had no money. My counsellor gave me 50 Jamaican dollars, because I was living in Linstead, which is quite far from Kingston. I took the money but I left my bag and walked as far as Halfway Tree. At that time Putting Up Resistance had been number one in Jamaica for almost two months. Beres was there, thinking I had run away. I told him I had come out and that I needed a bit of money to go back to my mother's. He then gave me the keys to his van. At the time, he had a 4Runner, it was brand new, nobody used 4x4s in Jamaica. He said to me: "Go and get your things and come back". I drove to the rehab centre, in New Kingston, and came back to Halfway Tree to catch the buses to the countryside. There Beres said to me: "Clive, you can't go off to the countryside, everybody in Jamaica wants you to work for them." That's what I did, and I couldn't get back home until two months later! So I worked a lot. Then Jimmy Cliff came to find me, saying he wanted to work with me. So I found myself doing I Can See Clearly Now for Disney's film "Cool Runnings" (Rasta Rocket, Ed.). Quite a few things happened after I made that song with Beres: it lifted us both to another level, even though I never got a dollar from Tappa...
Your collaboration with Jimmy Cliff also lifted you to another level.
When Disney wanted to do I Can See Clearly Now with Jimmy Cliff, they were all in California and Jimmy had come into the studio, where there were important producers, cameras... it was for the film, so it was a bit like a PR event. Disney's executive producer told me that Jimmy had arrived with his backpack, they had finished the track and were handing him the microphone. Jimmy said nothing, but when it came to singing, he announced: "Usually, I work with someone and I don't work without him". He was talking about me and the guy said to him: "OK, we'll bring him over". And Jimmy replied: "No, he won't come, you have to go to him". So they booked a flight to Jamaica. So I became the producer of that song with Computer Paul. We recorded one evening and the song had to be ready the next day at 10 in the morning, to be sent to New York for mastering and for the film. I remember we finished the instrumental track in the evening and I told Jimmy to go home and rest because I needed him to sing before four or five in the morning. I called him at one o'clock, to tell him to wake up and come and record. Jimmy always went to Rockfort, where there's a mineral water spring, to bathe and wash. He arrived at the studio around half past five and we recorded at six, the vocals, the backing vocals, everything, and we were done by 10, as planned. It became a big hit.
And for The Lion King?
They came to Jimmy again for The Lion King. He arrived in Jamaica to work with another guy, a singer from South Africa, Lebo M. A friend of mine was with them, Fabian Cooke, who came from the Bullwackie crew, a terrific musician and engineer: he plays bass and drums and builds studios all over the world. When I saw him, he told me he was supposed to produce that sound. Jimmy, for his part, only wanted to work if I was there, so I stayed but I deliberately stepped back, I let Fabian do all the work. I didn't get a penny, can you believe it! And the record sold 20 million copies! My daughter, who was at the University of Virginia, kept seeing that CD everywhere she went and it annoyed her that I never got any points or pay, because a friend of mine was in the production. I have to say he was very competent.
We haven't talked about the only album produced by you, for you...
I wanted to release the dub album "Satta I" to get back in the race, with a few people like Médiacom and others being interested. I put together a dub crew, I'm going to go home to rehearse and maybe do a tour. And I decided that Lizzard would be the guest on this album. Why? In fact, I've always had the keys to lots of studios. In most of the studios built between the 70s and the 80s, the owner would leave me the keys or let me have the first session for free. Simply because I had organised the studio and worked with the engineers, to make sure it sounded good. That was exactly the case here: I was in the studio one day, doing nothing, and the idea for the song came to me. Then one or two musicians turned up and I recorded it. In fact, I wanted to make this song for Bunny Gayle, a singer who worked at Lee Perry's. He's one of my favourite singers, I love him, even if he has no front teeth left! I made the song for him, but he didn't come, so I sang it myself. If you listen carefully, you can hear me laughing, because someone walked into the studio at that moment and saw me singing. A friend of mine heard the song and asked me what I planned to do with it. I answered: "Nothing, I'm going to erase the tape". Because it was my tape, not the studio's. He said: "No, give it to me". I replied: "On one condition, you don't use my name". I gave it to him for nothing and it became a hit. Two weeks later, he called me from New York to tell me he had mastered the record and that everybody loved it, even guys from radio stations who wanted to play it. He asked me what name he should use. As I have a little brother, Willard, who at that time was singing in competitions (he came second), I wanted to pay tribute to him so I said: "Willard". And he said on the phone: "What? Lizzard?" I replied: "Yeah, go ahead, whatever you like".
Two months later, he came to Jamaica and gave me US$5,000. The song was number one in New York for 18 weeks. Then I gave it to Trojan because they asked me for it. It was number 1 in England for 21 weeks. It was the first time I'd made that much money... a big wad of money, especially after converting the pounds into Jamaican dollars: I had to call two "rude boys" to carry the bag.
Trojan wanted to make an album, just because of the success of Satta I and I did it in one day, except for the song I had recorded before, Satta I. I found it ridiculous, but I wanted the money, because they had given me so much that I couldn't believe it.
You also sang on the first version of Dennis Brown's Milk and Honey.
