It’s impossible to summarise Lee Scratch Perry’s career without resorting to generalisations or ellipses.
The Jamaican singer, songwriter and producer has delivered several significant releases across six consecutive decades, collaborating widely and influencing generations of reggae and dub musicians worldwide. In conversation, however, he’s simply unpredictable, sharing a diatribe about good and evil, truth and lies, love and sex.
Perry will be back in Australia next month for shows with fellow dub practitioner Mad Professor, including a headline slot at Subsonic Music Festival. Perry’s greatest career contributions have been within the realm of dub, the genre he’s credited with co-founding in the late ’60s. And while dub has been through many permutations since then – dubstep being perhaps the most widely spread – the output of both Perry and Mad Professor coheres with the genre’s traditional character.
Over the years, Perry has worked with the likes of Adrian Sherwood, Bill Laswell, The Orb, Ari Up (The Slits) and Beastie Boys, while also producing records by Bob Marley, Junior Murvin and The Clash. But his creative relationship with Mad Professor has lasted longer than with anyone else. They first teamed up over 30 years ago and have gone on to make six albums and intermittently tour together. It should be said, however, that this doesn’t mean Perry is in awe of the Professor.
“It’s good to work with him, but he is a bit funny inside,” says Perry, his sentences darting around in different directions for the entirety of our interview. “It will be a good show [in Australia], you don’t have to worry. It going to be a good show because I know the root of all the evil and I will make sure our show is good. I am going to work with him, it’s going to be very good, but in the future when you want to do something you call straight here and then I can find better than Professor.”
Perry started making music in the late 1950s and has not stopped creating since, somehow thwarting the depletive effects of ageing. He’s now 80 years old and continues to record and perform, even without much fiscal reward. And doesn’t he want you to know it.
“Most of the music that is out there, [people] are not paying for it,” he declares. “Most of them are ripped off, so I’m not earning any money. I’m doing it because God want me to do it – to change the time and change the people. I’m not wasting my time. I’m trying to see if some other people can hear what I hear. Some are totally deaf, some are cursed and some can be healed and some cannot be healed. So I’m out there doing it free. I don’t [know] about who collecting, because I’m not collecting a cent.”
It’s almost a truism to say the world looks like an increasingly grim place at the moment. We’ve lost many of music’s all-time greats this year, coinciding with the rise of conspicuous evil in the political sphere. Perry has long been a preacher of love and happiness, committed to spreading this message with his music. But he’s not confident that many contemporary musicians are capable of sharing a similar message.
“Some of the people tell you about love, but they don’t know nothing about love. The key is love, the whole thing is love. The only key that can be used to enter people who are righteous is love. Nothing’s going on like it used to be any more. The judgement is going on and the old world is finished. The Third World doomed, finished, dead, and actually 75 per cent in the world of the people are stone dead. And they don’t know they’re dead, because they don’t have any love. They’re looking for love but they don’t know what is love. They no give nothing. They want everything for themselves.”
Perhaps if Perry recognises that things have gotten worse, he can offer some theory of explanation.
“God has a world and there be people who are greedy and bad-minded [who] change God’s world to make money and for vanity,” he says. “They are hungry for riches, silver and gold and money – stinking money. They will do anything to get money, so they sell their soul and have no care or respect for themselves any more.
“God is a great love, a symbol of love, but the master of revenge, the master of judgement and the master of payback – that is God. God don’t know what is evil; God only comes to kill evil smut. He say, ‘Behold evil, I kill you slowly like I kill Aleister Crowley and Bob Marley and the rest.’ Kill them slowly because of greed.
“What is happening on the world today, most of the people you see walking are walking dead. And some are singing, they are singing dead. Some who are rapping, they are rapping dead. Rapping dead, talking dead, walking dead, fucking dead and sucking dead. That’s what goes on.”
Make what you will of Perry’s relationship with God and his interpretation of the world’s prevailing moral character, but he does retain faith in love and hope for the future, which he endeavours to communicate in his live shows.
“Some things change but you don’t have to worry. The show will be so good, because I want to talk to the people in my way that they can understand. The devil is fuck. Fucking is the devil. Sex is good for creating good children and it’s also good at creating bad children. It creates righteous people and creates evil people. So fuck is really the devil. A lot of people don’t know who to fuck and who not to fuck.
“Sex overpopulate the people. Too much people caused by fuck, caused by Satan, fuck master. Too much people are here and they don’t have no inheritance, no money, no silver, no gold. So they are tormented here. Some God has to kill with flood, some God has to kill with bad heart.”
At this point, Perry’s particular world view starts to become clear: he looks out at the world and sees it populated by zombies – by people who are walking dead and talking dead, possessed by greed and who don’t know what’s good for them. He excludes himself from this group, however, and he has a go-to justification for what furnishes his sustained existence.
“Truth,” he says. “No dead meat. I don’t eat dead meat. I don’t eat dead beef. I don’t eat ill. We don’t eat nothing dead. Me don’t tell lies, that’s what’s keeping me alive.
“Everything I create is true. I’m allergic to lies and addicted to truth. It was hard one time [to stay true] because I was hanging out with lots of friends and most of them was evil and they don’t know they was evil. After I discovered that they all are evil liars, I dropped them in the pit.”
Perhaps this should be a warning to Perry’s fans ahead of his Australian shows. Leave the evil at home, folks; prepare for truth and love.
“I’ll be visiting you with the Mad, crazy, jealous Professor, but you don’t have to worry. You’ll have a super show. Lee Scratch Perry is good and Professor is evil. So you’ll have good show because good and evil create a good show. You will have fun forever. OK!”
[Lee Scratch Perry and Mad Professor photo by Chris Baker, design by Gemma Van D]
Subsonic Music Festival 2016takes placeFriday December 2 – Sunday December 4, atRiverwood Downs, Barrington Tops. Lee Scratch Perry meets Mad Professor at the Metro Theatre on Saturday December 3.
