THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF UNCUT
WITH... Billy Bragg | BadBadNotGood & Arthur Verocai | Spencer Cullum
LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY | 1936–2021
The “crazy genius” who helped take reggae global while rewiring our brains forever
YMCA/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP A GETTY IMAGES; ECHOES/REDFERNS
“I
GAVE Bob Marley reggae as a present,” said Lee “Scratch” Perry, with a mischievous grin. “He live with me for months. I give him songs to record. I give him rhythms. I give him all my love. He was like a brother to me in some other life gone by. Me think if he recognised me as a brother, he wouldn’t have died. He’d still be here now.” Perry’s mentorship of Jamaica’s biggest cultural export remains the starting point for any investigation of Lee “Scratch” Perry, the producer, i d
Scratch at his Black Ark studio in the 1970s: ‘hangers-on’ not pictured
vocalist who has died aged 85. But it was just one part of a 60-year career that saw him transform Jamaican music, studio technology and the role of the producer. He was an early
ponent of mpling, egrating found unds – rain, wing water, ing babies nto his oductions. pioneered b mixes, moving vocals, mphasising bass nd shrouding usic in reverb. he studio must a living achine,” he aid. “It must ave a life of s own.” His own living udio was the lack Ark, the egendary 12fty-12 ft shed hat Perry built
in the Kingston suburb of Washington Gardens and where, between 1973 and 1978, he recorded everyone from Max Romeo to The Congos and Robert Palmer to Linda McCartney. When asked why he felt the need to burn the studio down in 1979, he calmly explained that it was a necessity because it was being trashed by hangers-on. “I was being expected to support all these ragamuffins, all these dirty people,” he said. “I’m very scared of bacteria. Sometimes it gets dangerous and becomes fronteria.” In 1989, he moved to Switzerland with his third wife Mireille Campbell-Ruegg, a Zurich businesswoman who served as muse, patron, agent and business manager for his last three decades. When I interviewed Perry at their home in Einsiedeln in 2002, in advance of him curating that year’s Meltdown Festival at London’s Southbank Centre, he was full of gnomic utterances, drawing connections between his shamanistic music and his love of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Inspector Gadget and the science fiction of Steven Spielberg. He also heaped praise on Kate Bush. “She the only angel left in the music business,” he said. “Freddie Mercury, Sisqó, all devils. And who’s that drummer guy? Phil Collins. He’s the same – devil.” When asked to confirm some of the more eccentric stories about himself, Perry shrugged and acknowledged that they were mostly all true. Yes, he did bury Adrian Sherwood’s television in
