Q: How did that Island deal come about for you?

A: The 'War In A Babylon'?

Q: Yeah.

A: It's the worst thing I've ever done in my whole life! Until this day I have yet to collect a penny from Island Records. Now they're coming up with a bogus contract claiming that I signed a publishing contract with them in them days, 'Writers for hire'. Now, I was never born a stupid person, in no way would I sign a contract 'Writers for hire'. So, I've got a lawyer with them in court now trying to retrieve back at least even some of that money. And the whole irony about it, it's one of the biggest record companies in the whole entire world that is handling that album - Universal, and there's nothing forthcoming, which is a sad story but I don't bother by it 'cause I'm on the road working and I'm earning. So I get around to them very soon.

Q: What was Perry's role in terms of the whole songwriting aspect on that album, 'War In A Babylon'? There you have the publishing aspect once more.

A: Perry? At the time I did that album, he had a one hundred percent scrupulous function, so it was a very serious project. Although, at the time starting the project we didn't have a company in mind. I didn't even know Chris Blackwell or Island Records then, and he came later on after releasing the track 'War In A Babylon' as single, that's when he decided to give an ear to the album. But he had his plan, and his plan was to put the whole reggae machinery behind Bob Marley and nobody else. So what he do, he come to Jamaica with his chappo, and he signed up all the bruk-pocket artists like Burning Spear, Heptones, the Maytals. I know it was a conspiracy, the conspiracy was to sign us and put us under the shelf, put us on the shelf and then send Bob Marley. So any other company come to sign an artist after Bob Marley bust can't sign us, beca' we are already signed to Island and that is exactly what happened in my case. Because other companies tried to sign me but I was in contract with Island Records and Island wasn't doing anything for me. They just shelf us, all of us: Third World, Toots & The Maytals, Heptones - you name it. Anybody that had any potential that would be a competition to Bob Marley is already signed to Island, that was the conspiracy. So when I hear about that I rebelled. Because I said: 'Look man, I ain't nutten or no-one on earth worth the time - ease off!' You know, I rebelled and tore the contract up and claimed that I'm free. Now they're coming with one and a signature that I don't recognise, claiming that I have a publishing contract with them, and I signed all of my publishing rights to them on a contract called 'Writers for hire'. They're crazy!

Q: But still you did a self-produced follow-up for Island with 'Reconstruction' the year after.

A: Yeah, they came along before the controversy come on, y'know, that was the album called 'Reconstruction', it was an unfinished deal with them. And what they do they go ahead and do a deal with Universal and throw that album in the package as well. I had to let them know 'Look, this album is mine', it is an unfinished deal between me and Island, they didn't honor the end of the deposit that they should give me on the album. And we don't have an agreement with the album. So they backed off, but they still hold onto 'War In A Babylon'.

Q: But 'Reconstruction' produced at least the memorable 'Melt Away', did it ever become a substantial seller at the time?

A: 'Melt Away'? No, it go as what you'd call a 'creeper'. It's big in England and it's big in Europe, it's not known in Jamaica. Because most of my stuff, they ban it so much in Jamaica that Jamaican people don't have access to my music that much.

Q: What happened after 'Reconstruction' failed to make it, you left JA and settled down in the States for a while?

A: Yeah, in 1976 I migrated. No, I actually migrated because I had a job, a Broadway stint, to write some songs for a on-Broadway play, called 'Reggae'.

Q: With Ras Karbi, yes.

A: Ras Karbi was doing it as well. So I took the job and moved my family up to New York with me, and at the end of the project, which run for about eight months, I found me refused to come back to Jamaica. So I just hung out with them for a while. And that 'hangin' out' took me fifteen years actually. When I finally go back home - minus the family, ca' they're still not coming home (laughs)!

Q: (Laughs)

A: They get trapped in Babylon, y'know (chuckles)?

Q: Was this when you did the album with the Stones' Keith Richards?

A: Right, 'Holding Out My Love To You'.

Q: And Wackies too, you did 'I Love My Music' for him at that time.

A: Mmm, 'I Love My Music'. A lot of songs through Wackies was Japanese people.

Q: You mean Tachyon Music, Sonny Ochai?

A: Sonny Ochai, yeah, of Tachyon Music in Japan. I did a couple of albums for them.

Q: Speaking of Asia, how come you went into Buddhism?

A: I don't know where you a get that concept that I've been into Buddhism, I wasn't actually a Buddhist. I'm a person who is very critical about religion, so therefore I try to find out everything about all religions. And I realised that Buddhism is the closest to Rasta in terms of what they preach, it's all about yourself. We're not lookin' to no sky for no God-thing or no throne or no big book of life with names in it. You know, I and I don't look forward to that, that's fantasy - a Christian fantasy. The Buddhist tells you to believe in yourself - everything is within you. You just have to go inside of you and find it. And that is what Rasta is telling you as well. So it create two concepts closely, that's what it's about. But I wasn't really a Buddhist.

