Lee “Scratch” Perry

I’m making a new site at the moment. It’s a grotesque vanity project, gath­er­ing together columns for The Herald with var­i­ous bits and bobs I’ve writ­ten over the years. For some reason, though, one piece from 2000 flat refuses to enter the data­base, throw­ing up all kinds of mys­te­ri­ous errors.

I’m not sur­prised: it’s a pro­file of Mr. Rain­ford Hugh Perry, AKA Lee “Scratch” Perry, AKA Pipecock Jack­son, AKA The Upsetter.

Since I’ve given up trying to bypass the Black Ark obeah, here’s a few quotes plucked from the interview:

Perry on Reggae:

When you see a rain­bow in the sky I tell you that is truly the sign of the Ark of the Covenant. I bring the Ark out of Egypt, down to 5 Cardiff Cres­cent, Wash­ing­ton Gar­dens. No-​one in Kingston, Jamaica, noticed it was out of Egypt, so I give them reggae music, the trea­sure of King Tut. The dread­locks around me, them poor people, so them make poor reggae. When I was a dread, I was an actor, a dead-​dread. Now I am alive as a doctor, and I rep­re­sent God, and God is not a Rasta. If I returned to reggae, I would be totally stupid, it would be goin’ against the signs—all the tapes I had were taken by some thieves. All Bob Marley, all Upset­ter. I cannot return to that Ark and that reggae.

Perry on Duke Reid, and becom­ing The Upsetter:

I go to Kingston to do it with Duke Reid and all of them, but I have a song and a style they did not like. And then Cox­sone Dodd have a good spirit and him want a good friend around, so him havin’ me around for a good friend in the busi­ness. But soon I could take no more of him either, and decided to make People Funny Boy, because people funny, you know? It was then I expose myself as The Upset­ter. The Upset­ter was my first name after I got called ‘Scratch’ at dances for my style. It means to upset all thief, all liar, all pimp, all user and all abuser and let them feel shame. The Upset­ter rep­re­sents the word Excal­ibur - blazin’ fire!

Perry on the purity of machines:

I returned to music through machines. The dif­fer­ence is that the machines are clean, and the machines are not cor­rupted. What I create here cannot hurt people, but you can bring an impure musi­cian to play in your studio and create your own doom. My brain rep­re­sent the bass, an’ if an evil man is play­ing on my brain, it’ll cause me trou­ble as he’s trying to chip away at my brain. And if an evil drum­mer is play­ing my beat with an evil thought, I think he can hurt my brain by play­ing a dread­ful drum. But the machine cannot play a dread­ful drum, and the machine cannot play a dread­ful bass.

Perry on his intended audience:

The music I am play­ing now is strictly for the chil­dren. It is a mag­i­cal tech­no­log­i­cal car­toon pop music to cheer them up, to heal their brain from boring reggae. God give me a chance to recre­ate the chil­dren brain. The chil­dren must not be bored, or they will become criminals.

Perry on the IMF:

I am the head of the IMF now also. I am the future children’s bil­lion­aire. Look at my name, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. The L is for the Eng­lish pound, the S is for the dol­lars, the P is for the permit out of Egypt. I am the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund master. I have known this a long time now.

Perry on Rastafarianism:

The colours of rain don’t belong to the Rasta, they belong to the rain. Put some water in a glass right now!¹ Hold it up against the wall: it form and show you a rain­bow. You will see no dread in there. Hold it up against the wall! You see red, gold and green? You sure as hell don’t see a Rasta in there, surely not!

Perry on his divine origins:

My music rep­re­sent God. And there is only one house on this earth that rep­re­sent God, and that is my house. The house of Nep­tune, the true an’ living god. Merlin, the magic master, he give me the music sword named Excal­ibur. I am an extra-​terrestrial, not from another planet but from heaven. My real name is Rain­ford Hugh Perry. And in the begin­ning there was the word ‘rain’. The word ‘rain’ take unto him­self flesh and blood and become a living soul. I am a living soul. My name is R-A-I-N-ford. Do you understand?

I’m pretty sure that I still have the Mini­Disc on which this inter­view was recorded—it also includes Perry singing Sun Is Shin­ing (a song he wrote for Bob Marley, or claims to have done)—and if I can find it, I’ll post MP3s of the quotes above.

Also, it should be noted that Perry is nowhere near as crazy as he sounds—when not ‘on’, he’s basi­cally the same as your Grandad. Only really, really stoned and wear­ing a hat cov­ered in mirrors.

1. At this point, Perry refused to speak until I went to kitchen, filled a glass of water, held it up to the light, and ver­i­fied that it didn’t con­tain a Rasta.↩

Posted at 8am on 25/01/07 by Jack Mottram to the interviews, music category.
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