Yes, it was the first time I really produced a song. It was my first effort. Dennis Brown used the same riddim to sing his version. I produced the song with Mikey Boo. He was in the same crew as Geoffrey Chung and he kept telling me I could produce because I had been helping them from the start. Remember that I had run away from the army and I was living at his place. I thought I wasn't ready yet, so he gave me J$1,000, which I used to rent the studio, buy the tape, pay the musicians, make the label, the stamper and press 1,000 copies. I also wanted to do it for Bunny Gayle but he didn't come, because Treasure Isle was next to Tivoli Gardens and there was gunfire that day, so he couldn't make it. Because I didn't want to waste the studio time, I sang it myself and put In Crowd on the record, because I was in the band with Mikey Boo. No record shop wanted to buy records from me, but they all wanted me to leave a box of 25 on consignment. I refused and went to the Aquarius shop at Halfway Tree. When I gave the record to the owner, he played it and straight away, everybody in the shop wanted a copy. That guy's was the only record shop that sold it. From one day to the next, he took 1,000 copies from me until Joe Gibbs asked me to record the song for Dennis Brown on the same riddim.
In the 90s, you worked with Richie Spice...
Yes, his brothers, Spanner and Pliers, came to see me when I was at Tuff Gong. Richie had previously recorded for the producer Dennis Star. So I started recording him and I've had an album of his since that time. But Chris Chin (of VP) told me he wouldn't take that album from a young artist because he found it too new. So I kept it. The track Grooving My Girl was played for 11 years, until Richie broke through. The track is on his latest album now. I produced seven tracks for that album, but VP only took two songs plus Grooving My Girl.
I saw that you produced the Dutty Landlord riddim, have you done other dancehall productions, I mean digital?
Do you know the album “Ruff N’ Tuff”, one of my favourites? One of the guys from the Mighty Diamonds, Judge, once told me it was his favourite reggae album, and his favourite song on it is Dub dance by Dave Robinson. About dancehall… A few years ago, I realised I was always struggling as a reggae producer. I have never been a record producer. On all my paperwork I put music producer, because I don’t make records, I make music. At that time, Pierpoljak had become a star and was starting to act like an idiot. Everybody gets there eventually, though, it happens to me too. My workload had shrunk and my responsibilities were heavy. So I tried to get involved in the record business, to make records and sell them. I did it for Kossity, for example, and for riddims. Because someone like Quincy Jones is always involved in music: young producers come to him and he gives his recommendations. So I decided to get a bit involved myself. I wanted to be part of dancehall, but in my own way. Say you have a studio in Paris: I’m not going to produce a track and send it to you to record on your side and send it back to me. I have to produce you when you record the vocals too, and that’s a bit of the problem with dancehall. Elephant, Kartel, Beenie, they’re my youngsters. Now you notice that everybody is using dancehall riddims: Rihanna, Beyoncé… So I’d like to use my musical ability and apply it to a new kind of music. Another problem too: once the young dancehall artists become stars in Jamaica, you can’t talk to them any more. I’ve worked with Chaka Khan, Beres Hammond, Maxi Priest… and when they come into the studio, when I work with them, they become very humble. We’re on an equal footing and they know that once they’re in the studio with me, I’m the boss, because they hire me and pay me to be. And when I decide something, even against general opinion, they say nothing, or rather they say: “Okay, Clive”. Maybe the fans around them will be angry afterwards, but I don’t care. With the young stars, half of them are “badmen” and more than half are “rude boys”, and they have their friends too, so all you have to do is talk to them in a way they don’t like and they want to shoot you. You can’t argue with those artists, except when they lose their popularity. So it’s rather hard for me. (Clive Hunt would later tell us about the assassination attempt he survived in November 2004 in St Catherine, which left one of his friends, aged 29, dead and himself wounded by eight bullets, editor’s note.)
I would like to have dancehall musicians, engineers and good artists, with good vocal ability, whether singers or deejays, who appreciate what I do. We should get together with people who have real musical knowledge and know-how, like Jay-Z when he goes into the studio with different producers. So I’m waiting, and I’m looking all over the world.
Do you have any other projects?
I’m waiting for the next Abyssinians album: Chinna plus some of the children, and Linford Manning, the one with the high-pitched voice. He’s very special, his voice gave the group a really impressive sound. But he got rather fed up with the business, so he became a Christian and left the group. He recently said he would like to work again, if I’m at the controls. I also have an album project with Winston McAnuff that I’m very proud of. Slightly different directions, without leaving reggae, but introducing a few arrangement elements, new colours…
And with French artists?
I would also like to make another album with Pierpoljak. If we can meet eye to eye, calmly and humbly, I take him for what he is, he takes me for what I am... I admit that sometimes I go mad, but only when things don’t go as planned. Because in the end, the producer alone is held responsible, and even if it’s your own company or your own budget, it’s not unlimited. Time, the budget, or if you refuse to make an effort when you’re capable of better, all that drives me crazy. Sometimes I feel bad, I’d like to tell the world that it’s not my fault if certain songs are what they are, but that it was the artist’s decision, because he didn’t like this or that, a question of ego. Anyway, I don’t know how Pierre is seen here, but he is very talented.
Many French people know you thanks to him…
I know! It wasn’t Lavilliers, or Jimmy Cliff, or Khaled who made me known in France, but Pierpoljak. But Pierre has got into a thing, like Alpha, where he wants everybody to agree with him, with what he says or does. I’m not like that. I try to be diplomatic, because part of a producer’s job is precisely diplomacy and psychology during production. For me, the main thing, what I’m here for, is to make music and to make sure I deliver good quality work every time.
Have you ever thought of going back to classical music?
I’d like to introduce that style into reggae. It’s one of the projects I have to do before I can no longer do it: a nyabingi album. Nyabingi is the most versatile form of Caribbean music. It’s very special: you can do nyabingi music like reggae, like classical music, hip-hop, pop… One day, I’d like to conduct a full orchestra on stage, a reggae band and a nyabingi band: three in one, like the three colours. I’d like to do it on record first and then go out on a campaign to land a show somewhere.
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