Q: Just something you checked into for a while.

A: Yeah, I just went to Japan and I checked a few temples there and wherever I go there's a Buddhist temple I'm interested in findin' out what it's about. I do the same thing with Muslims as well.

Q: What about the albums during and after your time in the States, like you collaborated on 'Transition' with Perry again.

A: Yeah, that was done for a company called NEC (and the now defunct Rohit in the States) in Japan, and they wanted that combination, beca' it never happened again since 'War In A Babylon', the Max Romeo and Lee Perry combinations. Me and Lee Perry get together and do that album down in Wackies' studio.

Q: I've never heard it, did it turn out to be a good project?

A: Yeah, it did turn - I don't know if you know Lee Perry though (giggles), he didn't do much work on it but he was there, that was important.

Q: The next album was when you went into the studio with Tapper Zukie.

A: Yeah, 'The Cross Or The Gun'. That's when I went back to Jamaica in 1990 and was trying to get my foot back into what was happening there, and that was one of my first albums I did when I get there.

Q: And a short time after you hooked up with Jah Shaka from England.

A: Yeah, Jah Shaka. He came to Jamaica, wanted to do a project but didn't have anything in mind, that's what he tells me. So I said 'OK, I'm here and right now I'm not doing anything, so I could engage myself in a project'. Which we did, it came out two good albums: 'Tafari - Captain of My Ship' and 'Our Rights'.

Q: So what lies ahead for you, what about getting into producing others? Is that something you could see yourself do - again? You had the Serpent and The Truth labels back in the seventies for your own productions for example.

A: I'm about to do that. I just completed building a house and I put a studio there.

Q: Right, in Jamaica.

A: In Jamaica. I've got four kids now, and the last four kids that I got there is interested in music. So they are the ones I'm trying to teach and to produce. I'm building a studio for them, it's not completed yet. But that is what I will be doing as my retirement.

Q: I would like to ask you about the controversy regarding the reissue of the 'Revelation Time' album on Blood & Fire back in 1999. This came out with additional tracks bearing, again, the original US title 'Open The Iron Gate' for United Artists in 1976, and the stuff you've done with it on Charmax.

A: Yeah, the only controversy is when Blood & Fire give the company Strickly Vinyl to do some vinyl off it. But what happened is that I regained in Jamaica and the Caribbean rights for myself and how I do deals with people, 'cause I have my own vinyl company. So I press some of the same tracks on my label in Jamaica and sold some on export. And Strickly Vinyl run across it and figure it was a pirate, but it wasn't no piracy. It's just pressed in Jamaica on my label. So that was the only controversy at the time.

Q: OK. So what's the next project you'll be working on?

A: I've just completed an album. As a matter of fact it's just released in France, called 'A Little Time For Jah'. People love it. I'm performing four tracks off it on the concerts and it's really taking off.

Q: Who do you work with on it?

A: Clive Hunt is the producer. There's some young musicians, the bass player that is playing with me now plays bass on it.

Q: I saw him on these shows, he's wicked, nice discovery. What's his name again?

A: Stone. Young guy.

Q: What's the whole album concept?

A: It's within the same realms of 'War In A Babylon' - social comments, political statements. The normal Max Romeo thing, y'know. That's all I can do right now. I'm not motivated into...

Q: Branching off into something totally different?

A: Yeah. I stick to the roots and culture thing. It's a roots and culture album.

Q: Musically speaking, how do you foresee or predict the future of the music, will it get back more to the original acoustic settings again?

A: Well, if the industry doesn't get their things together and if they don't get some producers instead of these 'reducers' that they have now, and try to produce some artists instead of these 'fartists' that they're producing, then they're gonna plunge way down to where they're gonna only sell only ten records to make a number one. It's not gonna work. What they have now 'happening' is not happening. The hype is only the whole verbal nastiness that, y'know, accentuating that negative. Negativity - it's not gonna work. Music is a righteous tool and should be used in a righteous way. And not just in Jamaica, the US industry is in a slumber as well because of the nastiness that they're projecting. They figure that the whole world is nasty. Is only a quarter of the world is nasty. The rest of us are clean people, and they don't seem to understand that.

Q: And musically, the old-time...

A: For Europe. Europe is safe, because Europe hold the whole music.

Q: And try to bring back the interaction between instruments/musicians, like Beres is doing at his Silekshan studio in Jamaica now.

A: You mean...? Well, we have to go back to acoustic because the drum machine thing, the computer music is not - it don't have no soul to it. There's no feel to it, it just - as a matter of fact they don't make riddims anymore, they make a little noise.

Q: You mean the strict bashment riddims.

