Q: The 'Rockers' movie soundtrack has remained in print over the years, as the classic score it now is. Have you received any compensation over the years? A: No, no, no. I'm possibly this weekend meeting a lawyer, or next week - I'm not quite sure, to find out about my royalties and stuff. I have not received a penny from Island Records or Ted Bafakoulos released it, right. Q: You haven't met the director since shooting that film? A: Yeah, I met the director a couple of times in the early eighties up in New York, 'cause he lived there. But I think he has moved back to Greece now, I'm not quite sure. And the producer I was quite close to, but he's sick right now, terribly sick. Q: What was his name again, Patrick something? A: Patrick Hulsey, yeah. He's terribly sick, he has what is... no, what you call it... hepatitis, yeah. One or two of them, I'm not quite sure if its A, B or C. So he needs a lung, he's seeking a lung-transfer in some hospital in New York now. Q: Sad to hear. How do you look back on the work on that film, you were expecting a bigger part than you had there? A: Originally I was supposed to have been maybe the main act in the movie, but when the Black Disciples (Jack Ruby's studio band at the time) went up to New York after they had come down and seeing me in the studio, and they decided that we would have another sister called Faybiene Miranda... Q: Of 'Prophecy' fame. A: Yeah,'Prophecy', right. We were - actually the first idea was that both of us would have been the main lead in that. But when Burning Spear went up to New York with the Black Disciples, Horsemouth was playing drums, Dirty Harry was on sax. So they met with Bafaloukos and whatever and whatever, there - from there it change, yunno. And they became the... yeah. But at first that was the idea, with Jack at first, that I should have played the main lead and Faybiene the second. But we weren't around, 'cause I only spoke with Bafaloukos the time he came in the studio.

Kiddus I at the 'Rockers' Set with Gregory Isaacs and Horsemouth a.o.	Kiddus I at the 'Rockers' Set with Brother Bona
Kiddus I at the 'Rockers' Set with Ras Michael & Sons of Negus and The Abyssinians	Kiddus I at the 'Rockers' Set with Jack Ruby and (unknown) guitarist

Q: I did an interview with Faybiene last year, and she said she was offered a less than flattering role, which would depict the stereotypical woman, whatever, which she obviously wasn't too pleased or satisfied with, and backed out. Must've been after then? A: Oh, afterwards? Not satisfied with that... that would've been after the movie would have changed direction, and Horsemouth was now gonna be the main character, and Dirty Harry. Because the format she was in before, she would've been a different thing totally. But it's gone out there and it's all right. Q: Yeah, but you said somewhere, probably to Buckland, that you were a bit displeased that it lost the original plot and ended up like a slapstick comedy instead of something constructive in its original conception? A: I was disappointed only in... That wasn't what I was disappointed in. I was sort of disappointed, not in my being even playing a more important role, that was like I was disappointed for myself. But just that we could have possibly used it - that medium - to say a little more, yunno? Because I might've mentioned it seemed like a 'slapstick comedy' (chuckles) in a sense, yes, because the main values that we were projecting at the time, right, in a seriousness weren't actually aired on the film. So I thought that we could have used that vehicle more positively to spread information, on the music industry and on our lifestyle, and the Rastafarian involvement and what we were hoping for the future. Yeah. But otherwise from that, I don't really have anything... I don't have anything against the movie or what, I just think we could have used it a little more positively. So hence it seem to be more like a slapstick comedy in a sense, right, y'know what I mean? Q: OK. But the original script, was it intended to be more like a comedy, originally, or this was the way how it turned out along the line there? A: No, well, it wasn't much of a script, there's not much of a script. It's just everybody more or less played an idea that came up and they said 'OK, use that, use that', and everybody sorta were normal, I mean, natural. Q: They could shape their own roles pretty much as you went ahead filming scenes or sequences, whatever? A: Sort of, yeah. But this is in a sense now where I'm saying that hey, we could have even have the same movie but quietly acquiring running right through it with a main theme which would've been more positive, yunno. So, I say all right, maybe we might make 'Rockers 2'.

