Most music industry memoirs are frontloaded with celebrity namedropping. “The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond” by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell begins with a parable instead, although there are many things to brag about with the success of Bob Marley, U2, Steve Winwood, and Grace Jones.
In 1955, Blackwell was a wealthy 18-year-old Englishman whose family was part of the Jamaican colonial elite. Lost and thirsty after the motorboat ran out of gas, Blackwell came across a Rastafari man. At the time, he was a member of a group that was still exiled at the time, fearing that the Anglo-Jamaicans were threatening the “male of the Black Heart.” But this horrifying Samaritan took Blackwell to his community and provided him with food, water, and a place to rest. The young visitor woke up and found the host reading the Bible softly.
The encounter led Blackwell to an amazing path of music, especially in Jamaica. He is one of the most responsible for promoting reggae around the world, a nimble and eclectic indie label everywhere as the island grows into a rock, folk, reggae and pop transatlantic mini-empire. It became a model of.
But it may now be impossible not to see the Rastafari episode through the lens of race and colonialism as a story in which privileged young people access primarily black culture and make him rich and powerful. not. Blackwell, who turns 85 this month, acknowledged his debt in his recent interview.
“I was just a fan,” he said with a mellow upper class accent shaped by his time at a public school in England. “I grew up in blacks. I was an only child and sick, so I spent more time with blacks than whites. They were staff, gardeners, and grooms. But I was very fond of them. I care and realized very quickly how different their lives are from mine. “
When asked why he started the label, he said in 1959. It wasn’t about Chris Blackwell making a hit record or anything. It was really trying to cheer up the artist. “
He From the music Impresario of the same generation as Berry Gordy and Clive Davis, who have gained public reputation for decades, Blackwell is probably the most shy and so-called “recordman”. The least understood of all. As the label’s boss or producer, he’s behind Cat Stevens, Traffic, Roxy Music, B-52, Robert Palmer, Tom Tom Club, and the music that defines the era by U2 and Marley.
But in his heyday, Blackwell went with Marley to avoid the limelight that his photographs are almost non-existent — he didn’t want to be seen as a white Svengali to a black star. did. Last month, Blackwell spent a few weeks a year looking for coffee and eggs near his Upper West Side apartment, with a pale white beard, faded sweat and sneakers. When he returns to Jamaica, his favorite shoes are flip-flops or nothing at all.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that Chris provided some of us with a role model of how to live,” U2’s Bono wrote in an email. “I remember telling me when he once stood outside his property.” Don’t impose your success in the face of less successful people. Please be careful. His perfect manners and full-voiced tremolo never came across as a qualification. He was always himself. “
Music journalist Paul Morley, who wrote “The Islander” with Blackwell, is now part of a huge Universal Music Group after Blackwell sold Island to PolyGram for nearly $ 300 million in 1989. Said. I am interested in claiming his position in history.
“Chris always likes to be in the background,” said Jones, who released her first Island Records in 1977.
Born in 1937 For families who grew sugar cane in Jamaica and made rum to build their fortune, Blackwell grew up on the islands around wealthy British and vacationing celebrities. His mother, Blanche, was friendly with Errol Flynn and Noel Coward.She had again Long-standing affair With Ian Fleming, who wrote James Bond’s novel at the nearby Mansion of Golden Eye. But in the book, and directly, Blackwell only describes them as “best friends.”
By the late 1950s, Blackwell was involved in the early Jamaican pop business. He said with a jukeboxSound systemFor outdoor dance parties. “I was almost the only person with my complexion there,” he recalled.
Soon he began to set his own record. In 1962, Blackwell moved to London and began licensing his ska single. This was the hilarious predecessor of reggae and sold from behind the Mini Cooper to a shop serving Jamaican immigrants.
In 1964, he made his first hit, “My Boy Lollipop, “A two-minute slice of exquisite scabble gum sung by Jamaican teenager Millie Small. Blackwell was surprised that stardom changed Millie’s life in a blink of an eye, but the song came in second in the UK and the US, selling over 6 million copies. When she returned to Jamaica, her mother seemed to be barely aware of Millie, and she was cursing in front of her daughter as if she were visiting her royal family. “What did I do?” Blackwell wrote. He vowed no longer chase pop hits as his own goal.
Arriving on Tuesday, “The Islander” claims the record label boss as a serendipity enabler, not as a dominant captain. Shortly after his success with Millie, Blackwell saw the Spencer Davis Group. The singer, teenage Steve Winwood, “sounded like Ray Charles in helium.” In 1967, Blackwell rented a cottage and jammed for Winwood’s next band, Traffic, and seemed happy just to see what they came up with.