A: Yeah. I haven't heard any riddims being made. I don't know why people like Stevie Wonder and all these guys just fade, take some money and leave the business. I mean, y'know, we need them. We need back people of their stature to help to revive back the music. They just leave it to the gangsters, they can't do that. I mean, we don't want to force the gangsters out. But, I mean, where's the righteous people? What's happening?

Q: You see it more on a downward spiral than anything else right now?

A: Yeah, yeah. It's negative, man. The whole scenario is negative. MTV is a negative medium, a negative thing. I wish I could realise the damage that they're doing to young minds and put them into it. They remind me of a stupid station I have back home - in Irie FM. MTV is piss, man! I don't let my kids watch that, man. It's brainwashing people into perversion, everything out there is nasty.

'The Outspoken One' has spoken, and I wouldn't exactly turn those words against him, there's too much going on that needs to be reconsidered and changed, and built up again from scratch in our societies. But that is, perhaps, unlikely to happen. What we have left is the hope, they say hope is the last to leave us. And Max Romeo has been the voice for the hopeful for as long as we've known what 'roots music' really meant in concrete terms. Songs of upliftment. You appreciate the honesty and the energy he puts into the words. Sometimes his voice doesn't go along with and maintain that level of energy, but it certainly adds to the raw nerve he's exposing in many of the songs. The music follows a model of ragged, rough rhythm patterns to emphasise the harsh reality his lyricism often describes. It's not a pretty thing, often just like life itself, but highly effective and a pleasure to these ears at least. Hard music without apology. But he's sweet when he needs to be, even if he has left the 'romantic' man behind long ago he could still do the odd love title, but it had to incorporate a rough edge from day to day living somehow, 'We're Gonna Make It' is a splendid example of this to my ears. To my knowledge it has never been reissued. Other gems like 'Push De Broom' for Niney or 'If Them Ever' for Randy's has neither been repressed (though I have to insert here: a little bird whispered that it might be a 10", but just might be, soon) , so about time in other words. Mr Boswell and Mr Chin, off to the plants now, you hear!

Speaking of what is available of his best period, newcomers and other unsuccessful hunters of early Romeo material, you would wisely invest in Trojan's double-disc 'The Coming Of Jah' and Jamaican Gold's 'The Many Moods Of Max Romeo' for the late sixties and early seventies covered in a pretty decent way. Naturally there are good shots missing, but these two discs are still highly recommended as documents of a remarkable young songwriter at his early stage. Blood & Fire did us even a greater service by issuing, in my opinion, his strongest album to date back in the last century; the Clive Hunt/Tropical Sound Tracs-produced 'Revelation Time' LP from 1975, which now uses its original US title 'Open The Iron Gate' on United Artists from 1978, adding a couple of long lost shots like 'Melt Away', Randy's/Clive Chin's 'Every Man Ought To Know' and the Upsetter's 'Sipple Out Deh/War In A Babylon' alternative cut 'Fire Fe De Vatican', one of the pair's most memorable moments together. 'War In A Babylon' (the album) has always been available in one form or the other, as the rated classic it is, even since Mr Blackwell sold the Island label to the multi-national Universal, the latter who 'rebaked' the package and added a few things like a 7" mix, dub versions, and a Jah Lloyd toast to 'Norman' some time ago on the Reissue Specialist-branch Hip-O Select. A limited (and expensive) edition of course. And a good edition it was. I am also certain the multi national company wouldn't do any harm whatsoever by giving the author his long overdue share of the album...

Later records like 'I Love My Music' or 'Transition' are, unsurprisingly, not up to the standard of said classic albums but still worth searching for, both out of print. Another mysterious LP release came upon the Impact label entitled 'Every Man Ought To Know', the exact time of this release is unknown to me and the content of equal interest. A pity the late Keith Chin is no longer here to answer for that one. Max ensured each and everyone that he was back on form with the first Jah Shaka collaboration, but that was in 1992 and he hasn't shown the same strength since, though an album with Italian band Tribu Acustica made some noise a few years ago. He put together an album of various artists on the Romeo label and released his own 'Perilious Times' as well as the record he mentioned within this conversation but that's as far as activity goes, it has been quiet since apart from the occasional gig in Europe. He's left the saucy content behind long ago now in favour of some of the most thought-provoking songs you'll ever hear in reggae music. This has made him a household name in Europe at least, here he will always occupy the position of being one of best songwriters the island has ever produced. It's just a shame that Jamaica itself hasn't shown him the appreciation he is due. Now, didn't I write that about someone else a while ago...? I think I did, so there's two in other words? I strongly believe that, in truth, they are far from just 'two', but the actual amount is truly innumerable. That's the legacy of one of the most productive and creative forms of music the world has ever seen, and people like Max Romeo is upfront in representing that legacy. His reputation stands intact.

7" single information courtesy Roots Knotty Roots.