Q: I was talking to Ras Karbi... A: Where? Q: He's in New York, at least he was. A: OK, I haven't seen him for how many years. Q: He mentioned doing a script for a second 'Rockers', especially now when the reissue of the original movie has been so popular on DVD. It was a while ago so he might've done a good portion of that script by now. A: Mmm. Q: So there has been some talk about doing a second 'Rockers', the follow-up. A: That has been on my mind for the last twenty years or so. Q: You haven't met up with any other parties who might be interested to produce it? A: Well, even the director of the movie, even the producer seemed interested about some six years ago when we spoke. The idea was there, that Horsemouth wanted too at one time and I think he was pretty close with some people who might've been... so I don't know what that would have come up with. Because each individual idea might be different towards - if Karbi is even writing something, I don't know what would have been his main theme, per se. But for the music industry and showing the realities of certain things, the Rastafarian spirit moving through the music, because in a sense certain Rastafarian brothers frowned on the idea of even reggae music and this music movie. Because the medium was not as upful and straight as the pure Rastaman faith sees. So it's been a deviation from the Nyabinghi and Rastafarian true music, a movie which showed that root value, that seed value that is coming out of the Nyabinghi, going into and fusing into the reggae but not just totally reggae, because it's music. On the theme of expression that we spoke of earlier, and I'm saying that anyone who use it for posterity, defend who is your word. And if your words is not upful and directive but misleading and confusing to the ear and don't help to, y'know, untangle knots in the heavens and free the spirit in a sense, then it's not working in a positive sense. So a movie now again I would now feel or envision, is that it would be an enlightening story showing the reality of what has occured and is happening; misuse, abuse - the whole contrast, but at the same time, yeah, a true spirit that when if you leave the movie you see where you should go, what you should be doing and the reasons for doing it. Yeah. Q: So it didn't turn out to be what you had hoped anyway. A: Not in the original, not in its original, no. What I had been expecting to project on it, that wasn't what became the overall theme. Yeah. The intriguing spiritual value that we wanted to put on tape, that would have been an endurement to mankind, not just the music and ahh, y'know, a happy-go-lucky form of lifestyle and rey rey rey, no, that wasn't what we had aimed for.

Q: After the movie you released 'Love Child', the last 7" on Shepherd, and went to the States. You settled down in New York - or was it L.A.? A: I lived in Florida and I lived in New York for a while. Q: Late seventies? A: Yeah. Q: How come you moved out, you felt the hostility of increasing political violence coming too close, or what was the reason - the situation got too 'tight'? A: No, not really. I had always been close to that side of it while coming up, y'know, not being involved with either side of the parties, because I've never voted in my life for any politician. Well, I happen to work with both sides at different times. I was just observing the politics and the misuse and abuse of the masses, the promises made by people who never planning keenly on any promise but to give everybody a straw to hold on, because he's drowning and a person grab on to that straw. So, using words and not making words live and not making words true, which a lot of these people were doing over these times, y'know, still doing. Q: Nothing much has changed in that regard. A: Nothing much change, trust me, it's just a different way of expressing it. But the guy at the top still wants it all (chuckles), and he'll sell you any story to get what his desires fulfill, and the misuse and abuse still continues. When you get into governments now you get a different view, if you get into the corp. guy's head it's a different view, and overall the view is not for the mass or of the people's, right, it's just like the scraps that fall from the table is for the masses. Physically and spiritually, yeah, they don't wanna work with, they are just misusing, that mass is just a fodder. Enshackled slaves, is work-force that you bridle and harness to do. But kids aren't taught properly, right. They don't make sure that they learn if a some can't read, write properly, go get a good education, then you can tell them anything and they'll accept it. Because if you teach them, if they learn and they are aware, you can't give them shit and they accept shit. They will say 'fuck off, that's shit, I know that!' But if you don't show them what shit is, and they don't realise, then you can give them shit anytime and they'll take it, y'know what I mean. And this is what the governments and the leaders throughout has been using man and misusing and abusing, so...