A little over a decade later, Blackwell joined Jones with the house band at Compass Point, the studio that built the Bahamas. Jones said her results made her a better artist.
“I found my voice working with Chris,” she said in an interview. “He allowed me to be myself and, in a sense, grow myself by being with the musician. It was an experiment, but it actually worked.”
When U2 started working on their fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, the band wanted to hire Brian Eno as a producer. Blackwell disagreed with the idea of the avant-garde Eno. But after talking to Bono and Edge about it, Blackwell accepted their decision. Eno and Daniel Lanois created “The Unforgettable Fire” and its sequel, “The Joshua Tree,” establishing U2 as a global superstar.
“When he understood the band’s desire to grow, grow and access other colors and moods, he came out of the way of relationships that turned out to be important to us. Reveals more about the depth of Chris’ commitment to serve us, and not the other way around. There was no bullying. “
Blackwell’s most attractive His relationship with the artist was with Marley, who used heavier hands and had an even greater impact.
Island distributed 1960s singles in Marley’s band with The Wailers, Bunny Livingston and Peter Tosh, but Blackwell had money to return to Jamaica after the group finished their UK tour. I didn’t see them until 1972 when I needed them. He soon got stuck in their existence. “When they came in, they didn’t look like they were broken,” he said. “They looked like kings.”
Still, Blackwell presents himself as a “BlackRock Act” rather than as a simple reggae band to play on the radio, “College Kids” (a chord for a middle-class white audience). ) Was advised that it was necessary to chase. Blackwell recalls that Livingston and Tosh were skeptical, but Marley was intrigued. The three recorded the basic tracks for their next album in Jamaica, but Blackwell and Marley remade the tape in London, inviting white session players such as guitarist Wayne Perkins and keyboardist John Bundrick. rice field.
The resulting album “Catch a Fire” was a reggae release of the most sophisticated sound of the time, Continues today: How much was Marley’s sound and image shaped by Blackwell and Island for the white crossover? The question becomes even more bold when Blackwell talks about the origin of the hit “Legend” released by Island in 1984, three years after Marley’s death.
In this book, Blackwell writes that he gave work to Stiff Records’ Dabro Binson, who began working on the island after Blackwell signed a contract with Stiff. Surprised by the low sales of Marley’s catalog, Robinson targeted a mainstream white audience. That meant refining the tracklist to favor uplifting songs and limit his more confrontational political music. Marketing of albums, including videos featuring Paul McCartney, downplayed the word “reggae.”
According to Blackwell, “Legend” has become one of the most successful albums to date, with sales of 27 million copies worldwide. And it did not erase Marley’s legacy as a revolutionary.
Marley’s daughter, Sedera, who runs the family business as CEO of the Bob Marley Group of Companies, was not dissatisfied. “I can’t regret’Legend’,” she said in an interview. “And if you want to listen to your beloved Bob, the revolutionary Bob, the playful Bob, it’s all there.”
Through the “Islanders”, Blackwell drops an amazing sideline. He took over the deal with Pink Floyd, “because they seemed too boring,” and Madonna wrote, “because I couldn’t understand what I could do for her on Earth.”
Still, it’s sometimes puzzling that Blackwell omits or replays. Despite the reggae centrality of the island story, genre giants like Black Uhuru and Steel Pulse are briefly mentioned. Blackwell writes about his ex-wife and girlfriend, but not about his two sons.
Even those who may get angry still seem to be in awe. Dickie Jobson, a friend and companion who directed the 1982 film Countryman about a man who embodied Rastafarianism, gets little ink. “Since Chris’s best friend in life was his cousin Dicky Jobson, I was a little disappointed with the book that Dicky was mentioned only three times,” said producer Wayne Jobson, also known as Native Wayne. .. “But Chris has a lot of friends,” he said, adding that Blackwell is a “Jamaica national treasure.”
The second half of the book is the most dramatic, Blackwell talks about lack of cash flow — Island couldn’t pay U2’s royalty invoice at some point, so Blackwell is a company instead. Gave 10% of the band — and sell the island that bad business decisions led him to. “I haven’t regretted it because I put myself there,” Blackwell said. “I made my mistake.”
Blackwell, who has sold off most of his interest in music in recent years, is devoted to Jamaican resort facilities and believes that he has the last legacy of promoting Jamaica as well as artists. For example, every time he improves or tweaks the Golden Eye, he considers it a “remix.”
“If you say it yourself, it sounds great,” Blackwell said. “But I love Jamaica. I love the Jamaican people. The Jamaican people took care of me. And I always felt that I would do whatever I could to help. rice field.”