Kiddus I (Photo: Makasound)

Q: I guess this is what you would refer to - that can be heard on the new album - as the 'mind cannibals', right? A: Ahhh! You've got a version of the acoustic one? Q: Yes. A: OK, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly that! You see they reach their peaks, because you see the corporate of the governments and the various institutions which control... Q: It's just there to maintain what they already have. A: Ah, all right. They put on a different cap at times and maybe a little more soft here and what not what, but ultimately its the same. So if you see them man deh reach their peaks and you hear the same rethoric, right, talkin' (chuckles), because its not the truth they see. But still misuse by how they speak, 'cause its just money and power, man. 'No mind-cannibals control your mind to sabotage or re-programme you...'. Yes. Q: Moving to L.A. in the early eighties, you ended up being a guest on the 'Reggae Beat' radio show? A pretty influential show at the time. A: Yeah, I've done... Roger Steffens I did a couple of shows with, I did a few shows in Los Angeles. Q: I suppose you were a bit surprised that you had an audience over there, right? A: A little, a little I was, yeah. But quietly I found out that there's a certain underground set of people who really checked for what we were saying, y'know. And I guess I was a bit surprised, yeah. Q: And this is when you hooked up with this guy you've already mentioned, David Kulik, or 'Koolrock' as he called himself. A: Koolrock, you know of him? Q: I haven't heard what he did, but I know you recorded some tracks over there like 'To Toil', 'Stagger Lee', 'Jah Love' - all these were done for Koolrock? A: No, it wasn't actually with him, those were my tracks. Yeah. But Kulik is a good guitarist, musician too, and he is a songwriter. So, he produced this LP as I said with all different artists singin'. And his wife she liked my voice and she told him, so I did one of the tracks, 'Champs Elysee'. Q: Was this included on the soundtrack to the 'AMA' movie I know you were involved in? A: No, 'AMA' is a different movie, which I produced a girl who did 'High Wire', a track called 'High Wire'. I did a track called 'Steppin'' and one called 'Brave', and I had written a song and produced Ken Boothe, a song called 'Inside the Night'. Those four tracks was pre-released on this movie.

Kiddus I (Photo: Brian Jahn)

Q: When was that movie, what was the story about? A: It was in '91 I think it was, 1991. Q: Out of America? A: England. Yeah, it was done by a Ghanian I think it was, what's his name... Quatty? Neo Quatty was it...? He did it for Channel 4, sponsored by Channel 4, or BBC. Q: I figured that was the case, I heard you were getting more involved in writing songs and scripts for films, drama, theatre and all that while living in England in the late eighties. A: I did some of that. I started writing some tracks for an animated fusion movie, but I thought that was all set too. I wrote and recorded this track. But what was the movie that come out now, was it 'Robin Hood' with this guy... was it Adams, from Canada? Did this song which won the Grammy that year. Q: Bryan Adams? A: Bryan Adams, yeah, with (whispering)... what's the name of the track again... ? Oh gosh! I loved that song too. But after that, that was the track which licked the whole movie industry into using soundtracks, right, so for the animation movie that I was doing, I think ultimately what they did was they went for a big name to do the track instead of an unknown name, right. Because as I said Bryan Adams had made this song to this movie, and it had propelled the movie into mega, yeah (chuckles), because of this song. So the people since then has if you noticed the soundtracks of the movies have gotten better and better and more involved, because a marketing tool now to sell the movie if you have good music behind it. So that was what I was told, really, by this guy that hey, they're going to use I don't know what name-artist it was to do it. But I did write some stuff for movies an' t'ing.

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Article: Peter I (Please do not reproduce without permission)